Morning Moments

OOOPS! Had trouble publishing this yesterday.

NOT KNOWING!

Matthew 22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

I am constantly being faced with ignorance - my own and that of others. Learning is a process and it is an unending one as long as we live in this present environment. We, as believers, cannot afford to forget that. The truth is that many of us have learned nothing new about God in years and that is pitiful.

I am not saying TRUTH has changed, it doesn't, but light on truth does and continues to do so. Jesus is THE TRUTH and instructs me to "LEARN of me...” That means so much more than learning about Him, but learning from Him, of Him, in Him, for Him, etc. God is relational, so it behooves us who have established a relationship with Him to maintain the kind of fellowship with Him that enhances our understanding and appreciation of Him.

We are taught in Scripture NOT to be ignorant of Satan's devices, but we often remain so. We are told to "Be not ignorant" of 1) the mystery of Israel, 2) spiritual gifts, 3) about dead believers, 4) that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day, BUT we are also told that if any chooses to be ignorant, let him remain so.

Growth is a process of increasing in wisdom and knowledge and is to continue as long as we live, so DON'T BE IGNORANT! STUDY to show thyself approved...!

Let's now look more closely at Matthew 22:29. The issue at hand is the resurrection of the dead. This would be tongue in cheek for the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, but who still wanted to trap Jesus in His own words. Jesus explains something "new" to them, and it is probably new to many of us also.

He explains to them that relationships in Heaven are not the same as they are on Earth. I'm not sure any of us completely understand all this for we have only been given bits and pieces. But we know that through faith we are the children of God, so perhaps we will all have a brother/sister type relationship. Obviously we will not have to be introduced to one another, we will know as we are known. Also we will not have the mental or intellectual restrictions we have now and will have complete use of the brain without the obstruction of the fallen nature. Are thought processes will be pure and honorable. We know there will be no sickness, no sorrow, no sadness, no suffering, and no sin which says to me that after the Great White Throne Judgment when God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes, all the things that might have been remembered that would make us sad, etc. will be erased somehow. That means that Uncle or Aunt so and so, parent, sibbling or whomever that was cast in the lake of fire will not remain on our minds. There is much more to consider but we shall not do it here. The fact is they did not understand the Scripture they read nor the power of the God they claimed to believe in.

Hosea 4:6 The context is God's case against Israel regarding her unfaithfulness. The emphasis upon the knowledge of His Word is a clear rebuke of the lack of knowledge of the God of the Word.

Imagine a soldier in the field who receives a letter from the love of his life. He will cherish the letter because of who wrote it and what it says, but it is not the object of His affection, the writer is. We certainly hold the Scipture in high esteem, but it is because they came from God, whom we love. Because the soldier loves the girl back home, he will keep the letter close and read it many, many times until he knows it by heart.

God is not merely concern with the rote memory of the letter but the heart memory of it because it is an expression of His love for us.

The people had turned away and rejected God's Word and were therefore "cut off" from Him and left to their own undoing. It is one thing to say and sing about our love for Him, but quite another to show that love by respect for and appreciation of His Word. The absence of it in our hearts leads to the lack of love and respect for the One who wrote it.

BLESSINGS!