October 25, Day 298 – From Bad to Worse

Psalm 119:89-96; Jeremiah 50:11-51:16;

2 Timothy 3

"Buenos Aires Garden" © by Terri L. Stricker - Original Oil on Canvas

Psalm 119:89-96 tells us that God’s Word is “eternal and that it stands firm in the heavens” (verse 89).  God actually operates in realms about which we know nothing.  We have no idea how God’s Word can “stand firm in the heavens” – He doesn’t explain to us how that is possible.  He only declares that it is so.  What this really means is that God – being God – is able to accomplish things that defy our own ability to reason or to understand, but our incapacity to know or to comprehend His truth completely does not nullify the truth or its existence.  With full confidence in His revelation, we may accept as fully true, reliable, and trustworthy that His Word “stands firm in the heavens” – just as He decrees – and whether we see it or not.  Why should we ever doubt the One Who made us?  “His faithfulness,” we are told next, “continues through all generations; He established the earth, and it endures … His law endures to this day, and all things serve Him” (verses 90-91).  Clearly, Someone greater than this universe pre-existed and brought it into being; nothing can create itself. The Psalmist recognizes this; he says, “had it not been for the Word of God, we would have perished in our affliction” long ago (verse 92).  God’s Word teaches us that “by Him – the living Word of God – all things were created, and in Him all things hold together” (cf., Colossians 1:17).  Whether we like it or not, the Word of God keeps the entire universe operating from moment to moment.  John Lennox, British mathematician and scientist, says “physics and science are not the fundamentals that sustain the universe, but it is the Spirit of God that does this.”

In Jeremiah 50:11-51:16, the prophet continues his discourse against Babylon.  Jeremiah says that “the LORD will end Babylon’s habitation and it will be completely desolate” (verse 13). God promises to “punish Babylon like He punished Assyria, but He will bring Israel back to his own pasture” (verses 18-19).  Jeremiah further says that “Desert creatures and hyenas will live there [in Babylon] where the owl will dwell, but [Babylon] will never again be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation … just as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah” (verses 39-40).  Here, we see that, for a time, God used Babylon as His “shattering” arm of judgment against Israel and other nations for their sins, but God turns the table – no one will ever escape His hand.  Chapter 51 graphically indicates God’s judgment on Babylon.  He will “stir up the Medes – men who will come down on her like a swarm of locusts and shatter Babylonia for all the wrong it has done” (verses 11-23).  At least eight times in this section, God says He will shatter (i.e., utterly destroy) Babylon.

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul tells Timothy about life in “the last days” (verse 1).  May I say to you, that we are living in those last days.  All of the evils which Paul addresses are not only present with us, but also they are prevalent with us.  Paul identifies twenty specific sins in this passage, and each of them is characteristic of the entire age in which we live.  What are we to do?  Paul advises us to do only two things: [1] “Mark this” (verse 1), he says.  And [2], “have nothing to do with them” (verse 5).  The implications of a believer who has a “form of godliness but denies its power” (verse 5), are enormous, and they negatively affect our whole identity spectrum – spiritual, psychological, emotional, intellectual, social, and ontological.  Denying godliness results in the perversion of our entire view of reality.  Moreover, Paul says that things will “go from bad to worse” (verse 13).  In such “terrible times,” only the Scriptures can offer us a safe refuge.