March 16, 2024

Passage Read: Nehemiah 8-11
Meditation Verses: 9:30-31

Thought

God was committed to His people, but that doesn't mean He saved every last Israelite. The soul who sinned, died. And that surely means that he was lost to eternity. In the story of Lazarus the beggar, it is clear that there are many Jews in torment. The Lord is faithful to His people and refuses to let them all perish, but He disciplines the nation by killing those who forsake Him. He disciplines all by sending prophets to rebuke them, and those who refuse to repent are destroyed. So in this age, is God's unbreakable commitment to a people or to individuals? Paul, James, John and the writer of Hebrews all agree that the soul that continues in sin is not saved, though he may align himself with believers; he himself may claim to believe. But if he does not repent of his former sins, if he continues to live in sin, he will not be saved. God will not preserve him.

Application

How far we have fallen in faith. On the one hand, it seems we do not love the Lord or honor or fear Him all that much; He is like a tool in our hand. On the other, we think we are so powerless against sin, as if there is no significant victory against it. And we make things out to be sin which are not sin, and we deny the things that are sin. We have confused the truth so much; we have created our own standards of what it means to be a Christian, rather than listening to and believing the Word of God. We are no better than the Pharisees. We admonish those who walk in God's actual ways and embrace the unbeliever who jumps through our hoops. They are not saved if they will not honor the Lord and conform their lives to His likeness. I am not saved because I prayed a prayer, because I remember a date, but because I continue to believe that Jesus is Savior and Lord, and fear Him and discipline myself to walk in His ways, believe His Word, trust it to obey it.