"For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh,"
“Woe to those who drag their sins behind them like a bullock on a rope.” (Isaiah 5:18)
This is also translated to “with cords of falsehood.” Another translation says, "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes." A bullock is a strong animal that has large
horns and will most likely overtake you if it attacks. Dragging behind you implies that it is going
along with you without too much effort but if provoked, it attacks and can
easily overtake you without a moment’s notice.
We live in a dangerous place when we live in unrepented sin and pretending. When we live out of the false self of presenting while keeping up an image, we slowly carry more and more and get weighted down. We have to work harder and hard to keep up performance. But then this bullock that is tied to the end of the rope we have been dragging around suddenly rises up and pierces us from behind. Suddenly, you are not yourself and it feels like someone hijacked the moment.
Then you work hard to get everything back into place and look
good. You hope no one has seen you or
notices you for this. And you put
things in order, pick back up the rope, promise to not ever let it happen again
and move on, dragging more and more behind you again.
In this verse, Isaiah is talking specifically about unrepented sin. It is the sin of
falsehood, pretending and unbelief. It is operating out of the false self. Isaiah says here that their sin mocks God. Rather than genuinely following God in
brokenness, they are performing for others in the name of God. They may even call sin good to justify it as
okay.
We see this from an extreme with Ananias and Sephira. They mocked God with their sin by pretending and putting on a front of being generous as part of the body, but
they were manipulating the people. They
were trying to work it like a scheme out of wrong desires.
What was underneath was unbelief.
They were pretending because they didn’t genuinely believe. They did not trust. While our unbelief may come up in spots of
certain difficulty, it still can set us in this place of pretending and
covering over it rather than unearthing it and confronting it.
There is a book called "Operating at the Speed of Trust" that is all about the fact that we can only move forward based upon our level of trust. When we fail to have trusting relationships, things come to a halt. Living out of the false self is dangerous as it lacks trust and, rather than genuinely seeking God in brokenness, seeks pretending.
Often, we don't live completely in this place but have small areas where we lack trust and try to cover it up by pretending. Rather than repenting and seeking God for His truth and working on our trust by being open and vulnerable, we cover up what is not working and hide it--putting on a false front.
It is the small foxes that can sometimes spoil the vine. As we are the branches and He is the Vine, it is those things that steal the connection we have with God. They steal and eat away at what we have. As it erodes due to our unbelief and sin, our connection becomes more intermittent and not as strong.
We may close our eyes to the little compromises in our lives
because we do not want to deal with them or face them in brokenness and
repentance. Putting on the front of the false self covers us up and helps us not to feel vulnerable. However, as we do this, each
sin is a strand on the rope. These small
compromising sins add up.
We need to break our ties to all sin. Failure to water others and support them,
refusing to take correction, little white lies, indulgences (living to eat
rather than eating to live), small criticisms, gossip behind someone’s back,
pride, self-sufficiency, not doing the good that we know to do, and not witnessing
when given the opportunity all are little cords that entwine together and form
a rope.
Disregard of God for anything else is a sin. They eat away at our relationship with God
and steal from us. They take from the
fullness that God has for us. It is not
that God can or will not forgive us from the sin but we don’t see the need to
repent and turn from it. Sometimes the small sins can become so engrained in
our behaviors that we do not even see them.
What happens is our spirits are dulled and we are no longer on fire
for the Lord. Our hearts do not burn
because we have quenched them, but we do not notice because we are at ease. We become like a slowly boiled frog who doesn’t
notice that sin in our lives is ultimately hardening our heart and stealing the
fullness of life from us.
Psalm 123:4 speaks of those who are ease being in line with those
who have contempt for the gospel and are proud. I remember when I first came to the Lord and
was so enthusiastic, it totally annoyed everyone around me in my family. I received lecture after lecture by extended
family about how I didn’t need to go to church but occasionally and I was not
normal. It totally annoyed family that I
would actually want to spend hours reading my bible, praying and talking with
God.
Gideon experienced the offense of family and neighbors because of
his zeal for the Lord. He heard God
speak to tear down the altar of Baal and replace it with an altar to worship
the Lord, then to sacrifice the family’s best ox on it. He was so afraid of what might happen as a
result, he did it in the middle of the night.
Rather than family and friends repenting
of their sin, since it was part of the world structure they were steeped in, they didn’t see it and became enraged by it; they wanted to kill
him.
Could it be that when we become offended or enraged by something
that encroaches upon us, it might show us an area that we are at ease and not
living according to God’s best for us?
Ease and peace are two totally different things. To be at peace means to be wrapped in trust,
actively pursuing God and exercising faith. To be ease is to be lulled asleep
and inactive – no longer exercising one’s faith.
In Judges 5, the song of Deborah and Barak, Ephraim, Benjamin,
Issachar, Zebulun and Naphtali all stepped up to battle, exercising their faith
and establishing true peace while their brothers remained on the
sidelines. They sing in Judges 5:17b, “And
why did Dan remain with the ships? And why did Asher sit unmoved upon the
seashore, at ease beside his harbors?”
Ease comes from a place of the flesh where peace comes from the
place of trust and exercising faith. Proverbs
3:7-8 warns us, “Don’t be conceited, sure of your own wisdom. Instead, trust and reverence the Lord, and
turn your back on evil; when you do that, then you will be given renewed health
and vitality.”
When we first were created on earth, being made in the image of God, we
were fully spirit beings. We walked in
the garden with the Lord being naked and unashamed. It was not until we sinned and turned from
God in mistrust that we were clothed with flesh and put outside of the garden (Genesis
3:21).
As pure spirit beings, we were not subject to death. But by eating of the fruit, we surely die as
we were told we would. Our flesh bodies
have a life span. In Genesis 6:3 it
says, “My Spirit will not live in human beings forever, for they too are flesh:
therefore their life span is to be 120 years.”
The flesh was a result of our sin and separation from God. It was a to protect us as we separated from
God. Because we became clothed in flesh,
killing others became possible. And as
Cain killed his brother Able, he was further banished from living in the
presence of God. The place he dwelled
became the place of the flesh and outside the presence of the Lord.
It says in Genesis 4:15 that the Lord put a ‘sign’ on Cain, “so
that no one who found him would kill him.”
Cain was marked as his life in the flesh had value. Since this time, people have valued human
life in the flesh even above God and people lived outside of the continual
presence of God in independence.
As a contrast to this, Paul said in Philippians 1:21, “To die is
gain.” While he lived his life for
Christ and valued his life to fight the good fight for eternal rewards, he
proclaimed this truth that we often ignore, “”It is better to die and be with the
Lord than to stay in the flesh.” He was
not saying he desired suicide, but that life in the flesh is not the end game
when we walk by the Spirit. We have an eternal
home and to die, we pass back to spirit.
Rather obedience and trusting in the Lord were central to him while
living in the flesh.
The flesh is in opposition to the Spirit. Paul says in Galatians 5:16-18, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will
not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against
the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to
one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”
Doing the things that we please, we are put at ease. But pressing against the flesh and working
the ground, laboring with effort against its desires, we find the freedom of
walking in the Spirit. We have to rule
over sin and our flesh with determination in growing spiritually.
When John the Baptist came, he was filled with the Holy Spirit even
before he was born and he pressed against the flesh and being at ease at every
turn. He ate to live rather than living
to eat. He set aside any alcohol and wore
camel hair. Camel hair would have been continually uncomfortable to the flesh. He didn’t allow his position or success to get
into his heart. Rather, he rejoiced at
the death of his flesh as he decreased and the Lord increased. As he was going to die, the Lord answered him
not in comfort of the flesh but acknowledgement of kingdom work being
accomplished.
Coming back to the root of it in unbelief, it says that in the last
days, not only these sins of the flesh prevail (2 Timothy 3:2) as
people are at ease, but that the great apostacy will occur before His return. 2
Thessalonians 2:3 says, “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will
not come unless the falling way comes first, and the man of sin is revealed,
the son of perdition.”
David Wilkerson writes about this some 10 years ago or more, “You have
to be willfully blind not to see a raging apostasy gripping the whole
world. Unbelief is sweeping through
nations, with believers falling away from faith on all sides. The apostasy Paul refers to has arrived.” [1]
These days, we see the revealing of this (revealing of the man of sin)
where we have had blinders on before. As people have been at ease and
comfortable, their faith has not been challenged or activated. The “man of sin” is not a person but a way of
living in the flesh that puts human life and ease above all but is distant from
the presence of God and has no genuine desire for His Kingdom.
Eyes are being opened and ears are being unstopped. Unbelief becomes evident and comes up to the surface
as difficulty reveals our priorities and where we are placing our faith. This
gives us an opportunity to turn our eyes and fix our gaze on the Lord.
David Wilkerson goes on to write, "Some may say, 'Paul clearly says Jesus cannot come until the Antichrist is in power.' According to John, anyone who denies the Father and the Son is antichrist (see 1 John 2:22). Moreover, he says, the increase of such antichrists is proof we are living in the last days. In short, nothing is holding back Christ's return! 'The Lord is at hand' (Philippians 4:5)."
[2]
I had a dream that there were not many chapters left in the book before His return, only a handful. Who knows, this could still span beyond my lifetime but what I was seeing was that it was time to really press in. Also, in my dream was this burst of glory shining brighter than ever and thru His people... a beacon of hope in the darkness.
I, myself struggle between pressing in and being at ease. There is a part of me that would like to close my eyes but know that God is calling me to press in more than ever. Discouragement wants to set in when I focus on issues or events that are broken with sin rather than keeping my eyes focused on God. When I long for my circumstances to be better rather to honor God in my circumstances, I end up feeling discouraged. It becomes all about circumstances. When it comes to being at ease or living out of a place of being at ease and comfortable, ultimately, I have to decide if I am living for circumstances or going to live for God.
At the same time, my middle son had a vision of the Lord on His throne radiating like the sun and there was a golden rod as He was judging the earth. When I looked it up, a golden rod was used to measure God's Kingdom in Revelation 21. It also represents the Word of God. I think it represents God judging the world by His Word and measuring His Kingdom rule.
Lord, I can see how there is a continual temptation to be at ease
rather than engaged in Your Kingdom and how living against the flesh takes
effort. We turn our backs on ungodliness
and indulgent lifestyles but rather, live self-controlled, upright, godly lives
in this present age. For we continue to
look forward to the joyful fulfillment of our hope in the dawning splendor of
the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus, the Anointed One."
“Could it be any clearer that our former identify is now and forever deprived of its power? For we were co-crucified with him to dismantle the stronghold of sin within us, so that we would not continue to live one moment longer submitted to sin’s power. Obviously, a dead person is incapable of sinning… For by His sacrifice he died to sin’s power once and for all, but He now lives continuously for the Father’s pleasure. So let it be the same way with you!”
1-2. Wilkerson, David. God is Faithful. Chosen Books, Bloomington, MN. World Challenge, Inc. 2012.
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