In my day I have seen many confessing Christians in the body of Christ, that will stand up and give words that they say are of God, but you know that the person is living in fornication or adultery, so who wants to believe or listen to that? Also many pastors and ministers are now preaching more and more deception in the church that God will bless you in spite of any sin you may be in.
We know that God does choose His mouthpiece even though they might be frail and weak. But will they be morally corrupt? No! We know that God said concerning the lying prophets of Jerusalem, ''I have seen something horrible: They commit adultery and live a lie...Do not listen to them...I don't believe God wants us to believe and listen to someone who is living in sin and say thus says the Lord to us or wags their own tongues,'' and claims what they say is coming from God. How many of you know the evil things that God rejects that we as children of God are also suppose to reject? I remember a few times of being in a church service where someone would just walk in the church and no one knew that person, and the person would get up and start saying off the wall crazy stuff and would say thus says the Lord and then walk out of the church. The pastor of the church I was going to at that time said don't accept anything that man said because that was not of God. Many today are verbally forging God's name to their own religious tongue wagging babbling and this is what the false prophets also did when they prophesied peace to Jerusalem when there was no peace. Brazenly, they declared, ''The Lord said,'' when the Lord said no such thing. In fact, God was saying just the opposite of peace. It was the hour of judgment. Many warnings went out but the warnings just went on deaf ears because they failed to turn Israel and Judah back to God, Jeremiah prophesied impending doom: Captivity, torture, and death at the hands of the Babylonians. Actually, Israel's false prophets were simply mouthing Satan's Big Lie: You can sin and get away with it. They were putting down Jeremiah's word of exile to Babylon, they filled the people with false hope assuring ''all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts no harm will come to you.''
And because they knew God would always keep His word, they had the audacity to expect Him to fulfill their lying prophecies. They were thinking they had God under their control, thinking surely He would have to save His reputation. When the prophecies did not come to pass, men and women who believed the reckless lies would bitterly claim God failed to honor His word. If God didn't do as they prophesied, the whole ideal of ''the word of the Lord'' then word mean nothing to them.
The false prophets did not back God into a corner, but their attempt pushed Israel over the line to where repentance was no longer possible. Jeremiah was told not to pray any longer for the well-being of these people. God was outraged. ''I will allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them,'' He said. What a sobering thought! God did not only condemn the priests and lying prophets to judgment; those who listened to their lies would likewise ''perish by the sword and famine.''
This is the hour in which we live Christians who may or may not claim spiritual gifts, babble the same false message of peace. Many Christians today also live by..the twisted message of God's ''unconditional love.''Though it's mouthed in various ways, ''You can sin and get away with it'' is still the Big Lie. it's put this way by many confessing Christians and Pastors of today, that ''it doesn't matter what you have done, God isn't mad at you.'' in another words , ''you can't do anything bad enough to escape God's love. He loves you..regardless and does not turn his back on you because of your sin.'' I'm sure if Paul was in these services today that he would come out of his seat and rebuke them. Paul took a tough view of such corrupted teaching or preaching. Sexual immorality, impurity, and greed, he wrote to the believers at Ephesus, are ''improper for God's holy people.'' He warned, ''Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.'' Yes, God's wrath! It is one thing to say to a sinner, ''No matter what sins you have committed in the past, God still loves you. And if you are truly sorry and willing to forsake your sin, God will accept you just as you are, forgive you, and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.'' But it is quite another to say to Christians that God's unconditional love means He is indifferent to disobedience. This, Paul says, is nothing less than ''empty words'' to deceive.
I have seen case where people will say they knew it was wrong to marry the person they did, but they did it anyway because they knew God would forgive them. I believe this is really twisted thinking because you see many will have to suffer from wrong doing. When it ends up in a divorce because the one spouse decided to just end the marriage because they wanted to marry another person, they will say that God is bigger than divorce.'' Yes God sure is! But to be a victim of divorce is one thing. But to walk straight into adultery, and shrugging off the sin as it don't really matter because God loves me anyway and will be bless me is a deception. Sin does have it's consequences.
Isaiah 40:12-31 is real good scripture verses of the greatness of God. But you don't understand, says the prophet, if you think that God means He is too great to care; about our heartaches, our hardships, and our helplessness, that's not true because He does care and it does not go unnoticed by Him, then, guess what? neither do our sins. Those who smirk that God cannot see or know what evil they do in the darkness will be destroyed by a God from whom no one can hide.
After Moses died, God commissioned Joshua to lead His people into the Promised Land. And Let Joshua's know that he did not have to fear, and He promised, ''I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Two miracles followed: the people crossed the Jordan River on dry ground, and Jericho's walls collapsed at a shout. But only days later, God thundered, ''I will NOT be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.'' So what do you think stirred God to such severity? Achan's sin. Jericho was a victory for Israel. But sticky-fingered Achan sneaked home with a beautiful Babylonian robe, 200 shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold. He buried the loot under His tent floor, thinking no one would be wiser. But the very next time the army faced the enemy at Ai, something happened that had never happened before: Israelite blood was spilled in battle. Joshua was frantic; where was God now? Tearing his clothes and throwing himself on the ground, he beseeched God: What about God's covenant of love? What about His promise never to leave or forsake His people? Didn't God know His name was at stake? What would the heathen say about Israel's God now? ''Stand up! Joshua. And stop worrying about My name,'' God ordered. ''You had better start searching the camp.'' God had not violated His covenant of love, but His covenant was with ''those who love him and keep his commands.'' Achan's sin had made the Israelite ''liable to destruction.'' Because of His very nature, God simply could not bless Israel until that sin was dealt with.
In the NT church many false prophets had shown up, and Peter warned them, That they will tell you it doesn't make any difference what you do. But don't believe them.'' As for those who spread such lies, he had a sobering word: ''if they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred commandment...''Yet many confessing Christians will quote the verse, ''If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, ''They are saying that even when we go our own way and do what we please, God is still faithful to bless us. But that is hardly what that verse is saying. We need to look at what goes before and after. Notice, ''if we disown him and we do when we turn to our own way, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.'' Now when God says, ''he cannot disown himself,'' He is not saying our faithlessness doesn't matter, that He will bless us anyway. He is saying that whatever we do, He can only respond according to who He is--''the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.'' God cannot deny His loving-kindness. But neither can He deny His righteous judgment for sin. ''To be false to Himself is something which even omnipotent God cannot be,'' To be sure, God's love and mercy and grace endure forever. They reach to the depths of man's depravity to recreate and restore whenever there is true repentance. But it is an affront to God to deliberately do what God condemns and then take refuge in His amazing love and grace. The scriptures are very clear, any message that denies or evades the truth of God's judgment for sin is rooted in deception. God's love does endure forever--but so does His righteous judgment. Because so many today claim to be messengers of God, spiritual discernment is so needed. On the one hand, believing a false prophecy can have tragic consequences. On the other , prophecy that is truly of God can bring tremendous blessing. You know I was just thinking about something, and I believe that God don't set us free because of our love for Him but it's His perfect love that He has for us. I also realize that we are very much affected by the quality of spiritual life around us. This is why Paul wrote, ''Encourage one another and build each other up.'' And why Jesus warned against being a stumbling block, an offense to our brothers and sisters in the Lord.But the word says, ''Build yourselves up in your most holy faith, and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God's love.''
