What will you do with Jesus?

Isaiah 59:3-15

“For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness.  No one enters suit justly;

no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.”  (Isaiah 59:3-4 ESV)

Isaiah is addressing the chosen people of God, not the pagan world, I read this quote the other day; “If you are always looking down on others, such a person will never look up and acknowledge their own sins.”  And once more the word “iniquity” is best defined as: immoral or grossly unfair behavior, or sin.  As a follower of Christ, having unconfessed sin in our life breaks fellowship with God but not our relationship.  God is very clear in verse 2 that sin keeps God from listening to our prayers, it separates us from God.  It was true in Isaiah’s time and it is true today, so why would a follower of Christ allow sin to block their fellowship with Christ?  Could the problem be we are living independently from the authority of Scripture, that we have not hidden God’s word in our heart, we have no understanding that fellowship has been broken.  I’ve found it is wise to do what the apostle Paul told the churches at Corinth in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”

Now, I do not believe the following describes a follower of Christ, but it does describe many who are called Christian, in the same way it did many who were part of the chosen Jewish people.  Listen to how Isaiah identifies them: “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways.  The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace.  Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.  We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.  We all growl like bears; we moan and moan like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none, for salvation, but it is far from us.  For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.”

It sounds like you are reading about our culture, but the good news is you can be changed in a moment by bowing your knee before a holy God, and agreeing with Him, what you call mistakes God calls sin, and many of your mistakes were planned for many months, that is not a mistake, it is sin and Jesus came to redeem you and give you life.  So today is choice time; what will you do with Jesus?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice