{"id":10485,"date":"2018-10-22T15:40:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T15:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=10485"},"modified":"2018-10-22T15:40:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T15:40:31","slug":"evil-imitating-righteousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/10485\/evil-imitating-righteousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Evil Imitating Righteousness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was thinking today about the Jews who watched as Jesus was being led away by soldiers.\u00a0 Some of them would have witnessed Jesus rebuking Peter, when Peter made an attempt at saving Jesus from those soldiers.\u00a0 Some of those same Jews standing near may have been just moments away from doing the exact same thing that Peter did, right before Peter lunged with his sword,\u00a0and met the Lord’s stern displeasure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>No doubt those Jews who might have acted would have taken the Lord’s correction of Peter into their own hearts, and obeying their Master’s wishes, would have stood fast and watched in quiet anguish as the soldiers carried Jesus away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I then considered the others that would have been watching that day, the other Jews that were also quietly standing by.\u00a0 Also seemingly obeying the words of Jesus, as they offered no resistance to the soldiers who carried him away.\u00a0 These people were doing exactly what\u00a0the other Jews were doing, but for entirely different reasons.\u00a0 These Jews would have been happy that Jesus had been taken captive, happy that this trouble maker, whom so many seemed to adore, was finally being dealt with.\u00a0 These people were doing the same thing as those who loved the Lord, but one group was refraining from doing anything and enduring the heartache \u2013 for the sake of obeying and loving Jesus above their own desire to save him \u2013 and the other group was doing nothing simply because they wanted Jesus killed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They all were doing the same thing, to all of those who were looking on.\u00a0 But one group was hating God’s righteousness, while the other group was loving it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Evil imitating righteousness.\u00a0 Tares imitating wheat.\u00a0 Death imitating life.\u00a0 It all looks the same without the eyes of Jesus to see it through.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank God for the holy Ghost in us!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerry<\/span><\/p>\n

==========\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And I might add, Jerry, that both groups were ignorant of what God was really doing in His Son Jesus.\u00a0 The difference was a matter of the heart.\u00a0 Some ignorantly loved God, and some\u00a0ignorantly hated Him.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, thank God for the help of the\u00a0Holy Ghost in our hearts!\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pastor John,\u00a0 I was thinking today about the Jews who watched as Jesus was being led away by soldiers.\u00a0 Some of them would have witnessed Jesus rebuking Peter, when Peter made an attempt at saving Jesus from those soldiers.\u00a0 Some of those same Jews standing near may have been just moments away from doing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}