Here I Am, Send Me

Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals. I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. (Isaiah 1:14)

There are many instances in my life where I have to stop and ask myself… “What is it exactly that I’m doing?” I go to church…I read my Bible…I pray before I eat…I fast…I make sure my wife and I do at home communion together…I pray multiple times a day by myself and with my wife…etc. I do all these things thinking I’m doing them with the “right” intentions, but if I am to be completely honest with you Christian, there are moments when I’m simply “going through the motions”. Here’s why this is detestable to God.

By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead (Hebrews 11:4)

We all remember the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis. This is where God first reveals to us that He hates our “traditions” if we do them without a true heart for Him. He gave Cain and Abel explicit instructions on how to offer up tribute, but Cain, out of a heart of rebellion, offered up what he saw fit as a tribute that consisted of “hard work” from agricultural labor. We then all know what happened next. How many countless times post Cain and Abel did we read about mankind’s heartless “traditions” and how many times did we read about how destructive it was and still is today? A perfect example of this “counterfeit” faith system would be Israel’s “high places” of worship.

And he left Zadok the priest and his brothers the priests before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place that was at Gibeon 1 Chronicles 16:39

Israel set up altars to worship Yahweh in places of elevated altitude because they believed the higher they could get the closer they would be to God. We are told here in the above passage the tabernacle itself was in a “high place” and King David would worship there. His son Solomon, however, would be filled with wisdom but eventually would be overcome by it. He became “puffed up” from his wisdom in the ways of the world and not the ways of Yahweh which means in reality he knew very little, and we see a bit of this lack of wisdom show up in Ecclesiastes. We witness a man question whether we go up or we go down at the end of our lives. We read through his existential crisis and confession that all his life pursuits were nothing but some form of meaningless vanity. As a result of Solomon giving in to his fleshly lustful temptations of life he marries many women who hold various pagan beliefs. So he decides to build “high places” to offer tribute and worship false gods. Pretty soon these “high places” eventually become places of sexual perversion and immorality. They become intertwined with “Ashtoreth” the demonic goddess of fertility. Israel would literally go to these places to have “sexual encounters” believing it would increase the yield of their crops. All this because of apathy and complacency born out of an incredible zeal for the world and a lack of zeal for God.

We Christians love our Lord, but at times, just as Solomon did, we can fall more in love with life instead. Sometimes life is great and feels good so we want more of it and less of God. Before we know it we are “too busy” to stop, be still, open our Bibles, and spend time with our Lord. The sad truth is we are “too busy” because we want to ignore Him. We start rushing through our prayers, shorten our Bible studies or start looking at our watch during Church because complacency sets in. We find life more tantalizing then deepening our faith with His word. If we truly wanted to spend time with our Lord then we would make the time. Often times, there will not be the “right” time. It will, many times, feel like an inopportune time, because you will need to force yourself to press pause on life and press play on Christ(true life). That’s the truth and there’s no way around it, but once we force ourselves this is an excellent way to humble yourself before Him by putting aside your ways and taking up His. The Christians’ journey is, in many instances, the turning away from things. The flesh does not want Him, but it’s the fight against our flesh through faith that brings us back out of apathy. When life is going great it’s easy to ignore Him, but as soon as a wrench is thrown into our entire operation all of sudden we NEED Him. We all drop to our knees in crisis and cry out to Him. It’s easy to take our eyes off Christ because we get blinded by life just as Solomon did.

When we let worldly life “distract” us this opens the door to the prince of this world. We start easing up on things that are not of Christ and this makes us extremely vulnerable to evil. Perfect examples of evil would be things that are wildly popular today such as “manifestation” techniques, saying your “exercising” or “stretching” while striking poses that were designed to worship Hindu gods, believing crystals have power, dabbling in mediums and mysticism. Then, before you know it, you’re deep in “new age” worship…the popular religion of todays world that, if one would do the research, would discover its ties to a woman named Helena Blavatsky who was a well known worshipper of Satan. Yes, we are all protected by the blood of Christ, but this does not mean we are immune to severe backsliding. Whatever it may be, when we become complacent all of these worldly demonic ways can start slowly creeping into our lives, and we can become ignorant of sound doctrine. We have all had seasons of complacent faith. We wouldn’t be able to call ourselves Christians if we didn’t.

Eventually Israel became so selfish and self absorbed even the very traditions they practiced such as their feasts and festivals just became spiritual “harlotry”. They participated in all of these “mechanisms of tribute” that were designed for worship but were doing them without a true heart for God. Still, our Lord continued to reach out to Israel through the prophets to return to Him and stop their “adulteress” ways. On the outside they appeared to be followers of God but within their private daily lives there were no signs of Him to be found, but even after all of this disobedience God never turned his back on Israel and still to this day calls out to them. We all know you and I won’t be here during the tribulation period if we have a true heart for Christ. Who will be here though is a world of unbelievers and…unbelieving Israel. The most important piece in understanding the tribulation and the second coming of Christ is understanding that His main objective, during the tribulation and after, is to reconcile Himself with Israel, His first love. This is why the tribulation is referred to by God as “Jacob’s Trouble”. Who was Jacob? Jacob was Israel, and the church, ladies and gentlemen is NOT Israel. Just another “breadcrumb” God gives us gentiles to let us know we, the church, do not experience the tribulation period. It does not matter how far Israel went many years ago, is still going now, and how far they will go tomorrow. God will always desire their redemption just as he does with us right now. Christ told all of us that we reap what we sow. When the Israelites would sow just a little bit of seeds in their fields, and if the conditions were right, then they would reap a considerable amount of crops. It’s the same with turning our backs on Christ. If we sow just a little complacency, we reap even more danger. I know in my own personal life if I take my eyes off of Him just for a second, I experience more fear, stress, anger, pride, complaining, cynicism, gossiping (talking about people behind their backs) all of which scripture is extremely clear are all sin. He is a guarantee to keep all of these at bay. I don’t know about you, Christian, but that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.