February 9, 2026 -- Proverbs 1:28-29 -- The time of choosing Whom you will serve is short

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Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,
Proverbs 1:28-29 ESV
 
Choose whom you will serve, for the days are winding down and then you will no longer have a choice but will be so hardened in your sin that the LORD will confirm your wickedness and will ignore you. The context of our text today is a five-verse narrative where the LORD had poured out His Spirit among His people, but they ignored His counsel. They would have none of His reproof. They experienced troubles and hardship and anguish…but they did not repent. This is repeated in Revelation, where the LORD will send plagues and hardships so that those appointed to repent will repent, and those appointed for death would rather curse God and bite off their own tongues, than submit to Him (Revelation 16:10-11).
 
Sin hardens the heart, deadens the mind so that one’s will rises in rebellion against God. It is the original sin-nature that lurks in the heart of every man and woman. Any concession to one’s old way of life instantly encourages faithlessness against God.
 
Isn’t it cruel of God to set an endpoint where people will diligently seek Him and they will not find Him? Not at all. You were made by Him. You were made for Him. When you perversely continue to oppose Him in your words, your choices, your thoughts and your actions, then you have trained yourself in outrage against God for so long that you are too self-congratulatory to see your own vileness. You will call out to God on your terms, as if He owes you anything. He doesn’t owe you anything.
 
The fear of the LORD. Where there is no fear of the LORD, people will sin. They will act as if there will never be an accounting for their life and everything they thought, said and did (and the good deeds they left undone). Those who walk in wisdom’s ways know the LORD is gracious in forgiving sin. The LORD has provided the sacrifice which turns aside His wrath against all the iniquities of the heart, all the lusts of the flesh, and all the sin of one’s life. That sacrifice is Jesus Christ. To ignore God’s gift of grace, Jesus Christ, is to invoke the wrath of God against yourself.
 
The fear of the LORD is pure. When one stands in the pure presence of God through Bible reading and prayer, one’s sin is revealed to be like leeches all over the body, leeches sucking life blood away; gross, vile, and the most appropriate impulse is to want every single one of them to be pulled off. The fear of the LORD is right. It is clean. It is good. It is to read Scripture and begin to understand that He is holy. He is all-together right in all His ways. Just in His judgments. Any lack of conformity to His glory stings the conscience. Such stinging of the conscience is the appropriate warning bell to go to God, the merciful, in confession that turns from the old patterns of sin and is renewed in joy-filled obedience to Him.
 
God, our Father, thank You for the ringing alarms of conscience sounded by the reading of Your Word. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit Who takes the Word and makes it real, living and vital, a beacon of hope. Thank You God, for the wondrous gift of Jesus, in Whom every lecherous sin is pulled off and in Him Who true heart, mind, and soul healing begins. Spirit of God, renew in me a holy fear of the LORD, and a holy hunger for true Christian community where I join with others in mutual accountability against sin and incitement among us of a growing love for God. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/CyHbdqB8kto?si=TVq0oiFvXFNXyyf8 All to Jesus I Surrender
 

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