Insightful Musings on the Scriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Good morning, dear people.
I kind of like the fact that it is rather overcast at present. That means I can carry on with the milling without much difficulty from the elements. I’ll depart in that direction after I send this. My first task at the mill site will be to perform a little repair…replacing a carriage roller bearing that froze up.
Earlier, Becki and I did our little WOG. We picked some blackberries again on the return. I love that addition to the breakfast menu.
Have a great day. Trust Him.
Love, Dad/Ray.
Perhaps we could amplify that statement to say, “There is no lasting and reliable peace for the wicked.” Why is that so? Isaiah gives an answer in 47:10—“You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’” Now contrast that lead statement with an earlier one put forth by Isaiah—“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3, KJV). So peace, or the absence thereof, is determined by trust—and not just trust alone—but by the object of that trust. This is not rocket science. It’s really quite simple. How can there be permanent peace attached to anything, anyone, or any ideology that is permanently unreliable?
The word “wicked”, and words related, shows up often in the Biblical text. What does that word register in your mind? What does Biblical wicked look like? It could be a worthwhile exercise to do a concordance search to help in answering that question as accurately as possible. Without taking time for that here, let me draw from my own limited overview of Scripture and offer some ideas. To begin with, wicked people are not necessarily socially or behaviorally bad people. Just saying that much is enough to confirm the basic idea that “wicked” is a synonym for SIN (SIN-onym), or the natural state of being a sinner—one who has not been born of the Spirit—one who lives and functions according to their NATURAL SIN NATURE. There is such an obscure fine line drawn here as it relates to appearance and performance that many will argue like this: “Frank is a super nice guy. He’ll give you the shirt off his back. He doesn’t go to church or believe in God, but he’s a better person than most Christians I know.” And that right there, by Biblical standards, is a wicked argument. How so? Because it skirts the central theme of the Biblical Gospel—“that whosoever believeth in him should not perish”—that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life”—that “there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby ye must be saved”—that no amount of niceness or goodness is adequate to deliver from the sentence of sin and death and earn a place in eternal life—that “it is by grace you are saved…not of works lest any man should boast.” (I will assume this time that you know the addresses for these well-known verses.) This could be a good place to insert that quip that says, “JESUS DID NOT COME TO MAKE BAD PEOPLE GOOD, BUT TO MAKE DEAD PEOPLE LIVE.”
This matter of trust renders all mankind into only two basic categories:
- Those who trust themselves—their good works, opinions, and ideologies (which are subtle forms of idolatry if they are in oppostion to Biblical truth), and
- Those who trust Christ Who “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24)—“dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).