It’s UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ELECTION DAY!
Pray, then Vote! I thank GOD we are free and forgiven especially today – a day to unite civially expressing ourselves by voting.
FREE to share our opinion. FORGIVEN to pass along the mercy, grace and understanding to agree or disagree with fellow men and women who may or may not share the same view of genuine facts and information.
In a true & honest democracy the majority rules. It’s a God given system of government, a gift to be part of this country – founded one nation under God.
Our consitution and government should continue freely aligning with God’s laws always just as it did from the beginning. We should grow and change within the bounds of morality and justice originating from God’s Word.
SEARCH it out for yourself.
Today my devotion took me to John 8:3-11.
My opinion is that what was written in the sand reinforced what he was saying and it hit each person invidividually, then as a group also – enough so that they were taken back and knew stoning this woman was wrong.
3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Was Jesus:
*writing Scriptures to support his point?
*recording the names and sins of some of the woman’s accusers?
*writing something that was part of the reason the Pharisees and Scribes abandon their attempt to stone the woman?
*using symbolism in His writing?
Augustine had these comments:
You have heard, O Jews, you have heard, O Pharisees, you have heard, O teachers of the law, the guardian of the law, but have not yet understood Him as the Lawgiver. What else does He signify to you when He writes with His finger on the ground? For the law was written with the finger of God; but written on stone because of the hard-hearted. The Lord now wrote on the ground, because He was seeking fruit. You have heard then, Let the law be fulfilled, let the adulteress be stoned. But is it by punishing her that the law is to be fulfilled by those that ought to be punished? Let each of you consider himself, let him enter into himself, ascend the judgment-seat of his own mind, place himself at the bar of his own conscience, oblige himself to confess… Each looking carefully into himself, finds himself a sinner. Yes, indeed. Hence, either let this woman go, or together with her receive ye the penalty of the law… [H]aving struck them through with that dart of justice, [Jesus] deigned not to heed their fall, but, turning away His look from them, “again He wrote with His finger on the ground.”
Augustine, Sermon on John Chapter VII. 40–53; VIII. 1–11
God “wrote” the law first, then Jesus was reenforcing it possibly?
John Calvin had this perspective:
By this attitude he intended to show that he despised them. Those who conjecture that he wrote this or the other thing, in my opinion, do not understand his meaning. Nor do I approve of the ingenuity of Augustine, who thinks that in this manner the distinction between the Law and the Gospel is pointed out, because Christ did not write on tables of stone, (Exodus 31:18,) but on man, who is dust and earth. For Christ rather intended, by doing nothing, to show how unworthy they were of being heard; just as if any person, while another was speaking to him, were to draw lines on the wall, or to turn his back, or to show, by any other sign, that he was not attending to what was said. Thus in the present day, when Satan attempts, by various methods, to draw us aside from the right way of teaching, we ought disdainfully to pass by many things which he holds out to us.
John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary on John 13:1-11
So, each man or woman has an opinion – that right to agree or disagree in the United States of America was purchased through sacrifice and continues by the protection of those serving and working under the authority and beliefs our nation was founded upon.
There is only ONE Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the freedom He offers with His sacrifice, we have the opportunity to live just and fair together in this sovereign nation.
Pray. Vote.
God’s will.