Tag Archives: sin

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.”

But They’re Mean

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Jeremiah 18:18-23

Some people find in hard to be charitable toward people who mistreat them. When someone does us wrong, we like to believe “they’ll get what’s coming to them.” Jeremiah prayed that God would take care of the people he considered his enemies. He even prayed that God would never forgive them, never blot out their sin. In other words, “Send them to hell, Lord, because they’re mean to me.”

Jeremiah’s prayer is recorded in Scripture. God-breathed. So is this a prayer God wants to hear from us?

Hardly.

I believe this prayer is in the Bible as an example of how we ought to pray about our enemy, Satan; how we ought to pray about sin in our own hearts. I don’t think I’m wrong to spiritualize Jeremiah’s prayer in light of what Jesus taught us about our attitude toward people and our attitude toward sin.

We are to love and pray FOR our human enemies. Yet we are to hate and shun evil. We are to do good for those who mistreat us, and destroy the evil inside us.

So I will pray that God will annihilate the evil in me, never to raise its ugly head again. And I will pray that God will save the people entrapped by evil, even if they are mean to me.

The Power is the Miracle

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2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Hosea

Israel was like a prostitute. Time after time, king after king she sold herself to (often) the lowest bidder as we see in their history recored in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

She would go back to God when things got really bad. But the temptation to sin was too great. Israel was addicted to sin

God asked Hosea to live a real-time object lesson to prove the point of Israel’s unfaithfulness. It must have been a tough life for the prophet to live.

I am reminded of a Christian recovering alcoholic by the name of Trisha Fenimore who posts on social media. I follow her on FaceBook. She was being criticized for describing herself as a recovering alcoholic. Well-meaning people tell her that by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit she is healed, no longer an alcoholic. They wanted to encourage her to let go of the past because she has been saved, sins washed away. Which is true.

But Ms. Fenimore explained that the real miracle isn’t that God cured her alcoholism, but rather that He gives her the power to live sober as an alcoholic. She will always be an alcoholic (sinner) but God has provided what she needs – the power over the temptation to drink (sin) one day at a time. (I have paraphrased what she said).

Israel, and Gomer, and Trisha, and I, and you, have the power to resist temptation that comes to us every day. That is the miracle of a loving God for His children who live in a sinful world.

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13, emphasis mine)

Doesn’t mean you won’t be tempted. Doesn’t mean God won’t let you sin. You will be tempted just like everyone else. But as His child, He will give you what you need so that you can choose to stand up under the pressure of sin.

Israel and Gomer didn’t choose to receive what God provided. They chose sin.

I pray that Trisha, and I, and you will choose to accept what God provides: the will and the strength to say no to alcohol, or pornography, or lying, or hatred, laziness, self… whatever tempts us to sin. I pray that instead, we will embrace God’s provision to live holy lives today. We can visit tomorrow’s temptations tomorrow.

Let’s choose God today and experience the miracle of the power to resist temptation in the midst of the temptation to sin, to have the provision of holiness in an unholy world.

They tried

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Jonah 1-4

There are so many lessons to be learned from Jonah. Today the sailors spoke to me, maybe for the first time. They were pagan. they didn’t know God and most likely thought He was just another god like the ones they worshiped.

When the storm came they cried out to their gods, they tried to lighten the ship by throwing their valuable cargo overboard. They did everything they knew to do to save themselves.

These seem like really good men. Even when Jonah said God was punishing him and that if they wanted to be saved they needed to throw him overboard, they couldn’t do it. They continued to struggle against the storm, throwing more things overboard while sparing the life of Jonah.

But no matter how moral they were, or how hard they worked, or how many times they cried out to their gods, the storm kept getting worse. It wasn’t until they obeyed God that the storm calmed, and they were saved.

Does that remind you of so many in our world these days? Sometimes we think the enemies of God are bad people. But many, if not most are nice, moral, hard working, well meaning people doing everything they can to calm the storm, to be ok, to save themselves. What they find it hard to do is to surrender to the will of God. Thing is, there is no salvation apart from God.

I’m so glad the sailors we read about in the book of Jonah recognized the truth about God and believed. I pray the same will be true for the modern-day sailors who are trying so hard to save themselves. May they give it up, surrender to God, obey Him, accept the gift of grace through the blood of Jesus… and be saved.

Protect the Presence

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1 Samuel 4

The ark of the Lord was the Lord’s Presence during the Old Testament. It wasn’t like today when God actually lives in the hearts of Christians. But reading chapter 4 has me thinking.

Israel was at war with the Philistines, and lost an important battle to the enemy. Eli, the High Priest was at home anxiously waiting for news. When the messenger got there, the news wasn’t good.

The first thing Eli heard was that the battle was lost. The second thing he was told was that his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, had both been killed. The news must have cut Eli to the core. Can a parent receive worse news?

There was a third part to that report. The ark of God had been taken as plunder by the enemy.

When (the messenger) mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died… (verse 18a)

Eli’s pregnant daughter-in-law was then given the report. She was told about the defeat of the Jewish army and the deaths of her husband and his brother. To that, she found out her father-in-law was also dead. Again devastating news, this time for a young woman starting her family.

She also was told the ark of Lord had been captured by the Philistines. She immediately went into labor and died in childbirth.

The awful news of the loss of life understandably grieved Eli and his daughter-in-law. But what seems to have tipped the scales and threw them over the edge was the news of the captured ark of God.

Now, here’s what I’m wondering. Like I said the ark was the presence of God in Israel. The presence of God in 2024 is in your heart and mine. If His presence was removed today, would that news tip us over the edge or would we even notice?

Obviously, if the Holy Spirit decided to pack it all in and return to heaven, we’d notice. We’d be in hell.

But do we understand that our sin separates us from God? Some people don’t worry about that thinking once saved always saved, and God’s promise to never leave or forsake us. But that doesn’t mean God will follow us into sin if that’s where we are headed. He won’t forsake us. But we can certainly forsake Him.

I imagine all of us have experienced times when we feel closer to God than other times. Why is that? Does God move, or do we?

What causes the change except sin? God cannot and will not exist where sin is. And if we are holding sin in our hearts, where do you think God is? It’s at those times I might not know where He is, but I sure know where He’s NOT.

If I refuse to confess a sin, and then wonder why I feel I’m not as close to God as I used to be, I need to wake up. The problem isn’t that I don’t “feel” close to God. The problem is I’m NOT close to God because of my sin. It has nothing to do with my feelings and everything to do with my sin.

Oh, that we would be as heartbroken as Eli and his daughter-in-law over the thought of the loss of God’s presence. May we protect the Presence by moving nearer and nearer to Him through reading Scripture, praying and obeying. May we recognize sin and repent every time.

And may we never get comfortable living with the distance between our Holy God and ourselves.

Protect the Presence.

Lip Service

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Joshua 24

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Joshua told the Israelites to “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” The Jews responded: “We will serve the Lord our God and obey Him.”

Was that response an appeasement to Joshua akin to “whatever?” There wasn’t anything wrong with what they said, necessarily. It had the acceptable “Christian” catch-phrases. But it kind of seems like lip service to me.

Joshua had given them two specific tasks.
1. get rid of the idols among you
2. yield your hearts to the Lord

The Jews promised neither. And reading about the choices they make in the Promised Land indicates they did neither. Lip service.

God is still telling His children to throw away the idols among us AND yield our hearts to Him. Do we sit here and say, “Sure, God. Whatever you say,” then go on our merry way holding onto sin, to self, to success…? Do we say we yield our hearts, yet hold onto thinking God ought to yield His heart to ours and give us what we want?

Lip service.

Lip service is not obedience. And obedience is what God demands. I don’t think God is interested in the words. He is interested in the action.

Like I said, maybe I’m reading too much into this. But maybe I’m not.

The Lord Helping Me

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Joshua 12-17

There are two separate and opposite approaches to following God in these chapters. God had given the land to the Jews marked it out for them so each tribe knew what was their’s. However, there were people already living on that land and in those cities. Taking the land would require more than a U-Haul. It would require wars – victories and defeats. It would require strength and faith and obedience.

So here is approach #1: CALEB (14:10-15)

At 85 he was as fit as he was at 40. (I am neither). God had promised Caleb a portion of the land after he and Joshua had spied out the land and came back with a report saying they could defeat the giants living there. The other spies threw fear into the people and the whole nation was forced to wander 40 years in the wilderness as punishment for their lack of faith in God.

Now it was time to do what they should have done 40 years earlier. Caleb had been ready then. He was ready now. Here is his approach:

You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, BUT, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out JUST AS HE SAID. (vs 12b) (emphasis mine)

Caleb was ready to take the land at 85! Why? He trusted God. He knew God would help him do what God told him to do.

Which leads to approach #2: THE TRIBE OF JOSEPH (17:14-18)

They had already taken the land God had given them. Well, kind of. The Canaanites didn’t go down easily and were still living shoulder to shoulder with the Jews. The descendants of Joseph were living in the land, but they were outgrowing it. There just wasn’t room for the Canaanites AND the Israelites.

So they went to Joshua and complained about the crowded living conditions. “We need more land,” they said.

I think Joshua probably shook his head and rolled his eyes “No you don’t,” he replied. “You just need to use what God has already given you.” He told the people to get off their couches and continue the work God had assigned them. “Clear the land…you can drive out the Canaanites. Problem solved.”

We see Caleb ready to plunge head first into battle knowing God would be with him. We see Joseph’s clan hitting a road block of their own making, and wanting to take a detour. They wanted the blessing without the work. They wanted God to give them, without having faith God would help them, get what they needed.

In which approach to following God do you see yourself? I know God has given you a task, has given you land to clear so to speak. Do you grab His hand and go to work? Or do you sit back and expect Him to give you land already cleared by someone else?

Do you expect blessing without obedience, favor without faith?

There is still land to possess, souls in need of a Savior, sins that need to be annihilated in your life and mine. God says, “Go.” How do you approach obedience? How do I?

God WILL go with you. He WILL fight for and with you. Do you trust Him? I pray that you – and I – will say with Caleb:

I know that what God is asking me to do seems impossible but, the Lord helping me, I will take the land.

Don’t Go Back

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Deuteronomy 26-28

“A journey I said you should never make again.” (28:6b)

God, as He repeatedly does, lays out His demands, His blessings for obedience, His punishment for disobedience. There need be no question what is involved in God’s kingdom.

Throughout Scripture, God begs us to follow Him. He pleads with us to obey Him. He warns us over and over about the consequences that come with disobedience. He lays out a path for us to take that leads to glorious blessings. He wants us to take that path. But He won’t force us.

That path is paved with the blood of Jesus. It’s the path that leads us away from our bondage to sin, away from darkness and pain, and into freedom, love, light, and joy. It breaks God’s heart to see anyone turn around and head back toward the darkness and bondage.

It’s a journey we should never make again.

Yet some do. Some choose sin over holiness, self over surrender, things over a relationship with God. The path isn’t always easy. And some people just don’t want to make the effort.

These days when so many people are “deconstructing” their faith, please don’t go back. Hear God say:

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it. (Isaiah 30:21)

In which direction are you heading? My prayer, and God’s desire, is that you will follow Him with surrender, obedience, determination, faith, and joy. Because not following Him is a journey you should never make again.

If Only

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Numbers 33:55-56

If only. If only Israel had listened to and obeyed God, and had driven out the inhabitants of the Promised Land, life would have looked a lot different for them – and maybe for us.

If only I had eliminated sin in my young life, and obeyed God instead of ignoring Him, life would undoubtedly look different for me – and maybe for my family.

If only I would take my sin seriously today and drive it out instead of tolerating it, my life and that of those I love would look differently.

If only.

All of It

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Numbers 30-31

War is horrible. The killing, looting, and destruction reveals the worst in man. But what do you do when it’s God ordering you to go to war? How about when He orders you to kill all men, women, and children? You probably do what the Israelite soldiers did, and show compassion, and take the women and children captive instead of actually killing them.

Bring them home. Give them work to do and a place to live. That’s the compassionate thing to do.

We learn, however, that there was a very good reason God insisted the women die. They were the ones who had embraced idolatry and lured the Jews into their sin. They were more God’s enemies than the men! And here the Israelite soldiers are inviting them into their own homes.

This side of the cross our battles are not with flesh and blood. Thankfully we are NOT called to take the lives of people who have different beliefs or who have hurt us in some way.

Our enemies are spiritual, but they are no less threatening. God commands us to go to war… and kill them all.

Yet sometimes we think, “I’ll eliminate greed. I’ll destroy adultery. I’ll put to death impure thoughts. But…”

We tell ourselves God didn’t really mean put pride to death. I’m supposed to look out for number one! Surely God didn’t mean to eliminate resentment. That man hurt me. He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.

One little lie. One unkind word. Just a little gossip. That hint of jealousy. I’ll make room for them in my heart. They are just “children.”

But the Israelites had to kill the children, too. Why? Because children grow up, get stronger, have more influence. And so do baby sins.

Yes, it’s hard to read these chapters. We are compassionate people. But don’t let your compassion prevent you from hearing God tell you to go to war against sin in your life.

All of it.