Posts Tagged ‘Sin’

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Day 348: Daniel 9 — For Great Mercy

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

In Daniel 9 we read the fervent prayer of Daniel lamenting the sins of Israel. It’s not a finger pointing. In fact he uses the first person plural throughout. Lots of “we”. He includes himself in it all even though he was likely very young when all of it was going on. At no point does he shirk the responsibility or blame anyone else. He bears the full brunt of the shame and punishment for the nation he loves. Quite a different picture from what we would expect, a distinct contrast to the Pharisee that Jesus mentioned who was so thankful to not be as sinful the tax collector just around the corner.

Later, in his prayer for mercy he once again assumes a posture of humility. As he pleads for forgiveness, it is not because he or Israel deserves mercy but because God is righteous. “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.” And it is for God’s own sake, not his own that Daniel asks for mercy.

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Posted in Blame, Daniel, Forgiveness, Mercy, Repentance, Sin | Comments Off

Day 232: Psalm 36:1-38:22; Romans 5:6-21 — Viruses and Allergies

Friday, August 20th, 2010

Well I’m traveling again and of course writing my blog entry at the last minute while on an airplane. Something in the New Jersey air really hammered my sinuses. Either that or I had a head cold going into the trip. Hopefully the return to the hot dry air of Austin will restore my nose and eyes to their former cheery selves.

When pollutants enter the body (such as pollen or cold viruses or the various toxins we put in our bodies by choice or not every day), the body tries to fight them off by creating antibodies and other immune responses. Snot is a great immune response. It wraps up the bad stuff in a gooey mucous coating which it then tries to expel. This is kind of gross and not very pleasant when you start having a sneezing fit at 30,000 feet.

God put great healing abilities in our bodies. The more pollutants, the more antibodies we create…up to a point. Eventually one will win and drive the other out. But the pollutants will eventually return. And our body is stronger to deal with them next time (if we treat it kindly). So should we get sick in order to make our bodies even healthier? Well I don’t want to spoil Romans 6:1 but 5:20-21 is a hint of what’s to come.

20The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger so they say. But it sure does hurt when you’re going through it.

Today’s reading in Psalms 36-38 is also filled with joys and sorrows, triumphs and losses. But through it all we can trust in the Lord that grace will reign in us through Christ .

Oh, and if you thought my comments about snot and mucous were too gross, take a look at Psalm 38:5:

5My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.

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Day 190: 2 Chronicles 26:1-29:2; Acts 7:17-41 — Stupid People Tricks

Friday, July 9th, 2010

It’s amazing the lengths we will go to in order to do things our own way. Sometimes we rebel against authority figures from our past for the wrongs they committed against us. Sometimes we are convinced we are right in spite of mounds of evidence to the contrary. Sometimes we are just plain stoopid.

Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28) was one of those kings who just wouldn’t learn. He tried over and over to make things work out in his favor but never looked to the one source of true security. “Hey Ahaz! Giving gifts to the idols didn’t work for you. How about giving some of God’s stuff to the other king.” When that didn’t work, he tried giving gifts to the idols again.

Maybe if Stephen had been around to convince him, he would have changed his ways. Or maybe not. Those that heard Stephen’s impassioned retelling of the history of Israel (Acts 7) didn’t react appropriately. Just as the Israelites in the wilderness witnessed the wonders of God firsthand yet capriciously turned from Him toward a golden calf, the Jews rejected Stephen’s message and stoned him in the end (oops! hope I didn’t spoil anyone for tomorrow’s reading). So he probably wouldn’t have been able to convince Ahaz to repent either.

The question is, would he be able to convince you?

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Posted in 2 Chronicles, Acts, Repentance | 3 Comments »

Day 162: 2 Kings 17 — Enough

Friday, June 11th, 2010

In Deuteronomy 28, before his death Moses told Israel that once they crossed into the Promised Land there would be blessings for obedience to God and curses for disobedience. Following the death of Joshua, Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and worshiped various gods of peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger by serving Baal and the Ashtoreths (Judges 2:11-13). For approximately 325 years, over and over Israel turned from the LORD to other gods. GOD would use foreign oppression to chasten his people and then send a deliverer (Judge).

Following the death of King Solomon, God gives ten tribes of Israel to Jeroboam and promised that if Jeroboam walked in His ways and kept God’s statutes and commands, as David did, God would build an enduring dynasty through Jeroboam. However, once Jeroboam became King over the ten tribes of Israel he led the people away from God for fear that they would turn back to Jerusalem to worship God. He set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan, appointed men other than Levites to serve as priests, set up festivals other than what God had instituted, and led the people away from God’s commands and ordinances. Succeeding kinds of Israel led Israel to worship gods other than the LORD. The LORD was longsuffering but Israel persisted in the sins of Jeroboam and would not turn away from them. As given to us in the accounts in 2 Kings 17, finally God became very angry and used Assyria to remove Israel from His presence as he had warned in Deuteronomy 28. Assyria took many of the noble families of Israel to other lands, many of whom would never return.

So, where does that leave us today? We are God’s chosen people; his adopted children bought with the blood of His son, Jesus Christ. God loves us as his children. His grace for the forgiveness of sins is extended to us through Jesus. As with Israel, God also expects us to follow His ways. When we become His children, we take on the responsibility of turning from the ways that we lived previously and the ways that the world would want us to live in the future. Just as God promised Jeroboam that if he followed God he would receive blessings, God promises us the same. God wants to bless our lives but He also wants us to follow Him.

  • God is and has always been jealous for men to walk in His ways.
  • God is long-suffering and wants us to follow him. He will chasten us when we turn from His ways.
  • We should pay strong attention to whom we choose to follow – the ways of God or the ways that men tell us are better or are God’s ways.
  • Continuing to not follow God after having been saved, but walk in the ways we (humans) think is best will eventually take us from God’s grace. I don’t know where the line is drawn that God will finally have had enough, but I don’t want to know.
  • I sin when I don’t want to and try as I might, sin anyway. However, there is a difference in trying every day to follow God and continually searching for his ways, and living by whatever way I want to or that someone tells me is their opinion of the way. God gave us the Bible to use to find his way, and the Holy Spirit to guide us. These are what we should be using and listen to.

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Day 117: I Samuel 2:25 — “It was the will of the Lord to put them to death.”

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

I love this passage! It is one of the passages in the Old Testament that shows the “good news” and “grace” of our God. You see there is a false teaching that has infiltrated our world, our lives, and our church. It is the false teaching that God is not just. You see it in those who would teach we have grace without consequences. These are code words for “God is not just”. If this passage of God’s will to put someone to death shocks you, it is a good sign that you have been infiltrated by this false teaching. I would suggest that you do not understand justice. You do not understand God. You do not understand the creator. This is a story of sin and its consequences. Eli’s sons are sinful and even Eli warns his sons (1 Samuel 2:22-25). I love this passage because just like so many other sin and consequences stories if you look for it there is judgment and the grace of God involved and vice versa. We, like Eli’s sons, deserve death but in 1 Samuel 2:26, we see there is one who is growing in stature with God and man. This is grace and hope. In the midst of judgment God has a plan to redeem us.

I love this passage because in God’s justice, we are all deserving death, yet God our creator chooses to prolong our relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. God sends His son through history to save us and pay the price for our crimes. I deserve death but the good news is that I am still alive.

However, we must not be fooled…having a relationship with God is both demanding and dangerous. Those who would serve God place themselves under both God’s grace and God’s judgment. I love this story because God is just. I don’t have to make sense of a world gone bad but I know who is in control and who is worthy to be worshiped. I don’t have to seek a warm fuzzy feeling to know God. To know God is to be judged by Him and to be judged by Him is to receive His grace. Grace and judgment are intertwined and to try to separate one from the other is foolishness. Do we really want justice (1 Samuel 2:25) or have we gotten used to injustice (we should be able to sin like Eli’s sons with no consequences)?

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Posted in 1 Samuel, Creation, Sin, Worship | 2 Comments »

Day 46: Leviticus 4:1-6:7; Matthew 26:6-25 — I didn’t mean to…”Pay attention.”

Monday, February 15th, 2010

How many times do you remember saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to (do this, say that, break this, etc.)…” My mother likes to tell her grandchildren, to their chagrin, that a great and important rule of life is “Pay attention.”

Today’s two readings, and a few of the ones subsequent, seem to collide headlong. Our readings in Leviticus give directions for sacrifices and restitution to be made for sins, thoughtless and otherwise. Matthew begins narratives for that great, wondrous Sacrifice of sacrifices.

In Leviticus several paragraphs describe atonement one must make for the unintentional or thoughtless sins. Look at how the reading distinguishes between the anointed priest, a leader, and a common person. A few truths of life emerge immediately.

  1. Sometimes we just really make a mess of things. Sometimes we drown our God-likeness in a flood of human foibles. On top of that, sometimes we do not even know that we did it! What a great and gracious Creator to know what blundering feeble creatures we can be, and rather than extinguish us He provides for a way to come back, to be at one again with Him. God calls on us to acknowledge our sin and own up to it. He calls on us to take steps to apologize, make peace, set right what we have done, Matthew 5:23-24. What we do matters. Our actions affect others. There are no victimless crimes. We need to be thoughtful, purposeful. Ephesians 5:15-21.
  2. Family, friends, people will hurt us sometimes, and they may not even know that they did it! We must be the ones to bring up those uncomfortable discussions so that we not only can clear up what we may have misunderstood, but bring to the attention of that person an area of life that needs work. We need to exercise that part of our God-likeness that looks for grace, healing, and restoration. “Hey, I really need to talk to you. I am confused about something…” Oh! Judging judging judging!  No, rather this takes self reflection, repentance, and measuring by the righteous standard, and grace!  Matthew 6:14-15, Matthew 7:1-5, Matthew 18:15-18, John 7:24, Ezekiel 3:17-21, Psalms 133:1.
  3. Some sins and mistakes have greater effects and consequences than others. The high priest, a leader of the people, a common person all sin. All must be made right with God. Yet the effects, the consequences of those sins can be quite different, and so their atoning sacrifices get separate treatment in the text. How does a person go from “oops, spilled milk” to “oops, broken life”? All start with perhaps a lack of commitment to God, a lack of holy living, an attitude of “oh, that is not a big thing!” to our own weaknesses or “mistakes” (as sin is called today). Rather, be holy, committed to God in all things, so that the practice of life leads us to holiness and grace in all things. 1 Peter 1:13-21.

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Day 19: Matthew 12:38-50 — Scholazonta “empty/devoted”

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

depressedI remember a friend’s dad.  He had stopped being devoted to God and was living his life conformed to the world and he was unhappy. His daughter became sick.  He quickly became devoted again and made all kinds of promises to God in exchange for his daughter’s health.  His daughter recovered and he stopped his devotion to God and returned to a life of sin.  He became even more miserable and his life seemed worse than before.

In our reading from Matthew 12:38-50, I want to focus on the narrative of Matthew 12:43-45.  It is the story of the unclean spirit leaving a person then returning with seven other spirits more evil than the first.  Jesus tells us we can end up worse than when we started.  An interesting word is used, σχολάζοντα (scholazonta). This word is a participle (it has the characteristics of a verb and adjective).  It comes from the word σχολάζω, (scholazō). The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament defines it as to “have time for, devote oneself to; stand empty, be unused.” In regards to a thing it is “empty” but to a person it is something we may be “devoted to.” For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:5, it is used as “devote yourselves to prayer.” Matthew is utilizing a word play between a literal “empty” house and a person that is void of “devotion.” Jesus is telling us that when the unclean spirits return to a person that has no devotion, their life becomes worse than before.

Questions:

Have you ever struggled with something (sin, addiction, bad habit, etc.) that you overcame for a while and then you went back to and it became worse than before?  I wonder if we think we can overcome our problems on our own without being devoted to God?

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Posted in Matthew, Sin | 2 Comments »

Day 12: Matthew 9:1-17 — Forgiveness of Sins

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

A paralytic was brought to Jesus for healing but Jesus forgave his sins (Matthew 9:2). In our culture, we often don’t get this concept because we separate health from sin. However, the ancient world thought sin was a root cause to bad health, so Jesus forgives sins. Jesus calls Matthew and is criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:11) but Jesus states He came to call sinners (Matthew 9:13). Asclepius was the god of healing.  He granted to the sick healing if they were pure. If they were impure, well, they got what they deserved. Jesus is questioned about why His disciples don’t fast (Matthew 9:14). Fasting was not for losing weight. Fasting in the ancient worlds was related to the fear of demons. Demons were thought to gain power over you by your eating. So, one strategy for protecting oneself from demons was to fast. Jews fasted when they mourned, or it was an act of penance intended to protect one self from disaster (1 Kings 21:27-29), or they were seeking mercy (2 Samuel 12:22-23), or they were seeking forgiveness from sins. In the Jewish document the Apocalypse of Elijah 1:21, true fasting releases one from sin, heals, and/or casts out demons. There is a lot going on here but Jesus forgives sins, calls sinners, and doesn’t need to fast because He has authority over sin, demons, and/or our health.

Questions

It’s the New Year and everyone is making resolutions, changing habits, or seeking some guru to help them with their health, beauty, and longer life. Have you thought about your sins? Have you thought about the One who forgives sins? Have you thought about the One who has ultimate authority over sins? Where will you go for forgiveness of your sins?

P.S.

Let me tell you about my savior… He forgives sins!

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Posted in Matthew | 3 Comments »

Day 7: Matthew 5-6 – Forgiveness

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

My step-father was a mean man.  Alcohol drove his life.  When he was sober, he was a nice guy, and that was not too often.  But when he was drunk, I learned to stay clear.  I remember him putting me in the car and driving down the road as fast as he could.  He would laugh as he looked at me to see how scared I was. Just pure meaness.  I would come home from school and find my mother beaten and I learned to be a man and stand in between him and my mom and take on someone twice my size.  I called the police, I argued with him, and I once even had to evade a knife attack.  I guess the good thing was with the alcohol in his blood stream his reaction rate was poor.  I learned to hate this man.  I despised him.  My rage would boil within me anytime I would hear his name or see him.  Thankfully, he was out of my life for many years, until one day while I was working in a retail store, I saw him.  I hid and watched him from behind an ailse.  My rage returned and I thought it might be time to see if he could go toe-to-toe with a man his size and not a young boy. 

The only problem is that I had become a Christian and now the temptation was being tempered with Jesus’ words to forgive.  In the back of my head ran the words that if I did not forgive then I would not be forgiven (Matthew 6:15).  Like Peter, I realized that I was denying my Lord and in that retail store, I heard the cock crow three times.  I ran away.  I struggled for a while trying to deal with my hatred and a desire to try to forgive that seemed impossible.  I knew it was time to forgive my step-father but he didn’t deserve it, but I guess neither do I, or even maybe you.  I forgave my step-father, I still hate the awful things that he has done but I pray that his demons might be replaced by the love of God.  I hope he finds peace.  He is dead now and I hope he makes it to heaven.

Question: How about you…do you struggle with forgiveness?  I think we all do….read Matthew 6:14-15.

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Day 5: Genesis 9-10 – קֶשֶׁת (qešet) bow

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

rainbowIn our reading today from Genesis 9:1-10:32, I have picked out a verse from Genesis 9:13.  I grew up with the image of the rainbow as a monumental visual representation of God’s love for us after the sinfulness of man was irradiated with the flood.  Yet, as I grew older, I found that Sunday School did not always provide me with the deeper image.  The word we translate for “rainbow” is a Hebrew word.  It is qešet. It is used in the Old Testament for the weapon used by a hunter (Genesis 27:3) and warrior (I Samuel 31:3). Simply, a bow that an arrow is shot from.  It was a common weapon in the ancient Near East, The tribe of Benjamin were noted archers (Judges 20; I Chronicles 8:40). Jonathan used a bow (I Samuel 20:20) and later the bow became the weapon of leaders and kings (II Kings 9:24). The bow is controlled by God (Genesis 49:24). The arrow finds its mark because of God’s guidance (I Kings 22:34; II Kings 13-16). The broken bow can represent divinely imposed defeat (I Samuel 2:4), and/or peace (God peaceably “hangs” his bow, Genesis 9:13).

What a great thing that God does.  In Genesis 9:13, he hangs up His bow.  God sees the bow in the sky and remembers that He will not take such drastic measures against us again.  In fact, He plans to not make war against us in the way of a watery flood but in our new covenant, He plans to save us through His Son (His ultimate plan since the origin of sin).

Source: Harris, R. L., Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., & Waltke, B. K. (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed.) (819). Chicago: Moody Press.

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