Dog ownership comes with responsibilities. Among those are cleaning up after them when they poop, be it after a walk through your neighborhood, a city park, and even in your own backyard. If you’ve lived in the country for any length of time, it takes a bit of getting use to when you move into town and have a dog that needs to ‘empty’ itself on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day. And if you have a backyard...where small children play in, it becomes a factor. Trust me.

If you were to bring your children over to my grandsons’ house to play in their backyard, maybe run around barefoot in a swimsuit around the ‘kiddie’ pool, I might tell you before we sent them out that I needed to go and ‘clean up’ the poop piles the dog had deposited. No doubt you would appreciate my efforts to clean the area up. Perhaps you watch from the window or porch as I take my little paper baggie or scoop shovel and begin cleaning the area up, but you notice there’s a pile I missed, despite giving my ‘thumbs up, the yard is clear’ signal.

Now if you bring to my attention that I missed a pile, should I take offense to you pointing that out and be offended for ‘feeling judged’? You might even feel compelled to step down and help me out and get that last spot, more likely if you are a dog owner yourself; non-dog owners just don’t ‘get it’. But if I tell you not to worry about it because I got 9 of the 10 piles and encourage you to let the kids on out to play...how do you feel about your child being at risk to step or fall into that remaining stinky pile of dog poop?

One more quick illustration- if I got a little careless about shedding my clothes all over the bedroom, for whatever reason, and my wife asks me to pick up all my dirty clothes so she can wash them...and I take an armful of them into the washroom, have I fully done what she asked me if I left a pair of socks and maybe one T-shirt on the floor? If she starts the laundry load and then walks into the room and sees those, what might she ask me?

So...when God asks/commands us to ‘put to death’ all the lawless deeds of the flesh nature, which ones are ‘permissible’ to leave laying around? (Col. 3:5-8; Rom. 8:13;Titus 2:14; 2 Cor. 7:1)

Obviously... we probably want to stop ‘murdering’ people, and most likely cease from committing adultery. And I would think the idolatry and sorcery activities need to halt as well, as we repent of them and practice them no more. You’ll find quite the ‘list’ in various places of scriptures as to what all these ‘deeds of the flesh’ entail, but Paul reminds us that anyone who continues to practice these things...”will NOT inherit the kingdom of God.” (Gal. 5:21). Some of those ‘other piles’ include envy, outbursts of anger, gossiping, grumbling/complaining, holding on to resentment, foul language, etc. You’re probably familiar with that ‘list’ by now. (Rom. 1:29-32; Gal. 5:19-21;1 Cor. 6:9-10; 10:6-10; Eph. 5:3-6; Col. 3:5-9; 1 Tim. 1:9-10). Isn’t it a bit odd that so many people in our ‘churches’ today seem to believe that God didn’t really mean what He said? “God’s not going to send me to hell for calling someone a fool!”

Jesus: “Whoever calls someone a fool shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Matt. 5:22)

So let’s revisit a chapter from the OT, one that I mention regularly here, found in 1 Samuel 15. It’s the story where God sends the prophet Samuel with an ‘order’ for King Saul to ‘go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all they have; and not to spare them.” (15:3). I know this sounds harsh and drastic and quite serious, but God had His reasons. He even orders King Saul to “kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camels and donkeys”.

I should point out that these accounts we read in the OT were real, and could be quite graphic and even disturbing. The story of Noah and the flood comes to mind when you consider what happened there. And let’s not forget Paul revisiting (in 1 Cor. 10) telling how God dealt with His people in the wilderness, reminding us there how these things happened to them...as examples and warnings to us...upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor. 10:6-11). It helps if we can look at the OT including not only all those ‘historical events’, but to think of it being more like a set of ‘spiritual blueprints’ for us today. Yes, there can be a danger of trying to ‘over spiritualize’ everything we read in the OT, but we tend to err on the other side of that lesson ...and end up just disregarding much of what is recorded for us to learn from.

Paul reminds us in Colossians that many of these things were a ‘shadow of things to come’ (2:17); and when we read in Luke 24, where Jesus was ‘opening the scriptures’, along with their ‘understanding of the scriptures’ (32,45)...there was no ‘New Testament’ at the time to study. What ‘scriptures’ do you think they were ‘searching daily’ to see if these things were true or not? (Acts 17:11). In other words, there are many truths to glean from these OT stories, call them ‘mysteries of the kingdom’ if you will; and Jesus is more than happy to ‘reveal’ them to us...if/when He has our whole heart (Matt. 13:11).

So King Saul gathers up thousands of his troops and comes to the city of Amalek to ‘lay in wait in the valley’ (1 Sam. 15:5). The orders from God were clear, and Saul set out to do what God asked of him. Now read for yourself, vs. 7-9, and then ask yourself...Did Saul do what God commanded him to do?

Again, I ask...Did King Saul fully carry out God’s orders?’’

Did Jesus not ask some folks early on...”Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do the things I ask of you?” (Luke 6:46)

Who are the ones that will ‘enter the kingdom of heaven’ according to the words of Jesus in Matt. 7:21? And to whom...is ‘eternal life’ given to, according to Hebrews 5:9?

Meet me back here tomorrow?