Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Isaiah 42:4 "He will not be disheartened or crushed Until He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Isaiah 42:4 "He will not be disheartened or crushed [in spirit]; [He will persevere] until He has established justice on the earth; And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law." [Rom 8:22-25] |
Subject: And the winner is ___ ? |
Bible Note: You have made some good points there. Striking among them is the fact we need to decide what constitutes victory. The seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven“. It is true that wrong is often the aggressor, and it appears to win. We struggle to fit in the word “appears” when the righteous brother dies. But that is what we see, and hence the question and the challenge. My question asks, “Why was not Abel the aggressor?” Why was he not approaching his brother with the light and the right and the truth? Why was he not urging upon him the right way? It is clear that we can use our imagination to say that perhaps he did, etc. But the facts revealed indicate that Cain was the aggressor, with all of his evil skills and tools. We do not know that he sneaked up on him and such. We can imagine that. Can we not imagine Abel being smart enough to see what was coming and to protect himself? Beyond that, I say again, Abel could have decided to be the aggressor, to be proactive, to bring right and life to his brother. We are told to be on guard so that the enemy does not sneak up on us. “Be sober, be vigilant” (1 Peter 5:8). It does not seem to help the situation for us to say, while in the supine position, that he sneaked up on us. We are encouraged to be wise as serpents, and with that wisdom we go, with armor on from head to foot and a sword in our hands. We are to be proactive. We are to win. And he that winneth souls is wise. But of course, we also have to look out for each other. I wish that was saying that we look our for each other‘s welfare. But we have to look out for attacks from each other, because we do attack each other, rather than the foe. If you asked me, that is one of the main reasons we so often do not win. We spend so much of our effort attacking and opposing each other, it is a wonder we have any strength left to fight the foe. A kingdom divided against itself will suffer defeats. We also waste our time on nonsense. While the world is going to hell we sit and argue about where Cain’s wife came from. Mention it, and someone is sure to ask, “Who are you to judge?” We need some sure way, it seems, to provoke one another to love and to good works. Odium is swift and hate is strong. Love is slow to rouse itself. Truth is forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Once again I’ll say that Joshua won, and Jesus won because they were proactive. Since we have the weapons of warfare, mighty as they are for the pulling down of strongholds, we should be notching up more victories. By victory I mean turning aside a temptation, winning a soul, doing a deed of kindness, encouraging a brother, earning a good reputation, getting up after you have fallen, restoring a brother who has fallen, suffering patiently for the gospel, getting to the meeting. Satan tries to stop these things. But in the strength of the Lord, with encouragement from a brother or sister, we can do them. We can win. |