Isaiah 59:1-5 (TEV) 1 Don't think that the LORD is too weak to save you or too deaf to hear your call for help! 2 It is because of your sins that he doesn't hear you. It is your sins that separate you from God when you try to worship him. 3 You are guilty of lying, violence, and murder. 4 You go to court, but you do not have justice on your side. You depend on lies to win your case. You carry out your plans to hurt others. 5-6 The evil plots you make are as deadly as the eggs of a poisonous snake. Crush an egg, out comes a snake! But your plots will do you no good—they are as useless as clothing made of cobwebs! 7 You are always planning something evil, and you can hardly wait to do it. You never hesitate to murder innocent people. You leave ruin and destruction wherever you go, 8 and no one is safe when you are around. Everything you do is unjust. You follow a crooked path, and no one who walks that path will ever be safe.
Micah 4:12 (NIV) But they do not know the thoughts of the LORD; they do not understand his plan, he who gathers them like sheaves to the threshing floor.
Ephesians 4:17-21 (NIV) 17 [You] must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. 20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
"The tragedy of much modern life is that the abandonment of the knowledge of God means that futility has taken over."—Leon Morris in The Cross of Jesus. Christianity Today, Vol. 42, no. 3.
Today's Best Illustrations – Volume 5, (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1997), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, Under: "I".
