By David ReayThursday 11 Dec 2014LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Revelation 20:11-15
11 And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence,but they found no place to hide. 12 I saw the dead,both great and small,standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened,including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done,as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up its dead,and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. 14 Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. 15 And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire. (NLT)
Centuries ago in England,the king’s officers would travel throughout the kingdom recording what offences had been committed against the king. Wrongdoers would be suitably punished. The books that recorded these offences were bound in black. Hence we get the phrase,’to get into the black books’. You didn’t want your name in such books.
It seems that God,at least in a metaphorical sense,has books on hand. And it even seems there are ‘black books’ or their equivalent. Our offences are serious: God takes them seriously. And we can’t hide those offences from God either.
What saves this from being an intolerable burden of guilt upon us is that there seems to be another book. It is called the Book of Life. And from the rest of the Scriptures we can assume that it contains the names of those who have trusted in Jesus for his forgiveness and so trust in him for their right standing with God.
Our disobedience to God gets us in the black book. Jesus’ obedience to God,and our embrace of that,gets us in the Book of Life.
Blessings
David Reay