Justifying My Mess
Week 26 presented a tough message in class. The words in Deuteronomy are not filled with hope. The implication can be hopeful but that requires us to put a little thought into it and read between the lines. It requires us to envision what could be if we are willing to listen to God instead of what will be if we are not.
"Rich soil" by Adalberto Gonzaga is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
It’s very easy to type up words to say, organize thoughts about how we should grow closer to God. Scripture is available for everyone to read for free. Once you’ve purchased a copy of the Bible in physical form, the words on the printed page never change. The Holy Spirit might guide us differently when we are forty or fifty or sixty from when we were twenty or thirty, but the words didn’t change. We changed.
That’s how it’s supposed to be. God’s Word doesn’t change what it says. Man’s understanding of what God’s Word said changes. The trick is to ensure that change is a closer-to-God change and not a further-away-from-God change. How do you tell the difference?
19“It shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order to destroy the watered land with the dry.’
Deuteronomy 29:19 (NASB95)
“…though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart…”
“I don’t need to change.” “I’m doing just fine.” “I have a new translation and interpretation.” The word you’re looking for is “justification.” I know when I am walking in the stubbornness of my own heart when my internal monologue is constantly reassuring me I’m right.
I’m right.
Not God’s right, or I’m following God’s ways.
I’m right.
18Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling.
Proverbs 16:18 (NASB95)
I don’t need to change.
5“Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the Lord of hosts.
6“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
7“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
Malachi 3:5–7 (NASB95)
I’m doing just fine.
2Every man’s way is right in his own eyes, But the Lord weighs the hearts.
Proverbs 21:2 (NASB95)
I have a new translation and interpretation.
15and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you,
16as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness,
18but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
2 Peter 3:15–18 (NASB95)
When I discover something in scripture that tells me I’m not living the right way, thinking the right way, or doing things the right way, my first reaction is justification. My internal monologue, the conversation I have with myself throughout the day, returns time and again to the topic. I keep reminding myself that I’m doing it the right way. Or, I keep reminding myself why it’s okay to ignore that small still voice that wants me to change.
Should you change anything based on what I’m typing here? That’s up to you. I’ll let you have that conversation with yourself and the Holy Spirit. Just remember what you’re working toward. Are you trying to convince yourself you are right, or He is right? The consequences are dire.
20“The Lord shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven.
21“Then the Lord will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law.
22“Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, will say,
23‘All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and unproductive, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.’
24“All the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’
25“Then men will say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt.
26‘They went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not allotted to them.
27‘Therefore, the anger of the Lord burned against that land, to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book;
28and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.’
29“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:20–29 (NASB95)