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Oh To Be Wise Meditations
Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. Everyone who lives right and respects God will prosper, but no one who sins and rejects God will prosper or live very long. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure. LORD, do you fix your eye on them? Will you bring them before you for judgment? Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one! You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer. Please don't leave us alone Jesus, let us find some happiness while we toil and labor. “For the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay the normal daily wage and sent them out to work. “At nine o’clock in the morning he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around doing nothing. So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. So they went to work in the vineyard. At noon and again at three o’clock he did the same thing. “At five o’clock that afternoon he was in town again and saw some more people standing around. He asked them, ‘Why haven’t you been working today?’ “They replied, ‘Because no one hired us.’ “The landowner told them, ‘Then go out and join the others in my vineyard.’ “That evening he told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first. When those hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a full day’s wage. When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage. When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, ‘Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’
“He answered one of them, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage?
Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?’ “So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.” Praise God in Christ that when wicked people stop sinning, their past sins will be completely forgiven, and they won't be punished. And when good people start sinning, all the good they did in the past cannot save them from being punished. Jesus is LORD.
Meditate Matt. 22:14
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