In this age of litigation, warning labels have gotten a bit ridiculous. After a woman wins a million dollar lawsuit against McDonalds because her cup of coffee was not properly marked as hot, we have felt the need to warn against EVERYTHING.
For example, on a bottle of dog shampoo we find the warning, "Contents should not be fed to fish." On a baking pan, "Ovenware will get hot when used in oven (duh)." Or on a blanket, "Not to be used as protection from a tornado." I have been in a tornado and I'm here to tell you that anyone with any sense would know a blanket won't protect you if the whole HOUSE won't protect you. Another of my favorites is found on a three-pronged fishing hook, "Harmful if swallowed" (just ask any fish, he'll tell you). Or on a carpenter's drill, "Not intended for use as a dental drill." But the most ridiculous of all warning labels is found on a paint remover that heats up to 1,ooo degrees, "Do no use heat gun as a hair dryer." Now THAT would be some hairdo, I'm telling you what!
Other examples are found on the inside of a six-inch plastic bag, "Do not climb inside this bag and zip it up. Doing so will cause injury or death." Now no one I know could get more than a foot inside a six-inch bag. And finally, the award goes to a can of pepper spray that says, "May irritate eyes." Isn't that's what it is suppose to do??
I could go on forever about our silly notions about what others need to be warned about. We demand warnings that our coffee is hot, our ice is cold, our bags are plastic and could suffocate us (ever wonder if any of these people ever went to school?). It has gotten so totally ridiculous that many of us, me included, don't even look at the warnings that come with the things we buy. We flip past that page to the "some assembly required" pages not caring that whatever it is could hurt us. I mean, how many of us read all that paperwork on side effects and drug interactions that come with our prescriptions? I know I don't. I figure the doctor knows what else I am taking and he knows best. But we see in the news all the time people who have died from drug interactions. And still we don't want to know.
As God's people, He has also given us many warnings which, unlike some of the obvious things we warn each other about, need to be paid significant attention. For example, I Peter 5:8, "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about , seeking whom he may devour. Also Hosea 9:10, "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baal-peor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved. Or Matthew 6:23, "But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness." The Psalmist says in chapter 66 verse 18, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Having the Lord not hear me when I pray, that would be a tough one. But not as tough as Exodus 20:5, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." We are living the results of that warning today. One of the biggest warnings comes in Revelation 3:3, "If therfore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." We need to be doing God's work as if tomorrow Christ will return because all these people who think they have figured out when the end of the earth as we know it will be are in for a rude awakening. No one on earth knows when He is coming...no one knows when the last opportunity to come to know Christ will be gone. Nobody.
I am as bad as anyone not to read the warning labels on things I buy or on prescriptions. But I better not find myself lacking when it comes to the many warnings God has given me in His Word. I have bearly scratched the surface of what God has warned us against.
Everything I need to know to live on this earth is in God's word. All I need to do is listen, Let's not make Him use another wilderness or a another donkey to warn us to stay away from sin.
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