Good
and evil, just like truth, have become relative terms in our culture.
Paul
warns us of this in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. He writes, “For a time is coming when
people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will
accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their passions and will turn and
wander away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
There
will be a time when people will not listen to the truth and will thus not
recognize the truth and will live a life that is not based in reality.
Isaiah
warns us of the consequences of this kind of life.
Isaiah
5:20-21 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness
for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for
bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own
sight.”
Isaiah
warns us that God is not pleased when we reject truth for a lie. Isaiah uses
three illustrations to help us understand how we reject truth.
We
call evil good and good evil.
3
John 1:11 says, “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does
good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.”
Jesus
tells us in Matthew 19:17 that God is good. James tells us in James 1:13 that
God cannot tempt us with evil because He is not evil.
Good
is what God says is good and evil is what God says is evil and because,
according to Hebrews 13:8, Jesus does not change, what He says is good will
always be good and what He says is evil will always be evil. The measure is not
what a culture says is good or evil, but what God says.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is living the truth of what God says is good and
what He says is evil.
We
call darkness light and light darkness.
1
John 1:5-7
This
is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light,
and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while
we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in
the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the
blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
God
is light and in Him there is no darkness at all, and if we walk in His light, we
will have fellowship and cleansing from all our sin.
Darkness
is simply the absence of light, and when light comes into darkness, it makes darkness
disappear. We have to chose if we will live in darkness or live in light.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is about walking in God’s light & letting it
dispel the darkness.
We
call bitter sweet and sweet bitter.
Psalm
119:103
How
sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
God’s
words are sweet to us because they are truth, and they bring comfort,
encouragement, and peace.
Hebrews
12:15
See
to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of
bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.
Bitterness
causes us troubles and defiles us.
God’s
words are sweet because, by obedience to them, we experience righteousness, but
by letting bitterness consume us we are defiled.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is about letting God’s word produce in us a
harvest of righteousness.
In
verse 21 of Isaiah 5 we are told who calls good evil and evil good, who calls
light darkness and darkness light, and who calls sweet bitter and bitter sweet.
It those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight.
It
was the religious leaders of Jesus day who, no matter the amount of evidence
that they saw that Jesus was the Messiah, they chose to reject that truth
because they did not want Him to be the Messiah.
Jesus
says in John 14:6 that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life and that no
comes to the Father except through Him.
When
we accept Jesus as the Way and the Truth and the Life and as the only path to
God then we will be walking in truth & reality.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is about knowing the truth and living daily based
in that truth.
In the Truth Raising
the Roof and Removing the Walls,
Joe
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