FALLING IN THE WILDERNESS

FALLING IN THE WILDERNESS

Sunday, May 21, 2017

1Corinthians (GW) 3:9-15 We are God's coworkers. You are God's field. You are God's building. As a skilled and experienced builder, I [Paul] used the gift that God gave me to lay the foundation for that building. However, someone else is building on it. Each person must be careful how he builds on it. After all, no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is already laid, and that foundation is Jesus Christ. People may build on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw. The day will make what each one does clearly visible because fire will reveal it. That fire will determine what kind of work each person has done. If what a person has built survives, he will receive a reward. If his work is burned up, he will suffer the loss. However, he will be saved, though it will be like going through a fire.

  Man, exercising the God-given privilege of choice, individually and by group, has a history of rejecting His direction and falling outside of His verdant provision. For many it results in eternal separation from God and loved ones that trusted Jesus. For those trusting Him for eternal salvation but rejecting His directions for victorious living pleasing to Him, it results in wilderness living.

  Adam and Eve fell in God’s garden in Eden. (Gen.3:6-7)

  Cain was the first to fall outside of Eden. (Gen.4:1-14)

  After seeing God’s hand in miracles and deliverance, a multitude of Hebrews rejected responsibility to God’s direction and lived and died in wilderness. (Num.14:1-29)

  The Apostle Paul understood wilderness penalty. (1Cor.3:9-15; 9:24-27)

  The writer of letter to the Hebrews understood and warned of the cost of refusing God’s direction: “Therefore, holy brothers, called to be partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. For He was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, because he who has built the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God. And Moses truly was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken afterward. But Christ was faithful as a Son over his own house; whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation and said, They always err in their heart, and they have not known My ways. So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest." Take heed, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.” (MKJV Heb.3:1-12; thread continuing throughout the letter, especially thought provoking at 3:7-19; 5:11 thru 6:6)

  Those of us that have looked up the above Scripture references fully understand wilderness option ever before God’s children. We clearly are aware we can know, observe, and even experience the truth of His obvious direction but choose a detrimental path. Let us choose His life abundant!  (Jn.14:6)

EBB4 (2/15/17)

PS. Why have I been republishing some old DTs? The reason is because God continues to grow this ministry and me. DT readership has expanded considerably from what it was just a few years ago. As some of you beneficially reread your journaling, I reread, contemplate, rejoice and/or work at personal adjustment as recognized. Then, exercising God-given responsible free-will, I carefully decide if and what to redact and republish.