You Have Wearied the Lord with your Words

Grace. It's a beautiful thing. As all have sinned, and all have fallen short, we believers in the Lord hold a blessed hope: that God, in His wisdom and His love, was merciful towards us and has wiped the slate clean. We are free, we are saved, we have been given grace. Beautiful.

But something has been going on, something has been building up under the surface of the American church, and it's something that I think needs to be addressed. And that is, quite frankly, the increase of sin justified by the forgiveness of God.

More and more, Christians are becoming complacent in their faith. They prayed a prayer, sit in a church pew every Sunday (give or take) and tithe the required ten percent of their biweekly income (give or take).

And there they sit; a seemingly perfect Christian doing seemingly perfect Christian things. And then, after service, when they've penitently prayed at the alter call, they go home and return to their lives.

Lives of excuses, petty sin, and all the while the safe and secure thought in the back of your head that hey, you're covered. God's got your back. He'll snatch you up out of any mess you land yourself in, that's what He's there for. After all, He loves you, and you love Him, so that's that, right? There's a verse that has become the battle cry of those who believe in a complacent faith, and that is the ever famous "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

I have heard this verse used over and over as an excuse for sin. Even people who otherwise have seemed like the strongest of Christians have fallen for this twisted trap. "It doesn't say 'if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is lord and burn all your Black Sabbath CD's you will be saved,' does it?" They say. "If you confess with your mouth and don't watch dirty TV shows you will be saved. That's not in the Bible at all, is it?"

What of Paul when he says, in Romans 6:1, "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

A new life doesn't mean a life wherein you are now allowed to do that which you needed saving from in the first place. That's not what salvation means. Salvation means that what once enslaved you binds you no longer, and you can walk away. You're free. Salvation does NOT mean that you can choose your poison and know that you'll be partyin' in heaven once it kills you.

"God is pleased with us, no matter what we do!"

It has been said by many, and it has been said by some of the most popular and influential Christian leaders of our time, and it has been mindlessly parroted by thousands as justification for their sin. "Lying to my mom about where I was last night doesn't matter because God loves me and is pleased with me no matter what I do." "Stealing from my workplace doesn't matter because God loves me and is pleased with me no matter what I do." "Cussing out the guy who cut me off in traffic doesn't matter because God loves me and is pleased with me no matter what I do."

If you turn in your Bibles to Malachi, you will find God's answer to those who say He is pleased with us no matter what. I encourage you to read it through, but for now, I'll simply quote some of God's words as spoken through Malachi.

Malachi 1:10 “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands."

Malachi 2:17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. “How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?”

Malachi 3:13 “You have spoken arrogantly against me,” says the Lord. “Yet you ask, ‘What have we said against you?’ 14 “You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15 But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’”

And finally:

Malachi 4:1 “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. 3 Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty. 4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel."

I bolded verse 4, and I want to address it before I finish up this blog. You see, there is a huge and fatal flaw with American Christianity; and that is in the diminution of the law.

If God is a perfect God, who created a perfect universe, and established perfect order within it, why then do we disregard His law as anything less than perfect? Just think about this for a second: The One True God who created everything actually sent us a written law to instruct us in how we are to live.

If we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord over our lives, and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, thus confirming and sanctioning Jesus' claims that He and God the father were one, than why do we still LIVE as if we never were saved?

Jesus says in Matthew 25, starting in verse 31:

 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

"Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Don't let yourself fall for the lie that God is pleased with you no matter what. For your actions are a reflection of your heart, and if you do not truly believe, your actions will betray you. Confessions are easy for those with lying tongues; but nobody can fake what they truly believe in their hearts.

And the Lord God, who knows all men's hearts, will deny you with His words, just as you deny Him by your lifestyle.