Sticks and stones

can break my bones

but words can kill me.

"And I said, “Woe to me! For I am destroyed! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I am living among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, Yahweh of hosts!”" (is 6)

i was reading Acts 2 this morning.  We christians love to look at the Acts 2 church.  We love to talk about the Acts 2 church.  We love to invoke the model of the Acts 2 church.  Well, i got news for ya.

We're not the Acts 2 church.  

"And they were devoting themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers."

"And every day, devoting themselves to meeting with one purpose in the temple courts and breaking bread from house to house..." (Acts 2)

Do you know what the word "devoted" means?  We tend to use it as just meaning an intense love.  We might say 'passionate' love, but that's because we don't know what 'passion' means either.  Devoted, to devote something or someone, is to take a solemn vow.  Now if you have ever read the Old Testament, you know how important vows were.  You know how serious God takes them.  About the only place modern man makes a solemn vow anymore is in court or in marriage.  All you have to do is check the stats on perjury and divorce to know how serious we take our "solemn vows" these days.  How devoted we are to each other and to truth.  When you finally get honest with yourself about the culture we live in you will realize there is no fear of Yahweh anymore!  No one fears God.  No one takes him seriously, not me, not you.  

Now are you ready to cry with Isaiah and me?  No?  Well then, let me introduce you to my buddy Jeremiah...

"Therefore you must not pray for this people, and you must not lift up for them a cry of entreaty, or a prayer, for I will not listen in the time of their calling to me, in the time of their trouble.

     What rights has my beloved in my house
    when she has done many wicked things?
     Can the flesh of holiness pass over you?
     For you engage in your wickedness, then you exult."

When the reckoning comes there will be no more time to buy oil.  Read Matthew 25.  You may be a universalist but Jesus isn't.  You may think God loves everybody and He wouldn't do that to someone he loves but look at what he calls Judah right before bringing the Babylonian horde down upon them, "My Beloved."

You think hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?  She got nothing on Yahweh.