The Moth - 1

Please open your Bibles again to Isaiah chapter 51 it's a great joy to be back with you again. We really love it when we were here two years ago and so when I got the call a few weeks ago from Pastor Barkman asking me to return.

I eagerly accepted and Carol was very excited coming back. I have had a very blessedly busy summer and have already used up all the days that my church very generously allots me to preach at other places and be gone from the pulpit their bullet lick Baptist Church and so we had one week of vacation left and so when Pastor Barkman asked to come. Then we decided will will use our last week of vacation to come and spend spend the time with you sense here and is aware that just to give you some indication about how much we want to come and be with you work were using our last week of vacation to come and be with you. Appreciate the songs that were sung. I I got try to think what Greg was going through as he name is Greg as he was trying to pick something to go along with the loss and so you may have noticed that most of the songs this morning had a had a theme in them of things in nature are praising God and the moth does praise God but in the way that CH Spurgeon described that the damned would help to contribute to the orchestra of praise that resounds throughout eternity. He said that the damned and hell will sound the base notes in that great orchestral praise so the moth I'm going to say is not not something that is going to inspire, as is presented in the Bible is not something that's going to inspire our hearts to joy and admiration, but rather to solemn contemplation, although I say at the outset that I think moths are very beautiful and am amazed at the almost unlimited variety of patterns and shapes of the moths together on a window where you have mistakenly left the light on all night and sometimes sometimes see moths on the ground that have beaten themselves to death against a nightlight of some kind and I can remember it as a little boy just looking with wonder and all those great green Luna moth. Send those huge I/O moths that seem like they would always appear on the same that the same night under the nightlights at the home where I grew up not not going to try to say look at the moth and then let your heart be lifted up with praise and glory to God instead is the way of saying let's let's look with solemn contemplation about what is implied by the moth. Let me read the two verses that constitute my text and give your word of explanation. The pastor just read them a few minutes ago verses seven and eight, Isaiah chapter 51 versus 78 listen to me you have no righteousness. This people in his heart is my law fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their reviling's for the moth will beat them up like a garment and the worm will eat them like wool that my righteousness will be forever in my salvation to all generations. Though this is a short text.

My intention is to give an explanation of an even shorter segment.

Just what is meant by the moth will eat them up like a garment.

It won't be long until let you have been a church for 50 years.

I'm sure during those 50 years, you have heard CH Spurgeon quoted many times Martin Lloyd Jones quoted many times I'm going to say that it's a pretty fair assumption that you have never heard Pink Floyd quoted from this pulpit but I'm going to start off with a quoting a song from Pink Floyd from their album of 1973, which I think was the same year. This church was founded and the dark side of the moon.

Now I'll be quoting Pink Floyd and a couple of other people who say many things that I do not approve of. But I think this is a very thought-provoking song to be produced by rock 'n' roll band ticking away the moments that make up a dull day fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown waiting for someone or something to show you the way tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain you're young and life is long and there is time to kill today and then one day you find 10 years have got behind you. No one told you when to run.

You missed the starting gun and you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking racing around the come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but your older short of breath and one day closer to death every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

The time is gone. Song is over thought out something more to say and I may be reading more profundity into this than is warranted by rock 'n' roll song but I gather in that last line the writer is saying not just that song is over and I'm going to bring it to a conclusion, but rather my life is over.

He's writing in the in the voice of someone who has frittered away, not just the day but frittered away his entire life and wasted in the language of my text. The moth has eaten his life. According to Strong's concordance.

The word moth appears nine times in the Bible and the word moth-eaten appears once will look at most of them this morning. I think that every time that the word appears. It is used symbolically, even if it is referring to a moth-eaten garment. It's written in such a way as to say were not just talking about the destruction of clothing. As I said moths are very beautiful but their larger larva are often destructive.

I I maybe wrong.

Some of you some of you entomologists can correct me later, but I don't think moths I think if there larva that do the eating.

I may be wrong about that. Anyway, the moth creature, whether in larva or with its winged condition.

They eat food crops. The trees, the shrubs, I don't know about your part of the country, but there are times when these bag worms will just get all over our our shrubbery in Kentucky. My experience with moths. Besides outside the window in the destruction of the cause is when I open a bag of flour or a bag of cornmeal or some granola that hasn't been open for a while and then out flutter some moths.

It happened just a few days ago when we open some dog treats that had not been used for a while and some moths that flew out of this container that had the dog treats and they mess with my life, mostly because I keep these keep about 12 or 15 hives of bees and if a hive of bees gets gets weak. Then another wax moths will move in and I don't think that the wax moths actually kill the bees but the hive just gets weaker and weaker and then the wax moths take over in the wax moths are very destructive. They eat parts of the wooden parts of the hive to make the little cocoons and then they they just destroy you almost have to burn a beehive if it has been totally taken over by moths. But there their work, whether in clothing, which I'm sure is the way that most people have had experience with destructive moths.

Whether the work is in clothing or in the beehive or in the cupboard. You never wake up in the middle of the night and say I think I hear some moths crunching away in the cupboard. I I think I heard something in the closet last night. I think the moths may be into my wool sweaters you just never you never think like that because they are quiet and I believe that when the Bible uses the moth as a symbol for God's judgment that part of the terror of it is. It happened so quietly it's so effective in its destruction.

I think of the moth symbolizes the quiet corrupting time wasting things that eat up our lives like moths.

There times when God's judgments are shocking in their cataclysmic God destroyed the old world with the flood rain for 40 days and 40 nights got rained down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. Now that's the kind of judgment that we think of that comes from God. When Cora led several people to revolt against Moses and against the Lord. The earth opened up and swallowed Cora and his followers when a group of young men were making fun of Elisha saying go up now baldhead. There were two bears that came out of the woods and mauled many of those boys, Ananias and Sapphire were struck did God struck down King Herod with worms and he died in A.D. 70.

The destruction of Jerusalem is described in the Bible is the end of the world.

The sun becoming black like sackcloth, the moon becoming like blood in the stars of the sky falling to earth is when the fig tree is shaken by winter Gail and those are the ways that we have a tendency to think of God's judgments coming and it's no wonder that things like that get recorded in the Bible most often God's judgments are mundane and quiet.

I have you open to Psalm 51 but turned back just a page to Psalm 50 and you'll see another instance of this will read verses seven, eight and nine. Although the phrases it in verse nine, Isaiah 50 versus seven, eight and nine. This is a messianic Psalm with the Lord God helps me. Therefore I have not been disgraced. Therefore, I've set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. He who vindicates me is near.

Who will contend with me. Let us stand up together, who is my adversary, let him come near to me, behold, the Lord God helps me who will declare me guilty.

Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment. The moth will beat them up so similar to my text in Isaiah 51 here in Isaiah 50. Again, the date the prophet asserts my enemies who are resisting me are going to be eaten up by moth the bears are not going to come out of the woods, growling and ravaging them but the moth is going to eat him up Isaac in Hosea chapter 5 in verse 12.

The Bible says, but I am like a moth to Ephraim and like dry rot to the house of Judah probably had experience with dry rot may be on your bicycle tires may be on your car tires on the car or bicycle doesn't get used very much the rubber or whatever tires are made from begins to dry out and it becomes unsafe. It just happens very quiet and the Lord says I am like a moth to Ephraim and like dry rot's judgments come quietly and come slowly. Consider how the moth works. I've already mentioned several things about it.

He does work silently. His presence is unannounced and unnoticed, usually until it's too late. It's usually when the moth has already destroyed a beehive that I find it occasionally I'll go shopping for things and thrift stores in find a really nice Cashmere sweater. I can't believe somebody gave this to the thrift store and then I hold it up to the light and the moth has been at work. That's why they gave it away to thrift store. Of course they would've protected it. If you're like I am.

It seems like your grandparents house always smelled like mothballs think they were far more careful about preserving their clothing and their blankets then we are. Things were not as easily accessible to them as they are to us, but that they want to keep the moths out because the moth work silently and and before you know it, then his silent work has destroyed what something that you didn't want to be destroyed.

The way the the moth of God's judgment works in the lives of people slowly and silently gradually doing his work of judgment. The work of the moth usually occurs in the context of neglect.

If I were a more diligent beekeeper I would look into my hives more often about the middle of the summer I get tired of it. I've been getting tired of it for about 35 years and just ask myself why do I keep on doing this and then the spring comes around and the flowers are blooming and the bees are buzzing and it smells good and I'm excited about again but I'm I'm not a very I'm not as diligent beekeeper is out to be and in the context of neglect. The moths come in and they start destroying my beehives and this is the way the moth of God's judgment works in our lives and the lives of in the lives of people want to make some distinction here between the people of Egypt and the people of Israel as the Lord did with seven last plagues.

I don't think that God ever judges his elect his redeemed people for their sin. I don't think that he judges them. In a sense of saying I'm going to punish them for the thing that they're doing. I believe the Bible teaches that all of the punishment that was due to us for our sin was laid on the Lord Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, I think the Lord does use the quiet wasting moths of of things in the lives of his people to to wake him up to be a form of discipline as a loving father would discipline his children discipline doesn't always come in some stark and shocking accident or some stark and shocking disease or unforeseen turn of events.

Sometimes God's discipline comes when you open a drawer in your life and you pull out something that you've neglected and you see that the moths have been at work and and you think I must stop this. I have got to quit this pattern of neglect because the moths artwork the moth work silently the moth works gradually moth works in the context of neglect and the moth works ruinously now. The moth never ultimately and fully ruins the child of God, who shall separate us from the love of Christ love of God that is in Christ Jesus, not anything in heaven or earth, not the moth but for those who remain in rebellion against the Lord, then it may be that you will die an old in an old person, full of years and surrounded by people who love you and people will say that's the way that I want to die, but your whole life will have spent feeding the moths. It's ruinous me mention a few of the moths that I fear are in our lives and at this point you will recognize that I'm going into something like a topical sermon, but my main my main purpose here is to help you to feel the power of this one phrase that the moth will beat them up in one of the moths that I think eat up our lives is the moth of wasting time just day after day wasting time in James chapter 4 verses 13 through 17 the Lord says come now you to say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town practice business there and make money. You don't know what a day brings forth what is your life. It is a little mist that appears for short time and then vanishes away what you ought to say is if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that, but when you confidently assert that there's going to be time tomorrow to do the things that you ought to do today your speaking presumptuously you're speaking sinfully and there is this tendency that we have to just constantly put off things and put off things.

Some of you will be familiar with the Shakespeare's very powerful play Macbeth and something you literary people know that all all of Shakespeare's tragedies. In fact all tragedies and classic literature, and with all the main characters dying.

Everybody dies at the end of the tragedy and at the end of comedies. Everyone gets married.

That's true of Greek tragedy. That's true true Shakespeare Creek tragedy, so comedies are not meant to make you laugh, but they are lighthearted things and at the end everyone gets happily married. So, not surprisingly, at the end of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is already did and then some circumstances have come about that Macbeth himself never thought would happen and he sees that he is about to die and he remembers all of the things he thinks briefly about the way that he intended to take care of important things but he intended to do it tomorrow and he's he says tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day that is throughout our lives were constantly putting things off and wasting time. Say tomorrow I'm going to do it and this takes place. He says to the last syllable of recorded time up to the very last minute that we live. We are just saying. Tomorrow I'm going to take care of this. Consequently, all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death out out brief candle life's but a walking shadow.

This is the talk of a man whose filled with despair. The way that he has let the moths of wasting time eat up his life and bring him to an untimely bring him to a tragic death. Life just a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.

So my life is been.

He says just like some actor that got apart in one player and all he just just really does his best. He struts and frets for that hour. But he's just like in a madman life is a tale that is told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. That's the cry of despair of someone who has allowed wasting time to come and take away his life may not be you might not be me another moth that is very prevalent in our culture is accumulating temporary wealth accumulated accumulating temporary wealth. Jesus says in in Matthew chapter 6 verses 19 and 20. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal. For where your heart is for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And that's one of the most damning things about the accumulation of treasure on earth. Not only do you waste your life, getting it but you waste your life thinking about being anxious about. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also James again. James chapter 5 verses one through three give us insight into the problem of wasting our lives accumulating wealth, now you're rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

Your riches have rotted your garments are moth-eaten your gold and silver have corroded in their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.

You've laid up treasure in the last day accumulating temporary wealth is a moth that eats up many life. Another moth that eats up our lives is the moth of anxiety and here's where the songs that we saying in the first part of the worship service will help us so much. We are able to. Jesus directs our attention to the things around us in the way that God takes care of them and says let that be a an object lesson to not be anxious about tomorrow will be anxious about your life what you eat to what you would drink more about your body, what you will put on consent of the birds of the air don't toil, or even they don't gather into barns and and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than birds.

Consider the lilies of the field.

They don't toil and they don't spin.

And yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all of the splinter was arrayed like one of the if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, oh ye of little faith, so don't be anxious about your life. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to that last song that we saying I don't know if you paid attention to who wrote it, but it's based on the work that the word of St. Francis of Assisi and I don't know much about St. Francis of Assisi is someone that I respected very much said concerning him. That's one Roman Catholic that I expect to see in heaven. I know that there are some attractive things that I find very attractive about the life of St. DC and all creatures of our God and King just summoning all of all of creation without rushing wind that are so strong clouds that sale in heaven along praising out hellfire so masterful and bright.

They'll give us demand both warmth and light and a stanza. There several stanzas that are left out of the version that we have and are in him. But there's a stanza. This added I never heard that before. I looked and that was added by someone in 1974. Several of the stanzas that are left out one of which says, and thou most kind and gentle death waiting to hush our latest breath was thinking especially of that song that stands when I was considering the possibility of preaching on death as one of God's surprising servants servants. I'm not sure that I'm going to preach that sermon. I may substitute it with something else when Pastor Bartman asked me about what was going to preach the idea had just recently occurred to me that I was going to preach on God's surprising servants and then I see that what I had written what I've suggested to him on the phone as just here ideas I've got now appear in the bulletin as this is what's coming. Reminds me of that. That old old rock 'n' roll singer that I heard introduce a song that had written many years before, if I'd known that I was going to be singing this for the rest of my life.

I would've written something else so I'm going to feel the liberty to not hold myself exactly to the program as it has been committed on. In fact, I think tonight I'm going to preach from something other than what has been what's in the bulletin probably preach great use of wicked men tomorrow night. Tonight I anticipate preaching on unconscious influence which doesn't appear anywhere on the program, something of been really been thinking a lot about lately and excited to share so but anyway, back to the moth. One of the one of the moths that eat up our lives is just anxiety and that led me to talk about St. Francis of Assisi and that the the way that he heeded the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at the birds of the heaven and take a lesson from them. Look at the flowers of the field and take a lesson from him.

Anxiety will eat up your life like a moth another moth that eats up the lives of threatens to eat up the lives of the average Christian around me is excessive recreation. Now I'm all in favor recreation. Anyone who knows me that I'm knows that I'm not business all the time and so I enjoy. I enjoy a number of recreational activities, but I I am aware that there are segments of our society that are spending 789 10 hours a day and recreational activity statistics that talk about how much time the average person spends on his cell phone are are disheartening. Most of that time spent on your cell phone are spent in front of the computer screen and the latest that I've heard is that the average person and in the young category age group young age group category will spend about 12 hours a day in front of the screen and we all know that they're not working out, math problem, so this is going to waste your life. I look around this congregation I see is mostly older people, but there are people of all ages who are you wasting your life with the distractions that are easily available to you and it's fun for you to look up and read a half-dozen blogs and they might even be Christian blocks but there are more important things to be done then spend all day reading Christian websites in a hymnbook from long ago, the author of this is my father's world which we might have some would've been a great harmony with what the song service. This the author the author of this is my father's world which most of us know his name is multiple be multi Babcock multibank Babcock. He wrote this little him to. I don't know that it really belongs in a hymnbook, but the but it it strengthens the point that I'm making right now. Be strong. We are not here to play to dream to drift. We have hard work to do and loves to lift Sean not the struggle. Face it is God's gift.

Be strong, say, not the days are evil. Who's to blame and fold the hands and acquiesced.

So shame stand up, speak out and bravely in God's name be strong. It matters not how deeply entrenched the wrong how hard the battle goes the day. How long faint not fight on tomorrow comes the song.

I don't know that that belongs in hymnbook but that it belongs somewhere in a person's education that you don't just do things when you feel like doing them.

There is a time for work and there's a time for working hard and we are not here to play. I fear that many of us are allowing the moth of mediocrity just to eat up our lives is content with a a a mediocre life when we might have really pursued after participation in the divine nature. We might have really walked with God, we might have really had an influence on others. This is a poem by rep. Ralph Waldo Emerson who has many crazy ideas, but in this poem he he imagines that the days come to us and each of them offers wonderful opportunities for bravery for courage and at the end of this poem. The day turns away, looking at him scornfully because he has wasted the day that had so much on fraternity daughters of time. The hypocritical days, muffled like muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes marching single file in an marching single and an endless file come these days. Just wanted to time and they bring diadem's.

In fact it's in their hand diadem's would be crowns agates would be the bundles of sticks used to burn someone at the stake. And so there there these opportunities that come with every day to each. They offer gifts after his will, so the days offer gifts according to the will of the person that's you and me living out these days. Bread kingdoms stars or sky that holds them all IN my plea should garden the pleated garden is a garden where the trees have been interwoven so it's something that is taken some time. I am my plea to garden watch the palm forgot my morning wishes. So hit the day started off and I'm going to make the most of this day, but then here comes the day with all of its promises and he says I hastily took a few herbs and apples in the day departed, turned and departed silent. I too late. Under her solemn fillet Saul the scorn of fillet is like a headband and so as the day departs. He imagines of the day turns and looks at him and disses really, with all the gifts that you might've taken from my hand today all you take are a few herbs and apples. That's all you want.

I sometimes think about the sacrifices that were made by William Tyndale, John Wycliffe sacrifices that they made to make sure that we have the Bible in English burned at the state one of them. His bones dug up later date. He died before they could burn him and so they dug up his bones and burned them later and Wycliffe and Tyndale look at us with our with our dusty unused Bible and and they say really that's the way you're using that precious gift that is in your hands in your home.

You have so little of a committed heart.

You don't read it every day you don't value the preaching of God's word really I think about the martyrs from from the first day from Stephen down to this day is this the stones splash upon their their faces and and blood runs down and and they are subjected to all kinds of torture Nero ties the Christians to post send coax them with pitch and then sets them alight and from there more from their burning purchase in their dying throws.

They look at us and they say that's the way you're spending your life. That's the way that you're spinning the legacy that I've left I think about my own grandparents were born in the first few years of 1900 and lived in miserable conditions and shacks were, you wouldn't keep your dog and other way that they eat out a living in southern Illinois and in the hills of Kentucky and then when my mother got to be 10 or 11 years old and she didn't have any place to go to school then they made the sacrifice and moved out of the mountains and went to someplace where she could go to school in the sacrifices they made for her. The sacrifices that my parents made for me and the immigrants. The immigrants that are your ancestors and the sacrifices that they made to come to America and Sam going to give my descendents a better way to live and they look at us and they say really that's what you're going to live your life after all the sacrifice that we made after all that has been given to you.

That's all you're going to take just a few herbs and spices and then and then waste the rest of your life. Mediocrity is eating up our lives. One final thing that I'll mention as a moth that is eating up our lives. And that's the excessive pursuit for youthfulness and sickle beauty. Let me say as a disclaimer ahead of time that I I'm a strong believer in eating right, working out, and I have worked out my whole life. I still work out five or six days a week and so I'm not against working out and being healthy, but the excessive pursuit for looking beautiful or looking handsome or having big muscles or having shapely legs is an enormous waste of time.

Psalm 39 verse 11 says, when thou dost when thou with rebukes this correct man for iniquity. They'll make us to his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity first Timothy chapter 4 verse eight. The Bible says, for bodily exercise profit with little but it is not totally useless. It does profit. Some I can think of some other things that eat up our days, that we can't say that about, but bodily exercise does profit little but godliness is profitable and all things having promise of the life that now is end of that which is to come in. So what should you spend your time pursuing in one of my favorite sonnets by William Shakespeare. He, the poet addresses his soul and asks his soul. Why are you so skinny and hungry when you're so when your body is so well cared for. Goes like this poor soul the center of my sinful or my sinful earth fees. He's talking about his body.

My sinful earth. These rebel powers that the array so that the soul is clothed with the body and he asks is so whitest Alpine within and suffered earth dearth is like a great fan are you getting so skinny and hungry painting by outward walls so Costly get so inside you're starving to death. But boy it sure does look good on the outside. Why so large cost having so short a lease this thou upon my fading mansion spend like someone who's renting a property and you pour all of your you pour all of your resources into improving this property that you just renting you going to leave it behind shell worms, he asks is so shell worms inheritors of this excess eat up by charge. You're so worried about taking care of your body are worms going to eat it. Is this by bodies and then take this lesson. He says to his soul and so live thou upon thy servants lost.

Your body is your servant so some of the time that you're devoting to your body. Take that and apply it to the good of your soul.

Let that time. Let your soul get be the one that gets skinny to aggravate guys store aggravate your means to make greater so so if it means that you have to neglect your body in order for you to prosper than go ahead and do that. That's a good deal.

You will be buying terms divine by selling hours of dross. Dross is worthless stuff that a term is a long time and that's what you be doing when you take some time that you are unnecessarily devoting to the pursuit of of having a beautiful body trying to look young. You take that and you apply to having a healthy soul, then you will live upon your servants lost your feet on death that feeds on men, and death.

Once dead, there's no more dying then and if you want to look that up later. That's Shakespeare's sonnet number 146 Nellis bring this to a close by these two things. Number one as God's instrument of judgment. The Lord brings the moth against those who reproach and refile that's in my text that's also in Isaiah chapter 50 in verse nine. Don't be afraid of those who who are attacking you in your Christian faith. The moth will eat him up. The Lord also brings the judgment of the moth against sinful mortals turn if you will quickly to Job chapter 4 and verses 17 through 20. We can see the moth at work to bring judgment against more sinful mortals. Job 417 10 mortal man to be in the right be in the right before God can a man be pure before his maker.

Even in his servants, he puts no trust in his angels. He charges with error, how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like the moth between morning and evening. They are beaten to pieces. They perish forever without anyone regarding it and then turn forward to Job chapter 13 and in verse 28 we see again that God marshals the moth against sinful mortals and Job 1328. The Bible says man wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.

I think that there are moths of God that at work in our culture that the moth of distraction. I have heard Christians admit that years ago. The first thing that they would do when they woke up in the morning was that they would pray and they would read their Bible and now the first thing they reach for their self laziness, gossip, bitterness, the degradation of human worth.

That is so prevalent in our society teaching us that humans are nothing more than animals presenting men and women in pornography, as if they were nothing more than animals, people viewing and looking at pornography in a way that they know full well is eating away at the integrity of their souls. But they still just open up their lives to that mall, the unnatural affections of sexual perversions, and abortion, all of which go back to the degradation of human worth and God is letting the moth eat up our culture, but there is hope for moth-eaten lives. I hope that the Lord has stirred up your conscience today and you have said you know I need to open that drawer to make sure the moths are not eating that up. I am one of those people who reaches for the cell phone of the computer first thing in the morning and I give the best part of my day, not to God but I give the best part of my day to whatever news item catches my attention. I don't know how the Lord may have convicted you this morning but I don't want to drive you to despair.

Early detection is key to cutting off the debt. The debt, the depredation that moths accomplish, and most moths do their damage and dark secret places and so if you have dark secret places in your life bring them into the light of God's presence.

But take comfort from this God can restore moth-eaten years here. These words of encouragement from Joel chapter 2 verse 25. The moth is not mentioned here, but something that is analogous to the moth I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has the hopper, the destroyer and the cutter. These are various things that would eat up a crop and there were crops that were eaten up. Joel predicted a great great plague of locusts that was coming and then the Lord says this very encouraging thing. I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer in the cutter. My great army which I sent among I hope that the Holy Spirit gives us insight as we day by day, examine our lives and see am I living in the light.

Am I using my time wisely. Am I pursuing the Lord in my in my taking advantage of the opportunity that is afforded me day after day or must I as I get on my knees beside my bed tonight. Look up with shame to have and say Lord I wasted that one. I wasted that one. Please help me not to do it again. Help me to take advantage of the hours in the moments that you give me, and if the moth is at work in my life. Show me where it is helping to expose it to the light and make you and your great grace. Deliver me from this terrible judgment