4Finally, all the elders of Israel met at Ramah to discuss the matter with Samuel. 5“Look,” they told him, “you are now old, and your sons are not like you. Give us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.”
6Samuel was displeased with their request and went to the LORD for guidance. 7“Do everything they say to you,” the LORD replied, “for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. 8Ever since I brought them from Egypt they have continually abandoned me and followed other gods. And now they are giving you the same treatment. 9Do as they ask, but solemnly warn them about the way a king will reign over them.” – 1 Samuel 8
Rejecting God isn’t something new. People have been doing it for thousands of years. We want to do what’s right in our own eyes and then we complain about God when it doesn’t work out.
Some people say, “when God shows up and tells me He’s real, then I’ll believe.” Well that didn’t work in Jesus’ day.
Many turned away. God Himself was standing in front of them and they turned away. Maybe you think, “well I never would’ve done that.”
It is still happening now. People are rejecting God. We are rejecting God. We see the Bible on a shelf and we don’t open it to hear what God has to say. The Bible is the word of God, which is another name for Jesus. If you have access to a Bible, God wants to speak to you. If you don’t have access to a Bible, He still wants to speak to you. He just has to do it other ways.
Some may say, “I’ll follow after I accomplish XYZ.“ I have found when I take that approach, it doesn’t work for me that way, because if I reject God, the voice to follow Him gets dimmer and dimmer. The time to follow is now. We aren’t promised another day. COVID-19 has showed us that things can change very quickly.
The lordship of Christ is not a burden; it’s a gift. We GET to have Him in our lives. It’s a good thing when He takes over thoughts, activities, and passions. Let’s face it, the things He desires for us are much better than the things that are carnal, selfish desires. We can take His yoke upon us but it’s still His yoke and His responsibility to bear it.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:29
God wants me to be with Him to enjoy fellowship with Him now and later. I can choose to be with Him or live apart from Him.
Is hell fair? Absolutely hell is fair. A holy God has to punish sin. He Himself provided the sacrifice for your sin. It’s like if you’re on a sinking boat and someone throws you a life jacket. You have to take hold of it and put it on so you don’t drown.
Don’t drown in your sins. It’s not gonna work out for you or me. We can never do enough good things in our lives to outweigh the bad things in our lives. It doesn’t work that way. It works only the way that God said it works. Any other way is our imagination of God and it’s a false, misplaced hope. If I’m back on the sinking boat and I see an inner tube and grab onto it instead of the life jacket and it turns out it had a hole in it, then I lose. I will have misplaced my hope in something that seemed reasonable to me and lost my life.
If sin were left unpunished, we would be crying foul at the end. We know that God is in control and we can trust God to administer justice. How do we know that He will do it? He’s done it once already with the flood.
Following Jesus 