Tag Archives: the wages of sin is death

(Exodus 1-4) Even Moses

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Did God really want to kill Moses? 4:24 tells us He really did. Why? Wasn’t Moses going back to Egypt because God told him to? Hadn’t God said Moses would deliver the Israelites out of bondage? It seems odd that God would decide to kill this man.

If you read 4:21-26 you read the Gospel. Yes, Moses was going through the motions of obedience, but the fact remained he hadn’t been circumcised. That was disobedience. That was sin. And sin comes with a death penalty, no matter who you are, no matter how much you might appear to others to be following God.

It wasn’t until Moses was circumcised, until blood had been spilt, that God let him go. The same requirement is in effect today. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. (Hebrews 9:22)

After Jesus, His is the blood that brings salvation. No one needs to be circumcised or cut or killed in order for sins to be forgiven. But make no mistake, blood needs to be applied in order for God to pardon a death sentence.

And that’s the Gospel.

Our bodies don’t need to be circumcised, but our hearts do. That involves a true repentance, an acceptance of God’s will. Forgiveness doesn’t happen until the blood of Jesus is applied to a surrendered heart. Then, and only then, will God “let (us) go” as He did Moses here in Exodus 4.

You can do all the religious stuff, and go through the motions of obedience like Moses did. But even Moses had to address his sin.

And so do you and I.

June 9 – WHACK!

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Proverbs 19-21

When I was in junior high (about a hundred years ago, I think) it was not uncommon to be sitting in the classroom and hear the door open just a crack. We could hear one door after another all the way down the hall open in the same way. We’d all sit up a little straighter, eyes wide open, and no one, not even the teacher most of the time, would speak.

Then we would hear that dreaded, WHACK. Sometimes we would even hear it again, WHACK! Often we’d hear a teacher scolding the guilty student in such a way there could be no mistake. A rule had been broken, and this is what happens when rules are broken.

Solomon says: When a scoffer is punished, the naive becomes wise… (21:11) You can bet more than one student learned an important lesson from those paddlings back in junior high. I know I did. I never wanted the student in the hall to be me! I became a rule-follower. It seemed the wise thing to do.

Those days are long gone because someone was more concerned about the guilty child’s ego. I find myself wanting to get up on my soapbox. Especially in light of the recent convicted rapist, Brock Turner’s light sentence, the unbelievable statement he read at sentencing, and his own father’s statement after the fact.

Let’s make it personal. Parents, do your children know the rules of your home? Are the rules enforced consistently? Are the consequences swift and painful? Hear me when I say if we don’t teach them this truth on a small scale, they won’t understand it on a larger scale. And they’ll grow up to think the consequences for breaking God’s rules are no big deal, either.

I shudder to think about the lesson other young people have learned from the judge’s decision in the Turner case. Because lessons have been learned. The doors of the classroom were opened, and instead of hearing the WHACK, they heard the teacher pat the guilty child on the back and send him on his way.

 

The way you discipline your children, the way our society disciplines law-breakers, is done in a classroom occupied by others. When the guilty are punished, the naive become wise. That’s what Solomon said through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I pray that we are raising wise children instead of children who will remain naive. Just the other day we learned that naivety is a death sentence.

It’s that serious.