"It's His Place"

"That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the Most High over all the earth." (Psalms 83:18) Ultimately, it's really not up to us to save anyone; God is the one who saves! We are only vessels that He uses to spread the Good News that He does save; and we surely don't get to make the choice on who is worthy and who is not worthy to hear the Gospel. That is where some of our brothers and sisters seem to make the mistake of judging people based upon appearance; as if they are any different! When we judge someone to be condemned, we ultimately condemn ourselves in the process; not that we loose our salvation, or anything like that; but that is not our place, and there will be some sort of price to be paid for judging others; what that might be, I really do not know. If you notice, Paul said, "to save some." There will always be those who choose not to accept God's offer, but we do not make the distinction between who those people are and who are the some that will. I am sure that we are all going to be surprised to see who joins us up in heaven; but until then, we should be willing to see everyone make it there, no matter who they might be or what they might have done. As this Psalm begins, it sets up the notion of who the enemies of God are, and what it is that they do to become His enemies. The devil and his demons don't get a chance for salvation, so they are the primary enemies of God, and hell was created specifically for them. Man is not God's enemy; God's desire is that none should perish, none! So here is the end of what began as something to defeat the enemy, yet the enemy is not who we think. It's much the same with how we learn to take a stand against our old sin nature: we don't need to stand against something that is already put to death, but we do need to stand...
"I don't want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them are the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. These things happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did, or worship idols as some of them did. As the Scriptures say, "The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry." And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did, causing 23,000 of them to die in one day. Nor should we put Christ to the test, as some of them did and then died from snakebites. And don't grumble as some of them did, and then were destroyed by the angel of death. These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age. If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. So my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols." (1 Corinthians 10:1-14) NLT