Articles

Romans 3:9-20 & Genesis 6:6

⁹“What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. ¹⁰ As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; ¹¹ There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. ¹² They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.’ ¹³ ‘Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit’; ‘The poison of asps is under their lips’; ¹⁴ ‘Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.’

¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their ways; ¹⁷ And the way of peace they have not known.’ ¹⁸ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’ ¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. ²⁰ Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

Genesis 6:6 “And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”

Last week, my family and I and several other pastors attended an associational meeting in the US. During the meeting, we had a workshop on Human Trafficking. This was an eye-opening experience, and we learned that this was a global problem with people from all over the world being bought and sold for their work. We also had a session on sex trafficking, and this was seriously heartbreaking. This dear brother who led the sessions is one of the hands-on people who deal in the trafficking intervention ministries.

They attend hotels where the vast majority of people there are sex workers; they live in dangerous conditions and expose themselves to many hurts and injuries. He often just came and sat in the vehicle to give out hygiene kits, free water, and food as needed. Imagine a hotel with hundreds of rooms rented by the pimps for a weekend, and client after client comes in for 3 or 4 days, and this goes on weekend after weekend. Many of these ladies have kids, and they share childcare duties as the other moms do their business.

Often, as Christians, we tend to live in a bit of a bubble. We forget that there is real evil in the world done by people who use and abuse others for money and power. We forget that there are real women and real children who live through these horrors each day. These are the people that need our prayers! In addition to our prayers, they need actual help, actual hands-on people to give them some hope. Too many of us Christians are not helping; most of us just don’t know where to start, and many don’t want to see the true evils of this world.

This dear brother is also involved in helping kids escape the sex trafficking industry. Yes, he actually rescues kids and helps them get back to some sort of normalcy, whatever that means. We learned that the majority of kids that are taken are boys, that they can earn their captors in the range of $400-500K in a year, and once used up, they are often abandoned after having been physically, emotionally, and mentally scarred for life. Many are never coming home, and we learned that there is an estimate that some 40,000,000 are missing worldwide.

Yes, you read that right – 40,000,000. The task may seem overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable; however, with there being over 1 billion Christians in the world, this brother and many like him are trying to do what they can to make a difference.

In our text of Romans, we see God lay out the evil that is mankind. We are evil to the core. There is nothing good in us, not even a small amount. We don’t think we are that bad, and by doing so, we cheapen the price that Jesus paid for our souls to redeem us from hell. In Genesis 6:6, we are reminded that the evil on the earth became so bad it grieved God that He had made man. In Genesis 1-2, we were the pinnacle of His creation; we were good. But in Genesis 6, God was grieved that He had made us. We know what happened next: the Great Flood of Noah was sent to kill everyone except those that got into the Ark. Sadly, just 8 people made it through that judgment.

Jesus told us in the Bible, but as it was in the days of Noah, so it would be near the end. I cannot imagine how grieved God must be, looking at the state of the earth and the people right now. We are abusing children at an alarming rate; there are people who take these innocent ones and use them up for sex by the millions. The people hurting these kids have no remorse; they are just commodities to be bought, sold, used, and discarded.

By the way, unless we become too arrogant and judgmental, were it not for the grace of God and the salvation we have in Him, we could be one of ‘those’ people. We often forget that we are reprobate sinners who Jesus has saved. Take the time to thank God that Jesus came looking for us and that He has saved us.

The level of evil out there is deep. The level of disregard for God is even deeper, and the simple hatred for mankind, for children, is real. I don’t know what God will do to these men and women who steal and abuse children. By God’s grace, many of these evil persons can still be saved. They are alive and live under the loving, kind, merciful grace of God. But woe to those who die without Jesus.

Hug your kids, hug your grandkids, love on them, be vigilant, and protect them; evil persons are coming for them. I do not see how our world can become any more evil than it is right now. I cannot imagine what that will look like. I don’t want to imagine what that will look like.

By the way, there is nowhere on earth that is safe from human trafficking – nowhere. Rural areas are just as susceptible as cities; these predators are everywhere. We, as dads, usually take more care to protect our daughters, but I learned that 50-60% of the kids trafficked are boys. We need to keep an eye out for all of our kids.

What can we do in the shadow of a very daunting task? We need to open our eyes; men and women are evil. Find out if your church is helping a man, a woman, or a team that may be actively helping to find these kids. Many of the kids taken are in the foster care system. What if more Christian homes opened their doors to foster kids and our churches helped out?

Most churches in North America need more foster parents for kids, and this is a way we could rescue, protect, and preserve some of the children out there. I will admit that the task at hand is overwhelming; frankly, it haunts me.

Not taking action is not an option; we must do all we can. Jesus is coming soon; let Him find us working to share the Gospel, showing God’s love, serving the most vulnerable, and letting our lights shine in a dark and evil world. Jesus is the light that will kill the darkness.

John 1: 1-5, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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David had just been anointed as the next king of Israel by the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 16:1-13), much to the amazement of his father and brothers. He had been in the fields of Judea tending the family flocks, seemingly consigned like the majority of the populace to live a life of productive obscurity known only to God. Israel was under the rule of Saul, who had been anointed as the first earthly king of the nation against the advice of the LORD and of Samuel as well (1 Samuel 8).

The people had demanded a king like the nations around them. Saul, because of his appearance and other character traits, fit the bill. Saul started out well and seemed to possess a desire to please God. This faded quickly as Saul began to “believe his own press,” letting pride and a growing disregard for following God’s direction and the advice of Samuel cloud his decisions (1 Samuel 15:10-35).

Because of this, God rejected Saul as king, removing His spirit and allowing an “evil spirit” to torment him. Saul was gripped by depression and violent mood swings (1 Samuel 18:8-12, 19:9-10). In an effort to help the troubled king, the court officials suggested that he find someone skilled in music so as to calm him down for a time. It is against this backdrop that David is brought from obscurity to the stage where he will be prepared to fulfill the call God placed upon his life.

While David had been anointed to be the next king of Israel, Saul was allowed to stay on the throne until his successor was fully trained. God would use the madness of King Saul to help train the young shepherd boy for his future role as the next king of Israel. God had His “toolbox` ready to build the character and faith of David. He used four specific tools that He uses when He seeks to build our character as His children and servants. God does not leave us as He found us. He saves us in order to change us (2 Corinthians 5:17), and He saves us in order to transform us into the image of His Son, the LORD Jesus Christ (Romans 8:28; Ephesians 4:11-13). The LORD God uses certain tools that are suited for the work of our transformation.

Let us examine the specific tools He used to transform David from a young shepherd boy to the greatest king that Israel would know.

The first tool God used in building David’s character was solitude. David had spent the majority of his life tending sheep in the hillsides of Judea by himself. Yet, David was never alone. He learned how to fellowship with God, listening to His voice, communing with Him, worshipping Him, and how to be at peace with himself. There were no distractions except for the bleating of his sheep.

The idea of silence and quiet, without the distractions of the world’s demands, is a foreign concept to the modern mindset. We’ve been lulled into a false idea that work and activity take precedence over the idea of solitude and “quiet times,” especially quiet times to be alone with God. If we say that we are devout followers of the LORD Jesus, then we need to follow His own example of having time alone with the Father (Mark 1:35; Luke 4:42, 6:12; John 6:15). We need to spend time with God if we are to have any chance of developing spiritual character and maturity. Let us return to be the “special people” (1 Peter 2:9) that the LORD Jesus expects us to be and set aside time for Him. The world can wait.

The second tool God used on David was that of secrecy, or obscurity. As David worked in the fields tending the flocks of his family, not only was he alone personally, but he also had it in his heart to do the job well, with no one around to say otherwise. David performed his job knowing that he was being watched by an audience of One. God watched him as he did the mundane, ordinary, and difficult tasks that came with the responsibility of a shepherd. He did nothing half-hearted but with a sense of excellence and worth.

The Bible says that it is in the shadows of obscurity that God sovereignly works in the lives of His people.

It was the forty-year time of solitude in the desert that molded Moses from a fugitive murderer who fled Egypt in shame into the great leader and lawgiver of Israel. Jesus spent the first thirty years of His life as an anonymous carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth (Luke 2:52).

We are not to disregard those periods of obscurity and secrecy in which the LORD can place us, for it is done in order to mold us into fit vessels of service for His glory. We need to surrender ourselves to the reality that notoriety, worldly fame, or recognition may never be part of our lives and instead be content with the knowledge that whether we taste fame or are allowed to be part of the fellowship of the ordinary, it is God’s gracious outpouring of His wonderful mercy, grace, and salvation upon us that is of utmost importance and worth. God never uses our ego as a litmus test of obedience and potential service.

The other tools that God had ready to form David’s future royal character included routines and troubles. The tools of sameness and struggles are used on anyone whom God chooses for future service and significance. There is no such thing as a trouble-free life where we are handed everything necessary for alleged success in this present world. Entitlement is a vice disguised as a “right” that this present generation seems to think comes with being part of the human race.

Anyone who wraps themselves in such a ridiculous and dangerous ideology ends up as a despicable, self-centered, and potentially useless individual who will fall for the voices of tyranny and dystopia disguised as peace, safety, and comfort – and in doing so, lose their freedom, uniqueness, and potential service and use by God for better and more noble outcomes.

Routine in a job or other task is a way of gaining both confidence and expertise in that field. Expertise leads to further responsibility. Further responsibility shows maturity and dedication. The Bible says that faithfulness in the small things leads to greater responsibility because we can be trusted with getting those little things done, and that we will be rewarded for it by the LORD (Matthew 25:21).

No one starts at the top, not even those called by God into His service. There is a “boot camp” for everyone who is willing to set aside their ego, sense of importance, or belief that they are not expendable and instead give themselves over to the will and guidance of God, trusting in Him to do a great work in us – not for the sake of self-gratification or sense of importance but that in spite of adversity, tears, troubles, and setbacks, the Sovereign LORD God who created us is also going to use tools like these to shape us into not only choice vessels but also faithful servants upon whom He can rely to get the job done.

David had his share of troubles (1 Samuel 17:34-37, 40-51, 18:8-12, 19:9-10), but the LORD used these and other venues to mold David further into not only being a man after God’s own heart but also the king whose dynasty would produce the Promised Messiah, the LORD Jesus Christ.

Are you ready for God to use His tools in your life? Then give your life to Jesus Christ and let the Great Carpenter begin His work on you today.

donaldwhitchard@gmail.com

The Evil That Men Do :: By Sean Gooding

Construction of a King’s Character (1 Sam. 16:14-23) :: By Donald Whitchard