Day 4271 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 11:50 NIV

An implied implication

It’s something of a mystery in need of interpretation, a guess I guess, a recommendation surmised from a surprise situation. It’s a sudden change enforced or inflicted upon something that demands that all someones who were involved in said situation embrace this shift to the demands and destination. An implication is something implied, suggested, hinted at but not made entirely obvious so as to leave at least a little work to be finished by those to whom it’s given.

The Gospel is not that kind of situation.

Granted, of whom the Gospel is given and toward whom it is then intended to be received, much of the lead up was left and learned within parables shared by He about whom the Gospel is written, spoken, shared however it might have been shared or will be shared in however many days we’ve still to come before the Day’s done came and we’ve all flown away to wherever our forever might be.

But still, all such riddles aside, there is nothing that the truth of the Gospel either seeks to hide nor would agree to hide were that its point. Which it is isn’t. Rather the Gospel is given to open blinded eyes and unclog plugged ears and loosen tongues elsewise stuck to saying only the same worthless stuff again and again. Yes, the Gospel is our gift from Heaven intended to revive lifeless lives by replacing stone-like hearts of all those who’ve eyes to see and ears to hear and souls which are simply tired of sitting in these cells that are ourselves.

It’s come to set us captives free from our chosen lives lived lost in the cultural captivities of our always loving to believe only that we all know what we’re doing.

And it does so by at first pointing out the obviousness to the darkness of which we’ve all become marvelously oblivious. And, once this has been accomplished, obviously best by the fact that the Spotless Lamb was nailed to a sinner’s cross at what was, and in many ways remains, the applause of the very sinners for whom His blood was shed and life then lost, our seeing our hatred of He who loves us enough to give Himself for us invokes inside of us this willingness to turn from all those things which led the way for our to have arrived at that place in which we could so hate He who loves us that much.

And once we see how far we’ve fallen, well, the rest of that and they who’ve also fallen around us begins to become quite easier to recognize too.

All of the sudden it’s as if you awake into every day in which both all of hell has broken loose around you and yet seeing such darkness and decay as is daily displayed inside all of this fallen world’s depravity, well, it only somehow magnifies the light of the hope living inside of we who thankfully follow He who is the Way which said He’d came to overcome this place.

Doesn’t change the fact that we’re here in what is a world that’s still falling short of the glory of God nor even that we ourselves still do the same sometimes.

But it does change how we seek to spend these lives as it ignites inside a relentless desire to die to a dying world so that we might live unto the eternal life that He who died here first said we last might one day have.

A day which comes only after the Gospel has been shared everywhere and to everyone, giving then everyone everywhere everything they need to know to know this hope that we have and how it’s had in only and only because this world’s gone bad and our every life the same.

So bad in fact that we’ve all been blind to the obviousness of what is, again, a Gospel with no hidden implications that thus need to be at most implied so as to remain able to hide from all to whom it was given.

In short, the Gospel was given to everyone because Christ Jesus died to save the same.

And He did so at the end of a stay here in which He’d said here all that we’ve since heard here about Him who’s not here no more. His Bible has left no secrets, no surprises, no uncertainty or lack of clarity. Rather He made the entire thing so monstrously easy that we’re all called unto a faith like that of a child if we’re to understand the gravity of this gift He gave in that grave.

Yes, this is something apparently understood best by children, thus proving that there is nothing hard nor hidden but that rather everything about this story of our salvation is so utterly simple that pride and ego are only able to make it confusing.

Which is why this world keeps on losing what is this opportunity to find that we’ve been found and can have faith that this ground is not where we belong.

Looking around I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want the joy of knowing that promise as this place is, well, it’s something.

We’ll just leave it at that.

Because my point for today is that in all of our arrogance we’re only remaining willfully oblivious to the obviousness of the issue with which we’re all now faced. And that is that our guilt has left us so stained that there is no way for us to assuage the anger that is God. And this is because we’ve all, both alone and collectively, done so much that’s so wrong that we’re all promised to be those now charged with the blood of everyone who’s ever come to try and help us out of this hell we’re in.

Granted, we’re not technically there yet, but friends, let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s not hard to see at least a little bit of hell within all the hatred and anger and division and darkness we see swirling daily around us.

It too is obvious.

Problem is that we’ve all of us so come to consider it normal that we’re all rather unwilling to let any of it go. So much so that we in fact continue coming up with ways to keep one another convinced that it’s not that bad. That things are getting better. That we’re getting better.

All while all the hatred and anger grow only deeper and there harder to let go.

So much so that we remain in the days in which some are willing to kill those they oppose over something so simple as words.

That remains our world.

It’s a place in which we make it equally obvious that we want nothing to do with this salvation business. A place in which we make it seem that such things as modesty and honesty and morality are only limiting. A place where doing wrong is considered right and doing right something very few then dare to do. A place where we go out of our way to make everything seem always so confusing as if we believe that making it all harder than it really is really lets us off the hook.

As if our muddying the Gospel with our refusal to believe the obvious simplicity of it will somehow manage to make our choice to reject seem understandable.

It won’t.

Again, childlike faith.

But why? Why is it so simple? Why is it so obvious?

Because He wants for none to perish but all to come unto repentance in which awaits the free gift of salvation given unto those who’ve so misused the gifts of free will and freedom as to have spent them upon such outcomes as hatred and harm inflicted upon those we’re called to love.

In this case the blood of those who He’d sent to help us all to understand the message that He’s been trying to send since way back in the Garden, which, when boiled down to terms we’ll understand today, is that it’s His way or the highway.

Sadly many continue choosing the highway simply because it seems here easier and thus vastly more popular than the way narrow.

And, well, He make it clear where those two will end too.

All because He wants for all of us to come to know Him, to trust in Him, to lean on Him, to learn from Him how to live these lives that we’ve been given again. And He gives us rebirth through His resurrection by again helping us to become cognizant of our many chosen faults and failures, those we can see and probably still feel thanks to all the foolish things we’ve believed and all the stupid things we’ve done because of them.

Like how it was a good idea to kill everyone who’s ever come to simply try and help us up and out of this pit of pride and pettiness we all just keep diving deeper in.

It wasn’t and nor will it ever be a good idea to so ignore anyone who is honestly trying to help us.

A fact to be proven the hardest way possible should we refrain from admitting we got it wrong until that Day when He whom we’ve wronged will stand to say that He never knew us.

For then we’ll be turned away from the only hope we really have toward a place where no hope will be had again.

A place which exists because we’ve all lived as if He didn’t exist as is seen inside those scenes in which those who were simply trying to help at best got hurt and at worst left here at the insistence of those insistent that they were doing nothing wrong.

Friends, we’ve not got much if anything right.

A fact proven in how death is now a promised aspect of life.

Yes, we all deserve to die, and will, thanks to how we’ve spent our lives. The only question is that by the time we do will we have humbled enough to listen to those who came to tell us that we only had to do it once? For that’s a clarity in the Gospel too. That there are two deaths and we’ll all experience one at least. The second is an unending death as will be met in that place where hope isn’t.

We shouldn’t want that.

But, alas, it seems as if many are more than happy with that remaining a possibility. Why? Don’t know. But I do know that the Gospel has been shared just about everywhere and thus to pretty much everyone and so the time is running short before the coming again of the Son to gather those who are His from those who for whatever reason just don’t want to be.

That’s between them and Him.

We’re here to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling and to give our lives as if living testimonies as we do.

Again, simple.

The problem continues to prove in all of these confusions our delusions have all but demanded. And there’ve been entirely too many to name. But suffice to say that all of our various religions and all of the different directions and devotions and denominations within them are all evidence that we’re still working hard to make it all harder than it ever should have been.

It’s a relationship my friends.

Not that complicated.

Alas, we’ve made it so very inflated that we’re all now so infatuated with our own understandings as to everything He’s said and is still saying that we just keep missing the point. In fact, many keep rejecting the point simply because it doesn’t align with what they want it to be.

For we’ve all come to believe in a god that exists simply to make sure that we get whatever we want.

And we’re more than happy to fight and argue and perhaps even legitimately hate anyone who sees it any other way. So much so that we’ve in times past proven of a willingness to kill them. And, well, history does repeat as is proven in that even today we see people killing and being killed over differences in opinions and perspectives and beliefs.

Blood still fills the streets of those who are here trying to do what they believe is right and that all because someone else disagrees.

All because we’ve all seen fit to overcomplicate all of it.

Again, it’s meant to be a relationship.

But relationships aren’t built in nor then sustained by hatred.

Yet such is what runs this world.

And He’s made it clear that such will remain the case until this place has finally passed away. And indeed, coming is that Day when this world will not be there anymore and thus when we won’t be here either. Rather everything will be changed, and everyone too. And yet so many so loathe the concept of change that even saying that is perhaps grounds for being hated or worse.

So be it.

Because it honestly doesn’t matter what happens here. I mean the whole Bible is full of stories of those who were hated and harmed simply for doing what God put them here to do. Friends, this world is the furnace of affliction that His Word mentions. This is our fight, our battleground, our testing place. This is the part that should be hard. And yet we’ve all tried so hard to make it all so endlessly easy and always comforting that we’re more than happy to simply hurt those who say we’re getting it wrong.

And coming is the Day upon which they will all in unison say that they tried to help but that we insisted they didn’t.

And indeed, if all we ever learn how to do here is refuse help, then it shouldn’t come as any surprise when none is offered at the end of this life.

He’s told us that He will agree that He’s not known us should we leave this world having lived our lives clearly not caring to know Him as is proven in the widespread rebellion built upon a common rejection of His Word and any who may dare share it anyway.

Indeed, He allows mankind to refuse Him so that they can be the ones who bear the blame for refusing Him.

Again, simple.

But what won’t prove quite so simple as it seems to be here is when many leave this world only to find that their hands are too stained in the blood of those they determined to hate. Indeed, 1 John 3:15: “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.” And too Luke 10:16: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

Hatred is rejection and rejection is denial and denial is death when it comes to us hating and rejecting He who is our Savior and any of those He’s sent to either tell us we need said salvation or where to look in order to find it.

Many here continue rejecting Him and hating them who warn of the danger found in doing so. And that will not change until it becomes the inevitable forced issue that He’s said it’ll be.

And so no, our lives here won’t be easy as this world makes it obvious every single day that most here have no inclination to change much if any of anything. And thus hatred will remain common, thus rejection and rebellion and denial then too. But He knew all of this would happen and that’s why He told us that here we would have trouble but that when we did that we could take heart because He had come to overcome all that’s here.

One day all that’s been done will be paid for, hatred and harm definitely included. Let us not then become weary in doing good even though it won’t be received well by those who don’t want to see the good we’re trying to do. Rather welcome this world’s hatred as it only means we’re really doing an at least okay job of following and serving and sharing He who this world still hates.

Matthew 5:11-12: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

For indeed, this generation is no different than all those who’ve gone before. Rather still remain commonplace the hatred and rejection and rebellion that have always defined this place. And while it will be hard and at times perhaps hurt to see and feel this world’s refusal to embrace the better He came to call us all to become, it is what it is. Thankfully we can rest knowing that He will ensure justice and that those who trust in Him will be those few who escape the vengeance through which He will.

We’re just here to tell those we can about what’s coming and how to make it through it alive.

Just don’t be surprised when you find that most don’t want to avoid it.

And that they’re more than willing to welcome the risk of His wrath simply because doing so means that they don’t have to do anything different before it comes.

They will continue to kill the messengers.

But they will not get by with it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold