Today you may seem to be alone in your determination to live for God in this wicked and spiritually hostile world. You may believe that everything and everyone is against you. But this is not the case. You are not alone. God is with you. He alone is greater than any opponent you may face. And in addition to God Himself, there are also thousands who have not and will not bow their knees to the pagan gods of our culture.
Today you may seem to be alone in your determination to live for God in this wicked and spiritually hostile world. You may believe that everything and everyone is against you. But this is not the case. You are not alone. God is with you. He alone is greater than any opponent you may face. And in addition to God Himself, there are also thousands who have not and will not bow their knees to the pagan gods of our culture.
What is it that surrounds us? Is it the world with its temptations and ensnarements? The flesh with its lusts? The devil with his malicious hatreds and eternal enmity against God? It does not matter: “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”
Jacob had said, “Everything is against me!” He was not right in saying this, as I have indicated. But he would have been right if he had acknowledged these three enemies: the devil, who was no doubt seeking to destroy him as well as Joseph; the world, whose godless values and goals were a constant threat to all of this chosen family; and the sins of his own fleshly nature.
When we speak of the world in the sense of its being our spiritual opponent we are not using the word in reference to the earth (in the sense of the “world globe”) or even to the people who inhabit the earth (as in the phrase “the whole world”). We are using it to refer to the “world system” which Jesus referred to when he said, “If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:19).
I think that we are often like Jacob when we complain that everything is against us. And we are just as laughable! Circumstances fail to treat us right, someone says something less than complimentary, we are faced by a difficult decision—and suddenly we feel that nothing has ever gone right for us in our entire lives, and we pout about it. Is that the kind of witness we are going to bear for God? Is this the way we are going to disgrace the summons He gave us?
I say again, as I often have in these studies: I cannot see your heart, and therefore I do not know what it conceals. I do not know whether you are hiding unconfessed sin. I do not know whether God is working through the pinch of want, the pain of harsh treatment, the press of solitude or the circumstantial proof of His presence to bring some sin to light and lead you to a saving repentance. But I do know this: If God is working (or has worked), there will be confession. Sin will be repudiated.
How do you know that you are beginning to come to grips with the true God of the Bible and not a mere figment of your imagination? It is when you become conscious of sin and are troubled by it.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
PO Box 24087, RPO Josephine
North Bay, ON, P1B 0C7