Red Flag, Red Flag

 

The Bible is full of warnings from God to the people of the earth. Many would say that these warnings are only for Christians, The truth is that every single person on earth will be judged after death according to the way they heed these warnings.

This is not to say that obeying God is the “ticket” to heaven, nothing could be farther from the truth. Faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins and in the Word of God as our standard for living is the only way to heaven.

The “red flags” or warnings in the scripture are given to us so that we can show our love for God by obeying His Word (John 14:15). But this is not the only reason we should heed these warnings.

We are the created beings of a Most Holy God. He is the One who has a greater knowledge of us than we can ever expect to have of Him. In His grace He has given us the scriptures to inform us, to direct our paths, and to show us the way of wisdom and discernment according to the purposes He has for us.

In the culture we are living in the warnings of scripture have been ignored for so long that we can see the slide into a terrible demise for our children and their children. Even within the Christian community the emphasis has been to “love the Lord with all our hearts,” but the rest of that passage is ignored. We ignore that that love should also include all of our minds and all of our strength.

This raises two big red flags: the lack of knowledge of what the scripture says and the lack of wisdom regarding how to apply them to our lives. We have over-emphasized loving God and de-emphasized being wise and discerning about that love for Him.

God is most very gracious in what He warns us not to do. He even informs us of the consequences of not doing what He says. Reading the Ten Commandments we can see both the positive and negative. If we have no other gods before Him but worship and obey Him only we are promised mercy. If we do bow down to idols He warns us that He will visit our iniquity upon our children to the third and fourth generations.

How concerned are we today about future generations? (See Psalm 45:17, 78:4-6, 89:1, 106:31). There is a warning in these verses that if we want our children to know and love the Lord, and see His marvelous works, we are responsible to tell them.

When we obey these instructions our lives will bear the fruit of the blessings God offers. When we refuse to obey these commands we will see the curses of God on our lives.

It seems that this is what is happening nationally now. We are seeing an increase in evil, lying from those in positions to be trusted (journalistic, medical, military and political, the people who are supposedly informing, protecting and caring for their fellow man).

There is a blinding of the eyes of many in those positions. They would rather not have to fight against the evil and so they do what they are told; from teachers teaching elementary students about gender identity to legislators giving millions of dollars to evil institutions and a military with no respect for religious views, while the people involved say they have no choice but to do what they are told.

Everyone has a choice. Some of those choices have more consequences than others but we have to decide what is truly important in life. Choosing to “go along to get along” and not “fight city hall” have created huge red flags for the next generation. As we support the evils of this world, the pit we dig for the next generation is getting deeper.

Knowledge and wisdom to turn around our current trajectory of decline comes from the fear of God. It will require that we use all of our love for God, all of our minds for God, all of our strength for God, and all of our souls will have to be committed to Him and to the future generations He will call His people.

Are we willing to do the work? If not, that is another “Red Flag”  of a more personal nature.