We have yet another Evangelical Republican claiming that their people are being raised up by God. Of course, they feel this is a good thing. The problem is, the Bible shows many instances where people are raised up by God to teach His people a lesson. When will Christians learn the reality of their claims that God is “on their side”? The reality is that God is on God’s side.
The adjacent image shows a man. For our topic today, he’s a Republican. He claims to be a Christian.
He’s being lifted up by a very large hand. The hand of God.
But check out the background.
It’s dark. Cloudy.
And look at all the debris coming up along with the man.
All that debris is causing what we so politely call collateral damage.
Some people just have to pay the price for the greater good.
In our country, as in so many others today, the collateral damage is done to the poor, the immigrants, the people the so-called Christians look down on.
But isn’t there something wrong with that?
Who’s talking about being raised up by God now?
The headline reads: Folksy Champion of Christian Right Mike Johnson Is New GOP Speaker.
And what did he say? “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority,” Johnson told House lawmakers. “He raised up each of you, all of us.”
That statement deserves a response along the lines of, “yes, but …”.
The Bible is very clear that leaders are raised up by God. However, The Bible is just as clear that being raised up by God may very well mean the person being raised up is being used by God to teach His people a lesson.
God is the God of His people
Hopefully you remember, there are many times when God says something along the lines of, “They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.”
The first time those words actually appear is in Jeremiah 24:7. But the thought goes way back. Think Genesis, Abram/Abraham, and God’s covenant with the newly renamed Abraham.
The Covenant of Circumcision
Ge 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”
Ge 17:3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram ; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
Ge 17:9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.
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God will hold up His part of the covenant. Unfortunately, we, God’s people, often don’t hold up our part.
A famous leader raised up by God
God, The Father – Friend or Foe? A look at Pharaoh.
If you believe God’s your friend – you’re undoubtedly happy to remember that God will never forget you.
If you believe God’s your enemy – you’re likely wishing that He would just forget all about you.
BTW, if you answered that question with either yes or no, but you consider yourself an atheist, I have to ask you: who is it exactly that you wish would forget you?
Probably the most widely known leader raised up by God was Pharaoh, in Exodus.
There are some misunderstandings about God and Pharaoh.
This is especially true of atheists.
But even Christians who don’t understand the interrelationship between God’s love, justice, and His desire for us to have free will, including the free will to turn away from and even against Him.
For a deeper look into the situation with Pharaoh, I invite you to check out the adjacent inset box.
If that sounds interesting, just click on the read more button.
You’ll see that Pharaoh was raised up by God.
However, you’ll also see that Pharaoh’s existing character was used by God to accomplish His purposes. To bring His people, the Israelites who got too comfortable after Joseph and a different Pharoah welcomed Joseph and his family because Joseph interpreted that Pharoah’s dream saved them from a deadly 7-year famine.
So, even today, we have to ask ourselves, “why did God raise up this person to be our leader?“
Just because God raises someone up to be a leader it’s not a given that their values align with God’s. As with Pharaoh, they may be totally opposite. That person may be God’s chosen person to bring His people to the point where things get so bad they finally realize they’ve turned from God – and need to turn back to God.
It’s the old story of sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we realize we have a problem. For our own good, if we get to that point God will accommodate our needs. That doesn’t mean God is evil. It means God cares about our eternal souls. And sometimes He will use an evil person to bring us to the realization that we walked away from God and need to return to Him.
Were there other evil leaders raised up by God?
Yes, the Bible is full of references to evil leaders being raised up by God to teach the Israelites that they needed to return to Him. There are also nameless references to countries that would attack Israel.
Even today, or sometime probably not too far away, there’s this prophecy in Ezekiel to bring in the End Times.
A Prophecy Against Gog
Eze 38:14 “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: In that day, when my people Israel are living in safety, will you not take notice of it? 15 You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, all of them riding on horses, a great horde, a mighty army. 16 You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, O Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.
Are all evil leaders from other countries?
Maybe you’re thinking, all these people are from other countries. Surely God wouldn’t raise up one of our own to do bad things to us.
But that’s not the right viewpoint. God doesn’t allow bad things, evil, to happen just for the sake of doing bad things to us! Remember, God allows bad things to happen for a reason. And God’s reasons, while we may or may not understand, are always good.
The things we’re looking at now are events and leaders raised up by God with the intention of having us return to God. To make us realize that our own desires, when they go against God’s will, must be changed. One of the ways He does this when large percentages of a population turn against Him is by raising up a leader to give us an opportunity to realize this.
In a way, we’re fortunate here in the U.S. that we have the opportunity to change leaders so often. We don’t have to wait until an evil King dies. Or until a dictator is overthrown. Every year there are elections where we get to make changes.
But do we make those changes? Or do we just keep voting in the same people? Think about that. When we continue to vote in people who are so far from being in God’s image, we’re telling God that we don’t want someone with those characteristics to lead us.
I’m not talking about our own personal preferences. I’m talking about someone who has a character that God would approve of. For instance, as much as you might like Trump’s version of “christianity”, His character is so far from Christian, as Jesus told us to act.
Be careful what you ask for in a leader
God warned the people way back in the Old Testament about having leaders with characters outside the framework of His desires for us.
For those who love the “good” parts of the Old Testament, where the people did whatever they wanted, maybe you don’t remember this:
Israel Asks for a King
1Sa 8:1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. 3 But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
1Sa 8:4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. 5 They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
1Sa 8:6 But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”
1Sa 8:10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day. ”
1Sa 8:19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
1Sa 8:21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”
Then Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Everyone go back to his town.”
Just to be sure you got it, here’s part of that again:
1Sa 8:10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day. ”
Think about that.
It doesn’t matter which political party you favor. They all do some of the things above that God warned the people about.
Does it matter who our leaders are?
If the political party doesn’t matter, does any of this matter?
Yes, it does. But what matters is what Jesus said. After all, this isn’t the Old Testament, with the Old Covenant anymore. Check out the passage below:
Hagar and Sarah – Galatians
Gal 4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23 His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.
Gal 4:24 These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written:
“Be glad, O barren woman,
who bears no children;
break forth and cry aloud,
you who have no labor pains;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband.”
Gal 4:28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” 31 Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
No, I’m not going into details today. The point is merely that, as Christians, we should be cognizant of the fact that we’re under the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant.
There aren’t hundreds of “thou shalt not do this…” kinds of rules. What we have is two – “thus shalt do this …” rules.
The Greatest Commandment – Matthew
22:34-40 pp — Mk 12:28-31
Mt 22:34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Mt 22:37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Do you see what I mean? Do these two things.
Notice, both of them are about “love”. Specifically, “agape” love.
The letter to the loveless church in Ephesus in Revelation
The common theme in all that is that the church in Ephesus essentially walked away from their first love. As we saw, they weren’t led astray by false teachers. And they didn’t have their first love corrupted by evil coming in from outside the church. They just let go of it, neglected it, walked on and left it behind. In other words, they probably weren’t paying attention and their first love just got lost in everything else they were doing. Buried under all the deeds, hard work and standing up under trials. All of this led them to become the loveless church in Ephesus.
As most Christians probably know, there are several different “kinds” of love.
Many hopefully also know about the letter to the church in Ephesus, in Revelation.
They had a major problem with love.
They didn’t have any!
I did a series on the Seven Letters to the Seven Churches. The one to the church in Ephesus goes into quite a bit of detail on what “agape” love means.
Rather than reproduce it here, I encourage you to check out the article on that letter and see more about what agape love entails.
The thing to get here is that no matter what we do, if we don’t do it with love, with that agape kind of love Jesus spoke about in the Bible, then we leave ourselves in the position of the Church in Ephesus.
If you’re not familiar with the letter, or don’t remember it, here it is:
To the Church in Ephesus
Rev 2:1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
Rev 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Rev 2:7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Just want to be sure you understand the part about:
Rev 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
Since the people in the Ephesus church weren’t doing things out of love for Jesus, with His love for the people they served, they were about to lose their status as a church. That’s not like getting kicked out of a denomination because of some difference on how to interpret the Bible. That’s Jesus putting out their symbolic light in Heaven. That’s not a good thing.
What else is in the article that we need to pay attention to?
Remember, doing things out of love is incredibly important under the New Covenant.
Side note – actually, it was under the Old Covenant as well. It just didn’t quite happen all that often. We know this, at least in part, because of something Jesus said. Something that was almost kind of buried in Matthew’s Gospel:
The Calling of Matthew
9:9-13 pp — Mk 2:14-17; Lk 5:27-32
Mt 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
Mt 9:10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
Mt 9:12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
But then again, it appears later in Matthew’s Gospel with more prominence.
Lord of the Sabbath – Matthew
12:1-8 pp — Mk 2:23-28; Lk 6:1-5
12:9-14 pp — Mk 3:1-6; Lk 6:6-11
Mt 12:1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”
Mt 12:3 He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Mt 12:9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
Mt 12:11 He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Mt 12:13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. 14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.
Did you catch the part that was repeated? It’s ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’
Did you also notice, it’s contained within quote marks? It’s a reference to something in the Old Testament. From the Old Covenant times.
Israel Unrepentant
He cut us into pieces. Let’s return to his love.
He cut us into pieces. Let’s return to his love. Say what? He has torn us to pieces and injured us? And we should return to him? To his love? Huh?
…
What’s missing from the last passage is the implicit (unstated, but should have been understood) concept that the people were wrong to do the things they did. To bring that into current times, the people (us) are wrong to have been doing the things we are doing.
The acknowledgment that what we’re doing is wrong is important. If we continue to insist that we’ve done nothing wrong, then we haven’t really returned to God, have we?
Hos 6:1 “Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
…
Hos 6:6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
…
This was the notice to the people in Old Testament times, through the prophet Hosea, that their practice of sin, sacrifice, sin sacrifce, rinse and repeat, we not what God wanted.
God wants His people to be focused on Him. That’s the way it’s always been.
And as Jesus pointed out, even doing the “right” things for the wrong reason isn’t truly doing the right thing in God’s eyes.
I’m in the middle of doing a series that looks more at the world today in light of Hosea’s prophecy from the Old Testament. Rather than an unrepentant Israel, it’s about today’s unrepentant world. In that light, instead of looking at the Israelites, it looks at today’s Christians. It examines whether or not we’re getting that message of mercy and love.
You can check out what’s available as of the time you read this at An unrepentant world. You can also subscribe to this site to get notifications when new things are published at Subscribe to whichgodsaves.com.
With that in mind, here are some more from the article: Folksy Champion of Christian Right Mike Johnson Is New GOP Speaker.
Many politicians, including Biden, have an abiding religious faith. But Johnson’s decades of work on behalf of evangelical cultural issues make him the most conservative speaker in modern times.
He holds ultraconservative positions on abortion, for which he advocates a national ban with limited exceptions, and same-sex marriages, which he has vigorously opposed. He’s introduced legislation that would ban the use of federal funds for, among other things, drag-queen story hours, and he’s advocated for students’ rights to pray in public schools.
…
Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar questioned whether the speaker race was about finding “the person who can pass their extreme litmus test to oppose marriage equality, enact a nationwide abortion ban — without exceptions — gut Social Security and Medicare, and support overturning a free and fair election.”
“It’s a fair question,” he added.
Hardliners who overthrew former Speaker Kevin McCarthy embraced Johnson’s election as a victory for Trump’s Make America Great Again populism, often abbreviated as MAGA.
“If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention,” Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida, the ringleader in McCarthy’s ouster, said on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast.
I’m not going to go through any of those in detail. I figure that if you got this far, you know what these issues are about. Or, at least, you have your views on them.
Conclusion: When will Christians learn being raised up by God isn’t always good?
But here’s the thing. Regardless of which party/candidate you favor, there are issues with what they want to do as opposed to what Jesus tells us to do.
Plus, there are issues with the character of the candidate. And issues with the goals of the party, which is as close as a group of people can come to having some fort of character.
Therefore, no matter who we support, what we think is the “right” solution, have we, if we’re Christian, evaluated our choices in light of what Jesus taught? Or are we accepting the claim from a political purpose when it comes to whether the things they espouse are Christian or not?
When it comes to our choices, we can tell God, my party told me to do it. That’s not going to go over any differently than the conversation below.
The Fall of Man
Ge 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Ge 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
Ge 3:4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Ge 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Ge 3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
Ge 3:10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Ge 3:11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”
Ge 3:12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Ge 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Ge 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
Ge 3:15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Ge 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Ge 3:17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
Ge 3:18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
Ge 3:19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Ge 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
Ge 3:21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Yeah – Adam tried to say it was all Eve’s fault. But everyone got punished. If we choose to say it was Trump’s fault, or it was Biden’s fault, do we really think God’s going to accept that? Keep in mind, it was Jesus who died for our sins, It wasn’t our political candidate of choice.
Love matters. And it must be our love. The love that Jesus taught us about. The collateral damage from our choices is people who are just as much a creation of God as we are. Some of them are already Christians. Some aren’t. Our task, from Jesus, is to love even those who aren’t. Even those we hate. Blaming the death of people’s spiritual life and their soul on our political choice isn’t going to cut it with God.
Character matters. Our leader is Jesus. There’s not one single person on this earth whose character has come even close to Jesus’ character. How do we explain that we’re the reason some people turned away from God because we followed someone of distinctly un-Christian character?
People matter. The Bible tells us so many times to care for the poor, widows, children, immigrants. Yes, immigrants. how do we tell God, n – you’re wrong on that one?
And before you get upset about that, consider something. Many, if not most, immigrants who are poor or scared to live in their own countries are the ones we fight over. But maybe there’s other ways to solve the problem? For instance, have you ever thought about the reality that there are a very small number of super rich people in this world? And that most of the comparatively rich people, not the super rich, live in the so-called Western countries. You know, the countries those immigrants want to get into?
Have you ever thought about why that is? We, in the developed countries, still want people in undeveloped countries to make things for us, grow things for us, take our trash from us, mess up their environment so we can have the things produced by destroying their land. And we want to pay them as little as possible. Certainly not enough to ever get to where we are.
And then we wonder why they want to come here!
Maybe, if a few of us weren’t so greedy as to think having billions of dollars made for them by people who can’t even afford to live in the developed countries where they work, things would be different.
Maybe, if so many in America could live without all the excesses of huge trucks and cars to drive around with one person in them, didn’t waste so much food, didn’t spend so much on things they use once or twice and then throw away, things would be different.
And maybe, if more people in the so-called developed countries actually cared about other people, including those in the poor countries, and then carried out that caring with actions, things would be different.
And have we ever thought about, “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first”?
Or maybe, as in the warning to the church in Ephesus, we won’t make the cut at all? That we won’t be forgiven, but instead we’ll be told something like what’s in this final passage to close today’s topic?
A Tree and Its Fruit
Mt 7:15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
Mt 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
Ouch.
Think. Choose carefully. Choosing the God of the Bible is very different from choosing the god of politics.
Image by Bing Chat / DALL-E 3 from: make me an image of a person being lifted up by God. It should have a man sitting on a large hand, where the hand represents the hand of God. The background should be dark and cloudy. make it watercolor to enhance the haziness.