May 31
The Crooked House
Ps 127:1 Except
the LORD build the house,
they labour in vain that build it:
Wrong again! It was the third time I had redone
the work. Checking everything as I built
had not helped. My frustration and anger
boiled just below the surface. A pesky fly landed on my nose. Sweat burned my
eyes. How could it be so far out of level? I knew I was not a master carpenter
but this was ridiculous. Defeated, I checked the framework one last time as I quit.
The level now indicated the job was perfect. What was going on? So I turned the
level end for end and checked again. The bubble now indicated I was way off. My
old 4 foot level was the problem. A quick trip to town, a new level and the
problems were quickly fixed.
The bible has similar accounts of people
building on crooked foundations. Aaron should have been a level headed kind of
guy, but there were times when he had ungodly ideas and led the people astray. Exodus
32 gives the account of crooked building. Moses was up in the mountain where
God gave him the ten commandments. The
Israelites were tired of waiting so, “…the
people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us
gods”
Before we blame them too much we should take
into account they and their ancestors had lived in Egypt for 400 years. Egypt
was a land of many gods. The ten plagues were designed to show the gods were
powerless. Each plague invaded the domain of an Egyptian god. And yes they even
had a frog god; Heqet, a female goddess of fertility.
These same Israelites had seen the hand of
Jehovah working against the gods of Egypt and delivering them from the most
powerful military machine at the time, the Egyptian army. God parted the Red
Sea for his chosen people to escape and used the same sea to destroy the
Egyptian army. But old habits die hard, so the Israelites reverted to what they
had seen in Egypt, idol worship.
Still we marvel that they could have returned
to idol worship after experiencing the marvelous miracles of Jehovah. They went
back into idol worship because they had learned it from the world they had
known. Besides, it was a lot more fun to gather for a big idol worship party,
eat, drink, get naked and party, party, party. How could they have been so
blinded?
The answer is simple. They were using defective
tools to govern their conduct, in the same way Christians do today. In the 1960’s
the expression was “If it feels good, do it!” It does not take a genius to know
that building a life with that defective philosophy will result in a ruined
life, or in the words of our analogy, a crooked house.
The book of Romans addresses that defective
standard with warnings to avoid it.
Ro 12:2 And be not conformed to this world:…
Even more, it provides several things that we
should do.
Ro 12:1 … that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God,
That standard for living requires too much for many
Christians today. How are people able to continue living like the world and not
be condemned by such verses? The solution has been to redefine the terms, a
living sacrifice, the word Holy, and what is acceptable to God. Instead of
using the Word of God to define these terms, we have slipped into defining them
by what we think is reasonable, what won’t alter our life style, and what is
acceptable in our society. The result is we wind up with “a crooked house” and
cannot understand how it happened.
Romans explains how to escape the worlds
standards of building our lives, families and society.
Ro 12:2 And be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
Your mind is the essential measuring tool that
must be accurate. Those who use levels, and other tools refer to an “odd”
person by saying “He is about a half a bubble off”! That means the person doesn’t
make good decisions, can’t think straight or is otherwise foolish. To be sure
our minds are not a half a bubble off, we need to be transformed by the
renewing of our minds. Turn in your old way of thinking. Pick up a new way by
renewing your mind.
Romans 1:28 mentions the reprobate mind. The
verse is talking about what happened in times past, but I believe we still have
people with reprobate minds today.
Ro 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in
their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind,…
The next three or four verses describe the
results of using such defective tools; Fornication, wickedness, covetousness,
maliciousness, envy, debate, despiteful, proud, boasters, disobedient to
parents, etc. We hear of these sinful results daily in the news.
Ephesians warns against such defective thinking.
Eph 4:17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord,
that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk,
in the vanity of their
mind,
Verses 17-23 list the results of vain thinking and and some good advice.
Eph 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
In this information age there is a battle being
waged for your mind. Every possible allurement is attached to selling you a
product, gaining your support for a cause or appealing for your vote. The world
and our culture want you to adopt their standards for decision making. That is
why Scripture focuses so much on our minds and how we think. Colossians warns
that we should not be beguiled by those who are “…vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind”
(Col
2:18), “… but even their mind and conscience is defiled.(Titus 1:15)
Our meditation for today is to consider how
much of our mind is controlled by the world and how much by the Word of God. It
takes keen spiritual discernment to see through the way our culture redefines
what God opposes so it can not only be continued but incorporated into our
Christian worship.
The list of changes is endless. They all stem
from the same problem; A mind that has been conformed to the world and a world
that claims to be godly while they do ungodly things. Let us ask God to show us
where we have fallen into the same error as the children of Israel in the
wilderness. Perhaps then our nation, our society and ourselves will stop
building crooked houses.
2Ti 3:5 Having a form of godliness,
but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
Php 2:5 Let this
mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus:
