October 28, 2006
Newsletter Archives

Sometimes I sense that people believe God lives by a different set of rules from the rest of us. When we violate a divine law-simply stated, when we sin- we think that God doesn’t worry about it. And providing we don’t behave too badly we believe we are off the hook.
Yet when we drive at excessive speeds and and we see a police cruiser, we try to slow down as inconspicuously as possible so that it looks like we were not speeding at all. We fully expect that it we continue traveling at excessive speed, we will be stopped and get a warning or a ticket.
Why is it then that we don’t understand that “God made man in His own image” Genesis 1:27. That being so, we mirror God’s responses when we behave in a moral way. Hence, when God’s laws are violated, He responds as we would when our laws are violated. He has warning s and penalties. Yet we act like this is not the case. We have the mistaken idea that God will never take our sins seriously.
The apostle Paul had to remind his audience that God was not an idol that they carved according to their own imagination. He stated, “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” Acts 17:29. He went on to tell them that God did overlook this ignorance at one time, but times had changed.
Accordingly Paul said, “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man [the Lord Jesus] whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised him from the dead” Acts 17:30,31.
While most don’t have a visible image of God, it is clear that we have carved one in our thoughts. Accordingly, the best question to start with in our relationship with God is, What is God really like? The second question ought to be, Am I responding to God as He really is? And if we are not acknowledging Him as He is, the third ought to be, Am I going to take God seriously before it is too late?

Russ Nesbit