Reasons

One thing is for sure: If you look for a ‘good’ reason to believe and do the wrong thing, there will always be one there for you. It’s called justifying sin, and it hasn’t changed since sin was first conceived in this world: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Gen. 3:6). Eve found three ‘good’ reasons to break the commandment of God, and help usher in death upon the glorious life that God had given them and their seed after them. Saul, the first king of Israel, had ‘good’ reasons likewise, for not fulfilling God’s commandment by Samuel to destroy all of the Amalekites and everything that pertained to them: "And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the LORD: I have performed the commandment of the LORD. And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed" (I Sam. 15:13-15). Well, it certainly made sense to keep the best of the sheep and the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord. After all, what could be more important than sacrificing to the Lord? "And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (I Sam. 15:22).

That is correct my friend, obeying God’s will is the only thing that matters to God, and there is no true way to justify not doing just that. Nonetheless, if you are wavering on whether to believe and do what is right in the sight of God in a thing, there will always be those seemingly good and sensible reasons to do otherwise. And as they were in the beginning, those reasons are always provided by the enemy of your soul, the devil. Listening to Satan’s reasons cost Saul at least the kingdom, and likewise eliminated his seed after him from continuing in the kingdom. Neither do the scriptures give a good forecast on his soul (I Chr. 10:13). In his own mind, Judas was not stealing from the treasury bag that was entrusted to him to keep. He had found good reasons to see it as something other than stealing. And betrayal was not something that was in his mind when he accepted the thirty pieces of silver from the chief priests for disclosing where to find Jesus. In his thinking, he had a good reason to get Jesus together with them, probably so they could get a better understanding of each other. No wonder the scripture warns us to "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding" (Prov. 3:5). And where was Judas really getting these ‘understandings’ from? "And after the sop Satan entered into him" (Jn. 13:27). Judas had opened himself up to the devil by listening to his reasons for stealing from the bag, and therefore he was fully primed to continue listening to him to find a good reason to betray Jesus. Entertaining the devil cost Judas his life, his apostleship, and his soul.

Demas, the fellow minister of the apostle Paul, in his own mind did not ‘forsake’ Paul, nor did he choose rather to "love this present world,” as Paul asserted. Rather Demas listened to good reasons as to why he should leave Paul to go back and ‘help’ the believers in Thessalonica, a city where Paul had established a congregation in Christ (II Tim. 4:10). The truth is friend, if we do not “keep [our] hearts with all diligence,” and “purify [our] hearts, even as he [Jesus] is pure,” we are giving space to Satan to give us ‘good’ reasons for believing and doing the wrong thing (Prov. 4:23; I Jn. 3:3). Jesus said that believers whose faith and love would be fading in the last days, would “betray one another, and hate one another" (Mat. 24:10). He also said, "yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will THINK that he doeth God service" (Jn. 16:2). This condition is what the apostle Paul exhorted us to avoid, when he said; "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil" (Eph. 4:26,27). Don’t let the sun go down on or be risen with any other sin either, but rather get it righted now, and let any sin be "open beforehand, going before to judgment” (I Tim. 5:4). To allow any kind of sin to remain in our hearts, IS to “give place to the devil.” And that leaves us with only one more admonition to remember: “And be not conformed to [the mind of] this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2). Amen