Do Not Follow the Majority

 Exodus 23:1-2 "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.  Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment."

We are going to study  one of the devices or traps or snares that Satan sets to hinder Christians from doing their Christian duties, those being reading God's word, prayer, assembling with other believers, obeying what God's word says.  "thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil"  Satan has devices to keep Christians from doing these duties.  Practical things that the bible tells the believer to do.  When we do these things it leads to spiritual growth, holiness of life and maturity instead of immaturity as is seen in some people. 

As the spiritual temperature of the church plummets, it is evident that immaturity, lack of knowledge of scripture and neglect of duties has come to the fore.  Satan is using this trap to devastating effect to take Christian people from doing what God says they should do after they are saved according to the scriptures.

The snare of Satan is this.  "don't worry too much about reading your bible, don't worry too much about praying, don't worry too much about going to church, don't worry too much about obeying the bible"  Most people do not bother with those things, most people walk and live following the ways of their own heart.  They do what they want to do.  They say  "Just do what the rest do.  Stick with the majority, they must be right.  After all the majority couldn't be wrong.  Don't be different." For the church they say: "Don't worry about disciplining sin in your church, don't worry about using worldly methods and then calling it evangelism, don't look to the bible as your guide to faith and practice, just look at what the majority of churches do, they aren't guided by the scripture, anything goes.  Just follow the majority."

It's common to hear "but everybody's doing it".   Don't worry about obeying God, just do what everybody else does.  That is the snare of Satan.  God says "thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil"  do not follow the majority to do sin.   

The Days of Noah Part 7: What Does the Flood Teach Us?

1 Peter 3:18-20 "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."

Matthew 24:36-39 "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.  But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood  came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."

This is the last in the series of the Days of Noah.  The most important thing is, what is the lesson?  What does the flood teach us.
 
God judges and punishes sin always:  In the book of Genesis 6 it says 6:5-7 "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.  And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."  It was all because of the wickedness of man, sin.  Both in mind, imagination, the thoughts of the heart, and the violence.  It all happened because of sin in thought and in deed.  God sees all sin, and all sin brings judgment and punishment. 

The Days of Noah Part 6: The Aftermath of the Flood

Genesis 7:24 - 8:1-5

In the previous posts, we looked at the historicity of the flood, it was a real event, Noah was a real person, a man of God.  We have looked at Noah's world, a sinful, pleasure-seeking world.  We have looked at the ark and the heart of God that provided a way of salvation from judgment and we have looked at the world-wide catastrophic terrible reality of the flood.  Today we look at the aftermath.  

The Long Long Time.  7:12 "And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights."  V24 "And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days."  8:3 "And the waters returned from off the earth continually and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated."  It was a very long time, 40 days of rain, a further 110 days of the water deepening, and then 150 days as the water receded.  It was over a year before Noah and his family got off the ark.  It was a long time.  During that whole year there was no further word from God.  God had not spoken to Noah since he closed the door (of the ark)  A year of silence from God.  Noah's family must have asked him every day "Is there any word from God? Is it nearly over?" and Noah didn't know because he had no word from God.  It was a long time.  

Many of the great men in scripture ask the question "has God forgotten me" and perhaps Noah asked the same thing, "has God forgotten me?"   And you don't know the answer.  But in Genesis 8:1 "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged" God remembered Noah.  Remembered means Noah was in the mind of God, God hadn't forgotten Noah, and Noah was a man of faith and in that long time and those long dark days of judgment when there was no apparent communication from God, Noah had only one thing to cling to, the sheer faithfulness of God.  The integrity of God.  God had been faithful in instructing him thus far.  Trust in that.