I was reading my Proverbs for the day and this verse stood out today, Proverbs 6:26. It reads that the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.
The Bible says to love not the world and goes on to expand on what that means as the Bible also says that “for God so LOVED the world“. Casual reading might reveal an apparent contradiction. However, the book of First John helps clarify how in the world we are to not love it and so love it. Loving the world really applies to anything in the world that does not come directly from God or indirectly from a Christian yielded to Him to act as His hands and feet. God is not willing that any should perish, so in that sense, he so loved the world that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. God hates sin, but Jesus died on the cross so man could be reconciled to God and that man could be saved. While the Calvinist may state otherwise, God does not hate sinners nor want them to go to Hell. That does not mean that God cannot or does not hate sin and what sin does. I hate cancer, as it killed my dad and I see the evil it does. I also see the financial motives of the cancer industry. My dad had cancer but obviously I didn’t hate my dad. God hates sin and cannot even be in the presence of sin. Yet God the Father sent God the Son as a substitute for the punishment that God’s hatred of sin requires. You can see the two aspects, God loving the sinner in the world while hating the sin of the world.
Sin began in the garden when Adam and Eve disobeyed and died spiritually and death entered into the world, they were driven out of the garden, and the devil was now given dominion over the earth. The devil is the god of this world, and he has henchmen in Hollywood, on Hellavision, on Hell Boiled Over (or HBO), in the Hitlers and Hussains that want to take over the world themselves, in professional Hardball, Hockey, or Hoops, in Homosexuality, and in Healthcare. First John 1:16 says, “for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” That began in the garden. The devil has not changed his tactics in 6000 years and what trapped Adam and Eve still works to trap men today. Eve “saw that the (forbidden) tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, (and) she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Here we see the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The pride of life was the serpent’s promise “ye shall be as gods” if they ate the forbidden fruit. They lusted after what they could not have, and they took the bait that the devil cast.
According to Jesus, lust is adultery.
The book of James says YE ADULTERERS and ADULTERESSES, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
That is the theme of this post. Proverbs says the adulteress will hunt for the precious life. A literal adulteress wants what is unlawful for her to have. She is not content with her own situation and wants the life of someone else’s. In the process she destroys her own marriage, ruins her own children, destroys another family, and ruins another marriage. She finds nothing but misery and destruction and it started with her fixing her eyes off what she had and onto what she didn’t have.
Christians are the bride of Christ, yet instead of being content there and desiring the things of God and planting ourselves in a local church the majority are committing spiritual adultery. You can’t have one foot in the world and one foot in the church house.
The Bible warns us to be not deceived, adulterers shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (see 1st Corinthians 6:9-10). This literally could be a good indicator if we truly ever met the God of the Universe. At the very least it shows where our hearts are at. I believe a Christian could theoretically fall into adultery like David did. I do not believe a Christian can have an ongoing lifestyle of adultery. The bible says God chastens them that are his and God is able to keep us from falling He promises. Those in a lifestyle of physical adultery cheating on their spouse do not have a biblical reason to suspect they are saved. A man who said “I do” at the altar on Saturday that returned to his high school sweetheart on Monday would not be someone who will save his marriage.
I would expand that to urge Christians committing ongoing Spiritual adultery with the affairs of this life to honestly examine their salvation. I am not saying I am perfect, and I can only testify what God did in my life. God set me free from an ongoing day in day out lifestyle of sin. God made me a new creature with different desires and a different direction. I never read the Bible before until I experienced what legitimately seemed to be a courtship phase where God was wooing me. I started giving up certain sins, but when I truly was willing to give up everything I knew and I truly could see how good God was, something changed. I don’t know whether repentance happened before during or after but I know the moment I got saved. I went from an agnostic who had no desire for the Bible to reading it daily day in and day out the past 11 years. I went from attending church twice a year to twice on the weekend, and other nights as well. It killed me to give a dollar before, now I was tithing! That is not me bragging because I know me. I am saying I met Jesus and he changed me completely!
Yet we see too often in Christianity no change and no fruit and think it is normal modern evangelism. I sought out a pharmacy class mate who I remembered having his bible with him during class to find out where I should go to church. I thought he was odd then. Now I finally got why he did it. He didn’t have to bring it, he just was in love with that book! Why do we think it is normal if our converts have no longing to read that book that is the same as before they prayed and asked the Lord to save them? “At least they are saved,” is the attitude. Are they really? Have you ever met a new born who did not care about being fed? What does the bible say — desire the sincere milk of the word. I believe the Bible teaches that new converts desire the Word of God like babies desire milk. How can we say we are in love with God when we desire to read anything and everything but his word? If Christians read as much bible today as they did text messages, this country could turn around. Question is why there is little natural inward natural desire to read that book if the author promises to live in every believer?
Most American Christians are not saved and never had said “I do” to God. Many grow up in church their entire lives and sit in church while their hearts are out in the world. They spend Sunday after Sunday texting all service and tuning out the preaching and giving God second fiddle and no second thought.
The lost are already slaves to this world. The devil keeps the average 2nd generation Christian fixing his eyes on the world until he is 18 and can finally divorce the things of God for good. Usually that meant he was never married to begin with. The devil causes the average church to look at the success other worldly churches have, using the world to draw the into it’s doors and soon that church too looks just like the world.
The world will destroy us and everything in it’s path just as complete as a neighborhood caught in the eye of a hurricane. I was thinking about how many go after the gods of this world and the gods end up being the very things that destroy them. The drunkard refuses to come to Jesus Christ and chooses the bottle. He ends up with liver cancer a short time later and dies and wakes up in hell. The sodomite swears at the preacher and shakes his fists at God and contracts AIDS. The football player dies of a heart attack from steroid abuse. The drug user dies of an overdose. The glutton dies from a stroke from clogged arteries. The motivational speaker commits suicide. The Nascar driver has a fatal crash in the INDY 500 and the vet dies from a motorcycle crash swerving to avoid hitting a cat on his drive home.
We are hunting for life everywhere but where we can find life. Jesus will give eternal life and life abundantly. He will satisfy when we think Snickers does. He won’t refuse anyone who comes to Him and Him alone. He is the answer, he is the way, he is the truth. Yes, faith is involved, but how much more faith does it take to see person after person being destroyed again and again, and yet we still believe that we can find the precious life apart from Jesus? Everyone who tries it gets burned in the end. Literally in hell, and as well as down here.
Yet mankind continues to think there is a loophole and they won’t be affected. Others will get cancer from smoking, and everyone has to die of something, so I am not worried. I will drink to that, says another. I was born this way someone else says, let me do what I want. The hunt is on. They keep looking, trying, seeking. And it is all there for the taking if they will just come to God instead. Everything we need is found in a relationship with God. The World has nothing we need, everything we could want, and nothing that doesn’t come with strings attached.
The devil is the one pulling those strings. And he is really the world’s puppet master.
Only Jesus will cut the strings. But most are afraid of being free. Maybe because we don’t want the responsibility to be able to choose for ourselves. But I think that is the ultimate irony. When we truly get free to “marry” any god we want, we naturally will want the god who freed us.
And not return to our old master.
Once we are free, we don’t want to cheat on the God who died for us. My question is why if someone is truly saved, they could ever desire to go back to the one who enslaved them? Why would they still be hunting for the precious life?
I found eternal life and I am no longer hunting. Lord you are more precious than silver, Lord you are more costly than gold. Lord you are more beautiful than diamonds and nothing I desire compares to you.
How about you? Are you hunting for what you cannot have? Or do you have the one who came seeking to save that which was lost?