What’s For Dinner? Part 3 Series

One last thing I want to mention about being a watchman. Picture yourself doing this service. My question to you would be this, what direction do watchmen gaze at? If you answered a guard would look straight ahead, it would be incorrect. A watchman must look in all directions so an enemy could not sneak up behind him. One of the hardest things for me to deal with is the backstabbing of supposedly Christian brothers or sisters. I know if I, in any way possible, speak or act incorrectly toward a person, the Holy Spirit disciplines me. I know that I am not in any position to judge a person whether or not they are a believer. Yet, I have a difficult time believing that a person is a believer who hurts me or other Christians and nothing happens to them – No conviction of the Holy Spirit or any other form of discipline from the Holy Spirit. Does this problem ever happen to you?

I know that you have come into contact with people who believe that they are going to Heaven because of their works. Some believe that our God has a scale that He places all the good things we do on one side and all the bad things on the other side.

There is something wrong with this thinking. First of all whom does a person think he or she is to set the groundwork for eternal life. We are but dust. We do not control God. Look at verse 20 once more..

20 “Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you did not give him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand.”

So much for the idea of God using a scale. It’s like building up 100 ‘atta boys’ and then you do one thing wrong and they are all erased.

The apostle Paul additional clarifies this point in Romans 7: 7 – 25 as he reports,

”7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. 13 Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. 16 If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 19 For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. 20 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21 I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. 22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24 O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”