Honey From The Rock

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Honey From The Rock
Psalm 81:16

"Sweet Stuff From God's Word"

A daily Bible study with Victor Knowles
Copyright 2007

DEAD MEN WALKING

This entry was posted on 02-18-2010 and is filed under STUDIES IN GENESIS.

"But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, 'Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.'" (Gen. 20:3 ESV).

Abraham's travels had taken him into enemy territory. He told the king that Sarah was his sister. The king, believing Abraham's story, took Sarah. When God informed Abimelech what he had done, he was thunderstruck and pleaded for God's mercy. God granted him mercy and Abimelech returned Sarah to her husband (read the entire story in Gen. 20:1-18).

The following is excerpted from my article "Dead Men Walking" (Double Exposure, (c) 1999). From the President to your paperboy, from the Queen to the choir director, from the media elite to the man on the street, we're all dead men walking. There are no exceptions. The corporate executive who climbs into a cab in Chicago is just as dead as the faceless cabbie who drives it. Every person on this planet is a walking dead man of one kind or another. Whether we are dead in sin or dead to sin. God told Abimelech, "Behold, you are a dead man." He was dead though alive! So are we. One way or another. The Bible says some are "dead in sin" (Eph. 2:1) but others are "dead to sin" (Rom. 6:2). Both are susceptible to sin. But one man is insensitive to sin while the other is sensitive to sin. One revels, the other repents.

One man is dead to sin, even in the dead of the night. Whether he's in Minneapolis, home of Billy Graham, or in Las Vegas, home of bawdy girls and gambling. The other man is dead in sin, even as he sins in the night, night after night, into eternal night. Real dead men don't go to bed with dead women ~ those who are dead while they live (1 Tim. 5:6). There is no porn again for the one who has been born again. What's a dead man to do? The world will tell you, "Live hard. Die young." Drive your Infiniti right into eternity. But I'd like to say, "Die hard ~ to sin. Live life to the hilt ~ for God. And you'll be 'Forever Young.'"

Those who wear loincloths in the Outback of Australia or those who wear Cotton Dockers in America are all headed for The Dock. It makes no difference if you wear Guccis or sandals, you are a dead man walking. It matters not whether you stay in a fine hotel in Atlanta with all the amenities or in a poor hovel in Africa with none, you're a dead man walking. The question is: Which kind of a dead man do you want to be?

Hymn: "Free from the law, O happy condition, Jesus has bled, and there is remission; Cursed by the law and bruised by the Fall, Grace has redeemed us once for all." (Philip P. Bliss)