Cannot Continue in Sin

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand 

in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.

Psalm 24:3–4a

God has rigid requirements for those who want to enjoy intimate fellowship with Him. There is no easy access to God for those with unclean hands or an impure heart. It is an affront to holy God to assume that we can indulge in our sin and blatantly disobey His word, then brazenly enter the holy of holies. In Old Testament times, one's hands represented one's activities. Clean hands symbolized pure activities. Priests washed their hands before serving in the temple to symbolize that only those who were cleansed could worship holy God.

There are levels of intimacy with God. The moment you become a Christian you begin a relationship with the Lord. However, if you persist in your sin, sin will separate you from God and keep you from enjoying close fellowship with Him. If you follow only God's basic commandments but resist every time God gives you specific, personal directions, you will never fully experience the depths of God's Person. If, however, you are like the psalmist and understand the holiness of God, you will adjust your life to His standards and respond to His prompting so that you may have deeper fellowship with Him.

The closer you get to holy God, the more obvious even your smallest sins become. The more you know of God's character, the more you will realize the need to wash your hands and purify your heart before you can get close to Him.

Are you willing for Almighty God to make you absolutely pure before Him so that you can enjoy the maximum possible relationship with Him?

- Blackaby Experiencing God Day by Day 

Oh so many are attempting to live for themselves while claiming to live for Jesus!

When pressed throughout this pandemic, it's the rights of the individual that seem to be what's in the newsfeed on Facebook, the feed on Twitter, the news headlines as protesters of all kinds take to the streets. 

I read of hijacking a cause for a different purpose.  Have been reading of many of these in various forms.  

You realize that's what parasites and cancers do?

When in the desert, being tempted by Satan, in Matthew 4, Satan tried to get Jesus to create a situation whereby God would be forced to come to his rescue. If He was the Son of God that is.

Sounds like recent headlines to me from a Church in California. 

It's right up there, honestly, with those that want to bargain with God to do something different in life that it's apparent that God wants of someone's life.  If you just do this God then I'll do whatever you want.  If you do this, I promise you...

People so easily forget that He knows the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  They forget that it is He who searches the hearts of man.  All the while life is happening, that's what Jesus is doing.  

Does God need a crisis to showcase Himself to the world?  What of all the seriously disillusioned people who turned away from Salvation all because someone set a date for Christ to return and it passed.  How many lives are ruined by such things! 

My dear reader, Satan will indeed use every temptation that he used against Christ on us if allowed by God.  For believers he needs permission, for the unsaved he doesn't. Although if it's messing with someone being saved I have to wonder if there's limits to that. 

Should you attempt to create a grandstanding event on God's behalf, and it backfires, who takes the heat?  Sure the perpetrators will, but for sure Satan will make a media circus about it for several generations.  Perhaps you have read about a few?  

In the Old Testament, if such a one were to be prophesying and whatever it was didn't come true, they were stoned to death.  Deuteronomy 13. Because they encouraged the people to do something contrary to the will of God. 

The truth is we shouldn't try to instigate circumstances to create an opportunity for God to do something.  That's the temptation where Jesus told Satan you shouldn't put God to the test. 

The case in point in California they are twisting circumstances to say they are going to listen to God not man about being together as a congregation.  It is obviously lost on them that the early Church never met in big buildings.  They met in homes.  It's also historically obvious that God blesses the smaller Churches far more than the larger.  Perhaps it's to do with a greater ability for accountability.   It also prevents a puffing up of leaders above the people. Read Thessalonians and Timothy at least, to read of the future dangers that would come against the Church...they would come from WITHIN.  Not the world. 

Many Christians continue to live idol filled lives while going to Church.  The greatest damage from this pandemic isn't people's lives in the respect of life-and-death situations.  It's that God has removed idolatry on a grand scale and Satan is trying to recoup his losses.  He is encouraging binge watching of movies and television, of streaming services.  Encouraging people to do anything but get closer to God throughout this.

Lastly angry people don't really think with the brain God gave them.  The angrier someone is the easier to manipulate them.

Interestingly, this had been the punchline of most Loony Tunes cartoons. Get Elmer Fudd to get angry and Bugs would manipulate everything.  Get Daffy Duck angry and manipulate.  People get angry by a carefully orchestrated media attack and they are manipulated. 

Why are commercials so successful in the preservation of the lives of animals yet millions of lives of babies keep getting lost?  Oh that's right, if we had commercials that showed the plight of the unborn...

We cannot continue in sin in all its forms and yet keep coming to Christ asking for things to happen or situations to change. 

Paul, in Romans speaks quite a bit on practiced sin. It's intentional sin.  Sin we knowingly do and repeatedly do.  There's a flavor of sin for every opportunity.  Protesters of all kinds for virtually every form of sin exist.  Not against but for it!

They want gender equality. Including all forms of sexual perversion.  They want homosexual Pastors.  These are examples of sins being pushed as what should be right and normal.  Yet not according to God's Word.  

You cannot continue in sin that Grace may increase.  Read in Romans about it.

We cannot be provoking God by our decisions.  We are to JOIN God where HE is working not inventing situations FOR Him to work.  My friend, I did that myself over 30 years ago, thought I had God's plans for me figured out.  It was a disaster that almost cost me my life. 

Look at what motivates you to do what you do. When you are getting stirred up, is it for real Biblical reasons?  Are you on a bandwagon with others, not having done as the Berean Church and look it up for yourself?  You cannot continue in sin and expect God to answer your prayers.