Category Archives: Wickedness

Bible, Evil, Lifestyles, Scripture, Unrighteousness, Wickedness

NOT A PRETTY LIST

ROMANS 1:29

“people having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice; they are gossips,” 

I have often made pros and cons lists when I needed to make a decision. It could be about a move somewhere or trying to decide about a new job. I know some people who have those kinds of lists about whom they will date. It doesn’t make much sense to make a decision when the cons outweigh the pros, right? Aren’t you glad God didn’t weigh us that way?

In today’s verse, Paul begins a list that is pretty bad. It’s a list of behaviors and lifestyles that go against every fabric of decency, much less any sort of godliness. Now, before you start judging people over these behaviors, remember that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Our job as believers is to walk in such a way that we avoid these behaviors. The key to the verse is the participle verb at the beginning, “having been filled.” Let’s look at that.

APPLICATION

“Having been filled” is from the Greek verb pléroó. It can be translated as “to fully, completely fill, (literally) to cram (a net), level up (a hollow), (figuratively) to fully supply, satisfy, execute (an office), finish (a period or task), verify (or coincide with a prediction).” (Lexical Summary) So, you see it can have lots of meanings. Barnes says about this phrase, “Being filled – That is, the things which he specifies were common or abounded among them. This is a strong phrase, denoting that these things were so often practiced as that it might be said they were full of them. We have a phrase like this still, when we say of one that he is full of mischief, etc.”

These were not one-time events in these people’s lives. This was their lifestyle. We all sin. We all fail. But we cannot stay there. We can’t remain in the sin. We can’t continue in the sin “that so easily entangles us.” I once talked with a guy who “slipped” four times and had sex with women other than his wife. And he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t forgive him. Lifestyles matter when it comes to living for Jesus. Amen?

I don’t really need to go through the list of things Paul mentions here. You can look all those up if you want further explanations of them. The point I want to make is we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not hedonistic lifestyles. We need to be filled with the motive to glorify Jesus in all we do, not glorify our own fleshly appetites. What or Who is filling you today?

Fill my cup, Lord. I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench the thirsting of my soul.

If the Lord should lead you to support our ministry, check out our ministry page at Trans World Radio (www.twr.org/carl-willis). 

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Bible, Judgment, Righteousness, Scripture, Wickedness

CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

MALACHI 3:15

“‘So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.’”

Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between things. Take for instance, identical twins. During my years working in children’s homes and on church staffs, I got to work with several identical twins. Most of them could be distinguished between after I got to know them better. There was one pair, however, that I never was able to tell apart. And, of course, they would use that against me whenever they could, lol.

The Lord is not talking about identifying twins in today’s verse. He is, however, saying that we need to be careful to distinguish between the righteous and wicked. One serves Him and the other doesn’t. Now, mind you, that wicked one may profess to serve God. Watch their actions. See how they compare to Scripture. God knows their hearts and will judge them accordingly.

APPLICATION

There are so many verses in Scripture that show us the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. Here are just a few:

Proverbs 13:5 “A righteous person hates a false statement, but a wicked person acts disgustingly and shamefully.”

Proverbs 13:6 “Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless, but wickedness brings the sinner to ruin.”

Proverbs 18:5 “To show partiality to the wicked is not good, nor to thrust aside the righteous in judgment.”

Matthew 25:46 “‘These (the wicked) will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”

I think you get the picture. The wicked and the righteous do not belong together. God will separate them in judgment. We must separate ourselves also. Now, I don’t mean we should not reach out to them and try to win them to the Lord. We should. We just can’t live like them. We can just hang out with them and do what they do. We must be holy as He is holy.

Do you know any truly wicked people? I have known a few. In a couple of instances, when that person walked into the room, I felt a chill. Their glances were almost always like darts fired from hell itself. Most people are not wicked. They are just deceived and blinded by the evil one. Pray we can be good laborers in the harvest and bring some of these home.

Father, I praise You that I am counted among the righteous, not for anything I have done but because of Your Son.

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Accountability, Arrogance, Bible, Judgment, Obedience, Punishment, Righteousness, Scripture, Wickedness

UPSIDE DOWN

MALACHI 3:15

“‘“So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up, but they also put God to the test and escape punishment.”’”

There is an amusement attraction in Pigeon Forge, TN which is an upside down house. Everything inside that house is upside down. And people pay money to go inside. Now, that really doesn’t make any sense, lol. Life seems upside down at times, doesn’t it? Nothing makes sense. Everything is contrary to how things should be.

The murmuring people of Israel were claiming these falsehoods in verse 15. The arrogant were being called blessed. The doers of wickedness are built up, testing God and escaping punishment. The sad thing was they were saying these things to excuse their own bad behavior. If the world was so bad, nothing they did mattered. Sound familiar?

APPLICATION

Proverbs 21:24 says it well. “‘Proud,’ ‘Haughty,’ ‘Scoffer,’ are his names, who acts with insolent pride.” All around us today we see the same thing going on. Sometimes we may say to ourselves, “How can these wicked people get by with all this stuff they are doing?” It’s hard to imagine God tolerating them.

We see that explained in Isaiah 55:8-9. “8 ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. 9 ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.’” We will never understand the mind of God, therefore we will never understand why He allows the wicked to continue.

The real question is more personal. What are you doing that displeases Him? How are you living out your faith? What are you representing today for Christ? We are not responsible for the behavior of others, only ourselves. So, stop pointing your fingers at them and look inward. Check out yourself. Let others look at you in amazement as you live for Jesus.

I know I can only be held accountable for myself, Lord. Help me reflect Your glory.

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Accountability, Bible, Boasting, Evil, Guilt, Holiness, Judgment, Perversion, Scripture, Wickedness

WRONG IS RIGHT AND RIGHT IS WRONG

MALACHI 2:17

“You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, ‘How have we wearied Him?’ In that you say, ‘Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them,’ or, ‘Where is the God of justice?’”

Our world has so many things backwards. Men who were born male can now become women physically. Women who were born female can change their sex. We are arguing about what pronoun to call someone. None of this makes sense to me. I am sure many of you are confused. But just think what the Creator of the universe thinks about all of this.

Malachi told the people that they were wearying the Lord with their words. They were even claiming that the Lord approved of the evil being done (Sound familiar?). They were even mocking God by saying “Where is the God of justice?”. They were thinking, “If this evil they were doing was so bad, why wasn’t God punishing them?” Arrogance and lack of awe of God was prevalent.

APPLICATION

Man, this sounds just like today, doesn’t it? What is different? The New Living Translation writes Psalm 10:13 this way, “Why do the wicked get away with despising God? They think, ‘God will never call us to account.’” You see, this question has been asked for generations. We see a bad person prospering while we are serving the Lord and struggling to make ends meet. Why?

It isn’t ours to know why. God will judge everyone at some point. His timing is not our timing. We are called to be holy and devoted to Him. We are to focus on becoming as Christlike as possible and trust God with the rest. Do you trust Him? Do you believe He is just?

Take a few minutes and meditate on Psalm 73. Asaph struggled with this question of the wicked prospering as well. You have to read the whole psalm to see how he ends. But near the end is one of my favorite verses – verse 26. It says, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” That is where we rest, beloved.

Father, I need to keep my eyes on You and not on the prospering wicked. You will take care of them in Your own time.

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Angels, Bible, Forgiveness, Scripture, Wickedness

STORK WINGS AND A BASKET

ZECHARIAH 5:9

“Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there two women were coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of the stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens.”

Once, while walking a beach in Florida, I witnessed an osprey (a large raptor) swoop down and grab a little dog that was walking by its owner. Fortunately, the dog was on a leash. However, this meant that now there was a tug of war between the lady and this bird. I watched as she snatched her dog out of the bird’s talons and back to the beach. (In case you are wondering, as far as I know, the dog lived happily ever after.)

We are near the conclusion of this vision, but not without another strange sight. Zechariah sees two winged women fly down and pick up the ephah with the woman inside and carry it away. Scholars have all sorts of opinions about this verse. No one seems to come to a concrete decision about who these women were and where they were going. It is obvious the wickedness in the basket is being carried away. We have to speculate these women were agents of God who alone has the power to vanquish sin. Let’s leave it at that.

APPLICATION

With that view in mind, we need to see how this verse applies to us. Remember, every verse of Scripture is inspired by God and applicable to us. So, how does this verse apply to us. If you use the explanation that I ended the previous paragraph with, God is the one who has the power to take away our sin. He has done that through His Son, Jesus Christ. I don’t know what the two women in Zechariah’s vision represented. All I know for certain is they carried away the wickedness. Don’t you want God to do that for you?

I am involved in a men’s group that meets each Thursday evening. We are in the book of Romans right now and are in chapter 6. Oh man, is that chapter good. Verse 6 and 7 apply here. “6 …knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for the one who has died is freed from sin.”

Did you catch that? “our body of sin might be done away with.” The Greek word for “done away with” actually means to completely make inoperable. It might as well be carried away and dumped. Once we are in Christ, our old man is dead, gone, done away with. Aren’t you glad? I sure am.

Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me; Buried, He carried my sins far away; Rising, He justified freely forever: One day He’s coming—O glorious day!

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Bible, Boundaries, Choices, Cleansing, Commands, Deceit, Devil, Evil, Flesh, God's Will, Holy Spirit, Redemption, Scripture, Sin, Wickedness

PUT A LID ON IT

ZECHARIAH 5:8

“Then he said, ‘This is Wickedness!’ And he thrust her into the middle of the ephah and threw the lead weight on its opening.”

Put a lid on it! You may have heard that expression in regard to asking someone to be quiet, to stop talking. It is usually used when someone keeps rambling on about something until someone gets tired of hearing it. Has that ever happened to you? Have you been told that or told someone else that? It happens to the best of us.

Zechariah watches as the angel “puts a lid on it.” He calls the woman “Wickedness” and shoves her back into the ephah and slams down the lead cover. Obviously, when the angel raised the lid in the previous verse to show Zechariah what was in the ephah, the woman tried to stand or escape. But that was not happening here. Slamming of the lead cover showed that God could and would restrain the sin of the nation. He was in control, not the wickedness symbolized by the woman.

APPLICATION

We need to “put a lid” on sin. Our sinful nature is more prone to let it run free. I remember all too well how sin controlled me. It truly is wickedness. But we can gain control of that if we allow the Holy Spirit to slam the lid on it. We are actually told to do just that.

In Romans 6:12-14 we are told, “12 Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.”

Well, you can’t argue with that, can you? We are not under the Law. We are under grace. Praise be to God! Sin has no more control over my life through Jesus. He paid the price. He paid off our debts to sin and its master. We are free to live a life away from sin. We still have that sinful nature in us, but the Holy Spirit can restrain that, if we let Him. Will you?

Lord, use Your Holy Spirit in my life to restrain me from sin, to put the lid on it.

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Accountability, Bible, Flesh, Judgment, Rescue, Scripture, Surrender, Trials, Wickedness

SODOM AND GOMORRAH

ZEPHANIAH 2:9

“‘Therefore, as I live,’ declares the LORD of armies, the God of Israel, ‘Moab will assuredly be like Sodom, and the sons of Ammon like Gomorrah—ground overgrown with weeds and full of salt mines, and a permanent desolation. The remnant of My people will plunder them, and the remainder of My nation will inherit them.’”

Parts of our world are just plain wicked. Sex trade, drugs and prostitution are staples of these places. The darkness that exists can almost be felt on your skin. You can see the lostness in the faces of those who live there. They live with no hope. No, they don’t live. They simply exist. There is no life in them – only death.

When the Lord through Zephaniah compares Moab and Ammon to Sodom and Gomorrah, the audience knew exactly what he was talking about. The story of those cities is told in Genesis 19. Here are a couple of those verses. “24 Then the LORD rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the LORD out of heaven, 25 and He overthrew those cities, and all the surrounding area, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”

APPLICATION

2 Peter 2:4-10a gives us a great picture of God’s judgment and also His mercy. For the sake of space, I won’t include all of those verses here. You should take a moment and look that passage up. But the last two verses tell us what the Lord will do.

“9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from a trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt passion, and despise authority.”

We see the rescue and the judgment. God is capable of both. He rescued Lot and his family from Sodom and Gomorrah, but He also judged the wicked in those cities. The same holds true today. God will rescue the godly. If you are living for Him and striving to live godly, God will rescue You in His perfect timing. But if you are living to please the flesh, then….

I am thankful for His Holy Spirit Who guides me each and every day. He warns me of evil. He points out those things that can lead me astray. Now, I still have to make that decision to follow His lead. He won’t force me. But I have learned to trust Him. Have you? Have you learned to lean on the Lord during those times of testing. He is there.

O Lord, it does break my heart to see those who are wandering in darkness. Help me shine the light of Christ on them.

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