Son's of Perdition Series
“You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this one purpose, to speak about the truth. Whoever belongs to the truth listens to me.” “And what is truth?” Pilate asked. (1)
They shall not enter my rest. They always go astray in their hearts. As in the rebellion (2). To not enter the rest of God is to leave His presence, His guidance. His advice. This Promise to not enter His rest is reserved for those who God sees the inner intentions of their hearts (3). A heart that's been hardened. Hardened so that the inclinations of their heart will eventually lead them astray, lead them to become separated from Him. God knowing before hand has already determined the inevitable of a heart in this condition. In this state. Hardened.
Beware brethren lest there be an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God ... For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.(2)
Partakers of Christ are those who find rest through their faith in Jesus. The God of our Salvation (4). Faith, peace and hope in trusting in Him and believing that He is ever present and the Saviour of our souls. To not enter this rest of God, to go astray in our hearts, is to leave His presence, His guidance. His advice. Departing from this faith due to unbelief.
So what is it that instigates the unbelieving heart? What is it that nurtures this hardness of the heart? Sin. We become unbelieving due to our own sins that harden our hearts in the deceitfulness of sin which is hypocrisy. The deceitfulness of sin gives birth to hypocrisy the spawn of grudges, malice, bad eyes and contempt. These are the sins of the heart.The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (5). These deceitful sins of malice, contempt, grudges all darken the soul and harden the heart so that naturally a person departs from the light, peace and rest that can be found in God. These internalised sins of the heart hardens the heart and makes it impossible for the Potter (6) who is God to mould, soften and even correct that heart which is hardened by darkness, by deceit and hypocrisy. Unless it softens to its malleable form.
The deceitfulness of sin that gives birth to hypocrisy brings to memory our mischievous little Adam and Eve hiding from God when they did what was wrong. In not listening to His advice, their hearts became contaminated, their eyes darkened and then blamed each other instead of being accountable for their own errors.
Keeping a good conscience, good eyes, understanding, accountability and a way of looking at things is the antidote for hypocrisy. The softening of the heart so that it can be moulded by the Potter by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God that gives us this ability to keep this good conscience in sincerity, a pure heart and good eyes. For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (8). So that we can always look in this mirror of our own state so we are not deceived by our own errors in hypocrisy condemning, blaming and holding resentments so that we become shipwrecked in our hypocrisy in losing the faith but foremost that good conscience .
First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye (9).
The deceitfulness of this internalised sin found out Judas. In a moment of time he exposed and expressed the darkness that was in him through the internal sin of malice and contempt towards Jesus. Judas condemned the Lord Jesus for allowing the expensive perfume to be poured out on His feet for His burial (10). As we know Judas was in sin himself. So that the deceitfulness of his own sin had contaminated and deceived his own heart in his hypocrisy. His own sin darkened his heart producing the fruit of deceit hypocrisy leading to malice, contempt and grudges manifested in this outburst of revolt and contempt in his hypocrisy. The spot of darkness that began to grow, the deceitfulness of this internalised sin of malice, made his heart to be hardened so that the Saviour could no longer reach his disciple
This was the perdition of Judas. What is perdition? To waste one’s salvation. To reject the outstretched hands of the Lord Jesus to save the soul from eternal perdition. This deceitfulness of sin the hardening of the heart is what led Judas to go astray in his heart to depart from the Saviour of his soul. Even the eternal separation from the Lord when he committed to take his own life not believing that the Lord could help him. Judas was not able to find rest because his heart had been darkened, hardened by the deceitfulness of his own mistakes that brought forth hypocrisy and contempt towards his Lord.
Unlike Peter who himself was called a stone yet had sincerity. So that when he did sin, he was accountable and sincere so that his heart remained mouldable for the saviour to find room to bring him back to the right path. But the sin of Judas hardened his heart to unbelief in the deceitfulness of sin which was his hypocrisy. That blinded him to the truth that could set him free. The deceitfulness of sin that hardened his heart producing malice, contempt and grudges towards the Saviour of his soul
So if these internalised sins are the deceit of the heart, the lies of the heart. What is the truth? What is the truth that is the remedy of this deceit? This deceitfulness of sin that hardens our heart? What makes our heart to be free and break the chains of this deceit? What is the truth that lets our heart to once again enter this rest of God? In order to return to God?Like Peter was able to and Judas could not find out? What would have been this remedy, the secret to undo Judas' hardened heart that led him astray so that he was not able to find rest, peace and reconciliation?
The truth and antidote of the deceitful internal sins of the heart that lead us astray from the rest and peace we have in God. The truth and antidote that softens the hardened heart. The truth that counteracts the deceitfulness of sin is accountability.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (11)
Unforgiveness and the internal sins are nothing but hypocrisy. We are usually quick to judge, rebel and hold contempt and fail to see that many times in which we judge others and hold them in contempt. We are usually worse off guilty of the same offence we find in others. The thief on the cross in direct contrast to Judas who also was a thief. The thief on the cross understood this even rebuking and confessing his fellow companion who failed to be set free from this truth (12).
I usually find when I found fault in others or my heart becomes hardened towards them that I ask myself why am I angry with this person? Why do I find fault in them and have this contempt? Then when I reflect on this contempt I have upon another and search myself if I have also committed the offence against someone else as well. Many times if not always I found that the offence I am so grieved about I also did to someone else and sometimes in an even worse way than it had been done to me.
This particular example many times I found in my marriage. That a lot of the things my husband would do that I did not like or took offence in, I had behaved or acted the same way toward my mother growing up.
“Honour your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. (13)
So that in this truth, in this sincerity and accountability I found justification, forgiveness and peace. I was better able to understand my husband and his temperament in that it reflected my own bad character as a child and found strength to exercise patience and wisdom to delegate the heat of the moment keeping my peace and rest in God.
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (14)
And there lies the hypocrisy and deceitfulness of sin. Then the remedy that sets me free from the deceitful internal sin of malice contempt and unforgiveness that hardens the heart is accountability. When I take account of my own actions against someone else in like manner I find peace and praise God. I even reverse the order of the Lord’s Prayer of forgiveness (11).
So I acknowledged that first I have sinned. Yet what about the case of those who are innocent or without sins? What about the innocent child who was abused. Or the innocent children who abused other innocent children as I experienced myself as a child. What was their sins and errors so that they too had to endure or be justified by the ill intentions and mistakes of others. What sin do they need to be forgiven of to bear the offence of those who knew better?
And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation. (15)
Since the Garden and the offence of Adam and Eve we are all assimilated into a reprogramming of sin through the seed of Adam and Eve the mother of all the living (16). We are all born into this simulation, inheriting the curses of our forefathers and fathers from generation to generations. The inherit sins of man. Some like Abraham changed the nature of the curse into a blessing when he became the friend of God and started a covenant with God so that through his seed would come forth the Promised Seed that would restore to those who believe in Him the original programming of peace, communion, righteousness and salvation in God.
Yet those who do not believe will continue into this inheritance since the fall of man to the eternal perdition of the soul. Those who do not believe by the hardness of the heart spawned by the deceitfulness of sin which is hypocrisy. The Absence of Sincerity and Truth.
In mercy and truth Atonement is provided for iniquity; And by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil (17)
References:
(1) John 18:37-38
(2) Hebrews 3:7-14
(3) 1 Samuel 16:7
(4) Habakkuk 3:17-18
(5) Matthew 6:22-23
(6) Jeremiah 18:2-6
(7) 1 Timothy 1:19
(8) Hebrews 4:12-13
(9) Matthew 7:3-5
(10) John 12:3-6
(11) Matthew 6:14-15
(12) Luke 23:39-43
(13) Ephesians 6:2-3
(14) James 1:2-4
(15) Exodus 34:6-9
(16) Exodus 3:20
(17) Proverbs 16:6
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