We have been told that God’s promise of salvation is a free gift, which it is, and as such we can depend on it.
But can we depend on ourselves?
If you prefer to watch a video, that won’t be possible today because we are having work done on the house and my office is unavailable to me, so I cannot use my video app. You’ll just have to read this one.
God’s promises are as dependable as the sun rising in the morning, but that doesn’t mean that they come freely; even salvation, which is a free gift, requires that we do our part.
When we read Deuteronomy 28, the “Blessings and Curses” chapter, God starts off by promising us a plethora of wonderful blessings, BUT they are only available if we obey his Torah. If we choose to reject his instructions (and it is ALWAYS a choice), then his promises of blessings turn into promises of curses.
For the record: I do not believe that God actively curses anyone, but since the world is already a pretty cursed place, when he says he will curse us all he really does is take away his divine protection from the world. God doesn’t do evil things, but does allow evil things to happen to those who reject him.
As I said, even salvation- a free gift from God, provided to us by the sacrificial death of Yeshua the Messiah- doesn’t come unconditionally. We have to repent of our sins, accept Yeshua as our Messiah and, by means of his sacrifice, ask forgiveness of our sins. And then (yeah, there’s still more) we have to do t’shuvah (turning from our sins) and live our lives in obedience to God’s instructions in the Torah (not what some religion says) as best as we can.
If we refuse to do that, or if we apostatize, we will not have that promise of salvation anymore. That isn’t God reneging on his promise, oh no! We are the ones who will have reneged on God!
Now, there are some promises God makes that are unconditional, but they are few and far between. His promise to Abraham, his promise to David that the Messiah would come from his descendants (even though that promise was predicated on David’s children continuing to do as God said to do), and to Noah that God would never destroy the world by flood, ever again.
(But that doesn’t stop him from destroying us by other means!)
So, we have a clear and simple message for today: God’s promises are absolutely, 1000% dependable… but they come with a proviso! We get what he promsies so long as we do what he says we should do, and what God said we should do is found only in one place in the entire Bible- the Torah.
Judaism knows that pleasing God is not a cakewalk, whereas Christianity makes salvation sound like a Come-As-You-Are Party.
Trust me…it ain’t!
Thank you for being here and please remember to share these messages with everyone you know. Hey, after all, you never know how fertile the soil is until you plant a seed in it.
That’s it for this week, so l’hitraot and (an early) Shabbat Shalom!