John 10:27

Do we even know the voice of the Lord anymore? “MY sheep will KNOW my voice,” says Jesus in the Gospel of John. The commands of Christ are as unfamiliar as a foreign language. We have tuned out the fluency of Christ’s Word and exchanged it for a babbling of the barbarian. God’s Word will not return void.

Sinners will continue to fight for acceptance of their lifestyle, yet will still find the personal hatred of themselves to never cease. Acceptance and involvement in sin by the individual or the masses still leaves the one with a feeling of personal void and depravity. A homosexual will try to take the language and the living away from the heterosexual, but still be burdened with the individual feeling of guilt and conviction brought on by their debauchery. Mob mentality has always moved the masses to great acts of destruction. There is no greater evidence of sheep who know not their master’s voice, the one inherently calling them to virtue. More sermons on intolerance of sin and the pursuit of the virtuous life need preached and less of sin’s acceptance and further more, its embrace. Sermons are too commonly preached that embrace the sin of remarriage after divorce, and other morally abhorrent sinful practices designated by God as abominable but are not preached to prevent such occurrences from happening through the exercise of godliness.

Secret sin is a public sin because the public is moved by its industry therefore it is a public shame, or have we forgotten how to blush? Whatever the habit is—alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography—it is not a secret sin that one can commit without the support of the masses who have industrialized and sanctified its consumption. Like open sin, it’s sanction is sought for the promulgation of the lifestyle and by the futile thought that acceptance will make one virtuous. Popularity is to virtue as ignorance is to the philosopher.

2 Peter 1:3 bring the relationship of virtue and knowledge together under God. Ignorance is not bliss.  Virtue comes with knowledge and knowledge by moral instruction.  Let God’s Word be to us what it is meant to be, “Living and active . . . penetrating to the joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12) . . . given for instruction in the ways of righteousness, reproof and correction (2 Timothy 3:16).