the righteous and the wicked

Ecclesiastes 3:16-17, "And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there. I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work."



It was Andrew Bonar, who over a century ago said, "I looked for the church and found it in the world. I looked for the world and found it in the church." But before that Solomon made the same observation. No matter where you look you will find both the good and the evil. It was first in the garden of Eden that God established the fact that these things often are found with each other. It doesn't take much to realize that the opposite of good is evil from this thought, but it is sometimes mind boggling to consider how often the two are intertwined beside each other. Sometimes we get the thought that the church should be a place free from the presence of that which is wicked, however the Bible teaches us that no matter where you look you will find both. the great promise for the righteous is not that they will be kept from the wicked while here on this earth, but that God knows the difference between the two.



As David said in the twenty third Psalm, "the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish". The Lord knows those who are His, and He knows how to judge the lost. We need not fear to find about us those who are wicked. What we should be more concerned with, is to be sure that we are not ourselves counted as those who are wicked.