Do You Believe in Karma?

Rev 20:11  Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. Rev 20:12  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. Rev 20:13  And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Rev 20:14  Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. Rev 20:15  And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

The above passage sets forth the basic biblical teaching of the general judgment that awaits all mankind when Christ comes back.  It is pretty plain that those saved by the grace of God in Christ Jesus will live forever with God and those whose names are not found in the Book of Life will spend eternity in the fires of Hell.

Unfortunately America has become thoroughly secularized so that if you ask people on the street if there is a judgment or hereafter or any accountability after death by far the answer you will get the most will not be based on the Bible at all.  Listening recently to just such a survey all the answers either brought in a sense of Karma or just a sappy, “If I do more good than bad, I will be Okay”, or both. 

It is amazing how even those who call themselves Christians will refer to Karma as how life and death generally work.  They assume that what goes around will come around when it comes to the hereafter.  Of course, they have neither studied Karma nor the Bible and so even though they are nominal Christians, their doctrine of the judgment is thoroughly pagan because humanism and paganism is allowed to be taught in the schools and airwaves but not the Bible.

The next time you hear someone say they believe in Karma ask them to explain Karma to you.  You can pretty much be sure you will hear an Americanized form of it that isn’t biblical and isn’t Hindu either.  The fact is that Karma teaches that one pays for past life’s sins in the following life until you finally are freed from earthly existence entirely after countless life cycles.  But here is the kicker.  If one is suffering in this life it is because of something they did in a previous life and so to be relieved of suffering means that you will have to suffer at some point in the future or you will never move to a higher level of existence. 

This helps explain why social conditions in a place like India have always been so deplorable and continue to be so.  Karma works well with the caste system or we might say the caste system is a result of Karma.  Charity work was pretty much unheard of before the English brought Christianity and reform to India.  That is because if you see people who are suffering you mustn’t give them relief because you aren’t allowing them to pay for their sins.  On the other hand if you are born into wealth, you must have deserved it and so it is perfectly acceptable to look down on the less fortunate. 

In other words, what forms the basis for western civilization when it comes to human rights and charity is turned on its head in societies that hold to Karma or a system of judgment similar to it.  So the next time you hear someone say they believe in Karma find out if they do or not and you have an opening to give the gospel of grace.  Karma is just impersonal law keeping in which grace has no part.  Some mindless, nameless force makes sure that every bad thing we do will be paid for with no hope of escape.  Grace is God paying the price for our sin so that we can escape the punishment. 

And by all means let’s make sure we don’t use terms like Karma that just causes more confusion and darkness in a world that is too dark to begin with.

The Controlling Nature of Sin

Gen 19:9  But they said, "Stand back!" And they said, "This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them." Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down.

Gen 19:10  But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.

Gen 19:11  And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.

Perhaps no passage in the Bible depicts the controlling nature of sin like the account of the homosexuals of Sodom.  As the two angels come into town to rescue Lot and his family the entire male population, “down to the last man” saw the visitors as merely sexual objects.  It didn’t matter that they were human being created in God’s image, as they would have assumed they were human; they saw them only as something to use and discard.  And of course, this is common with all sexual sin. 

But it is the above text that is truly hard to believe.  As they are trying to beat the door down to get at these men, they are struck blind.  Now you have to put yourself in their shoes.  It is dark and perhaps they had torches but all of the sudden you can’t see anything.  You might at first think that someone put out the torches but in a second or two you realize you can’t see.  You yell for help, telling anyone who will listen that you can’t see.  At the same time everyone else is relating the same thing. 

Now I am pretty sure that as a Christian who is pretty familiar with biblical morality; if I found myself engaged in a questionable activity with some others and we are all struck blind at the same time that the first thing I would think is, “maybe someone is trying to tell us something”.  But these men obviously didn’t have the Holy Spirit indwelling them and their conscience had been seared long ago in all likelihood. 

Being struck blind is merely seen as an inconvenience in their attempt to commit sexual perversion.  Instead of trying to make it home safely they actually wear themselves out looking for the door.  This has to be one of the starkest accounts of sinfulness that is found in the Bible.  It should remind us of how sin can control us and dupe us into thinking that what we want is more important than anything or anyone else no matter who we hurt. 

Unfortunately the controlling nature of sin is something that Christians must be aware of and do battle with.  I can think of plenty of times in which I wanted something so badly, whether it was my way or some object, that I had little regard for Christ’s will or how others were affected.  While it is easy to point a judgmental finger at these guys, it is easy to see that I sin in similar ways all the time. 

In fact, in this account we see righteous Lot showing a rather unbelievable lack of faith in verses 16-20.  He sees how wicked these guys are first hand, he is reduced to offering his daughters in exchange for the angels, he sees the angels strike the men of the town blind and yet he is hesitant to leave. 

Then apparently after being miraculously lifted and carried outside of the city he then proceeds to argue with the heavenly messengers that he knows best where he needs to flee.  Evidently God was smart enough to save him from Sodom’s destruction but not able to take care of him in the place where he tells him to flee.

But that is what sin does; it has us believing that we know better than the Lord.  I have had people come to me for help with the results of years of sin in their lives but when I direct them to church and to listen to what God tells them to do, they want none of it.  They might be miserable in their sin but one thing they know is that they are not going to give up their sin and certainly not submit to God.

And it is particularly sad when Christians’ pride and lusts have such control over them that no matter who they hurt and how much their lives fall apart they only get angry if you try to direct them back to where the Lord would have them.  They will argue with you and tell you that your theology is wrong but their view isn’t helping them at all!  

Yes, this chapter teaches a lot about sexual perversion but it teaches more about the deceitfulness of sin that we all are only a step or two away from.  May God grant us a tender conscience and a repentant spirit so that we can recognize when our sin is controlling the way we are living.  I think too often I see myself in this chapter more than I see the sin of homosexuality.

Christian Logic

Heb 11:17  By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, Heb 11:18  of whom it was said, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." Heb 11:19  He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. 

The account of Abraham rising up early in the morning in obedience to the Lord to offer his son as a sacrifice has to be the quintessential example of faith in the Bible and surely why it is used here in Hebrews 11.  At the heart of his faith and obedience to such a difficult task is simply that he believed God and so he believed what God said about the reality of things and acted accordingly.  This sounds simplistic but I think it is something that we all struggle with more than we might think.

In verse 19 the word for “considered” is an accounting term.  Strong says it literally means to take inventory but there are several ways to use it.  Perhaps we can sum it up by pointing out that Abraham took all that God had said and all that he had done and came to the only biblical, godly conclusion he could have.  This is biblical accounting or math.  It is to believe what God says about our lives and act accordingly. 

As he leaves for Moriah he expects his son to come back with him because God has told him that in Isaac’s offspring all the nations shall be blessed.  So whatever happens, even if he kills his son, he knows that God will have to raise him up from the dead because God doesn’t lie and he hadn’t lied to Abraham for a 100 plus years and so he wasn’t going to start now. 

His faith wasn’t some vague idea of what he thought God should be like but his faith was based on what God had revealed about himself.  He took God’s word seriously and acted accordingly.   The commands and promises of God are what we build our life upon and are what guides us when making decisions and all of the cries of this world to do what they say and not what the Bible says has nothing to do with how a Christian is to think.  The reality of the true God always trumps the logic of the world and the flesh. 

But too often when God leads us to make such a painful sacrifice we assume that God must be erratic, but this had not been Abraham’s experience with God.  His experience had been that everything God had said came true and that God was able to do whatever he had promised and so the wise thing to do was to obey him.  So sure was Abraham of God that he was willing to plunge a knife into Isaac and live with that picture in his mind for the rest of his life because he knew that God would bring him back to life.  So Abraham acts in a way that is consistent with his knowledge of God.  He doesn’t question but waits to see how God would work things out.  No doubt this is what enables him to get up early to obey God.  Too often we would assume God is not being fair; we would make it clear that we will not be full of joy and contentment and will not give all glory to the Lord.  We will sit at home and mope or lash out at our loved ones or be generally unhappy but the question should be will we rise up early to fight the good fight?

Are we willing to do biblical accounting by adding the truth of the Word up with the promises of God in Christ Jesus and live in light of the results?  Even though Abraham fully expected the Lord to raise his son back up, he would never forget seeing the blade cut into his son’s body and his life ebb away.  Yet he accepts this and rises early.  Remember verse 3 says that Abraham split the wood that would burn his son’s body; he didn’t have the servants do it.  How could he have done this without going mad?  He had to know that God would have a resolution to this.  This is the only thing that will keep our minds when God would take away our loved ones or send some other severe trial.  Our God will make all things right.

Part of the idea with this word “consider” is thinking logically about something.  He worked all this out in his mind and his understanding of God.  After all, God is not a liar and his salvation lay in Isaac’s descendant.  Therefore, his son must live again!  He wasn’t working with numbers but it is the same principle. 

Just like 2 plus 2 will always equal 4 so the Lord says that when we obey it will always work out for good.  It means that his ways are the right ways and our ways will always end in failure, Pro 14:12  There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.  This isn’t fuzzy logic, God’s reality doesn’t change, whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap.

Have we learned to think according to God’s principles or do we think this world and our flesh know best?  To be willing to think before we act and react takes discipline.  It is much harder than just living in the flesh and doing what everyone else does but one way glorifies the Lord and the other glorifies our sin and ends in a miserable life and eventual death.  Is this how we think as we journey through this life?  Do we take what we have learned about God and make decisions and react accordingly?  If we react rashly, emotionally erratic, if we are overcome with depression or anger, if we act in any other way than total submission to God, if we do anything other than rise up early in obedience, there is room for growth in our faith and love for God.

If you are saying to yourself, “There is no way I would or even should do what Abraham did, then you don’t have the faith of Abraham and you don’t know the God of Abraham.  When you come to know God as your loving Heavenly Father, who cares for you more than any earthly father ever could, you can give Him everything in your life and know that He will not abuse you, in spite of how circumstances may appear. 

When we see God’s great love for us as seen in His not sparing His own Son, but giving Him up for us all, our response should be, as Isaac Watts put it, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Give yourself and all that is precious to you to the Lord. He will bless you and give you great joy.

Praying for the Kingdom of God

Mat 6:10  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Rev 4:8  And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!"

Rev 4:9  And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever,

Rev 4:10  the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

Rev 4:11  "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."

As I was preaching through Revelation 4 Sunday Matthew 6:10 popped into my mind.  John sees in his vision, among other things, Cherubim standing by the throne of God.  Ezekiel sees them in his vision of the throne of God back in Ezekiel chapter 1.  In both cases the prayer that the Lord taught us to pray comes to mind. 

In Ezekiel these living creatures appear to be inside of wheels that turned in every direction.  When the Spirit of the Lord gave a command they flashed away like streaks of lightning without turning.  I take this to mean that their obedience was instantaneous so much so that they didn’t even have to turn around; they just went.

What we find them doing in Revelation is constantly proclaiming the holiness of God along with his eternality and omnipotence in their praise in verse 8.  It appears that every so often at some prearranged signal the elders (who I take to be angels as well) join them in verse 11 and proclaim that the Lord God deserves all praise and honor and power because of his right as the creator of all things.

In Matthew 6 Jesus tells his disciples that the first things they should pray for is the proper respect for the Father’s name and that his will would be done on earth as it is in Heaven.  From Ezekiel and Revelation it would seem that God’s will is being done instantaneously and everything that is being said and done ends up in worship and honor of the Lord. 

To see this as merely praying that the Lord would come back and set up his kingdom on earth I think pretty much misses the mark.  First of all, his kingdom has already been established on earth but I will not take time to develop that thought.  I see his kingdom being established on earth as it is in Heaven in a two-fold way.

First of all in an evangelistic sense.  The world of the lost is not obeying or honoring God at all.  And so one way we see the kingdom advancing is when souls are brought into the kingdom by the preaching of the gospel and all of the sudden where you had rebellion you now have obedience to the will of God.  And so we are to pray that the Lord would use the gospel to convert sinners, subdue their hearts and bring peace and holiness to their lives where before there was conflict and unrighteousness.

But an even more practical way to ask for this kingdom on earth is to ask God to work in our hearts so that our obedience and worship looks more like what John sees in Revelation and less like what we see in the world.  I think the thing that hit me while I was preaching was how unlike the throne room my life really looks.  I do not see the constant worship of God in my heart as I ought; too many times my prayers do not have the glory of God as their focus; too often I make my normal decisions during the day based on what pleases me in the immediate and I don’t stop and consider what would bring the most glory to the Lord nearly as much as I should; too often my obedience is not immediate but only after I make some initial unfortunate remark or display some ungodly attitude. Then I remember that it is not I that am to be served but the Lord and then I obey but not nearly as soon as I should have. 

So while I want the Lord to come back and set up the consummated kingdom soon, I have much more pressing things to pray for.  I need to be burdened for the salvation of the lost so that more and more sinners are saved from Hell’s fires and are transformed into Christ’s image.  But really my first prayer needs to be that my life, my heart, my mind becomes more and more a place that looks like the very throne room of God in Heaven.

Who Controlled the Writing of the Word of God?

2Pe 1:21  For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

One thing I have learned in 37 years of preparing Bible lessons and sermons is that most doctrines relate in some way to the attributes of God.  If we get the doctrines of the person and nature of God wrongly we many times will develop shortcomings in other areas of the Bible.  Most notably when we see the Lord as anything other than absolutely sovereign in all things or that he hasn’t ordained every detail of history to work out exactly as he has determined before the world began.   If instead one assumes that man or Satan or nature can act independently of his decrees so that at times things happen that he does not want to happen but was unable to control, we find ourselves unable to deal biblically with his providence because we don’t see trials as providence but bad things overcoming the providence of a loving but weak God.

When we deny God’s sovereignty in every detail we also set ourselves up for weakness in another area; the infallible, inspiration of the Bible.  To be fair there are plenty of people who deny God is sovereign in all things that do believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, but their doctrine of God makes them inconsistent.  Many more, because they don’t really believe God can do what the Bible says he can do assume that the Bible is merely a few men’s attempt to write down some things they experienced but we should not think that God actually led them to write down only what he wanted them to, no more and no less.  This second group is consistent, the first group is not.  Let me try to explain.

While the Calvinist states that all men are dependent on the Lord initiating and effectually calling, saving and justifying them and that left to their own devises no man can be saved, the Arminian argues that all men have a morally free will that can tell God no or choose to believe but that it is the individual and not God that makes the final determination.  This is an old debate and I will not address it in this article but let me say that this position causes another problem.

If man can resist the sovereign leading of God then who is to say that the writers of the Bible didn’t add a few of their own thoughts while writing their books?  If they didn’t add words how do we know that they didn’t delete a few ideas that they didn’t like?  Once you take a position that God cannot force anyone to do his will, even by making him willing, you undermine the infallible, inspiration of the entire Bible.  You can’t have it both ways; we can resist the Holy Spirit’s sovereign role in saving the elect one moment but that God can absolutely make sure we do just what he wants us to do the next moment. 

It is a little like the atheist who wants to live with a moral worldview that he owes to the God of the Bible while he denies the very God who has given us our sense of morality.  So the Arminian wants to believe that God is sovereign to move men to write down his infallible words and make it to Heaven someday but refuses to believe that he is powerful enough to overrule the affairs of men and angels.  But the fact of the matter is that the only way God can know how the history of man was going to end thousands of years into the future is if he is in total control of every detail, at all times and in all things.  This is the God we worship when we gather at church and I don’t think worship that robs him of his power and glory is worship worthy of our Lord.

The Root and the Shoot

Isa 11:1 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. Isa 11:10  In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

Rev 22:16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."

There are many ways the divinity of Jesus and his eternal nature are taught in Scripture.  Some are rather obvious as the prologue of the Gospel of John and others are mentioned in an almost matter of fact way couched in a metaphor as in the above verses.  What I like about these verses is that it shows the unity of the Old and New Testaments as they teach the divinity of Jesus.

In Isa. 11:1 Isaiah prophesies that the Messiah shall shoot forth as a branch from the dead stump of Jesse.  After the Babylonian captivity the kingly line all but disappeared from the world stage.  The Monarchy was for all appearances dead.  But when Jesus came to earth born of the line of Jesse, the stump all of the sudden is alive again.  In this case Jesse was the root from which Jesus sprung forth as Isa. 11:1 states as well as Rev 5:5  And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."  In Revelation David is the root or progenitor of Jesus’ humanity.

But in Isa. 11:10 the Messiah is all of the sudden referred to as the root of Jesse!  So who is coming from whom?  Isaiah didn’t make a typo nor was he confused because Jesus as the eternal Son of God is the source of all life and yet in the incarnation he was born of the virgin Mary of the lineage of David. 

But just to seal the deal Jesus at the very end of the Bible brings this all together in Rev. 22:16 above where he states plainly that he is at the same time the root of David and yet a descendant of David; he is the root and the shoot!  He isn’t just saying that he existed before Jesse and David which could be taken to mean at some point he came into existence before they did.  By saying that he is the root he is claiming that Jesse and David came from him thereby claiming to be the God of creation.  If that wasn’t enough back in vs. 13 he says it another way, Rev 22:13  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."  He couldn’t have come into existence because nothing was before him.  

No wonder all creation gives him the worship reserved for God alone in Rev. 5; Rev 5:12  saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" Rev 5:13  And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!" Rev 5:14  And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Proverbs For Husbands

Pro 21:9  It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

We are reading through Proverbs in Sunday school and we came upon this verse.  There are actually several verses like this one including one in the same chapter, Pro 21:19  It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.  The question was asked why there are so many verses about this and why is it always about the contentious wife and not the husband.  They are questions that are worth considering. 

On the surface the easy answer is that this book is written from a father to his son and so naturally it would be from the man or husband’s point of view.  I think that if we look at it from the man’s point of view but also from a biblical and New Testament perspective we can make a good application. 

I think men typically either read a verse like this as a funny truism and then move on to the next verse or immediately think of a nagging wife and tend to apply it to wives by telling them they shouldn’t be contentious but submissive instead.  We tell them that if you submit to your man the home will be one of peace.  Now there is certainly some truth to that but that application directs these verses to the woman and not to the man.  And so the verses become mostly just truisms about what a home is like if the wife is a nag but they hardly find application in a man who wants to be wise in the Lord.

As I said earlier, this book is written to instruct a son and while there are great applications for men, women and children in this book yet I began to think about what would be the wisest and most profitable way for a young man looking for a wife or a husband who finds himself in this situation to apply it to himself.

There are at least two ways we can approach this.  We can quote it to our wives when we feel they are being quarrelsome or nagging, etc.  We can use it then to try and keep our wives sweet and submissive or we can consider how to apply it to ourselves as husbands.  Perhaps a similar verse will help, Pro 17:1  Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.  Here the point is the same but it doesn’t blame either the man or his wife for the problem.  It is simply saying that a home of peace is a much more enjoyable place to live than one in which there is strife.

I think a better application of these verses then is for a man not to use them to try and get his wife to submit but to look at why there is contention in the home to begin with.  Since the husband is to be the head of the home then we should always look at our leadership with suspicion when there is strife.  Why is my wife contentious, why is she not happy, why is she nagging me, etc.?  In fact, a better way to ask that question might be what is there about living with me that is making her unhappy. 

Yes, it is miserable to live with a contentious wife but it is equally miserable to live with a know-it-all, abusive, “I am king of my domain” husband.  So it might be best for the husband to read these verses and think to himself that since it is miserable to live with such a woman I need to make sure that I am the kind of guy that brings out the best in my wife and not one that is unbearable to live with.  In this way these verses become a directive for husbands to consider how they lead rather than just something to use against our wives.

A young man looking for a wife would do well to keep this verse in mind and look for a woman with a sweet, godly, submissive attitude because if he just looks on the outward he might very well end up with a miserable home.  And this applies both ways.  How many girls have gotten caught up in a guy’s looks, money or “manly” take charge attitude only to find out that he is just mean or so caught up in himself that it is impossible to have much of a relationship. 

There is a lot in the verses to think about but I hope we men use them to consider the atmosphere we encourage in the home and not use them to beat our wives over the head with.  Otherwise they just become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy in which we make her miserable and she returns the favor.  And of course, we could just go to the Eph 5:25  Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, and Eph 5:28  In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Eph 5:29  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.  The application is the same.  If we love her like we want to be loved, she will be happy and the home will be at peace.