...words

He replied, 'Why do you ask my name?  It is beyond understanding.'  Then Menoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the LORD.  And the LORD did an amazing thing while Menoah and his wife watched:  As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame.  Seeing this, Menoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground."

How low is low?  Only a few moments ago I heard on the radio that a mother has been charged with driving her son and several of his friends to a park where they killed a member of a rival gang.  Several years ago the front page of some newspapers announced that according to the research group, Public Agenda, we are rude, crude and getting worse.  Now why is it I feel that you are not shocked by this newsflash?!  It does not take a very discerning person to realize that day by day we are getting worse.

Some time ago, I alluded to the fact that the brilliant mind of Solomon was prone to foolishness.  He had human intelligence, but it was clouded and contaminated by the sins of the flesh.  He had allowed his human appetites to control his actions; hundreds of wives (many of them aliens and with their false gods).  He also possessed a huge number of chariots.  Both were specifically in direct opposition to God's commandments. 

Let me see if I can phrase this properly:  Solomon (like us) knew what he was to do, but like us, he often failed to do what he knew God wanted him to do.  Knowing and doing are often world's apart!

In studying the words in today's Scripture, which Solomon wrote, it is important to consider what he wrote; not the way he lived.  God's Word is far above the life and actions of even those who were inspired to write the words which God gave to them. 

If even a brilliant man such as Solomon could stray from the straight and narrow way, what does it say to us?  I think it teaches us that faith and trust are a moment-by-moment thing.  It is not something that we learn and then coast on through life.  It is an application which must be applied continually.

The nature of man is to rely upon our own perverted thinking process which is contrary to God's way.  If we are to learn anything, it is that God's Word is the ultimate truth. What we rationalize in our own thinking is a way that leads to death.

We live in a day touted to be an "age of enlightenment".  If that is the case, why do we see the chaos in our world in epidemic proportions?   The answer is that we depend upon our human reason for our actions.  When we do that, they will always lead us away from God and into a dead-end street.

The five verses cited in today's devotional, contrast the two methods of reasoning

-pastor cecil