"The highway of the
upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul.” (Prov. 16:17)
Well, here we go with
another new year, to wit: 2015. If you’re reading this you’ve survived
2014. Hopefully, you count that as a blessing as we know that many did
not. Yes, many of our fellow man had their soul return to God this
past year and we can only hope that it was in a saved condition when it did
so.
The underlying reason
for the writing of my weekly editorial lessons is to assist the readers of them
to recognize the importance of keeping their souls in a condition that when it
returns to its Maker (and all will) that they will be “acceptable in His sight.”
I should add that it is the underlying reason to myself for writing them - to
help keep my soul acceptable to God.
So, we’re into a new
year and I trust all of you have made your New Year’s resolutions. I
simply kept the same one I’ve resolved to do for the past several years and
that is, I resolve to get up at least once a day. So far I’ve been able
to keep it and I pray that the Lord will allow me to keep it for the rest of
this year.
The subject I’ve chosen
for today’s lesson hopefully will remind us of our soul’s condition and the
importance of keeping it acceptable to the Lord. For lack of a better
title we’ll just call it “good
intentions.” And, since we’re talking about the “way” of preserving our
souls, I’m of the opinion that many of man’s “good
intentions” are found on the “broad
way that leads to destruction.” (Matt. 7:13)
“The road to hell is
paved with good intentions.” Now before you get out your concordance and try to find
that quote, let me save you some trouble. It’s not in the Bible. It
was stated by the novelist George Bernard Shaw. Another well-known
novelist by the name of Oscar Wilde said something closely related. He
said, “It is always with the
best intentions that the worst work is done.”
I can truly only speak
for myself, but I’m also quite sure that most of you can relate to what
I’m about to tell you. And that is, I have done a lot of things in my
life with all “good intentions”
that, well let’s just say, didn’t have the positive results I expected.
It’s a wonder that I have survived some of them to even be able to enter into
this new year. But, rest assured, at the time, I intended to do a good
thing.
How about we look at a
couple of Bible characters that can serve to help teach this lesson today about
intending to do something good and the end result was very costly to
them. And, we’ll see that both of their “intentions” revolve around the same
affair. If you open your Bibles to the 6th chapter of 2 Samuel you’ll be
able to read the entire account, and also check my narrative of the event and
verify what I’m writing is true.
Our first character,
David, set forth on a mission to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to
Jerusalem from the house of Abinadab where it had been residing since the
Philistines had sent it back to Israel 20 years earlier. You can read all
about that occasion in 1Samuel, chapters 5&6 and I think you’ll find that
episode interesting also.
Now David had devised
this grand parade comprised of 30,000 “chosen
men of Israel” accompanied by numerous musicians and a brand new
ox-cart to carry the Ark back home to Jerusalem where it rightly
belonged. So, they all proceeded over to Abinadab’s, got the Ark,
placed it on the cart and started home. What a great spectacle this must
have been.
One of Abinadab’s sons,
a man by the name of Uzzah, accompanied the procession and apparently was
walking next to the cart when the “oxen
shook it” and Uzzah reached out his hand and “took hold” of the Ark,
apparently to steady it. I’m sure that all of us would agree that Uzzah’s
intentions were good. That he was just protecting the Ark from possible
damage but, he was immediately struck dead by God.
The death of Uzzah had
an immediate effect on David as it woke him up to the fact that it was his “good intentions” that
brought about the death of Uzzah. How so? God had given Israel
specific instructions as to how His Ark of the Covenant was to be transported
and who was allowed to touch it. (You can read these instructions in the
4th chapter of Numbers.) Suffice it to say, hauling it around on an
ox-cart was not in those instructions.
I think that we can tell
by all the grandeur and preparations made by David that his “intentions” were good in
bringing home the Ark. And likewise, Uzzah’s “intentions” were good when he reached out and “took hold” of the Ark to
steady it. There was only one thing wrong with this scenario. It
was THEIR “intentions”
as to how to do something - not GOD’S.
Sometime back I happened
on a quotation that I thought worthy of saving for future use someday.
The quote: “Good intentions do
not justify bad actions.” Obviously “someday” is today and
if it doesn’t apply to David and Uzzah I don’t know what does.
And, we still see
examples that reflect that quote all the time, don’t we? How about the
protests we see on the news almost every day lately? Various groups of
people, supposedly protesting something they consider to be bad behavior and
then themselves burning and looting stores and businesses.
And this especially
applies to those who are teaching false doctrines. And I’m going to opine
further on this and say that I’m sure that many of them don’t know or think
that they’re spreading falsehood in the doctrines they preach. Just as
David’s “good intentions”
led Uzzah to do something that cost him his life, the purveyors of doctrines
different from what God specifically gave us in the Gospel, will cost many
their eternal souls.
In closing, I think
there is one resolution that all of us should make and that is, that we make
sure that our “intentions”
match what God says is “good”
and not what we or any other person decides is “good.” If we do this, it’ll just be one
more way of helping us to “preserve”
our souls.
I offer all reading this
my best wishes for this coming year and hope that all of us are successful in “keeping our souls.”
Ron Covey
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