I woke up about 3:30 am and decided to look up information about a small church we were planning to attend in Redmond. There were more than a half of a dozen churches in downtown Redmond so I was looking at the website information about each church professing Jesus Christ as savior and professed to follow the ways of Jesus. I went back to sleep after an hour and woke up a few hours later with parts of a dream still in my head.
In my dream I had been visiting the different churches, all within walkable distances. Each church welcomed me but then someone would come up to me and begin telling me about a dead body and that they could not find the killer. It was repeated over and over in each church, with different faces and different voices, it was the same story of a dead body and no one could find the killer. As I listened there were people who actually wanted to find the killer. But in each church I noticed there were those who hung back and those who told me it was none of my business and that I should leave. As I left the churches I could feel my feet sinking and I looked down to see the carpet where I stood and I could see it was mud and goo under my feet and it was blood red. I walked out into the yards of the churches where it was also filled with the blood red mud and goo. I continued to talk with many different people about the death, the dead body and who the killer could be but nothing was ever determined and no one knew how to find the killer.
I woke up from my dream.
Waking from sleep I tried to understand what the meaning of the dream was and what the Lord wanted me to understand.
I was lead to Deuteronomy 28: 15-68
“However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you. You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The sights you see will drive you mad. The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you. You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land. The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail. All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you. Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities. If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
Reading this scripture in Deuteronomy, which I do not remember reading before, I could hear the wrath of the Father for a people that would not repent. They would not stop following false gods and false idols. I prayed asking for more clarity and the following is what I wrote.
The Church has failed. It is time for rebuke. The definition of rebuke is to express sharp disapproval or criticism of someone because of their behavior or actions. The people have covered the carpets of the churches with the blood of Jesus. They continue in sin all the while knowing they continue in sin. These sins keep the blood he shed on the cross continually flowing but without the power of repentance and the saving grace and mercy of forgiveness. They take this unrepentant attitude with them as they leave the churches and go into the outside world leaving His power of forgiveness looking like nothing more than mud and goo. They are stuck in this because of their unwillingness to repent of their sin.
Lord, I want to be an encourager not one who speaks hard truth to the church. These are my brothers and sisters not my enemy.
The Lord says, “They need to hear hard truth.”
“The people think nothing of spending thousands of dollars on themselves and think so little of the needs of others. They look at themselves first. Others in need barely matter and are the responsibility of someone else, so they believe, but they are wrong.”
“The church is to serves me if they follow me. They speak love but fail, as they are selfish and value themselves above all others. They sin in their selfish ways and therefore I hang on the cross bleeding freely without my blood covering them but flowing to the floor with no power. Repentance is not in their hearts. Many come again and again, over and over. Many say they want to be free of sin but in their hearts they desire and choose their sin over me. They are selfish. They lie to themselves. Even their shepherds live like this.”
Isaiah 29:13
“The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”
Proverbs 27:5
“Better is open rebuke than hidden love.”
Matthew 5:13
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
John 12:35-36
“Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.”
Everyone wants to be the light. No one wants to be the salt. Encouragement is good for all who are seeking the Lord by serving him. But those who are called to serve him and are only serving themselves need to hear the real hard truth of their ways and hear rebuke. The church has failed. The church leaders have failed. We have failed. I have failed.
Lord Jesus, I ask that you give me strength and wisdom to be able to be salt and be light. To be able to rebuke and to be able to encourage. To be able to speak your hard truth to others as well as speak your love into others. Help me Lord to be your servant with a willing spirit for what you need not what I think I should be doing but that I actually do your will. Help me with my words and your wisdom. Amen.
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