Category Archives: Sin

Righteousness

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Genesis 6

Warren Wiersbe (Be Basic; David C Cook publisher; 2010; p 105ff) challenges us to be men and women who have the same attributes as Noah. Genesis 6:9 gives us four traits to emulate. Noah was righteous, blameless, and he walked with God. Verse 22 tells us Noah was obedient.

I’m going to consider each characteristic separately for the next four days. So today the question is: what is righteousness?

Is righteousness the same as religious? Is it something I can aspire to achieve? The Apostle Paul has quite a bit to say about that.

In Galatians 2:21 he says that if we could be righteous through the law, meaning being good and following the rules, then Christ died for nothing. So, no, we can’t be good enough to call ourselves righteous. If we could, Jesus sure went through a lot of grief for nothing. And we know He didn’t die for nothing.

Religion doesn’t save, nor does God accept our good deeds as a trade-off for sin.

Again in Titus 3:5 Paul says:

He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Righteousness comes from God, from his own mercy, and not from anything we do. Righteousness, or being right before God, isn’t something to be bartered.

And in 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul explains:

For our sake he (God the Father) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might becomes the righteousness of God.

Did you catch that? In Jesus we BECOME the righteousness of God. We don’t earn it. We become it through faith in the risen Savior. Paul emphasizes our need of God’s righteousness when he quotes an Old Testament passage:

There is none righteous, no, not one. (Romans 3:10)

The precious truth is that even though we can’t hope to be right in God’s eyes because of our sin, Jesus – who IS righteous – places His own righteousness on anyone who believes. We become the righteousness of God Himself!

Proverbs 21:21 says:

Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor.

Pursuing righteousness doesn’t mean trying harder to be good or acceptable to God. It has nothing to do with how “good” we are. Pursuing righteousness means pursuing Jesus.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. (Proverbs 14:34)

The Lord’s righteousness, His perfect standing before God, becomes mine and He who IS light will shine through me as bright as broad daylight.

When you consider Noah, God’s light shown through him all those years he was hammering on that big boat and preaching the need for repentance. He stood out like a sore thumb in a world of sin and rejection of God. So should we.

Are you pursuing Jesus? Have you submitted to Him and allowed Him to dress you in His righteousness for all the world to see? This is my prayer for us all.

Compromise

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Genesis 6:1-8

Wiersbe uses the word “compromise” in his commentary on these verses in his Be Basic study series. Before the flood, godly people began marrying ungodly people. The godly people knew better.

Maybe they told themselves, “you can’t help who you love.” Maybe they thought, “my body, my choice,” or “God wants me to be happy.” Oh, they knew that joining together with God’s enemies was wrong according to the Law given them by God. But they did it anyway.

They might have convinced themselves that through their bond with them, the ungodly people would recognize their wickedness and cross over to the godly side. But a good apple never makes a barrel of rotten apples good. In fact, a good apple tied to a rotten apple doesn’t even make that one rotten apple good.

You and I, as children of God through the blood of His Son Jesus, are called to be a holy people, separate from the world, standing firm in our faith and on the Word of God. One compromise isn’t insignificant.

Compromise is just a dressed up word for sin.

Would It Be Better?

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Genesis 3

I know there are many people who deny the existence of God or question the goodness of God, or simply don’t know if there is a God or gods or a higher power somewhere out there. But I want to ask you a question:

Would the world be better if we all just rejected God altogether? If there were no more Christians, and the Holy Spirit took a step back, would people be kinder? Would our streets be more safe? Would wars cease and everyone be treated fairly?

If everyone did what Adam and Eve did, or didn’t repent, or if they had their own morality and made their own individual rules, if there were no absolutes, would you want to step outside the safety of your home?

If there is good in this world, if there is peace and love it is only because of the grace of God. God uses the result of our disobedience, the natural consequences for sin, to reveal our dependence on Him, on His power, HIs strength, and our inner longing for that which He alone provides – love, and cleansing, and hope, and joy, and fellowship with a loving Heavenly Father.

No. The world would not be better without God. That would be hell.

Smart Enough

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Genesis 3:1-6

When you were young and your mother told you the red coil on top of the stove was hot so you shouldn’t touch it or you’d get burned, you had a choice. Some of us took our moms at her word and avoided the red coil. Some of you might be wearing the scars from the burn, or at least remember the pain you felt when you questioned the truth of what Mom said, and decided to find out for yourself.

One criticism of Christianity is that we simply believe the Bible as true without questioning it. The critics imply that we are not intellectual or just gullible or that we are missing out on the enlightenment of the universe (or some such nonsense).

Consider what questioning God’s Word did for Eve. Satan planted a seed of doubt. But instead of going back to the Word of God, she began to use her own logic. The seed of doubt grew to rejecting God’s Word, and to sin.

I will not apologize for believing the infallibility of God’s Word. I will not be intimidated by the intellectual sounding arguments of some. I will not even consider any other so-called truth.

I don’t need to touch the hot stove to see if what Mom said was true.

God, who created me, inspired His Words to be written down so that I can hear and accept the warning, so that I could hear and accept His grace. His Words are true because God is true.

I’m certainly not smarter than God. But I”m smart enough to take His Word for it.

Quit Trying So Hard

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Ephesians 1-5

I don’t know how anyone, after reading Paul’s words, wouldn’t want what God has to offer:

Grace, mercy, love, acceptance, strength, purpose, family, identity, redemption, wisdom, enlightenment, peace, being rooted and established in love, goodness, righteousness, and truth.

Who doesn’t want those things? People try so hard to find them in so many places and in so many ways. Yet here they are, offered as gifts to anyone who believes in Jesus as the Christ, the Savior of souls.

If you are one who is searching, search no more! Quit trying so hard to find what is right in front of you. Surrender to Jesus and I know all these things will be yours.

Then, when Christ dwells in your heart through faith, “…I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know the love that surpasses knowledge -then you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (3:17-19)

I’m praying for you.

Stay On The Ship

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Acts 27

I was talking to my pastor yesterday about how easy it can be to believe a lie. If you take time to listen to people who reject God, you being to understand their point of view. That can be a good thing, and I hope we are all investing ourselves in people we love and who are rejecting God. But when our understanding of their viewpoint becomes acceptance, we have a problem.

Paul was heading to Rome to be tried for bogus crimes the Jews made up to get rid of him. The ship he was sailing on got caught in a hurricane-force storm that pummeled them for weeks. The soldiers did everything they knew what to do to save the ship from being torn to pieces. They naturally feared for their lives, so Paul encouraged them with a word from God:

But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost, only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, “Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.” So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. (Acts 27:22-25)

In other words, stay in the ship and God has promised me you will be saved. Some of the sailors panicked, however. In their minds, and from what they believed about ships and storms, they determined the better option was to escape to land by lifeboats. They began to lower the lifeboats with the intention of abandoning the ship, in opposition to the Word of God.

When Paul saw what they were doing, he said to the centurion guarding him:

Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved. (Acts 27:31b)

So the ropes were cut, the lifeboats dropped empty into the raging sea. And although the ship was lost, not one of those men lost his life.

I think the moral of the story is the Word of God. Do you believe it or not?

We must sift everything we hear through the words God spoke. We must shape our world-view, our morality, our stand on what is right and what is wrong, our definition of sin and its punishment, our understanding of grace and mercy and love, through the lens of Scripture.

We all hear things from time to time that sound reasonable, maybe even scriptural. And maybe we think: “Ok. I can see their point. Maybe they have something there.”

BUT WAIT!

Before you go any further with that thought you better ask yourself: what does Scripture say? Not just a random verse taken out of context. What does God really say, how did it play out in the lives of the Old Testament Jews, how did Jesus embody the words spoken by the prophets?

Dear ones, there is one Truth. Anything that veers from that Truth is merely opinion and is nothing to stand on. Anything that is not Truth is a lie.

There is one salvation. There is one ship. To attempt to save yourself any other way is death.

I can confidently say that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no one goes to the Father without going through Jesus. I can say you must be born again. I can say that faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

I can tell you that Scripture is God-breathed and it is the first and final authority.

I can say those things unapologetically, having built my life on the truth of it, because those words are in the Bible and the truth of them is demonstrated in those precious pages, and in my life.

Again I ask you concerning to the Word of God: do you believe it or not? Your life depends on your answer.

Don’t Judge?

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Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:37-42

This whole “do not judge” thing is out of control these days, and entirely contrary to what Jesus actually said. He certainly wasn’t saying we shouldn’t call sin sin, or turn a blind eye to sin in ourselves or others. Scripture is pretty clear about that, if you take time to read it.

Jesus wasn’t implying that everyone is entitled to their own truth. Remember, He’s the same One who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one goes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is THE Truth. Not just one of many truths.

If you read these chapters Jesus is telling us to confront and restore a fellow believer who is sinning. Just don’t be a hypocrite about it. Recognize and confess your own sin before trying to address someone else’s sin.

Jesus didn’t say, “Because you’ve sinned, you have no right to point out someone else’s sin.” In fact, He’s saying that BECAUSE we are sinners saved by grace, we have a responsibility to address the plank in another’s eye.

Pointing out sins according to Scripture isn’t trying to judge them. Their actions judge them. You aren’t the judge. But you are the Judge’s voice, His arms and legs, when you have the ability to be used by Him to restore a sinning brother.

Satan’s interpretation of these verses has made Christians weak and stupid. We should be less concerned about being accused of “judging” and more concerned about being accountable to the Judge. Because one day, we all will face Him. I pray that when we do, we’ll be able to look Him in the eye and say, “I did what you told me.”

No, Thank You.

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Ezra 4

When people came and offered to help build the temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, Zerubbabel told them: no, thank you. Even though they claimed to seek God, and would have lightened the load on the Jews (many hands make light work), the people offering their help were not true believers. In fact, Scripture calls them enemies.

Zerubbabel told them they had no part in the building of the temple, and sent them away.

I wish the Church was as protective of the work of the Lord. today It seems we are quick to welcome anyone who knows the password: “I’m a Christian.” But we aren’t necessarily hearing what their lives are telling us.

We welcome the enemy by singing Bethel songs, listening to the likes of Joyce Meier, Andy Stanley, and Joel Osteen. We welcome the enemy when we focus our worship on the band, or focus on the raising of hands and clapping along with the drums. The enemy comes saying the Gospel needs to be relevant to a changing society, that homosexuals can be pastors, that humans are basically good. The list goes on.

We’ve welcomed the enemy, and think we’re building the Church. Zerubbabel knew that you can’t build anything pleasing to God working shoulder-to-shoulder with the enemy.

When are we going to realize the same?

When the Question is, “Why?”

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Ezekiel 25-29

When God told the prophet about the impending doom for the nations, He not only told them what would happen, who would conquer them, and exactly the sin He was punishing them for, God was very clear about why they were being punished:

“Then they will know that I am the Lord their God.”

Often when people go through hardships one of the first things they ask is, “Why?” “Why me?” “Why now?” “Why this?” The answer is the same as it was in Ezekiel’s day:

Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.

Oh, you may be experiencing discipline over a sin you’ve yet to repent of. Or you might be suffering because of a choice you have made; maybe a choice someone else has made. But in it all, God wants you to see Him.

God longs for you to come to Him. He died so you can be saved. Your suffering doesn’t go unnoticed by an absent God. He is there in the midst of it, revealing Himself, drawing you to His saving grace.

So the next time you are tempted to ask, “Why?” open your Bible. See God. Hear Him say exactly what you need to hear through the words He inspired to be written to you. Then submit to God with all your heart. Your situation might not change. But you will discover that all things will work for your good if you love Him, and are answering His call.

Weird

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Ezekiel 3-4; Jeremiah 27-28

The label “weird” is being thrown out a lot lately in the political arena. No one likes to be thought of as weird. It’s a term that is intended to make you think something is wrong with you. That you don’t fit it. That you should be ashamed.

When I read about the Old Testament prophets, I have to think many were considered “weird” by the people around them. I mean, making a model of the city, putting a frying pan up as a barrier, then lying beside it on your side for a year and a half is weird. Going around with a yoke around your neck is weird. Reading God’s Word aloud in a public setting, then tying a rock to it and throwing it into the water is weird.

Elijah, Elisha, all the way up to the last Old Testament prophet, John the Baptist were all kind of weird. But their weirdness was obedience to God to point people to the truth. God revealed Himself in dramatic fashion through the obedience of these precious weird-os.

So what do people see when they look at you? Do they see someone who looks and acts just like a non-believer? Do they see someone who fits in, plays it safe, doesn’t stand out as a child of God?

Or are you weird because you are obedient to your Lord? It might seem weird to shine your light in a world that is more comfortable in the dark. But isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

The world’s definition of “weird” IS WEIRD!

I hope you are weird.