Jul 12 - Today from Proverbs 12 we look at verse 28
"In the way of righteousness there is life; along that path is immortality."
Ever since history began, man has been seeking immortality. The ancients tried to build a tower to heaven. Men got involved in black magic, divination, necromancy, sorcery and the like; seeking the secrets of the dead in order to discover the source of life. Explorers traveled the earth looking for the 'fountain of life'. Because of sin and its roots in pride, man has convinced himself that there is life apart from the Creator. Man has come to identify life as something he possesses, and he desperately tries to hold on to it. The truth is, apart from God, there is no life - only existence. We cannot fully explain it because it is beyond our comprehension. We believe it because God revealed it.
Immortality is not discovering a way to live forever. Many paths to one God? Never! Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6). Immortality is accepting being found, purchased, and restored by Jesus back into God's original intentions for man. It is the glorious account of His substitutionary death on a tree, and His victory over death for all who call upon His Name. For mortal man, death happens when his eternal spirit separates from his mortal body. This is the first death. The second death is when his eternal spirit is ultimately separated from even the common grace of God. For those who are in Christ, this will never happen. For those who die the first death apart from Christ, they are doomed to eternal separation from God. "Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment." (Heb. 9:27). They will still exist, but they will be void of life because life is found only in the Life-giver. It is the deceitfulness of pride that entices man to believe in and seek a way of immortality apart from the atoning work of Jesus Christ. It is impossible!
This sounds like foolishness to man. Were it not for the gift and work of the Holy Spirit, man could not believe such a thing. "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor. 4:4). The church is to be constantly engaged in spiritual warfare, praying against the deceiving forces of darkness and asking for the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to draw hearts to Christ. Jesus is the way. He is our righteousness. In Him, and in Him alone is the path to immortality.
Since Nov 08
About Me
- Ken
- While mentor-ing a couple of young men late in the year 2001 , I told them that if they agreed to read a chapter of Proverbs each week-day as a part of their devotions, I would choose one verse from the chapter and share a meditation by email. They agreed. I continued to write the meditations at my desk in my home for the next two and a half years. They began to forward them to their friends and I received requests from those friends to be placed on the email list. My personal email bundle was to about eighty people. Many of those people forwarded them to friends all over the country – and some over the world. Only the Lord knows how extensive the writings traveled. I am not a professional writer, and each meditation was spun off in a relatively short period of time during my own personal devotions in the morning. In April of 2004 I assembled 366 of the meditations into a calendar year. As I now bring up the Proverb of the Day to send on to my friends, I am surprised at how fresh each of them is to my own heart – and often how they speak to me in a completely different way than when I first wrote them. . . . . Ken Sweers
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