Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate.  Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.  For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.

 
 
 

Going to Jesus

Daily Thoughts

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Thought for Today
Aug. 14

THE SEVEN ABOMINATIONS, PART FOUR

"These six things doth the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination to Him."
David, to his young son Solomon, in Proverbs 6:16

This is the fourth of the seven sins concerning which David warned his young son Solomon that God especially hates.

"A HEART THAT DEVISES WICKED IMAGINATIONS"

Have you ever seen some new wickedness and wondered, "What kind of mind came up with that?" David warned his son Solomon that there were people in the world who could not rest at night unless they had conceived of some evil and done it. "They sleep not," the wise king said to his son, "except they have done mischief, and their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall" (Prov. 4:16).

There is such a thing as being so much in love with God and His people that one can become addicted to doing good (1Cor. 16:15). Such a person rests best at night when his heart knows that he has accomplished some good for the children of God that day. Doing the will of God becomes that person's food; it is what keeps him alive and happy. Jesus was like that. He told his perplexed disciples, "I have food to eat, of which you know nothing" (Jn. 4:32). And then he explained, "My food is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work" (Jn. 4:34). Jesus was living a kind of life in the Spirit that the disciples could not yet understand, but in time they, too, entered into it. Love for God and zeal for His righteousness "consumed" Jesus (Jn. 2:17). The word of God was to Jesus as Israel's ancient prophet Jeremiah said it was to him: "As a fire shut up in my bones." To be filled with the holy Ghost is to be driven by it to do good and to love people with the love of God. This is the kind of life Jesus lived, leaving for us a golden example of righteousness.

But there are also men and women, both young and old, who are so accustomed to doing evil that they cannot sleep at night unless they have done something that displeases God. God said that sinners such as these can do good no more than a leopard can change his spots (Jer. 13:23). They have become addicted to sin; they are stimulated by the thought of some new way to sin, some new perverseness, or some new evil scheme. When they were young, they would not listen to their teachers, and they did not refuse the evil path while they could. Now, for them, the way of peace and righteousness is forgotten, for God has turned them over to love the darkness. They are cursed, and they do not even know it.

God's gift of imagination is precious. An imaginative mind can be of great benefit to people, if the spirit is clean. God has blessed the nations of the earth with inventions, ideas that He gave to men and women who had imagination (also a gift from God). But that same gift of an imagination can be twisted to become one of the seven things most despised by God when it belongs to a person with a darkened heart. For a wicked man to give birth to even more wickedness in this wicked world through his imagination is for him to despise the very goodness of God.

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