Previously I wrote a post about what it means to betray God. Betraying God means leaving His Word, receiving false teachings after knowing the truth (like Adam eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil even though he knew not to), and death – both physically and spiritually (Rev. 20:15, 21:8).
Betrayal Happens
Now, I want you to keep in mind that betrayal doesn’t happen in an instant, but it happens over time. God always gives His people a chance to repent and turn back to Him.
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
God sent prophets and even His Son, Jesus Christ, to preach to the Israelites in the hope they’d repent, but what happened each time? God’s own chosen people didn’t repent and instead persecuted and killed God’s messengers.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Matthew 23:37-39
As forgiving and loving as God is, He also has His standards to judge by (the Word). When a child disobeys his or her parents, do the parents just let it go? They need to discipline and correct their child. When God’s chosen people betray, God has to show some tough love. He has to judge by His standard which is His Word.
Destruction Will Come
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
Instead of repenting, God’s people continued to disobey and God had to judge them. He does that by allowing gentile nations to take them captive (“destruction”). The only reason these people can destroy God’s chosen people is because God left. When we look in the Old Testament, when Israel stayed true to God’s Law, they were victorious in battle. But when they turned away, they lost. The Old Testament showed us the physical consequences of the Israelites’ betrayal of God’s covenant – which said if they fully obeyed God’s commands, they would be God’s holy nation and the kingdom of priests (see Exodus 19:5-6). But since they broke that covenant (promise) they made with God; they were destroyed (see 1 Kings 11).
The Change From Physical to Spiritual Destruction
When Jesus came at the time of the first coming, those who believed in him were able to become God’s children – His new chosen people – through the word Jesus spoke.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13
Before Jesus came, you had to be born of the physical bloodline of Abraham to receive salvation. But once Jesus came, that promise was truly meant for those who accepted, believed, and obeyed God’s Word. When they did that, they became reborn of God’s seed. What does one need to be called a “son”? He needs the seed from his father. Jesus was born of God’s seed through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18), but those who believed in Jesus didn’t receive God’s physical seed – since God is spirit, but His spiritual seed (Luke 8:11). This marked the change from the physical to the spiritual.
What does this have to do with destruction?
It’s said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In the movie, Remember the Titans, Coach Boone gives the newly integrated T.C. Williams HS football team a much needed and moving speech. He reminds them about the struggle of the Civil War at Gettysburg, of how brothers in the past killed each other with hatred and malice. They destroyed each other and Coach Boone reminded his team that if they didn’t pull together, they’d be destroyed, too.
In the Old Testament, God’s chosen people, Israel, broke God’s law and were destroyed. They were taken captive by gentile nations. Jesus’s first coming marked a new beginning: a re-creation of God’s chosen people – not a physical group but a spiritual one born of God’s seed (word) through Jesus and the 12 disciples. Who are these new chosen people? Those who believe in Christ. Today they’re called, “Christians.”
What About Today?
Yet, if we look at the state of Christianity today and all the various groups of believers and denominations, can you honestly say all believers have kept God’s and Jesus’s words? The Apostle Paul talks about the Jews, in their own zeal for God, didn’t obey God’s Word but followed their own way (“established their own”).
For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
Romans 10:3
If we reflect on Christianity today, haven’t Christians established their own with all the various denominations and such? And if so, what is the result?
The destruction that comes for spiritual betrayers is worse than physical destruction because the spirit is eternal. Now I don’t mean to scare you, but we should have that fear of judgment as much as we have the hope of heaven.
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
Hebrews 10:26-27, 29
We should ask ourselves, “Do I know what the covenant God wants us to keep today is?” and also, “If I don’t know this covenant, where do I learn it and how do I keep it?” I don’t mean to scare you, but we must take this seriously as it is a matter of life and death, of salvation or damnation. And God fulfills everything He promises in the Bible – which includes judgment on those who break His commands. If we don’t fully know or understand what God has said in His word, then can we truly obey them as He asks?
How Do We Avoid Being Destroyed?
If we want to avoid ending up like the physical Israelites, we must fight and overcome ourselves, Satan’s false teachings, and come out to where God’s truth and light are shining. We must learn to understand God’s Word, the teachings, and prophecies for us today as believers who are waiting for the second coming of Christ. And once we begin to study and understand God’s Word, we must not turn away from it and be destroyed. Jesus said,
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Matthew 7:13-14
What is this “gate” and this “path”? In John 14:6 Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life. Another word for “way” can be “path”. In John 10, Jesus refers to himself as the “gate” to the sheep. In other words, we must understand and obey the words Jesus spoke in the four gospels and in the book of Revelation. When we understand, believe in, and obey Jesus’s words, then we are walking on that narrow path.
The wide path seems nice and easy – carrying out a life of faith according to our own feelings or another person’s interpretation. However, the narrow road Jesus calls us to walk on is not easy. It’s filled with suffering – just as Jesus and his disciples suffered for the gospel. Yet in Romans 8:18, the apostle Paul reminds us that the sufferings we endure are nothing compared to the glory that lies ahead. That glory is the promise of heaven and eternal life.
I hope and pray we can overcome ourselves, the devil, and not be destroyed like those who disobeyed in the past. The best way to begin overcoming ourselves is by studying God’s word. I encourage you to begin a study so you can learn and understand what God requires of us today as believers and those of the new covenant.
Written by Kenny
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