For we know the One who has said, Vengeance belongs to Me, I will repay, and again, The Lord will judge His people. It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God! Hebrews 10:30-31 HCSB
We serve a loving God. God wants us to be in fellowship with Him. He wants us to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds. He wants us to dedicate our lives to Him. He will not, however, force us to do this. He will always give us a choice. We can choose to love Him and serve Him, or we can choose to reject Him.
Some will argue that a loving God would never condemn someone to spend eternity in hell. Those who believe this must not believe the Bible. The Bible clearly states in Hebrews 10:26-27 that if we deliberately sin after knowing the truth, there is no longer a sacrifice for our sins but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of fire about to consume the adversaries.
2 Timothy 3:1-6 describes men in the end times as being selfish and evil. It says they will hold to a form of godliness but deny its power. Sadly, I think many believe in God. The problem is they don’t believe the truth. They choose, instead, to believe Satan’s lies. The devil will tell us our sin is okay. It’s not that bad. God won’t care, after all, if He loves us, He won’t do anything to harm us.
We must remember, that we do serve a loving God. But we also serve a living God. The Israelite’s problem was they continued to fall into idolatry. They didn’t worship the one, true, living God. They worshiped man-made idols. These idols could do nothing for them, but still, they worshiped them time after time.
I spent a time in my life in idol worship. I put myself first and things like spending time with my friends out on the river second and God got whatever time I had left over. There came a time in my life when I acknowledged the truth. That wasn’t working. I was never truly happy. I had temporary happiness followed by heartache and was in this never-ending cycle like the Israelites wandering around in the desert for 40 years.
I came to realize that I served a living God and He would never be satisfied with being put on the back burner. He wanted to be first in my life.
We all need to grasp the concept that God has a love for us that is so great, we will never be able to fully comprehend it. But we must never forget that we serve a living God. This means He will punish us when we do wrong. This also means that when we face the final judgment, we will be condemned to an eternity in hell if we are not in a right relationship with Him.
Many people don’t want to hear that fire and brimstone preaching, but you must understand this; any preacher who doesn’t tell you the truth is wasting your time. It’s not all rainbows and lollipops. We are told we will suffer here on earth. We will go through trials and tribulations. The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat it.
If we surrender to Christ, He will fight our battles. He will protect us. We won’t have to worry (Philippians 4:7). We can have peace and joy.
If we reject Christ, He may just give us over (Romans 1:19-24). There will come a time when it is too late. There will come a time when we no longer turn to Jesus and accept Him as our Savior and accept the great price He paid to ransom us. There will come a time when all we have to look forward to is a terrifying expectation of judgment.
Our loving God wants us to come to Him. He wants us to love Him. He wants us to live our lives in fellowship with Him. But as a living God, He will not allow our sins to go unpunished.
Our Scripture passage says it’s a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Don’t let that happen to you. Surrender to a loving God today.
Have a great day!