Thursday, September 15, 2016

Jesus Resisting the Devil.

Resist…  the DEVIL. 

Do we SET OURSELVES AGAINST THE DEVIL?!
Do we WITHSTAND the DEVIL?
Do we RESIST the DEVIL?
Do we OPPOSE the DEVIL?

*******
How did Jesus resist the Devil?

Mat 4:1  Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
Mat 4:2  And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Mat 4:3  And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
Mat 4:4  But he answered and said, IT IS WRITTEN, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Jesus was confronted by the Devil, they came face to face. The Devil spoke to Jesus outright making demands of Jesus. The Devil knew it was Jesus, and yet he said this,  'IF thou be the Son of God.' Why? Why did the Devil do this when he knew the answer already? What was his reasoning? He knew he was face to face with the Son of God. He was TEMPTING, not just TRYING to tempt Jesus, but TEMPTING JESUS to defend Himself. IF YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, they both knew that the Devil knew He was the Son of God, but the Devil isn't ever content to be understated. He will play on every single emotion he can at every opportunity. Yes, the temptation was to command the stones to change to bread but, only IF Jesus truly was the Son of God. Only the Son of God could do such a miracle, right? So if those hard stones made of stuff completely unlike bread were altered then that would prove Jesus was the Son of God, right? Not right. But according to the Devil if Jesus did that particular miracle for him then He'd be proven right. It was a BOLDFACE lie. They BOTH knew that the only thing that would happen if Jesus changed that stone into bread would be Jesus LISTENING to the DEVIL, Jesus succumbing to the DEVIL'S tempting! Jesus giving credence to the Devil's desires.  Jesus did NOT reply, that He couldn't change the stone into bread, He took it to another level. He bypassed any discussion on the change that the Devil wanted Him to make and went right to the HEART of the matter- 

IT IS WRITTEN.  Bread?  Man shall not live by bread alone.

Did the Devil say anything at all about living by bread alone? No. Not a single word. So why was He talking about living by only bread?

Jesus make the very bold statement to reveal that BREAD is not important at all, physical food was not important even though He, in His human form, was starving.  Seriously, forty days and kept alive by God miraculously, but NOT without feeling the extreme pangs of hunger. He hungered. Yet, even if He were left to starve all the way to death, if it were by the will of God - by God's plan whatever that may be, it was better than eating with the Devil, better than giving place to the Devil in any way.

Man wasn't to LIVE by food alone… but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Not food alone- but food with something greater than food- God's word.

He would starve before He'd live by food alone. His Father had to give Him leave to break the fast He was on, not the Devil.  The Devil wanted Him to give into the HUNGER, to ease His hunger while PROVING He could do miracles that would in turn prove He was Jesus, the Son of God- something that did not need to be proved at all.

Jesus wanted us to know that EVERY word of God means more than ANY thing else, truly anything else. 

Is it any wonder that so many people throughout time have died rather than give up the Word of God?

The torture, the agony, the sheer horror of the things people have had to endure because they rather believe in God's word than the sensual, temporal things of this world is beyond our full understanding. We need to question ourselves though, would WE choose the Word over all else? Would WE? And if not, why not?

We must RESIST the Devil so he will FLEE from us.  May we learn from our Savior, through His power learn to resist through our submission, our full submission to Him!

More tomorrow by the will, by the grace, by the love of our God!

In Jesus' name now and forever, amen!

*******
Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 
Jas 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 
Jas 4:9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 
Jas 4:10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Submit to God- Resist the Devil.

Submit…  to GOD.  Do we submit to God? What's it mean to submit to God. How can YOU personally submit to God?  Do you yield your power to God? You do have a power of your own and that is the power of choice. You choose, God does NOT choose for you. If God chose for us it would be HIS choosing and He might as well have made us simple robotic without any will of our own at all whatsoever. We choose and we choose often, we choose constantly.  Our decision to submit to God is a constant choice as well. How simple would it be for us to make a choice once and never go back on that choice. But we are creature of different choices often. Some people are very rigid in their inability to choose anything other than what they are familiar with, however we deem them as anomalies, not average. How often today are we face to face with people making serious choices and then changing those choices, even ones they've considered final.

Getting back to submitting to God- do we yield our power to God? We have power simply by existing and that power to choose to give ourselves to God is yielding that power to Him. We yield any authority we may think we possess, to God- we want Him to be our authority!

Do you want God to be your authority, or are you like so many others proud to say you are the boss of yourself. We take so much pride in being in control of ourselves, making our own decisions and in truth we shouldn't. That pride we are talking about is in direct contradiction to our submitting to God.  If we lay claim to control we are not allowing God to control. We cry out in happiness, "Look what I did!" All the while forgetting that we only did whatever it was, because God allowed us to. Truly all glory goes to God!

Do we submit? Do we yield our authority to God? Do we give God the control of our lives to lead us in His way? This truly is something we need to contemplate, to pray on, to study more.

Resist…  the DEVIL.    Do you resist the devil?  How do you resist the devil?

The Greek definition for resist--
ἀνθίστημι
anthistēmi
Thayer Definition:
1) to set one’s self against, to withstand, resist, oppose
2) to set against

Do we SET OURSELVES AGAINST THE DEVIL?!
Do we WITHSTAND the DEVIL?
Do we RESIST the DEVIL?
Do we OPPOSE the DEVIL?

How do we do this?  More tomorrow by the GRACE and MERCY of our LORD and SAVIOR!!!!! JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD! NOW AND FOREVER! AMEN!

*******
Draw nigh… to GOD.
Cleanse… your hands.
Purify… your hearts.
Be… afflicted.
Mourn.
Weep.
Humble… yourself in the SIGHT of the LORD.
HE- the LORD- will lift us up!

Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 
Jas 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 
Jas 4:9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 
Jas 4:10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Be Afflicted.

Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 
Jas 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 
Jas 4:9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 
Jas 4:10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up

Submit…  to GOD.
Resist…  the DEVIL.
Draw nigh… to GOD.
Cleanse… your hands.
Purify… your hearts.
Be… afflicted.
Mourn.
Weep.
Humble… yourself in the SIGHT of the LORD.
HE- the LORD- will lift us up!

What do we think about affliction, mourning, weeping?  These are all very negative things, right? We shun affliction at all costs and weeping is a sign of something being wrong so the patent response to weeping is 'Please, don't cry. It will be all right. Don't cry.'  We want the crying to stop because crying means there is something wrong, something making you cry. Mourning? We say, sure mourn as you need to, but we then offer drugs and therapy to help stop the mourning.  Why are we told TO mourn, to weep, to be afflicted?  Where is the benefit from such things?  When we are told to let our laughter turn to mourning and our joy to heaviness this does NOT sound like a prescription for the calm, peaceful state we imagine we should be in as Christians.

The truth is… well, the truth is this…

When the people of God were readying themselves for their yearly day of atonement, the were to do this--

Lev_16:29  And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls…

YE SHALL AFFLICT YOUR SOULS.

We know the sacrificial system was done away with at the cross, but we also know the sacrificial system was an example. The lamb was symbolic for the sacrifice of Christ in every sacrifice for sin. The whole ritual process was for a purpose.  What did the afflicting of their souls represent?  They wanted to be a part of the day of atonement because they wanted that atonement.  They wanted all their sins that had been accumulated over the course of the year, washed with the blood of the sacrifices over the altar, staining the sanctuary, to be cleansed completely- gone forever. They knew how important it was for their sins to be cleanses away, they couldn't be pure if they weren't cleansed, they couldn't be God's. This ceremony was one of cleansing, a dual atonement. This ceremony was the most sacred of all the Jewish holy days for a reason. 

The final cleansing of ALL sin is going to take place BEFORE our Savior returns is there any wonder why need to do be afflicted?

I'm NOT talking about going about moaning and groaning, oh, woe is me and the world is ending moan, moan, moan. I'm talking about a heart affliction, the deep sense of sin in ourselves and the world. A deep sense of our unworthiness, of our need to be saved because we CANNOT save ourselves!  We can recognize our need for a Savior, but we cannot save ourselves, it's impossible to do anything other than submit to the ONE who can save us.  If that is saving ourselves, then that is what is necessary- submission, realization of our need of saving.

We must mourn, we must weep, we must be afflicted because we know the horrors of sin and the cost of sin.

More on this tomorrow by the grace of our LORD and SAVIOR, now and forever! 

AMEN.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Was Jesus Humble?

Was Jesus humble?

Did Jesus abase Himself? Did Jesus take on any airs at all?! Did Jesus magnify Himself? 

Jesus did NOT crave power.
Jesus did NOT lift Himself up.
Jesus did NOT have any self-adulation.
There was NO pride in our Savior.
Jesus did say- I am the WAY the TRUTH the LIFE- was that a boastful declaration? No. It was the TRUTH.  It was a fact.  He wanted people to know that the way to truth, life, to eternal life was in Him.  And yet, He did not act like any power hungry, self-centered, leader. He defied the definition of leading by pulling up the down-trodden, exalting the poor, chastising the rich, reprimanding the powerful. He did NOT pull up an army of men and He could have. That wasn't His mission. 
Jesus was humble.
Jesus ALLOWED Himself to be led, like a lamb to the slaughter because He had to give up everything, His very life in order to save all mankind who would be His.
Jesus had such amazing power- from God, His Father.

Joh_14:10  Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works

The Father did the works in Jesus.

Jesus did NOT use the power of His Father to raise up an army of men to defeat the oppressive ruling powers around them and all that knew Him, all that believed in Him, KNEW He could have done that. 

JESUS HUMBLED HIMSELF and He is our ultimate example.

When we constantly look at ourselves and feel put out even in the slightest at the lot life has given us, we are NOT humbling ourselves, but rather exalting ourselves all the while believing we do not deserve to have the life we have, the hardships we face.  We moan inwardly at being called to do things that interfere with our own plans believing our own plans are superior to any plans others have for us. We are so incredibly SELF-CENTERED, that humbling ourselves is the furthest thing from our minds.  Humbling ourselves.

Jas_4:10  Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

We HAVE to learn to humble ourselves!  Do we sense the importance of doing this? Humbling ourselves!

PLEASE LORD!
HELP US!
SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!

Sunday, September 11, 2016

We are little children.

Excerpt from yesterday and expansion on that excerpt-

'To be humble like a child can be confusing for those who have experience with all sorts of young children. We have come in contact with many 2 or 3 year old children who seem to be anything but humble in any manner. 

The Greek definition in the Bible for humble in discussion here is--

Strong's -
From G5011; to depress; figuratively to humiliate (in condition or heart): - abase, bring low, humble (self).
Thayer's-
1) to make low, bring low   1a) to level, reduce to a plain 1b) metaphorically to bring into a humble condition, reduce to meaner circumstances 1b1) to assign a lower rank or place to  1b2) to abase
1b3) to be ranked below others who are honoured or rewarded 1b4) to humble or abase myself by humble living 1c) to lower, depress 1c1) of one’s soul bring down one’s pride 1c2) to have a modest opinion of one’s self 1c3) to behave in an unassuming manner 1c4) devoid of all haughtiness

To be humble like a child truly is to realize our dependence, our nothingness. To a society such as in Jesus' day- a child was expected to be obedient, their place in the grand scheme of things was very minimal, they had no rights, no voice to be heard, especially one of disrespect. They had no position of any authority whatsoever. Today we've elevated children to such a place they often think they have a lot of authority and they rule over their parents in a lot of situations. How often have we heard of children being disobedient to parents- we witness it for ourselves in the stores we frequent. We've begun to coddle children to such a point they've lost their position of humbleness.  And this has happened because of a misguided sense of sympathy for children being misunderstood. I say misguided because so much in our world truly is misguided and not always from a bad place but even in attempting to do good people can be misguided.

We need to HUMBLE OURSELVES.
We need to be HUMBLE as LITTLE CHILDREN.

Why? Because we ARE LITTLE CHILDREN - and our God is our FATHER.'

End excerpt from yesterday.

We are little children even in our adult guise.  It truly is a guise isn't it?  We do grow out of a lot of things but more of our youth remains than we tend to let on to children as they grow up.

I know personally, I thought there would be some (for lack of a better word) magical change that would occur when I became of age (18).  Yes, 18 years old was the magic age when childhood would disappear and I'd be consider an adult- back then it was the legal drinking age, it was also the legal voting age, the legal age to leave home, the legal age to marry as well any number of other legalities that were suddenly all mine.  Having all these new legal statuses surely meant I'd attained some sort of adulthood and change, right?  I was seventeen, underage, and then suddenly eighteen and of age. So why didn't anything magical happen? Why hadn't there been an overnight alteration in my brain to reflect my new attainment?

I was the same, the exact same as I'd been at seventeen without any sudden new maturity. I was goofy at times, silly, playful and to this day many, many years later I am still goofy, silly, playful etc.  What I have gained over the years is knowledge, experience and those two things have aged me, but I've never lost that person I was at seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. HOWEVER, and it's a big however, I am NOT at I was much younger than that. I remember my five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve year old self and I do remember my life changing, that childishness giving way to maturity.  In some cultures maturity is measured by the age 13,  or for girls with the coming of their cycles and I fully understand that. By age 13 or so we do have a defined sense of who we will be as adults don't we?  The rest is up to the experiences we have, the choices we make, the paths we choose to take.  Our essential self is there by the time we are over what we deem our childhood, and still some of the child we were and are, is always with us. 

Going back to being as little children, there is a sense of wonder in children, a sense of innocence, a special humbleness in the very little children.

We, just as those little children, need that special humbleness. We need to REALIZE as adults that we NEED to be as CHILDREN in humbleness.  We spend so much time as adults trying to be this elusive grown up person, that we've forgotten we NEED to be humble children!

We should NEVER forget our NEED to comprehend we are CHILDREN of God, not grown-ups of God. We are ever created by Him in a very unique way that goes way beyond our human reproduction- Father/Mother = Child.  God is the FATHER of all who have ever been reproduced, no OTHER can claim that. God is the FATHER of ALL ever created.  All created need to be in awe of such a CREATOR. We need to HUMBLE ourselves before our CREATOR knowing that we are HIS, and all we are is HIS, for HIS will. To take it upon ourselves that we have some sort of power within us on our own to control ourselves is lunacy. We can choose to deny God, to embrace evil and become very far from anything resembling humbleness. We can choose to serve self.  We can do this but still God is there and HIS plan will be realized. Nothing we do, no evil we commit will change God's plan.  God sacrificed His ONLY begotten Son and that will never change. Evil will have its end. Our being allowed to know the outcome of all evil is a blessing that our Savior came to give to us. We need to live in humbleness to the truth we've been given.

Humbling ourselves.  A constant recognition of our dependence upon our God for our life, for our eternal life, for all we are and may be. 

When life tries to demand we think of ourselves more highly than we should- something Satan will encourage at every opportunity- we need to bow down before God all the more and pray for humbling.

All by the love, the grace, the mercy of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord!


Saturday, September 10, 2016

Humble Ourselves. Do We?

Mat_18:4  Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

In order for us to be instructed to humble ourselves there MUST be something in us that is warring against being humbled.

Society is very contradictory on this point- admiring the humbleness while at the same time telling the humble to have more confidence, more pride in themselves. There is this fine line of humbleness and what is perceived as detrimental timidity.

What does it mean to be humble? It means to truly believe we are NOT more than what we are- created beings in NEED of their Creator. 

We were never intended to be entirely on our own, never. Recently I watched a donkey being born and it was scary for a bit there because after she was born the mother donkey kept pawing at her to get up. The people there had to intervene because they were very scared the mother donkey would end up hurting the baby. In this, not so normal, donkey birth the baby- being a bit premature -didn't have that immediate instinct to get up like a baby donkey is supposed to have. This instinct is a self-preservation instinct born out of the necessity of the animal to quickly move so predators wouldn't attack a vulnerable, helpless, baby donkey.  Much was discussed about this situation on message boards in this group hosting the donkey cam and in the course of the discussions there was talk of what is considered normal and what isn't for donkey births.

Many mammals while dependent upon their mothers for nurturing, for sustenance, also must be able to be capable of walking shortly after birthing. This independence is necessary. And the eventual independence after weaning and teaching survival is also necessary. Us humans are the same in many ways - we must all be nurtured and taught to function in society without our parents. However, we are NOT taught to function in society without ANY other human beings- at least 99.9 percent of us aren't.

To be taught that sort of total independence from all other humans would mean living isolated and solely by your own wits and skills, with whatever nature provides- not other humans. We all seem to depend on many different facets of human interaction- even if none of it is on a personal level such as friendship. I'm not going to list the many ways we are dependent but just a few. We depend on others for the food to be in the stores we go to. We depend on others for the electricity they have the skill to provide to us. We depend on our various employers and monetary providers to provide us with income.  Those are just a few examples. You may never personally meet the owner of the store you go to, and you many never see the owner of the electric company. Some people never meet the owner of their place of employment, just various supervisors and bosses.  Bottom line- we depend on a lot of people in our everyday lives even if we don't know them at all.

Now, pushing all that aside and going back to much simpler days pre-electricity, pre-common grocery store, pre-employment people did survive but they still did so with help of others in lesser ways. A pioneer going once a year into a town to stock up on things they need during the year without a store close by.  Let's go back even further to the Native Americans pre-invasion- did they have stores and such? For the most part they did not, however they STILL lived in tribes, in groups and not individually scattered everywhere. Their tribes had various people performing various duties that all benefitted from.

Where am I going with all this?  People, human beings and a lot of your animals, are not meant to be independent of all others.  Yet, we are mostly not humbled by our dependence.

Somewhere along the line, probably very early on in man's history after creation and the fall, people began to admire independence. People began to look up to, admiring, those who weren't humble at all but very self-confident, very prideful. 

We have so many situations in life that call for us to be humbled and we confuse that with being humiliated, and because of that we nurture resentment.  Children are to honor their parents, do you imagine this entails them being humble towards their parents? I do. Yet, the children rebel against this as they assert their own desire to be their own masters, not under the thumbs of their parents. Even little children will test their limits as to what they can do to manipulate their parents to do things they want done.

So HOW is a child humble?  The child KNOWS at some point it is DEPENDENT upon its parents, it's caregivers- for life. Very few, if any, YOUNG children can survive on their own. They may in some countries tragically become little beggars on a street- but even then they are dependent upon the mercy of strangers and usually a gang of other homeless children which form a pecking order so that the older are responsible for the younger and so on. A single young child without ANY help would die fairly quickly from hunger, exposure, sickness, thirst. This is factual.  And comprehending dependence is humbling, isn't it?

Often young children do not even recognize their dependence but we as adults comprehend it fully.

To be humble like a child can be confusing for those who have experience with all sorts of young children. We have come in contact with many 2 or 3 year old children who seem to be anything but humble in any manner. 

The Greek definition in the Bible for humble in discussion here is--

Strong's -
tapeinoō
tap-i-no'-o
From G5011; to depress; figuratively to humiliate (in condition or heart): - abase, bring low, humble (self).

Thayer's-
G5013
ταπεινόω
tapeinoō
Thayer Definition:
1) to make low, bring low
1a) to level, reduce to a plain
1b) metaphorically to bring into a humble condition, reduce to meaner circumstances
1b1) to assign a lower rank or place to
1b2) to abase
1b3) to be ranked below others who are honoured or rewarded
1b4) to humble or abase myself by humble living
1c) to lower, depress
1c1) of one’s soul bring down one’s pride
1c2) to have a modest opinion of one’s self
1c3) to behave in an unassuming manner
1c4) devoid of all haughtiness

To be humble like a child truly is to realize our dependence, our nothingness. To a society such as in Jesus' day- a child was expected to be obedient, their place in the grand scheme of things was very minimal, they had no rights, no voice to be heard especially one of disrespect. They had no position of any authority whatsoever. Today we've elevated children to such a place they often think they have a lot of authority and they rule over their parents in a lot of situations. How often have we heard of children being disobedient to parents- we witness it for ourselves in the stores we frequent. We've begun to coddle children to such a point they've lost their position of humbleness.  And this has happened because of a misguided sense of sympathy for children being misunderstood. I say misguided because so much in our world truly is misguided and not always from a bad place but even in attempting to do good people can be misguided.

We need to HUMBLE OURSELVES.
We need to be HUMBLE as LITTLE CHILDREN.

Why? Because we ARE LITTLE CHILDREN - and our God is our FATHER.

More on this tomorrow by the grace and will of our LORD, our SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST, now and forever!


AMEN.

Friday, September 9, 2016

No right or wrong?

The majority of people grow up comprehending their actions have consequences. They realize without any parent or authority figure whatsoever, that when they push another child and that child begins to cry that it isn't a very good thing to do- they in fact know that crying is something done out of distress because they've cried themselves from infancy on up when things have been distressing to them.  That action of causing distress generally will ignite distress in the one bringing on the initial distress. There is a sense of confusion as they try to make sense of why and how their action caused the undesirable response. I've witnessed it for myself. One child ripping the toy from another's hands and that child crying when the toy is removed. The toy ripping child pauses as the other child begins to cry, the wheels are turning and then a moment later the toy ripper joins in on the crying even as they clutch the toy. They are in fact distressed by causing distress.  Now don't get me wrong, this isn't the only scenario to such a situation- there is age to consider. They aren't so young they have no ability to conceptualize cause and effect, which, if the case they could just take the toy and be nonplus by and resulting tears from another. Or they could be older and wise to this business, and purposefully choose not to care that their actions caused distressed.  But there is that tender age, that moment of figuring things out and they don't like that their actions distressed another.  Further on they learn that they don't like it when another steals their toys and why don't they like this? Because they desired to possess what was given to them, it was in fact theirs, not the toy stealer's.  Not liking having their own toys stolen they learn it is wrong to steal that it just isn't right to take what isn't yours. They continue to grow up and learn various truths about life and how it is supposed to be lived.  A lot of truths will be taught to them by their parents, other truths will be garnered through their peers, through teachers in schools, through other various means.  Ultimately as a grown person they will either be considered well-behaved and in league with our societal norms or ill-behaved and acting outside of the acceptable behaviors we expect from people. Everyone knows what we mean by saying someone is a criminal. We even know what we mean when we say there is a very troubled adult.  There is something about them not fitting in with expected, desired behavior. It doesn't matter what society we live in- even in criminal organizations there are acceptable and unacceptable set behaviors. 

To be able to say there is a right and wrong we truly need to determine WHO deemed what is right and what is wrong, don't we?  If there is NO right and wrong what's left? Something beyond our comprehension really- because we've never lived without a right and wrong, never.  We can speculated on societies that have okayed murdered, stealing, lying and whatnot in that speculation can we truly imagine what it would be like to be living in that society? At any time you could be murdered and it'd be fine? Can you imagine that? At any time you could have all your belongings taken away and it's all well and good? No one anywhere would think it wrong. Can you imagine that? There is no such thing as retribution because to have retribution you would need to be wronged and if murder and stealing aren't wrong then you couldn't even desire something called justice because it wouldn't be considered justice. You have to have been wronged by someone to want justice to take place.  But if there were no wrongs in this strange society where all is good even the most vile of acts, then even acts considered vile could no longer be considered such. Something can't be vile and be considered fine.  You can't have the two go hand in hand. If something is vile it must be considered wrong and if it's considered wrong then there has to be a reason for that designation. As soon as you have a single act considered wrong then you comprehend there is a distinction between right and wrong.  Can we honestly say that murder only became wrong when it was decided it was wrong and before then people considered murder acceptable?

What am I getting at here? Well, I read the next bit in C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity' and it got me to thinking.  Please, go ahead and read what he had to say which set me off on such a subject, he will explain it a lot better than I ever could.

May God help us all as we seek to comprehend the true reality of God's moral law.

*******
4. What Lies Behind The Law

Let us sum up what we have reached so far. In the case of stones and trees and things of that sort, what we call the Laws of Nature may not be anything except a way of speaking. When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a certain way. The socalled laws may not be anything real—anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of Man, we saw that this will not do.

The Law of Human Nature, or of Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond the actual facts of human behaviour. In this case, besides the actual facts, you have something else—a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.

I now want to consider what this tells us about the universe we live in. Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view.

People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.

The other view is the religious view. (*) According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know.
---
[*] See Note at the end of this chapter.
---
That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself—I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave.

Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw soand-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did soand-so." Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science— and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question. If there is "Something Behind," then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.

The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?" "Has it any meaning?" would remain just as they were?

Now the position would be quite hopeless but for this. There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men.

In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know. And because of that, we know that men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey.

Notice the following point. Anyone studying Man from the outside as we study electricity or cabbages, not knowing our language and consequently not able to get any inside knowledge from us, but merely observing what we did, would never get the slightest evidence that we had this moral law. How could he? for his observations would only show what we did, and the moral law is about what we ought to do.

In the same way, if there were anything above or behind the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside, could never hope to discover it.

The position of the question, then, is like this. We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it.

There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe— no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house.

The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?

In the only case where you can expect to get an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes; and in the other cases, where you do not get an answer, you see why you do not. Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, "Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter." And if he then objected, "But you've never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting," I should say, "Of course not, and I shouldn't expect to, because they're not addressed to me.

I'm explaining the packets I'm not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open." It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way. I do not, of course, think that if I could get inside a stone or a tree I should find exactly the same thing, just as I do not think all the other people in the street get the same letters as I do.

I should expect, for instance, to find that the stone had to obey the law of gravity—that whereas the sender of the letters merely tells me to obey the law of my human nature, He compels the stone to obey the laws of its stony nature. But I should expect to find that there was, so to speak, a sender of letters in both cases, a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide.

Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.

I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions. But, of course, it need not be very like a mind, still less like a person. In the next chapter we shall see if we can find out anything more about it. But one word of warning. There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God for the last hundred years. That is not what I am offering. You can cut all that out.

Note —In order to keep this section short enough when it was given on the air, I mentioned only the Materialist view and the Religious view. But to be complete I ought to mention the In between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution. The wittiest expositions of it come in the works of Bernard Shaw, but the most profound ones in those of Bergson. People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet "evolved" from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the "striving" or "purposiveness" of a Life-Force.

When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then "a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection" is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind "strives" or has "purposes"? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences.

When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?

*******

It is this bit-- 

'Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.'

Something direction the universe.
A law within us.
This law within us urging us to do right.
This law making us free responsible and uncomfortable doing wrong.

Not everyone has this FEELING of right and wrong and when it is missing from a person we considered them abnormal- we do NOT have a society which accepts some people murdering others because they do not feel/comprehend the wrongness of their actions. We try to teach those who are born/or grow to become those who have no sense of right and wrong- we try to teach them that even if they don't have that 'feeling' or uncomfortableness and responsibility they need to behave appropriately through the sheer knowledge of right and wrong. 

This is truth. And while C.S. Lewis hasn't come 'within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology', he will get there as we continue to study.  He will get there in a VERY logical manner and he's doing so in order to reveal to those who are confounded by the fact there is a God, that God exists beyond any doubt.

Remember yesterday's closing verse? 

Psa 53:1 ' … The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'

We live in a world of fools and we can only praise and thank God if we are not among them! It is by the grace of God alone that we are allowed to comprehend His truth.

Please Father God in heaven, please, we would know You! We would have You in our hearts! We believe Lord, we believe- help our unbelief!  All through Jesus Christ our Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer now and forever! Amen!