0618 SECRETLY MOCKING

MOCKING GOD

God is good. By nature, He is inherently good. By which, I mean God cannot/will not be bad. He conceived the universe and spoke it into being. He placed everything in it, so that planets align and forces balance. He established light in darkness, and He set seasons and planets, water cycles and circulatory systems. And he looked and noted that it was good. And He set “right” and “wrong” into the hearts of the crown of his creation mankind. He also established time and natural consequences to help the discerning heart to choose to do right, because sowing right things yields a reaping of right things.

It does take discernment to recognize the wisdom of cause-and-effect, though. Our selfish wills would like to imagine a world in which we can live as exceptions. I want to be able to lie and cheat and steal and do as I please, and to be able to get away with it all, because, well, I’m an exception. So I hedge my bets and take my chances and assume that I can get away with foolish behavior. After all, it seems to be working for the devil, right?

Day after day, year after year, the evil enemy of God mocks the righteous balance of the universe and says, “I can do what I please and nothing bad will happen to me.” And, sure enough, nothing happens to me—today, anyway. And I assume I snuck into the secret planning room and broke the mold. I believe what the serpent said back in the garden: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely not die.”

Did it work? Did I sneak in uninvited to the wedding banquet, without so much as a piece of formal attire? I did! I ate the fruit, and I did not die! I win!

But keep in mind what Paul wrote: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 

Notice how Paul words it here: God CANnot be mocked. Not just God doesn’t want to be mocked. Or God won’t allow you to mock his rules forever. No, it says he CANnot be mocked. We mock God when we ignore the rules of the universe. And that moves us from being people of doubt and hesitation to being full-fledged God-mockers. Just like Adam and Eve back in the garden. They took the forbidden fruit and ate it.

Bad idea! You know it’s going to backfire, right?

Sure enough. Adam and Eve are banished from the garden, now facing their inevitable death.

Sure enough. God cannot be mocked. We mock God when we try to think of ourselves as exceptions to the rules of life and go against the commands of God. But Paul goes on with his line of thinking, when he says,

Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 

Talk about long-term and short-term strategy for gratification! Do what feels good in the moment, and it will destroy you. Go ahead. Try to think of anything that pleases your so-called “flesh,” and see where it leads if you over-indulge in it constantly. It leads to your destruction (or possibly to the destruction of someone else). In any case, the short-term gains are lost in some sort of flesh-driven drive that leads to self-destruction. 

On the other hand, imagine what happens when you make investments of time and energy into things that will yield long-term results, and you will see it to be true that when you sow to please the Holy Spirit, you reap forever. And those habits are not self-destructive, but are usually good for making your body better, even while you focus on internal and eternal things.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 

And so Paul wraps up the topic by cheering us on. It’s easy to become weary when you are doing what is not pleasant to you. Sometimes we need to discipline ourselves to say no to our flesh and say yes to the spiritual discipline focus God calls from us. But if we don’t become weary, and if we don’t give up, the harvest will come. It might not be in this lifetime, but it will be worth it all. So, it’s about time for Paul to start a sentence with “therefore.”

Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Do good to everyone, says Paul. But especially be sure to be good to those who are your “family.” Amen.