WE STAND BARE AND VULNERABLE BEFORE THE ONE WHO WILL CLAIM ACCOUNTABILITY FROM US
Sakkie Parsons
Translated from the Afrikaans Version: Ons staan kaalgestroop en weerloos voor die Een aan wie ons rekenskap moet doen
Translator: Lynda Botha
Someone wrote to me as follows:
"Please help us to understand. Does God see everything, even when you're naked and I think you know what we mean? "
It seems to me, what this person really wants to know, is whether our Lord knows everything regarding our sex life. I had to smile when I read this letter, not because of the type of question asked but because of the beautifully and diplomatically way this question was asked.
I want to begin my answer as follow:
Our God is the Almighty, Omnipresent, All-Seeing, All-Knowing, All-wise God.
He created the Universe, with the Earth as part of it, and everyone and everything on and in it; He sustains it all according to His will – including you and me. Because this letter is about people, like you and me, I share the following with you:
PSALM 33:13-15
13 “The Lord look down from Heaven and sees the whole human race.” (with great love)
14 “From His throne He observes all who live on the Earth.” (Also what they do)
15 “He made their hearts so He understands everything they do.”
Like His Word states, He created us and our hearts, therefore He knows, sees, and obviously understands everything we think, do, experience and feel. This is everything that’s in our hearts otherwise stated, the type of person we are on the inside.
He gave us all the beauty and splendour at our disposal, to enjoy according to His will. Originally, as I understand it in the Word of God, our Lord created intimacy between a man and his wife to enjoy within the bond of marriage. I specified “according to His will” because for example rape is also sex and sodomy stays sodomy as far as I understand it in the Word of God.
When our Lord looks at you and me, His highest creation, He looks at us with His wonderful divine love, and want us to enjoy and appreciate everything He created for us following His wise counsel. Of course, He knows about everything, literally everything that happens in our lives, whether it happens within our hearts or outside our bodies:
PSALM 139:1-8
God’s perfect knowledge of man
For the choir director: Of Psalm of David
1 “O Lord you have examined my heart and know everything about me.”
2 “You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.”
3 “You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.”
4 “You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.”
5 “You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.”
6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me too great for me to understand!”
7 “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!”
8 “If I go up to Heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.”
If we read further in the same Psalm, how wonderful is it not to know that we cannot hide anything from Him:
PSALM 139:11-17
11 “I could ask the darkness to hid me and the light around me to become night – “
12 “but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.”
13 “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
14 “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvellous – how well I know it.”
15 “You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.”
16 “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
17 “How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!”
At another place we read:
HEB 4:13: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes, and He is the one to whom we are accountable.”.
Fortunately, as I have shown you, our Lord watches us with great compassionate love, and He handles everything that happens in our lives with loving compassion.
We read a little further in HEB 4:15-16:
15 “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testing’s we do, yet He did not sin.”
16 “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”
So, how does our Lord look upon a man and his wife who practices intimacy within their marital bonds?
What I understand from the Word of God – I will explain it in this way with the following example:
I know my kids enjoyed it immensely to ride on a swing. I build them a swing and it is wonderful for me to see them play on that swing. However, if they play on that swing in such a way which it was not created for, like trying to swing like an acrobat on their hands, it would upset me tremendously and I will intervene immediately. Also, if someone steals the swing and I saw the swing elsewhere with children playing on it, I will be very upset as well. No matter how joyfully they play together, and I will intervene.
I would also like to mention, that part of our Lord's rules in this wonderful lovemaking bond between a man and woman in marriage also includes, that one never forces the other into something which is either uncomfortable or is unacceptable for that person.
When my kids play on the swing which I made for them, and they swing together, but the one swings too high to the liking of the other and continues to swing too high, I would also not approve.
Also remember the following:
If I enjoy something our Lord has given at my disposal but disregards His fixed rules, I know that I am disobeying Him and if I continue to disobey Him, then I am deliberately and willfully disobeying our almighty God.
From this kind of deliberate willfulness, we read in the Word of God the following:
HEBREWS 10:26-31
26 “Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.”
27 “There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume His enemies.”
28 “For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.”
29 “Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and distained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us.”
30 “For we know the one who said, “I will take revenge. I will pay them back.” He also said, “The Lord will judge His own people.”
31 “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
We serve a great God full of love and thus most evangelists preach His gospel accordingly, which is true, but there is another thing that should also be preached with this great truth and that is:
As great as His love, just as great is His fair judgment.
Therefore, He says to you again today and to me who wrote this letter, what He told the adulterous woman. Do you remember?
They wanted Him to condemn her but, I believe, Jesus showed them what He knows about them instead by writing in the sand, and then, as I see it, all her accusers slipped away quietly and when Jesus got up everyone was gone. Then he said to the woman who committed adultery, because she did commit adultery:
JOHN 8:10: “Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
JOHN 8:11: “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (Don’t do it again willfully and do not continue with your adulterous life)
You never have to experience anything negative that our Lord Himself set for you to enjoy. However, if you practiced it outside of His rules and lived in a willful deliberate way, Jesus your loving Saviour awaits you to ask Him, to be your loving Advocate who atones for you in the highest court in the universe. He, whom there was written about:
1 JOHN 2:1-3
1 “…But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.”
2 “He Himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins – and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.”
3 “And we can be sure that we know Him if we obey His commandments.”
Now remember, I am not talking about addiction, as long as the addiction in your life does not become the norm for you. You must always fight it.
To be always tempted by the same temptation is not being wilful, in any case not from your side. This is the evil wilfulness of satan. But to commit the same sin again and again, is outright wilfulness.
This Jesus – Our loving Counsel and Advocate our Lord within the highest court in the universe tells you today and that’s why you have read this far:
JOHN 8:11: “……Go and sin no more.”
In other words, now you should no longer do any wilful sinning.
Greetings,
Sakkie