Tag Archives: Sin

Spit on My Face

March 8, 2010

Sin has farther-reaching consequences than we are probably comfortable with.  Many of us live under the Satanic delusion that if we indulge ourselves in some fleshly way or another and then immediately pray for forgiveness, that everything will be alright again.  God will take us back.  He won’t remain angry at us.  After all, Christ took the wrath for that sin on the cross; as long as I’m truly sorry, God won’t sustain the consequences of His displeasure.

Once again, it was John Owen that opened my eyes to the falsehood of these thoughts.  Chapter 13 in Kapic and Taylor’s edition of his Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers is entitled, “Do Not Speak Peace to Yourself Before God Speaks It, But Hearken to What God Says to Your Soul”.  His point in this chapter is that the Christian who willfully sins ought not to kid himself that the relationship between him and God has been restored until God makes that plain.  He even goes so far to say that we can’t even use the Scripture’s promises of restoration for the repentant to assuage our souls before God has given the comfort Himself.

I don’t mind admitting that I neither liked nor agreed with this chapter in Owen’s work when I first read it.  Surely if we claim the Bible’s promises of reconciliation, we will indeed be reconciled!

Numbers 12 changed my mind.  In that chapter, Miriam sinned when she spoke against Moses.  Her pride welled up and produced fruit when she grew tired of Moses’ continual leadership and desired some spotlight for herself as well.  In punishment for this sin, she was struck with leprosy.  We are told in verse 11 that Aaron, and most likely Miriam as well, immediately sought forgiveness.  Moses himself even dropped to his face in that very moment to plead with Yahweh on her behalf.  God’s answer to Moses’ prayer ought to give us a chill: “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be shamed seven days?  Let her be shut outside the camp seven days, and after that she may be brought in again” (Numbers 12:14).

Would it change how readily you give into the temptation of the Devil or your own wicked heart (James 1:14) if you knew that the fracture in your relationship to God after the fact would last for a week or more?  It should!  Life stinks when we have no joy and peace in serving the Lord.  Satan knows that.  He is ever your enemy.  When he overcomes your will with temptation and you take a bite of what he has offered, his weapons tear through your soul.  You have just invited the assassin into your home, and he is not interested in merely giving you some morsel that you desire so that you can indulge and then immediately fly back to God.  He knows, even if you don’t, that God’s displeasure at your transgression will not be immediately over.  One of the Enemy’s greatest lies is to tell you that you can sin and then go immediately to the Father for a restored peace.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not talking about ultimate forgiveness for sins.  That’s Christ’s work.  I’m talking about peace and blessedness.  If you want to be greatly used of God tomorrow, then don’t indulge in presumptuous sin today.  If you want to experience the joy and peace of salvation this month, then don’t give into the temptation to willfully violate God’s commands under some kind of illusion that you can simply ask for forgiveness and be immediately and totally restored.

We need to fear the shaming spit of our Father and let that fear drive us toward a more serious pursuit of holiness.  I don’t like the way the worldlings live.  I’ve tasted the joy and beauty of living in God’s peace and I don’t want to go back, even for a week.  Start counting the costs of sin and let that steep price-tag allow you to pass right on by without even taking the offered temptation off of the shelf for a look.

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The Sin-Killer

March 5, 2010

You want to know how cool the Bible is?  It has a story about a guy who rams a spear through two people having sex.  And on top of that, God is so pleased with this action that He makes an eternal covenant of peace with the killer right there on the spot.  The young killer’s name was Phineas (yes, I would love to name a son after him), and his story is found in Numbers 25.

Now, I have already written about my sick tastes in being drawn to stories like this (see previous blog post here), so I won’t do so again here.  Instead, I want to focus on why God was so pleased with what happened.

One commandment that God repeatedly gives His people is that they should not intermix with unbelievers.  Israel was to remain separate from the nations around them, and God’s reasoning behind commanding this was that shackling yourself in marriage to an unbeliever is about the most sure way to corrupt your faith that can be found (Exodus 34:12-16).  If you marry a pagan, it is very likely that he or she will eventually lead you off into some aspect or another of paganism.  Thus, in the New Testament as well, those in the church are given the command to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14).  To do so is purely disobedient and utterly foolish, no matter what kind of ridiculous excuse the believer gives about “evangelistic dating” or whatever.

Well, in Numbers 25, this was exactly the way that Satan was ambushing the people of God.  He sent a bunch of hot Moabite girls into the camp and all of the stupid Israelite guys were chasing after them.  Then, when they invited the boys to the sacrifices of their gods, these lust-sick idiots went right along with them.

In judgment of these acts, God told Moses to “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the LORD, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel” (Numbers 25:4).  So, Moses gives the order to the judges of Israel.  And while they are standing there discussing this, and while the godly ones were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting because of the sad state of the people, a fool named Zimri walks by with a Moabite whore named Cozbi, giggling and making googly-eyes at each other as they made their way toward Zimri’s tent (okay the giggling and googly-eyes aren’t in the text, but you get the picture).  At this point, Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, grabs a spear and follows them into the bedroom where he shish-kabobs them right there on the spot in the act (Numbers 25:7-8).

God’s pleasure with this act of justice is made immediately known.  He tells Moses that Phineas has turned back His wrath against the people of Israel, and He gives as His reason for this that “[Phineas] was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy” (verse 11).  Apparently this is a similar case to what I wrote yesterday: if we will uphold God’s holiness in our lives, then He will not have to show Himself holy in judging us.  Likewise, if we show His jealousy for the righteousness of His people in our lives, then He won’t have to show it in judging us in that jealousy.

Phineas, then, becomes the model sin-killer for us.  The tabernacle used to sit in the middle of the Israelite camp, but in the New Covenant each believer becomes the temple that houses the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).  And just as the godly ones were weeping at the tabernacle for the sin that was in the camp, when we bring sin into our lives it grieves the Holy Spirit who dwells within (Ephesians 4:30).  So we need to become like one who would take up the spear and put sin to death with God’s jealousy for His Name.  We need to be ruthless in the way that we stomp out disobedience in our own hearts.  Let this young man be a role model to you and look on your sins not as delicious distractions that you would hate to lose, but as an enemy in the camp who needs to be killed violently and immediately.

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The Holy Horror Show

February 17, 2010

“Lay your hand on his head and kill him…”

“Flay him and cut him in pieces…”

“Bring the blood and throw it against the wall…”

“Wring off his head…”

“Tear open his chest…”

“Stack his head on top of his fat…”

“Wash the entrails and stack them with the rest…”

“Burn it all…It is a pleasing aroma.”

After reading the instructions on how to offer a sacrifice in the first few chapters of Leviticus, I wonder if an Israelite would have been grossed out in the slightest by watching even our most gruesome horror movies.  This is macabre stuff!  It becomes even more horrifying when you try to put all the images, sounds, smells, and details together in your head to create a decent picture of what it must have been like to be there.

Well before you were able to walk your spotless lamb anywhere near the place of sacrifice, you would have seen the column of greasy smoke reflecting the hellish light of a large bonfire somewhere below.  The screams of dying and frightened animals would no doubt fill the air.  Somewhere, you probably had to jump over or slog through a little stream of blood and gore flowing from the place.  Then you catch a glimpse of it through the gate: fire!  In the flames you can see heads with eyeballs melting in their sockets, burning lumps of slimy fat, kidneys and intestines hanging half over the side of the altar.  And there are priests with blood-stained clothes (so much blood!) slinging buckets of the stuff against the walls of the grill.  Another one snatches a bull close to him as he slashes its throat and one more spray of blood erupts over the scene.

This is hell.  There is no other word for it and there is no other concept in the human imagination that better fits the description of what is going on here.  Just inside the court of the Jewish temple and tabernacle stood a gate to hell.

What was this awful place doing there?  Why in the world did God demand that such a thing ever be a part of His holy worship?  To answer those questions, it is necessary to also imagine what laid beyond the altar of sacrifice.

On the other side of the court stood the Holy Place – the tabernacle or temple itself (depending on where we are in our imagination: the desert or the city of Jerusalem).  This was a palace of heart-stopping beauty.  Literally no expense was spared on the construction of either place.  They were buildings so full of gold and light that our eyes would be quite possibly completely overwhelmed at the sight.  And in there in the midst was the Holy of Holies – the very place where God set His presence and met with His people.  This was heaven.  No more beautiful or holy a place has ever existed in the history of the world.

And yet to draw near to heaven meant that one must first deal with hell.  The burning altar stood between you and the golden palace, and someone or something had to go into that fire before you could proceed.  This was because of a breach of God’s Law.  The One who created the universe (including you) gave instructions for how His creatures were to behave and you disobeyed those instructions.  That horrible fire speaks of what you deserve: the end that God has appointed for His enemies.  But He has also made a gracious provision for you.  Another can go into the flames in your place!  Bring a lamb without blemish.  It will go into that hell that you see instead of you, allowing you to pass on by on your way to the glory beyond.

This is the gospel – written with bold bloody letters right at the start of one of the most unread books in the Old Testament.  It is possible for a spotless Lamb to suffer the holy wrath of God so that the wicked sinner can enter His presence.  “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  That was the way that John the Baptist introduced his crowd to Jesus in John 1:29.  Ultimately, none of those bloody animal sacrifices actually removed the guilt of sin from those who offered them (Hebrews 10:4).  Their purpose was to teach people the horrible price of sin and to prepare us to understand what it was that Jesus was doing when He died – the spotless for the blemished – on the cross.

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The Universality of Obedience

February 3, 2010

The following quote comes from the first part of Overcoming Sin and Temptation, entitled, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, written by John Owen and edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor:

The second principle which to this purpose I shall propose is this: Without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is no mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained…You set yourself with all diligence and earnestness to mortify such a lust or sin; what is the reason of it?  It disquiets you, it has taken away your peace, it fills your heart with sorrow and trouble and fear; you have no rest because of it.  Yea, but friend, you have neglected prayer or reading; you have been vain and loose in your conversation in other things, that have not been of the same nature with that lust wherewith you are perplexed.  These are no less sins and evils than those under which you groan.  Jesus Christ bled for them also.  Why do you not set yourself against them also?  If you hate sin as sin, every evil way, you would be no less watchful against everything that grieves and disquiets the Spirit of God, than against that which grieves and disquiets your own soul.  It is evident that you contend against sin merely because of your own trouble by it.  Would your conscience be quiet under it, you would let it alone.  Did it not disquiet you, it should not be disquieted by you.  Now, can you think that God will set in with such hypocritical endeavors – that ever his Spirit will bear witness to the treachery and falsehood of your spirit?  Do you think he will ease you of that which perplexes you, that you may be at liberty to that which no less grieves him?  No.  God says, “Here is one, if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more; let him wrestle with this, or he is lost.”  Let not any man think to do his own work that will not do God’s.  God’s work consists in universal obedience; to be freed of the present perplexity is their own only.  Hence is that of the apostle: “Cleanse yourselves from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).  If we will do anything, we must do all things.  So, then, it is not only an intense opposition to this or that peculiar lust, but a universal humble frame and temper of heart, with watchfulness over every evil and for the performance of every duty, that is accepted.

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Don’t Have a Cow

November 2, 2009

gnome-dev-ipodI preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on November 1, 2009.  The sermon text is Exodus 32:1-14.

Don’t Have a Cow

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A Crime of Comparison

October 31, 2009

A Crime of ComparisonThere are a few comparisons that should be obvious.  Sodom and Gomorrah must have been more wicked than first-century Capernaum – they were destroyed by a rain of fire and sulfur after all.  The apostle Paul must have been less of a sinner than someone like Adolf Hitler.  And for anyone who has read the Old Testament, the Southern Kingdom of Judah must have been a far more righteous place than the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  For one thing, the Southern Kingdom at least had a few good kings, whereas the Northern Kingdom was completely spiritually and morally bankrupt from the day of its secession to the day it went into captivity to Assyria.

But if these comparisons are true, then why in the world does the Bible state that the opposite is the case in each of these three examples?

And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. (Matthew 11:23-24)

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. (Paul speaking in 1 Timothy 1:15)

And the LORD said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. (Jeremiah 3:11)

What we miss when we make the opposite assumption is that the offense of sin gets greater the closer a person or a people walk with God.  Those who flagrantly transgress the laws of God when they have never heard them are not nearly as culpable as those who flagrantly indulge in what they have heard forbidden.  And to go deeper: those who sin in full knowledge of their wrong out of a hatred for God are still less culpable than those who love God and His Law and yet continue to offend Him.

It’s just like that Biblical adage, “But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48).  Paul didn’t just think he was the chief of sinners, he knew that he was because he had been entrusted with so much more than really anyone else at the time, and yet he continued to sin.

That’s why I can’t ever make myself feel better about my own sin by comparing my life to someone else’s.  If I compare myself to someone whose heart has not been changed by the Holy Spirit, then my sin will always be more grievous because I have been entrusted with far more than that person.  If I compare myself to someone who I feel like is far greater than me spiritually, it doesn’t really help to think that their lesser sins are more grievous to God.  That thought doesn’t stroke my fleshly confidence.  “Haha!  He is better than me, so that means he’s in bigger trouble!”  Nope.  No good.  Especially since it’s those kinds of people that we want to become more and more like.

So who can we look to when we feel like a failure that will make us feel better?  Well, that should be easy.  We should look to Christ – not to compare ourselves to Him – but rather to see Him who is our righteousness.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”  Ultimately, I don’t have to compare my righteousness to anyone else’s, because my own righteousness is not ever what counts.  I have a stand-in.  Christ became my righteousness, so my righteousness is perfection Himself.  Praise be to God!

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