Woke up at 4:45 this morning and had an hour of study in Ezekiel 33 using the SOAP method (S - scripture; O - observation; A - application; P - prayer).
S - Ezekiel 33:1-20
1The word of the LORD came to me: 2(A) "Son of man, speak to(B) your people and say to them, If(C) I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and make him their(D) watchman, 3and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and(E) blows the trumpet and warns the people, 4then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away,(F) his blood shall be upon his own head. 5(G) He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. 6(H) But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.
7(I) "So you,(J) son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. 8(K) If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. 9(L) But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way,(M) that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.
Why Will You Die, Israel? 10"And you,(N) son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: 'Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and(O) we rot away because of them.(P) How then can we live?' 11Say to them,(Q) As I live, declares the Lord GOD,(R) I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live;(S) turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?
12(T) "And you, son of man, say to(U) your people,(V) The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses,(W) and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness[a] when he sins. 13Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet(X) if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. 14Again,(Y) though I say to the wicked,(Z) 'You shall surely die,' yet(AA) if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, 15if the wicked(AB) restores the pledge,(AC) gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks(AD) in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16(AE) None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.
17"Yet(AF) your people say,(AG) 'The way of the Lord is not just,' when it is their own way that is not just. 18(AH) When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it. 19And(AI) when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. 20Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' O house of Israel,(AJ) I will judge each of you according to his ways." ESV from http://www.biblegateway.com/
Key verses: vv11, 12
"Say unto them, 'As I live,' saith the Lord God, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wiched turn from his ways and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?' Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgressions; as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth.'" KJV
O - Ezekiel was a prophet of the Lord. God gave him an object lesson to take to the people concerning wickness and righteousness - and first He gave an object lesson to Ezekiel. Just as a watchman is placed in a tower and is responsible to warn the people of coming judgement, so Ezekiel was responsible to warn the people of God's coming judgement upon Israel. And this was God's judgement to them: The righteousness of the righteous does them no good when they sin, and the wickedness of the wicked is forgotten when they turn away from it. In verse 10 Ezekiel is commanded to ask the question, "If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?" To which God answers them directly that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that they should, "turn ye, turn ye " from their wicked ways and asks them in turn, "Why will you die, O house of Israel?" - why will you choose to die in your wickedness? He then spells out his charge against them - that the so called "righteous" and the wicked are all condemned in the same boat if they sin. Who among us hasn't? He speaks three times to the wicked, describes the physical signs of inward repentance from sin, and the promise that they shall live. But he speaks FOUR times to the "righteous" who turn to sin, and outlines this point in verse 13 - If I say to the righteous, that they shall surely live; IF HE TRUST IN HIS OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS and COMMITS INIQUITY all of his righteousness SHALL NOT BE REMEMBERED. God paints a very clear picture that the very moment we trust in our own right ways, we WILL sin; and therefore are counted with the wicked. He concludes by telling Israel that He will judge them "everyone after his ways".
A - I have to ask myself the question - has there been any time in my life since Jesus Christ saved me that I have trusted in my own righteousness - YES. I can think back to a week or so ago that I plainly did. That is sin against the Lord. By His grace He said, "Webster you shall live", but because I have a righteousness that God looks at and says, "That boy deserves my love and my life - look a the merit he has accomplished." NO! Instead He says, "Look at that rebel - he is a transgressor and a sinner; an enemy of mine. But because I loved the world so much and sent my Son Jesus Christ to die for transgressors and justify them by raising Him from death - for THAT merit Webster shall live. So 'turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways' Webster Hunt, 'for why shall you die?'" It is by His goodness through Jesus that I live, move, and breathe. My application to this scripture is, I think, two parted. 1) repent from my self-righteous ways and trust only in the righteousness of Jesus given to me by God's grace. 2) warn others that God will judge every one by his ways, just as He did Israel. We will either follow the way of man - which is self-righteousness, sin, and death; or the WAY who is Jesus Christ - which is self-denying, God praising, forgiving, and life.
P - Lord please give me the grace to live by Your righteousness, and not to trust in anything I perceive in myself as "good works" outside of what You've done in me. Please forgive my self-righteous ways in the past, and thank you that you cry out to us "turn ye, turn ye", and take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Give me the boldness and the grace to tell others in care and concern for their postition with you through Jesus Christ.
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I am responding to your comment on Ray Comfort's blog. I'm sorry if this is inappropriate, I just wanted to speak with you and I was concerned that anything I said would be lost in the comments over there (or that you wouldn't check them).
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:
"is it really nonsense that we say you believe that everything came from nothing? You believe everything came to be by chance. Is chance a thing?"
Well, yes, it is nonsense. I, personally, have no opinion on how the universe was created. I don't believe that it "came from nothing" because I have no idea how it all began. It could have been created by some god, but I see no more evidence to suggest that than I do for any other theory. When I ask for the evidence that God created the universe, people just tell me that nothing can come from nothing, which, at best, argues against one claim but makes no positive claim for anything else (and doesn't make much sense since the obvious next question is "where did God come from?" - the answer usually being, of course "God is eternal," to which one simply replies "well what if there is something in the universe that is completely natural and non-sentient that is also eternal and that BANGs into universes every once and a while?" The argument doesn't prove a God. It doesn't really prove anything since it is a claim that would require absolute knowledge to back up - have you seen everything? How can you know that no where in the universe are things that are eternal?).
So that's the "nothing came from nothing" side. The other part of your paragraph is that we believe that "everything came from chance." I'm at a loss here. You seem to think that we believe in chance in the same way that you believe in god - that it is some sort of sentient creative force. It isn't. Chance, quite rightly, isn't a thing and therefore cannot create. We believe that humans aren't the end result or goal of the universe and that it is therefore pure chance that we are here, in the same shape and form that we are. Had the dice rolled another way, maybe life would look very differently, or maybe there would be no life at all. It's the same as saying "my parents did meet at the supermarket one day and later went on to have me, but that doesn't mean that it was destiny for them to meet for the purposes of creating me." It seems so very arrogant to assume that the entire universe has been building up just to produce me, wonderful me.
Now, I know that you will probably find this a bleak outlook, but it isn't. It might be a chance occurrence that I exist, but now that I exist, my life is full of meaning. I don't need the universe to find me special for me to find worth in my own life. I know that this is likely what would trip you up, as it did me when my deconversion began. When you have built up your ego on the belief that there is an all-powerful king who knows you, personally, and takes an interest in you, as an individual, and that the entire universe has fallen into place just so to make you because you are so special, it is very difficult to transition to a point where you can create meaning for yourself. If you do try to explore this idea, I can assure you that it is very rewarding. I feel so much more satisfaction with my life now that my meaning comes from within myself than I ever did when I felt it was external. But please don't get hung up on this.
To get back to the idea of chance, I feel that I must explain what we mean when we talk about chance in the context of evolution. There's always a chance that mutations will occur when new life is conceived. I'm sure you know this - you must have encountered children with genetic diseases. For example, Queen Victoria is known to have been born with a randomly mutated gene that controls the clotting of blood. No individual is genetically 50% their mother and 50% their father. There is always some new material.
Due to the way our genetic code works, the vast majority of these mutations are completely neutral. If they express themselves at all, it might be something benign like eye colour. Some, like Queen Victoria's, are harmful, and some are positive.
ReplyDeleteThis is where chance ends. The important part of evolution is selection - negative/harmful mutations that impair an animal's ability to reproduce (which includes living enough to have a chance to reproduce) will not be passed on. Again, Queen Victoria is a great example of this. Had this random mutation occurred in a male, he would likely have died before marrying, but because women have a "mirror gene" that compensates, she was able to have many children (many of them daughters who were also carriers of the gene) and spread it all over Europe. But she, herself, was not prevented from reproducing and so natural selection didn't take place.
So, as I was saying, negative mutations are selected against (though only when they stop an individual from reproducing). Selection doesn't care about neutral mutations, so these just float around through the population. Positive mutations are selected for because they enable the animal to have more children, and therefore pass the gene on to a larger percentage of the next generation's population.
So you see, "chance" doesn't create anything. It is a chance that a mutation occurs, and then selection which chooses which mutations are kept in the collective gene pool and which are not. If you have any questions about this, or are having trouble understanding, please feel free to ask. But I don't think it should be too difficult for you since most people accept "micro evolution" at the very least, which is small changes that allow a population to better adapt to changes in its environment. We can directly observe this happening, and even direct it ourselves through selective breeding.
"Macro evolution" is exactly the same thing. The only difference is time. Over a long period of time, these tiny difference stack up so much that we arbitrarily decide that the population now belongs to a different species. I say arbitrarily because the term "species" really doesn't mean anything. It's a subjective designation that humans give to certain types of animals, despite the fact that there is huge variety within that population and that evolution is always taking place. For example, we refer to both chihuahuas and great danes as "dogs" even though they don't fit the definition of being in the same species (which is that the two can copulate and produce viable offspring - size differences alone prevent such a match). But because we bred both of them into existence not that long ago, and because we know how we did it, we are arbitrarily deciding that they are in the same species. Had we encountered chihuahuas and great danes in the wild, we most certainly would have given them different species designations. So this idea that "micro evolution" happens but that animals don't cross from one species to another is perplexing to me since, if we were consistent in how we determined what constituted a species, then we have seen "macro evolution" before our own eyes.
"We Christians KNOW because we know the One who was there from the beginning, and He is the one that we are pointing you to - not ourselves. Don't believe us, read the Scriptures for yourselves."
I have never understood this line of reasoning. It seems that you are faulting Atheists for admitting it when they don't know something. Well, the obvious response is "no, you don't KNOW, you just think you do" in the same way that I KNEW Santa Claus existed when I was a kid. My KNOWLEDGE had absolutely no impact on reality. I hope this comparison isn't offensive to you.