Beloved: grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to another week of the month of January 2023. My prayer is that everything God has been saying to you will succeed in making you the person He wants you to be in this world and not work against you on the last day. Amen.
Once, while addressing the Jews, Jesus said the following to them: “As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.” (John 12:47-48NIV) From what the Lord said to these people, it is clear that it is not a new thing for people to hear His words and not act on them. So, if you have been hearing the word of God and not acting on it, it should not surprise anybody.
In any case, the Lord says that He is not ready to judge anyone that hears His word and rejects it. And that is because His mission at this time is not to judge people but to save them. That, however, does not mean that those who reject Him will not be judged at all. They will be judged at the last day. And who will judge them? According to the Lord, it is the very word that they have rejected that will stand in judgment against them on that day.
Therefore, if the word of God is coming to you and you are refusing to take it seriously and act on it, know that this same word will testify against you someday. And this is not something that will happen only in heaven but also here on earth. For instance, Solomon, while addressing his sons about adultery, makes it abundantly clear to them that if they will not pay attention to him, a day will come when they will remember his words and condemn themselves.
Look at his actual words about this: “At the end of your life you will groan when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, “How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors. I have come to the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.”” (Prov 5:11-14NIV) Now has something like this ever happened to you? Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which you began to condemn yourself for your own failure to act on the wise counsel you had received from your parents, church leaders or other good people in your life?
Well, I have been there. And trust me, it is not a nice experience at all. I am talking about a situation in which you know that you are the cause of your own trouble. That is because you can vividly remember all the words of warning and caution that you heard and that you failed to utilise. Then you begin to wish you had acted on them; you begin to wish you had not been stubborn. Yet you also know that the damage has already been done and that unless God shows you mercy, you will have to live and die with the mess you have made. And though you beat and condemn yourself at such a time, it will not change anything.
Now that is how the word of God judges people and how it will judge them on the last day. They will remember every truth they have heard and have failed to utilise. And they will know they have no excuse for failing God. They will know that they have no excuse for messing up their own lives or for choosing hell. But it will be too late to change anything then. It will be too late at that time to change the results they have gotten. So, they will have to live eternally with them.
But while we are still here in the world, there are things we can change. As long as we still have the breath of life in us, we can turn back from the path of disobedience to God and start listening to Him and taking His word seriously. That way, He can heal us, save us from the consequences of our past mistakes and set our lives right. Then we will not have to live forever regretting the wrong choices we have made. And my prayer is that you will take these words to heart and turn away from doing those things that will make the word of God stand against you someday in this world or on the day of the Lord. Amen.
Have a great week.
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