Ecclesiastes 3:3 “A time to kill, and a time to heal;”
Deuteronomy 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
Hebrews 12:14 "Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man
(woman) shall see the Lord.
A time to awaken again to Holiness!
I recently read Jonathan Edwards’ (1703-1758) powerful sermon, SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD. Although I was familiar with it, I had never given much attention to the particular Scripture he chose for his sermon—Deuteronomy 32:35, the phrase… “Their foot shall slide in due time.” That’s an interesting statement God made… “Their foot shall slide in due time.” And so it shall be!
I couldn’t help but think of all the evil in society today, people’s indifference towards wickedness, and how morally bankrupt the United States and so called Christian nations have become. America is a sin-loving nation. The very fact that Las Vegas is promoted as "sin city" is blatant evidence of America's love for sin. They love their saying; “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.” But that’s a lie!!! What sin happens anywhere stays in eternal damnation forever and ever in God's economy!!! How can God bless America?
Jeremiah 14: 10-12 Thus saith the LORD unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the LORD doth not accept them; he will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins.11 Then said the LORD unto me, Pray not for this people for their good.12When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.
Our foot shall slide as a nation in due time.
Everywhere we turn, Godless heathens are prospering in today’s society. King David was also frustrated by the “prosperity of the wicked”…
“For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… Until I
went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set
them in SLIPPERY PLACES: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they
brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors”
(Psalm 73:3,17-19).
With the Lord’s help, David eventually realized that the prosperity of the wicked is only temporal, and that their day of reckoning will come “in a moment!” Notice that David said God has placed the wicked in “SLIPPERY PLACES.” THEIR FOOT SHALL SLIDE IN DUE TIME just as God said in Deuteronomy 32:35!!! The days of the wicked are numbered, then their doom and destruction.
The Bible proclaims in Ecclesiastes 3:1,17… “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.” In due season, God will judge the wicked. They will cease from their evil ways. There won't be anymore casino gambling, houses of sin, dirty bookstores, brothels, nightclubs or taverns. God will punish them according to their works, casting the unsaved into the Lake of Fire forever (Revelation 20:11-15). Their foot shall slide in due time.
God will execute justice! God will also judge the righteous (2nd Corinthians 5:10; Romans 12:19; 14:12; 1st Thessalonians 4:6). No one is going to get away with anything. “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
"There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up" (Proverb 30:13)
The arrogance and confidence of the wicked shall cease...
"The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day ... For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low ... And the mean man shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled" (Isaiah 2:11,12; 5:15).
The immorality will stop. The lascivious filth of Hellywood will end.. “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
Madonna, Elton John, Miley Cyrus, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, Oprah Winfrey,, Gene Simmons, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Marsha Stevens, Hugh Hefner, the Olsen twins, Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger, Beyonce Knowles, Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, the Pope, Barack Hussein Obama, and thousands more wicked influential people and power figures… “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
The rebellion of the American feminist will end. Judgment will be swift and severe. God will judge every wife & husband who divorces unscripturally. Divorce is a horrible sin which God hates... “Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 3:20). Divorce is a sin that perpetuates for a lifetime. Woe unto those rebellious wives who divorce. “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
The whorish lifestyle of Hollywood will stop. The fornicating and adultery will come to a sudden end. “Beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit” (Jude 1:17-19). The pleasures of sin can only last so long until death and judgment overtake the wicked. “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
I say to every woman who has had an abortion, and to every abortion provider, and to every abortion doctor, and to every Supreme Court judge who sinfully ruled in favor of abortion, and to every person involved in any capacity with protecting abortion rights… including voting for the Democrat's platform, God said, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). The shedding of innocent blood will one day cease. The cries from the grave of innocent aborted children will be avenged... “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). The arrogance of the wicked judge will be no more. The haughtiness of the insane feminist will be gone. “Their foot shall slide in due time.”
Hell awaits the wicked. Repeatedly the Bible warns that God will punish Christ-rejecters with a vengeance… “In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction…” (2nd Thessalonians 1:8,9). Yet, skeptics today attempt to explain away Scriptures which plainly teach the imminent judgment, hellfire and eternal damnation of the wicked. Woe unto the unbelieving Modernist.
The foot of those who corrupt the Bible shall slide. The warning from God's Word is clear for those who corrupt and pervert the holy Bible... “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). It is a horrible sin to alter the Word of God. Truly, if we were to receive immediately from God what we all deserve, the ground would open up and swallow us whole into the fires of Hell. The average American today is saturated with sinful arrogant pride, extremely thin-skinned and so easily offended. We are living in a society of big babies and spoiled brats. Walt Disney's concept of a “princess” is more resemblant of a spoiled brat. Walt Disney is influencing young girls to dance and dress worldly, as found in the Godless nightclubs. Miley Cyrus (aka, Hannah Montana) is a disgrace upon America, the epitome of everything that a young girl SHOULDN'T become. The blatant wickedness and horrendous crimes being perpetrated by The White House administration (Democrat and Republican alike) will come to a sudden end when the Lord returns.
Conclusion
Interestingly, the Bible likens the life we live with our feet. In Romans 10:15 we are told, “And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!” What a precious Scripture. For those who reject Jesus as their Christ and live in wickedness, God has set their feet in “slippery places”... “For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… Surely thou didst set them in SLIPPERY PLACES: thou castedst them down into destruction” (Psalm 73:3,18). Are your feet beautiful in the eyes of God, or are they set upon slippery places?
Proverb 1:16 states, “For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.” Proverb 4:26 admonishes, “Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.” Psalm 119:105 proclaims... “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Our foot cannot slide from a slippery place if we are standing upon the Word of God.
Although God is a vengeful God; He is also a holy and merciful God, willing to pardon those who sincerely acknowledge their guilt of sin and believe upon the Lord Jesus to be forgiven. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. God manifested in thr flesh Jn 1:1 Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1st Timothy 1:15); but the rich and self-righteous arrogantly reject Him (Matthew 9:12). There is NO salvation apart from the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Salvation is of the Lord (Acts 4:10-12; 10:43).
“For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… Surely thou didst set them in SLIPPERY PLACES: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors” (Psalm 73:3,18,19).
Jonathan Edwards, a descendant of four generations of Puritan ministers and the most renowned and influential of Puritan leaders, became active when Puritanism was already on the wane. The infamy of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, which sent twenty persons to their death and another 150 to prison, festered in the community for a generation as a tragic episode that exposed the excesses of misguided Puritan zeal due to the doctrines of men that twisted their understanding of Holiness and it paved the way for they themselves to be deceived by witchcraft!. In the early part of the century, New Englanders enjoyed a rising level of affluence that induced a sense of both material and spiritual comfort and eventually led to the introduction of the Half-Way Covenant. Whereas full church membership was the privilege only of those and the children of those who could testify to a personal experience of conversion, the Half-Way Covenant extended such membership to the third generation of those who confessed an experiential faith. It was such creeping secularism and spiritual lethargy that Edwards sought to correct in the 1730’s through a revival movement called the Great Awakening.
This revival movement stirred many to intensify their religious seriousness, not only in Edwards’s own congregation of Northampton but also throughout New England. His sermons were intended as a wake-up call for those who underplayed the majesty of a holy God and overemphasized their own worthiness as decent, hard-working, successful citizens. Edwards believed strongly that only a genuine conversion experience should qualify a person for church membership. Revivalist preachers, therefore, sought not only to address the intellect but also to engage the emotions so as to convince the listeners of the seriousness of their sin and activate them to seek salvation from the punishment they could expect from a righteous God. The results were encouraging, but one congregation, that in Enfield, Connecticut, seemed to be immune to the call for radical conversion. Edwards was therefore invited to preach there. On July 8, 1741, at the height of the Great Awakening, he delivered a revival sermon in Enfield that became the most famous of its kind. He followed the traditional three-part sermon structure: a scripture text, which is the foundation for the sermon, and an exposition of its implications; discussion of the doctrine that is derived from the text; and the application of the doctrine to the personal situation of the listeners.
Edwards carefully selected the text for this occasion, for it was his single-minded intent to disturb profoundly the comfortable members of his audience. He found the words he wanted in Deuteronomy 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” This short sentence was taken from a long passage, undoubtedly read in its entirety to the congregation, that enunciates God’s anger toward the perversity and the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. Edwards obviously wished to establish a close connection between those addressed in the biblical passage and those whom he addressed in his sermon.
He begins his sermon by pointing out four features of walking on a slippery slope: The threat of destruction is constant, the destruction is imminent, it is self-generated, and the delay of that destruction is due to God’s restraining hand. He is clearly establishing here the foolhardiness of those who choose to walk in such slippery places and the fact that a fatal slide into the yawning abyss is an inescapable certainty. He speaks to both the head and the heart in leading his hearers to recognize the nature of such foolishness and to fear the consequences. The warning leads Edwards to his theme: “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any moment, out of Hell, but the mere pleasure of God.”
In a ten-point elaboration that makes up one-third of the sermon, Edwards pursues his purpose of awakening the spiritually somnolent. Many of his points are interrelated, but cumulatively they persuade the hearers that God’s power is terrifying, that his wrath burns hot against the wicked, that the wicked stand condemned by the law and are deserving of hell, and that nothing will save them from such eternal punishment except a saving faith in Christ. Edwards knows, of course, that a cognitive persuasion does not necessarily lead to action. True religion should be a matter of both head and heart, and the emotions, too, must be engaged and moved to reinforce the will to turn to God for mercy and to a spiritually transformed life.
What distinguishes this most famous example of Puritan revival sermons is its use of imagery so vivid that it left people in the pews trembling and weeping. The imagery in the first part of the sermon graphically underscores the theme of the lot of the unregenerated. They should not deceive themselves about their status or their strength. Their vaunted trust in their own wisdom, prudence, care, and caution is but a self-delusion and will not save them. Before God’s almighty power, they are but “heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind” and “dry stubble before devouring flames.” They are like worms that crawl on the earth and are easily crushed underfoot; they are hanging as by a slender thread that is easily singed or cut. The glittering sword of justice is whetted and is brandished over their heads. The flames of the fiery pit below them rage and glow, hell’s gaping mouth is ready to swallow them, the devils like hungry lions are straining to get at their prey, the arrows of death are poised at them. What Edwards tries to pound into his listeners is the notion of life’s uncertainty: Death is always but a breath away. For the unconverted, therefore, and for the unredeemed sinner and those who have not embraced Christ as savior, perdition is but a breath away. They are “walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering” that cannot be trusted to bear their weight. Only faith in Christ will bear them up. That may not save their life, for they are mortal still, but it will save their soul and awaken the deluded souls in their sinful condition to the wonders of divine grace. That is Edwards’s sole concern.
The third part of the sermon, the application, makes up the largest and, to Edwards, the most important part. If up to this point he describes the plight of the unsaved in general, he now turns directly to the congregation of Enfield and to the unconverted persons before him. The use of the third person in the sermon’s second part changes to the second person in the third part. All of the Bible’s warnings about the fate of the unrepentant sinner apply to them, Edwards says: the “lake of burning brimstone, . . . Hell’s gaping mouth, . . . the dreadful pit of glowing flames. . . .” He goes on to attack the reasoning of the unconverted, who try to persuade themselves that it is not God but their own care and caution that preserve their life. They may point to their religiosity, their ritual of family devotions and church attendance, and the uprightness of their moral life, but Edwards reminds them that unless they experience a “great change of heart by the power of the spirit of God” and unless they are made “new creatures” they are still sinners in the hands of an angry God, standing on the slippery slope of disaster, at any moment apt to be “swallowed up in everlasting destruction.”
To break down the will’s resistance and reinforce the notion of impending doom, Edwards unleashes a powerful arsenal of metaphorical weapons aimed at the emotions. Through metaphors and images, Edwards links the spiritual world to the physical world of the listeners. Images of weight and tension dominate. Sinners “heavy as lead” with their wickedness will “plunge into the bottomless gulf” as surely as a falling rock would plunge through a spider’s web. The floods of God’s wrath will sweep them off their feet with all the fierce power of a bursting dam. The “bow of God’s wrath is bent,” the arrow of justice aims at the heart. The God whose hand is yet staying this ultimate doom is a righteous God of fury to all who reject him. In his sight such are like a loathsome insect that he holds over the fire of Hell, like a spider hanging by a slender thread above the leaping flames of the “great furnace of wrath.”
Edwards wants to ensure that no one takes the wrath of this holy and infinite God lightly, and he frequently refers to biblical passages that support the point. He stresses that God’s wrath is much more terrible than that of the fiercest human warrior, and that no one can endure it. Moreover, it will be inflicted without pity upon all who “remain in an unregenerate state.” It is, however, Edwards’s passion to lead the unregenerate to salvation. All of his dire warnings lead up to what now follows: the announcement of God’s grace. Having mercilessly proclaimed the imminence of God’s wrath without pity, Edwards now shifts dramatically to the theme that “Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy.” Woe to those who neglect this opportunity, however. God will show them both how excellent his love is and how terrible his wrath is; the God whose hand of wrath will destroy the wicked is the same God whose hand of mercy will save the repentant. In the concluding part of the sermon, Edwards addresses his invitation to receive salvation to everyone in the audience before him—the old, the young, and the children. This, says Edwards, is the time of God’s gathering in, the pouring out of his spirit, and now is the time “to fly from the wrath to come” and to “hearken to the loud calls of God’s word and providence.” This emphasis on immediate response reflects Edwards’s conviction that, though emotions can move the will to act, emotions are transient; therefore it is necessary to act before spiritual sloth returns and the door of mercy is forever shut.
But in todays world of Hollywood visual high definition animation and computer generated movie magik….these preaching images are diminished as our minds are spoiled by the Worlds eye candy and it gets harder and harder for the preaching of Hell to be believed and received by the modern worlds expectations!!!
We see in the world events today murder and slaughter is on a
rampage as never before! The book of Revelation 9:18 "By these three was
the third part of men killed by the fire and by the smoke and by the brimstone."
Back to the text of Ecc 3:3 Ecclesiastes 3:3 A time to kill, and a time to heal;
It is time for us to Kill!!! 1 "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb 12:1-2
The sin which doth so easily beset us...It’s time to Kill the besetting sin that habitual sin that you hide as Achan hid his sin underneath his tent in the camp
your besetting sin is keeping you from killing the old man .. the new man cannot live and
reign until you kill that bessetting sin!!! and die to self….it’s time to kill all that is keeping us
on the slippery slopes and places that defile our holiness!!!!
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