daily java

Daily Java: The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; 
            let the distant shores rejoice.
Clouds and thick darkness surround him; 
           righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side.
His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles.
The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, 
          before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory. (Psalm 97:1-6)

What a picture. The presence of the Lord as so great and powerful that the elements melt in his presence.

The coming of the Lord is shown the same way in 2 Peter 3:11-12 when Peter writes, Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.

This is a powerful God, one who is no one to mess around with.

It is in total contrast to the god that so many worship, the one who would worry about the kind of car we drive, or whether or not we eat meat, or any of the million little trivial things we want him to buy into.

He is not a God that buys into anything just because we decide he should support it. He is God, the one who made heaven and earth and created man to have dominion over it.

That isn’t to say that this mighty, all-powerful God doesn’t care about the small things. I think it is accurate that he would be at least somewhat touched by our destroying his world. But, on the other hand, he made a world that will recover. No world made by the hand of the all-powerful God would be so fragile that a few people could wreck it in a few years.

And besides, Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). His kingdom transcends the things of this world; it is above them.

His kingdom is about the souls and hearts of mankind, about our very lives. He made us to worship him, not serve the planet. He made us to sing his praises, not the praises of vegetarianism.

No problem with being concerned with any of these nor with taking them as inmportant. But they are not his mission.

Jesus came, Luke 19:10 says, to seek and to save what was lost. He came to bring us back to God, not to save this temporary world. This planet, our food, everything else was meant to be temporary, not permanent.

It was designed to serve us, not us to serve it.

When God gets ready, he will destroy it and make something better. It will melt before him.

What a day that will be.