Isaiah 5:20 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!
Matthew 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many (some translations say, “most”) will grow cold.
As we continue to inspect our hearts and take spiritual inventory of our lives during this month of Elul in preparation for the fall feasts, we should stay particularly aware of Yeshua’s prediction in Matthew 24:12, “The love of many will grow cold.” He warned that a sign of the last days would be abounding lawlessness and that callousness and hardness of heart would characterize the end times. The evidence of this is everywhere.
Mass looting, street violence, and robbery are commonly reported in thousands of mobile phone videos and mainstream news to an alarming degree unheard of even a few years ago. Meanwhile, much legislation has been perverted and manipulated to persecute Christians for their beliefs. Isaiah plainly described this present social and moral catastrophe, “Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil!”
In the midst of this, we have to ask ourselves, “Are our hearts becoming calloused? Are we losing our love to the increase of wickedness?” The atmosphere itself breathes strong temptation to be isolated, self-protective, and loveless, even toward our brothers and sisters, much less the multitude of lost and wayward souls around us. If the day is looming when “no man can work” [John 9:4] have we already begun to decide that loving for Christ’s sake is hardly a worthy cause any longer?
D.L. Moody once said, “(If) we have got the true love of God shed abroad in our hearts, we will show it in our lives. We will not have to go up and down the earth proclaiming it. We will show it in everything we say or do. “He also said, “Out of 100 men, one will read the Bible, the other 99 will read the Christian.”
How are you being read today? Are you gradually becoming stoic and isolated like your neighbor? Is your heart slowly but surely growing tough skin? “The love of many (or most) will grow cold.” Such a terrible expectation; God forbid that environmental and reactive fear, anger, and manipulation steal the fruit and character you’ve spent years cultivating in the Lord. God is love. There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear. [1 John 4:18] Allow yourself to be consumed by the love of God — and in doing so, you’ll be more than a conqueror through Him [Romans 8:35-39] in these last days!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Continuing our exciting account of the Moravian Revival, I have to highlight the minuscule quantity of saints involved. This was, in proportion to its astounding effect, a very small group, a little church. Yet the amazing demonstration of God’s principle of power through unity re-echoes the events at Pentecost when 120 believers also were in profound unity waiting on the Lord. It wasn’t the numbers but the removal of contention and division that paved the way for a 100-year revival.
The Moravian revival, our current subject, began in the little community of Herrnhut on August 13, 1727, with a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit likened to that of Acts 2. It was a work of God that would transform this group of splintered Christian settlers into a unified missionary endeavor committed to reaching the unsaved around the world.
As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
This is one of my favorite promises in the Bible — that God turns mourning into dancing! He takes away the anguish of being clothed in sadness and replaces it with gladness. However, notice what God doesn’t do — simply stop your mourning and make it disappear. No, He transforms it…into joy!
With war drums beating even more intensely in Iran and Syria, we’ve received numerous phone calls and emails expressing their concerns — and understandably so! Nevertheless, even in this climate of anxiety, we are preparing to enter into Shabbat (the Hebrew word for Sabbath) this afternoon. And as we do, we are remembering again, the deep lesson of God’s entering into His rest following the six creation days.
A sailor who was shipwrecked on a desert island was captured by some of the natives of that island. They carried him off on their shoulders to their village, where he was sure he would end up being the main course. But instead, they put a crown on his head and made him king. He was enjoying all the attention he was receiving but was growing a little suspicious. He started making inquiries and discovered that their custom was to crown a stranger king for a year and at the end of that year the crowned king would be sent to a deserted island where he was allowed to starve to death.
Some of the wealthiest individuals in the United States are real estate developers. They make their money by buying a piece of property that is terribly run down, seemingly useless, without any value to the naked eye and reforming it completely, making it look brand new! These businessmen are not as much interested in what is on the property as they are interested in the land it’s on!