Right on the heals of the amazing victory and revival wrought under the leadership of Josiah, things take a radical turn for the worse. A new king, and it’s back to the same old idolatry, and the Lord is once more forgotten.
Hector has written several times about the High-places, and the danger posed by rebuilding them. We saw that they represent idolatry, things that can take the Lord’s place in our life… once those things are torn down, we should never seek to raise them back up... we need to let them lie. Paul calls this “reckoning the old man dead”. You see, the life we used to live, the things we used to do, they have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer us who live, but Christ who lives IN US.
The Old man is dead, and NEW LIFE is ours in Jesus Christ. The problem is, the old man doesn’t want to stay dead… he wants to be resurrected and brought back in to the middle of our life! The Bible’s way of dealing with this is “reckoning him dead”. This means that daily we remind ourselves that our old nature is dead; we remind ourselves that we now live by faith in Christ, and we no longer walk the way we used to. Whenever that dirty old man rears his ugly rotten head, we remind ourselves that he’s dead and we put him back in the grave.
The Israelites resurrected the dead man… they let his filth spread all over the camp, and they were judged because of it. What about you today? Are you dead to sin and alive to God? You say you love the Lord, but who are you really living for? Are you listening to God, feeding the Spirit, living for Jesus? Or, are you listening to the Old Man, feeding the flesh, and living for self? Maybe you have experienced great victory in recent days… the Lord is doing in amazing work in your heart, and you are so in love with him… to you I say, WATCH OUT FOR THE OLD MAN, and when he shows up, remind him that he’s dead, and he isn’t welcome here any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment