Monthly Archives: March 2010

Goals. If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time. The world has too many people who travel through life without any clear goals for what they want to accomplish. Get your eight hours a day in, get your pay check and don’t get hurt, are hardly goals that will change the world for any good. How many stories are there of people, young and old, who just seem to live their lives by reacting to the things that they encounter day by day. Aimlessness.

We are prone to think of younger people when we bemoan the lack of goals and strenuous pursuits and aiming at something. But it is not a problem restricted to the young. All age groups have it. The old man who has the intellectual ability and physical stamina to do something that matters but who thinks that because he has put in his nickel’s worth of effort to the world for forty years and now deserves to rest, is a pathetic, sad mess. He is wasting his life no less than the youth who sits in front of video games for hours on end. He may even be worse. The youth has the chance to rectify the situation. The aged may never come to their senses. There is no fool like an old fool.

Those who dream of winning the lottery and spending the rest of their lives travelling or sunning themselves or cruising around in a different sports car every week are fools. We are made for purpose and to achieve things that matter. We find purpose in pushing toward something, in expending energy toward a goal that has gripped the soul. Laziness, despair, hopelessness, surrender, laissez faire attitudes – these all are a curse upon an individual and all with whom he interacts. Even more, it is a curse upon a world that sorely needs to be conquered by those who know the good and pursue it.

But a goal is not enough. There are good goals and there are bad goals. It is hardly sufficient to teach our young people that as long as they pursue something they are fine. They need to be taught to pursue something worthwhile. Misplaced goals are worse than none at all.

All of this has been sparked by the news of a lady weighing 601 pounds who has decided to reach the weight of 1000 pounds. In order to achieve this, shall we say, hefty goal, she is spending $815.00/week on food. Where is the money coming from to finance such an endeavour? Is she independently wealthy? Not at all. She is earning money through her website where men pay a fee to watch her eat and, wait for it – wash herself.

Aside from the gross perversion that this represents it is a horrible waste of time. It is the utter waste of a life, both for the men and the woman. But it is much more than that.

It is sin. It is sin on many levels. But it is sin first of all because it violates the first and greatest commandment. There is no way in a hundred worlds that one can aim at becoming the weight of eight healthy women for the pleasure of hundreds of very unhealthy men, for the glory of God. It is simply not possible for this goal to be set for the glory of God, out of a supreme love for God and the honour of the only God there is. There is no way that this can be done without committing idolatry and slandering the name of the one true God.

But let us not throw too many stones. Any goal that is set is to be for the glory of God. One does not have to set one’s sights on weighing a thousand pounds in order to commit idolatry. We grill it into our children to “make something of themselves”. What we usually mean by that is that they become successful, wealthy, famous, popular, or all of the above. We let them know that we don’t want them to embarrass us. We worry about them getting sick or getting in with the wrong crowd and breathe a sigh of relief when they become adults without having done either.

And we treat their lack of faith in the Creator as if it is a small thing. My mother used to tell me that if I didn’t apply myself better in school I would amount to nothing but a ditch digger. My father would sidle up next to me and whisper in my ear, “Be a saved ditch digger”. He had right perspectives.

The woman who gets her fifteen minutes by striving to be grossly overweight is no more idolatrous than the model who eats tissues for lunch and has different men with different fetishes watching her. It is no worse than the parent who makes it known that what is important is career and money. It is similar to those who push toward being the best gamer or the collector of the most bottle caps or the reader of the most books. It is believers who chase after having the biggest church or writing the book that will end up on every Christian’s shelf. They are all self centered, self satisfying, and self absorbed. Goals are important and we can do no better than make as our own those which propelled the Apostle Paul in the work that God had called him to.

2 Cor. 5:9 – So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

Ephesians 1:16-18 – I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, [17] that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, [18] having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

Ephesians 3:14-19 – For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, [15] from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Philippians. 3:7-14 – But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. [8] Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— [10] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [11] that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. [12] Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. [13] Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, [14] I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 2:15 – Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Now those are goals. And the issue is not that they are for those who are “full time” Christian workers. There is no such thing as a part time Christian worker. We are all full time believers in Jesus Christ. No. These are goals that you can take with you into any calling with the prayer that whatever you accomplish in life, these things will be more important, more noticeable more fruitful and more satisfying. They will have the smile of God upon them and they may even result in helping someone else find the God that such goals are adopted for.

An aimless life is a great tragedy. A life with God-less goals is just as bad. There is a solution to both.

Jeremiah 7:21-26 (ESV)

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. [22] For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. [23] But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ [24] But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. [25] From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. [26] Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

When God released the children of Israel out of Egyptian slavery He had one requirement: obedience to all that He said. Among the commandments that God would eventually give them were the laws about worship and sacrifice. When God says to Jeremiah that He did not speak to the Israelites about burnt offerings and sacrifices what He meant was that the general rule was obedience to all that He would say.

What the Israelites did was take one set of laws – those regarding animal sacrifices, and reasoned that if they went through the forms of the ceremonies connected to the worship of God in them, then that was all that mattered. In other words, their hearts were not focussed on obedience to all that God said. They were focussed on the external observance of forms and rituals and confusing that with real obedience.

So while they are sacrificing their animals in worship they are also abusing the poor and the fatherless. They are cheating one another at the markets. They are disregarding all that God said about marriage and divorce and adultery. They are worshipping idols. And they do all this and more while going to the temple to sacrifice, confident that all is well between them and God because they have thought that all that mattered to God was the forms of worship. Keep those things and then do as you please.

Well, the more things change the more they stay the same. People have not changed at all in the 3500 years since God led the Israelites out of Egypt and the 2600 hundred since He spoke to Jeremiah. Churches split over music style while not flinching at the gossip and worldliness in the church. Whole church schisms erupt over whether one should take the elements of the Eucharist standing up or kneeling. Get the forms right and nothing else matters. The forms are important. But they are not of prime importance. The obedience that springs from faith is.

Have you become satisfied with your Christian testimony because you worship regularly or give to the poor or have found a church that sings the way you think singing should take place, or use the right version of the Bible or allow any version of the Bible or dress right or take pride in the fact that you don’t dress right? Such things are not the commitment that God is looking for. He searches the heart. His goal for you is conformity to the image of Christ. Satisfaction at conformity to the forms of religion is a far far cry from that.

Worship God in the beauty of holiness. Pursue God with your heart. Love Him and love your neighbour. Be careful how you build (I Cor. 3:10).

God is always concerned about motive and heart (I Thessalonians 2:3-6). We must never allow form, ritual, activity to become more important than the reason we do them. If we do, we have replaced obedience, faithfulness and grace with a works righteousness that He simply finds insulting and which for us is damning. It is easy to do and we need to be constantly examining our hearts and motives to make sure that we do not go there. He is with His children to help us.

He is loving and patient and directs those who truly honour Him from the heart. Let us worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Psalm 73:1-3 – Truly God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart.

[2] But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,

my steps had nearly slipped.

[3] For I was envious of the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

God is good to the pure in heart. When someone says “God has been good to me” what do you suppose has happened in his life? Did he win the lottery? He got the job he had been praying for? His mother was healed of the illness that was afflicting her? All those would be legitimate. But could we say “God has been good to me” if the prayers had not been answered, the hoped for job had not materialized and mom died?

Psalm 73 starts out with a claim that God is good to Israel and then he clarifies what he means by that – those whose hearts are pure. In other words, “Israel” even in the Old Testament sometimes meant spiritual Israel – those who have kept the faith.

Having said that God has been good to them he then goes on to explain that he had been envious of others who were prospering while he was not. In others words, though God had been good to him he had not recognized it because of his troubles. The circumstances of his life had blinded him to the goodness of God. Same old, same old. This is precisely what happens to many Christians today. We start comparing ourselves with others who are not faithful and we see that their car is not held together with bailing twine, their homes could be used for your morning church services and they go to the club every morning with healthy bodies that they manage to keep in shape since their schedules are not booked up from sunrise to sunset.

What the Psalmist is saying is that God had been good to him but he had failed to see it because he took it upon himself to define what it means to be blessed by God. Hear him in verses 12-14

Behold, these are the wicked;

always at ease, they increase in riches.

[13] All in vain have I kept my heart clean

and washed my hands in innocence.

[14] For all the day long I have been stricken

and rebuked every morning.

They have it easy and I have it hard. Therefore God is not being good to me. This is the sad reality of how we think. It is understandable. When life is hard it is difficult to recognize the goodness of God to us in the non-material matters of life. It is hard to keep a spiritual perspective when the physical is being so powerfully hard. To add the effort at keeping one’s faith strong in the midst of all this is wearisome. And while enduring the hardships of life and struggling to keep a faith that does not faint in the face of those hardships we see that there are godless people who do not seem to be suffering at all. It all adds up to sinful attitudes, sinful conclusions and sinful actions.

What did the Psalmist do? He sat down and thought. He took the time to put things together properly. Hear verse 16.

But when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task,

He takes it upon himself to understand why things are the way they are. It does not start out well. It wearies him. So, he goes to the place of worship, the place where God is represented and the place where the faithful gather for worship. There God helps him get his thoughts together and he comes to the right conclusion.

Psalm 73:17 – until I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I discerned their end.

For all the ways that the wicked have it easy, their final destiny, which is forever, is far from enviable. In fact, the very thing that the Psalmist envied were what are sending them to ruin. The wealth, the ease of life, the seeming ignorance of God toward the way they live are the very things that are evidence that they should not be envied, but pitied.

Psalm 73:18 – Truly you set them in slippery places;

you make them fall to ruin.

That pity should result in praying for their salvation and an opportunity to give them the Gospel.

It is always better to be in the place of God’s saving grace with little of the world’s goods than to be outside of that grace and be in possession of much.

We are to walk through life with an eternal perspective. The hope of eternal life enables us to always say “God has been good to me”, no matter what the difficulties are. A walk with God now in the face of our difficulties is better than a walk with no troubles and no God with us. It is easy to lose sight of such things. But they are true and they are a great tonic for the soul. God has been very good to us. The cross is proof of it, no matter what.

Listening to the radio the other day and the DJ was encouraging his listeners to visit the station’s web site. “It is so safe” he said “that you don’t have to hit the ‘clear history’ button when you are done”.

Why is there a “clear history” button on your computer? Why is it possible for people to delete any reference to the web sites that they have been visiting? Is it there because the developers of such things know that people, mostly men, are going to be visiting web sites that they would be embarrassed to have other people, one thinks of wives, children, bosses, find out what sites they have been in? A single click and you can erase all reference to the fact that you were where you were when you were on line and the boss thought you were working, your wife thought you were reading the news, or Carson, or your children thought you were into that game.

I know nothing about computers, but it is my guess that someone with the knowledge and skill could go into a computer and find out what the deleted sites were. Somewhere, in the bowels of the computer, there is reference to the deleted files that are immune to the “clear history” command. And then there’s Google, and You Tube and your internet provider. You know they keep track – no matter how much deleting you do – even if you set your computer afire and get a new one.

Does the thought that your surfing history can be found out send chills up your spine? And what if that were true in other areas of life? What if someone from your past were to show up at your door and threaten to talk to your wife about your university days? We see this all the time in the political arena. Just ask Adam Giambrone (a reference for the Toronto news savvy).

The application of all this is blatantly obvious. There is no delete history button in our lives. We simply cannot erase the sins of our past or our present. They hang over us like a cloud that is constantly raining down on us. Live sinlessly perfect from this day until you die and you still cannot deal with all the ones committed up to today. There simply is no delete option.

And yet there is.

The cross.

The cross deletes all reference and all history and all consequences. It is the grand cleaner of junk. Others may make reference to them, but God never will. Call in the computer expert of life – God Himself, to search for evidence against you and all He will see is a pristine heart, because all He hears is “I have done a cleaning”, from his Son.

The cross makes it as if those deeds were never committed. It is a marvelous work. In the computer analogy again, it is the perfect program for ridding your files of all the junk. Not even Google will find it. And that is what you need.

God’s standard is absolute perfection. He will simply not tolerate any sin whatsoever. And only Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God who lived a sinless life and died a substitutionary death, taking the consequences for you that you should have taken, can completely delete the sin. Nothing and no one can even remove one. It is all or nothing with Him. You can have all your sin removed by Him or have all else and everyone else and everything else that you try, completely fail to remove even one. Jesus does a perfect complete job. Don’t be a fool.

Now, back to delete history. There is help for you if the only solution you have found so far for hiding your computer sins is the delete history button. It starts with faith in Jesus Christ.

But it would be foolish to assume that there are no Christians who are not troubled and haunted by their internet activities. Use what God has given you. He has given you the Word. He has given you prayer.

And I can hear it now. “The Word and prayer?!!? Do you have any idea how much Bible reading and prayer I have done only to sink right back into the same old habit again?” Yes, I do. But that is not all that God provides.

He also provides the fellowship of the saints. And if you are really serious about kicking the habit of computer sin then you must find one or more Christian confidants with whom you can confess and from whom you can find prayer and help and time. Hebrews 3:12-13 is important here:

Hebrews 3:12-13 – Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. [13] But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

James 5:16 is necessary as well:

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

You think that prayer and Bible reading are not enough. You are right. God didn’t design them to be. You need those things but you also need everything else He has provided for you. You need the church, the fellowship of the saints, loving care from others. Consider these verse regarding that:

Psalm 55:14 – We used to take sweet counsel together;

within God’s house we walked in the throng.

Luke 22:32 – but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

John 17:20-21 – “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, [21] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Romans 1:12 – that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

Romans 12:15 – Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Galatians 6:2 – Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Ephes. 4:15-16 – Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, [16] from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephes. 5:18-21 – And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, [19] addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, [20] giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, [21] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Philip. 2:1-4 – So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, [2] complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. [3] Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. [4] Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

1 Thes. 5:11-15 – Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. [12] We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, [13] and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. [14] And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. [15] See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

Hebrews 10:24-25 – And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, [25] not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

There are more of course. But this isn’t a bad place to start. And it’s good place right now for me to stop.

Psalm 145:1 – I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.

“I will … bless your name forever and ever” can be understood to mean that he will bless the name of God for as long as he lives. It can also mean that he will live forever with God on a new earth and live for the purpose for which he was created in the first place.

Extolling the name forever and ever does not mean that all we will do is sit around with harps and sing worship songs, although, it needs to be said, that if that is what it means then we would be so changed that it would feed every need and every longing.

We will do all that we do for the praise of the glory of God. The gardening, the enjoyment of creation. The time spent with others. Everything will be God saturated and God praising. The only ones who think that is not a good thing are those who don’t enjoy it now. In other words: if you don’t enjoy worship and the company of God’s people and exalting grace and being in the presence of others who do … then you will not enjoy it in the eternal state either.

Don’t want to spend eternity living sinlessly for the glory of God? Eternal worship sounds boring and one dimensional to you? OK. Then you won’t have to worry about it. God will not give  you that which you abhor. He will see to it that you never enter into His presence and never have to worry about worshipping. You will go away from the presence of God where you will shake your puny little fist at God and all who are found in Him for all eternity. And you will know that it is what you chose for yourself.

Jeremiah 7:1-7 (ESV)

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: [2] “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. [3] Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. [4] Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

[5] “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, [6] if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, [7] then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

Jeremiah has been giving the message from God to the city of Jerusalem that judgement is coming despite what their prophets and priests have been telling them. But the people are intransigent and they refuse to repent (6:17). Now God sends Jeremiah to the centre of the problem, the temple. It is the centre of the problem because it is priests and prophets, the religious leaders, who have been counselling the people that God is not angry at Judah and all is well. It is the centre of the problem because the temple is the centre for the worship of God and the sins of the people are the sins of those who are active in the temple. It is those who go through the forms of worship who are the problem. It is those who offer sacrifice for sin without any plans to change and without any hearts of repentance.

Judgement, as Peter reminds us, must begin in the house of the Lord (I Peter 4:17). The worship, as Jesus (quoting Isaiah) pointed out to the religious leaders of his day, has the right words, but those words come from hearts that are far away from God (Matthew 15:8-9). The problem in Israel lies at the place where people are certain everything is fine. If judgement is coming it certainly is in spite of the worship in the temple, not because of it, is how they would reason. And they were wrong. Judgement is indeed coming because of the worship in the temple.

Could we be wrong too? It is so easy to lash out at the wicked people all around us. It is so convenient to have a government that we are allowed to criticize for its godlessness. It is so easy to blame Hollywood and the school system and various movements in the culture that are idolatrous and immoral. And it is really easy to blame those of a more liberal theological bent.  But the words of Jesus should ring in our ears whenever we start thinking about the moral decay and slide in our culture.

Matthew 5:13 – “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

The world is an idolatrous place and people are responsible for their own behaviour. But Jesus is clear here that the Christian community is a preservative in the culture/world. Our presence is to be that which will keep the society from rotting away into complete godlessness. The church needs to be at least aware of the fact that the moral decay all around us accelerates if the salt is absent or ineffective.

The problem with Israel was the temple worshippers. The problem with the covenant people of God today may very well be the covenant people of God.

It is not for us to mourn the moral and ethical state of the culture and world in which we live. It is for us to examine ourselves to make sure that we are living such godly lives among the pagans that even though they accuse us of wrong doing they will have nothing evil to say about us on the day of God’s visitation (I Peter 2:9-12).

The church of Jesus Christ needs to stand at the gates of its places of worship and see if it needs to amend its ways. We need to be at least not as arrogant as the worshippers Jeremiah encountered and pray with David “search me O God and see if there be any way in me”.

Jeremiah 6:6-8 (ESV)

For thus says the Lord of hosts:

“Cut down her trees;

cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem.

This is the city that must be punished;

there is nothing but oppression within her.

[7] As a well keeps its water fresh,

so she keeps fresh her evil;

violence and destruction are heard within her;

sickness and wounds are ever before me.

[8] Be warned, O Jerusalem,

lest I turn from you in disgust,

lest I make you a desolation,

an uninhabited land.”

Once, around the time I was eight or nine years old I came home to an empty house after school and decided to go out. I dutifully locked the door and as I closed it a note fell from off the lock of the door and I picked it up to read it. It was a note to me from my parents which said that they had misplaced the key to the house and that I must not lock the door if I go out. I still remember the churning feeling in the pit of my stomach and the hope that I really hadn’t locked the door or that perhaps I had not pulled it quite far enough to close. I was confident that my greatest fears would not be realized. But they were. And I remember thinking “this can’t be happening”. But it was. It was the biggest crisis of my life up to that point. I couldn’t believe that something this horrible had occurred and that I was the cause of it. The point is, even in the face of knowing what had happened I did not want to admit that this was the case. I actually thought “this wouldn’t happen to me.”

This is not a rare thing for people to conclude. People who smoke do not think that the cancer that has taken root in so many smokers will reach them. Speeders know that they will not hurt or get hurt on the roads when they drive. Eating like this will not give me diabetes.

This was the problem that the city of Jerusalem had in the days of Jeremiah. They would not admit that God would really punish them for their sins. God cannot make it plainer – “Be warned, O Jerusalem”, Jeremiah tells them on behalf of God. The religious leaders are telling the people “peace, peace” when there is no peace (verse 14). The pleasant message, the uplifting message, the soothing message is what they want and it is what most preachers are delivering, so Jeremiah is not heard or believed. “This will not happen to me” is their heart belief.

How many so called “Christians” live in the same delusion? How many turn the grace of God into a license to commit immorality (Jude 4)? How many bask in grace while making no attempt to show grace in how they live, in what they value, and in real struggle against real sin and a real enemy of the soul? How many Matthew 7:21-23 believers will be at the throne of God hearing a statement that they were absolutely convinced would be said to others but not to them?

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [22] On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ [23] And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

There is no deception worse than self-deception. There is no confidence so bad as false confidence in something that cannot give any help. That is what the people of Jerusalem had in Jeremiah’s day and they refused to believe otherwise. It is what many professing Christians have today and they are no less duped by their own false confidence and self deception. Make sure you are not one of them.