Banished from God's Presence
The most chilling words that anyone will ever hear are when God will say to those who rejected Him, "Depart from Me; I never knew you." Those people will be banished from His presence for eternity. This shows us that there is a limit to God's mercy. Yes, He is love, and He loves everyone, desiring for all to come to repentance. However, if they fail to repent and turn to Him in faith, they will be banished forever. The people of Jerusalem and Judah experienced God's anger against sin to the point that they were banished from His presence. (II Kings 24:20) They may have thought that God's mercy would last forever, and they would always get another chance, but that was not the case. It is not the case of us today, either.
It is possible for us to presume upon the grace and mercy of God. We can think that God will overlook our sins because we are His children. Yes, our sins are forgiven, once we put our trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We will go to heaven when we die. We will not lose our salvation, if it was genuine. However, after that, we are to live according to God's Word. We are to confess our sins quickly and completely, so they will be cleansed, and we can have a close relationship with Him. If we go our own way, and we decide to sin willfully against the Lord, those sins will build up, and we will have little or no daily walk with the Lord. He will bring punishment upon us to turn us back to Him. However, if we ignore His anger and His chastening, we can come to the point where we can't come into His presence, until we repent. We are banished from His presence like Jerusalem and Judah were in the time of Zedekiah. That is a truly miserable life, because we know what we should do. We know what we could have, but we persist in sin and selfishness. I pray that none of us will ever get to this point, but I felt the responsibility to warn all of us about this possibility for us as believers. Also, I pray those who do not know Christ will turn to Him today in repentance and faith, so they will not be banished from His presence forever.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Chronicles 1-3.