pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: sin


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Promise = Hope

Reading: Isaiah 65: 21-25

In the new kingdom, all will be blessed.  The works of the peoples’ hands will bring enjoyment.  The homes they build and the crops they plant will be enjoyed.  Nothing will be done in vain.  Even before their prayers are spoken, God will hear and answer them.  Life will be wonderful when the earth is renewed by God.  The renewing will affect all things.  Even the wolf and the lamb will lie down together!  There will be absolute peace and all will be blessed by God Almighty.  We long for the day!

The promise and hope in these words from Isaiah were just what the Israelites needed to hear.  Times were very bleak and it was an easy time to begin to lose faith in God.  Nothing in life seemed to be favoring the chosen people.  While the people knew their situation was the consequence of their sins, at some point we all say, “How long”?

We too have uttered this question to God.  Like the Israelites, we may have wandered from our faith and there is a consequence that we must endure for our choices.  Often we too get to the point of longing to return to ‘normal’ in our lives.  At other times in life, our time of suffering is not caused by us.  We can be adversely affected by another’s sin or choices.  We can also be affected by the circumstances of life – a diagnosis or sudden loss comes our way and we suffer and experience pain.  In all of these scenarios, we long to move past and to come to terms with our hurt or loss, but it can be so hard.

The promise of a new heaven and earth cannot remove the hurt or pain or suffering.  But it can give us a new sense of hope.  In this promise we can find hope and strength and comfort and maybe even a little healing.  One day all will be restored.  May we cling to this hope.  The promise is true!


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One Step

Reading: Luke 19: 6-10

Once again Jesus reaches to an outcast.  Once again Jesus looks past what is a barrier to others and lives one in need.  Zacchaeus certainly was not in need financially because he was a rich man.  Zacchaeus was in need of love and acceptance.  Because of his job, Zacchaeus probably spent life largely alone, without any real friends.  When Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus, many in the crowd grumbled with disapproval.  Zacchaeus’ ill-gotten wealth has drawn much dislike for the crowd.

At times we too act in certain ways and do certain things that cause others to dislike us or to remain at a distance from us.  Sometimes we can be like Zacchaeus, mistreating others for our own gain or purposes.  Sometimes we can fall into sins of other types, causing others to look down on us or to treat us like an outcast.  Sometimes we act in ways that cause people to think, ‘Jesus, don’t go near that one today’ or to think that Jesus could never call out to us.

Yet He does.  No matter what, Jesus always calls out to us.  He continues to call us out of our trees and into relationship with Him.  No matter our sin, Jesus continues to seek us when we are lost.  Like Zacchaeus, we are always just a simple confession away from a righteous relationship with Jesus Christ.  Like Zacchaeus, we are always just one step away from forgiveness and new life in Christ.  For this we say, thanks be to God.


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To Save the Lost

Reading: Luke 19: 1-5

Zacchaeus was a man  who probably had few friends.  We are told he was wealthy.  So he was probably ‘good’ at his job as the chief tax collector.  He became wealthy by extorting extra taxes from the people to line his own pockets.  He also likely collected a slice of what those working under him collected as well.  So Zacchaeus was not very well liked.  There is a reason he went alone to get a peek at this Jesus.

Just prior to today’s reading, in Luke 18 we find the story of Jesus’ encounter with the rich ruler.  He comes to Jesus seeking  to know how to inherit eternal life.  In their initial conversation he tells Jesus he has kept all the commandments since he was a boy.  In both of these things, he is an opposite to Zacchaeus.  But he is unable to do what Jesus asks of him: sell all he has and then come follow Jesus.  This man went away very sad; he was unable to part with his great wealth.

Zacchaeus finds a place in a tree because he is short and really just wants to be able to see Jesus as He passes by.  He is curious.  Zacchaeus does not go out that day to have his life changed.  He is content with his wealth.  Yet Jesus picks him out of all those in the crowd that day.  He calls Zacchaeus down and invites Himself into his home.  While there Zacchaeus is changed.  He admits his sins and joyfully pledges to make restitution to all he has wronged.  Jesus responds by saying that salvation has come to Zacchaeus’ house this day.  In what almost seems like an afterthought, Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost”.  It is an answer to the crowd’s judgment of Jesus going to a sinner’s home and also a declaration for us.

In choosing Zacchaeus, Jesus is saying He will come to anyone.  After all, He came to you and to me.  Jesus wants to come into people’s lives today with the same intentbthat He came into Zacchaeus’: to save the lost.  Who will you introduce to Jesus today?


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Right Relationship

Reading: Jeremiah 31: 31-34

God promises a new covenant.  God promises a covenant in which God’s ways will be on our minds and written on our hearts.  The faith will become something personal.  It will become something we live.  In stead of going to worship to simply get our fill or to be tuned up, our faith will be instilled within us all of the time.  It will be a faith based upon God’s love.  It will be a faith that does not carry the guilt and shame that many of the Israelites have been hauling around for years and years.

Verse 34 promises that God will forgive our sins and remember them no more.  Instead of bearing the shame of one parent’s or grandparent’s sins or fearing how your sins will forever taint your children’s or grandchildren’s lives, one will be able to be freed from one’s own sins and their consequences.  Through the new covenant, made real in Jesus Christ, faith will become personal and be between just God and you.  What a new covenant!

While the idea of our sins being our sins alone and the idea that God will remember our sins no more is wonderful news, it is also scary.  A distant, lived out through others faith is much easier in many ways.  Having God’s ways in our minds and on our hearts ups the ante.  When God is constantly with us doesn’t that increase the expectations?  If God is always near, doesn’t  that mean we always live and act as God would act?

These things are indeed the goal.  Of course, being human and far less than God, we are not perfect.  But when God forgives and remembers our sins no more, we are made new and are right back on track.  To receive this forgiveness, all we need to do is repent and ask.  Through our personal relationship with Jesus, His blood makes us new again.  Then we return instantly to a right relationship with God, loving God and neighbor as we are called to, bringing glory to the name of Jesus.


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Because He Loves

Reading: Psalm 91: 14-16

“Because he loves me…” opens our reading today.  It goes on to say that because we love God, God will rescue, protect, answer, be with, deliver, honor, give long life, and show us salvation.  Because we love God.  Thankfully, these things God blesses us with because we love God is based not just on our love for God.  More importantly, it is based on God’s love for us.  Even though our love is at times fickle and wavering, God still desires a loving relationship with each of us.  There is investment and commitment on both sides.

From God’s side, the love is as steady as the day is long.  God’s love for us never changes.  As the character who portrays God in one of my favorite books says, “I’m especially fond of that one”.  It was said about everyone.  This is one of the most amazing things about God’s love – it is unlimited in that it is for all people, not just for those who love God.  And God’s love is constant.  There is nothing we can do or say to earn more of God’s love.  There is nothing we can do or say to drive away or lessen God’s love either.

But our love ebbs and flows.  Our commitment to the relationship is sometimes strong, sometimes weak.  As people prone to sin, we have moments, days, and even seasons when we slip, drift away, act like we do not love God.  At times we probably make God question our love and commitment.  We are human.

Yet God remains faithful, true, loving.  God remains the same always.  God patiently waited for us to realize our poor choices, to repent and return to our loving relationship.  There are no “Where ya been?” questions.  There is simply, “Welcome back”.  Welcome back to where we belong.  Welcome back.  Thanks be to God for this incredible love.


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Chances

Reading: Jeremiah 4: 27-28

In the King James translation, verse 27 reads, “The whole land shall be desolate, yet I will not make a full end”.  After a long period of disobedience there will be mourning and weeping, but all is not lost.  The people will wake up from their season of living outside of God’s ways and will realize things are desolate.  Into this God whispers, “I’m not done with you yet”.

Just like the troop that wandered the desert for 40 years and just like the people of Israel who constantly cycled between chosen people of God and idol worshippers, we too wander off the path of discipleship now and then.  We all make choices at times that end us up in places of desolation where we find ourselves dry and broken spiritually.  Yet no matter what we’ve done, no matter what has led us off the path, God is still there, still ready to continue working on us, still saying, “I’m not done with you yet”.

God is certainly in the reclamation business.  God takes us as we are, just as Jesus took all who came to Him.  God is also the God of “second chances”.  Although for us it may be the 2,356th chance or the 41,843rd chance, for God it is always our second chance.  When we confess and repent of our sin, for God our sin is no more.  We have been made clean as new-fallen snow.  God’s grace is amazing.  Our sins are forgotten, so each time we stumble, to God it is our first failure.  God’s love is so pure and honest, the grace so great.

Thanks be to this God who loves us so.  Praise and glory to our God who loves us without limit!


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Pruning

Reading: Isaiah 5: 1-4

In our passage today God laments, “What more could I have done for my vineyard”?  God thinks back to the fertile land flowing with milk and honey that was handed over to Israel.  God recalls the cities they did not built that were offered as dwelling places.  God remembers how a shield was kept about them, protecting them from their enemies.  God’s people, the vineyard so carefully tended, is now producing bad fruit.  The people had all they needed to produce good fruit but have instead turned away from God.  God looks and sees bloodshed instead of justice, heard cries of distress instead of righteousness.

The passage calls us to look at and reflect on our own lives.  God has also richly blessed us in so many ways.  God has built hedges of protection around us.  God has poured into our lives the example of Jesus found in the scriptures and has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  God has given us all we need to go forth and produce a good crop.  So we must honestly ask ourselves if we are doing so.  Are we using all of God’s rich blessings to go out and produce a crop of justice and righteousness and love?

Too often we can be like the crop God finds in Israel.  The soil is good and the leaves are healthy.  But the fruit underneath is sour.  We go to church and maybe even read our Bibles every day.  Then we go to work and exploit those with less power or cut a corner or bend a law for our own gain.  Or maybe we say and do all the right things out in public but harbor an addiction within the secret places of our lives.  We somehow think God does not know, but the pruning shears are ready to go to work.

Maybe instead we are holding onto a sin we can’t quite give to God or we are nursing a grudge or hurt from long ago and we can’t quite offer forgiveness to another.  God calls aloud for us to give up all that holds us back, to release anything that separates us from God, and to lay it at the cross.  God invites us to do this so that we can walk in a right relationship with our Lord and Savior.  God desires to prune away all that keeps us from being all God intends us to be.  Pruning can be hard but the results are a healthier plant that produced a better crop.  May we be willing to lay down all that hinders and separates us from God so that we may walk humbly and faithfully with our Lord.


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Redemption 

Reading: Psalm 107: 1-9

Sometimes as Christians it can be easy to settle into a comfortable faith.  The further we get from that last big brush with grace, the less we remember what redemption feels like.  It is in those times that we really struggle and Christ sweeps in to our rescue that we feel the strongest expressions of grace and forgiveness and redemption.  Once we get past those times when struggles were common in our early walk of faith, we can slip into a sort of cruise control.  Then it can be easy to forget that others are still in a struggle.  We lose touch with what it feels like to be held captive to something.

There are many people that struggle in life.  The battle may be with things such as drugs and alcohol.  It may be pornography.  It may be abuse.  It may be due to forces such as injustice or oppression.  It may be cultural or economic.  When we ourselves forget what redemption and that taste of freedom was like, we can lose our drive to help others find freedom from whatever is holding them captive.

The true freedom we find in Christ is the only real freedom from all that binds and holds humanity captive.  In our struggles we may succeed in the battle for a short time when we fight it on our own.  But Satan always regains a foothold when we try to do it alone because in us there is weakness.  It is only when we call on the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ that can find redemption from all that binds us.  It is by His strength alone that we have a chance in this battle.  But all who do not know Christ cannot call on His name.

As faithful disciples of Jesus Christ it is our call and charge to make the good news known to all people.  It is our call to share Christ with who struggle with the powers of this world so that all may come to know the redeeming and freeing power of Christ.  Only in Christ is true freedom found.  May we share Jesus and His redeeming love this day with all who are held captive to sin so that Christ may set them free.


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Restoring a Sinner

Reading: Psalm 85

The psalmist expresses a cycle that is common to us all.  The people of Israel sinned and found God’s forgiveness.  Time passed and they sinned again.  The writer expresses the need for God to forgive the people once again.  The psalmist calls for God’s unfailing love to once again yield mercy and grace.  The writer reminds themselves and God that God promises peace to His people.  The the writer again requests salvation from God.

It is a cycle we often repeat as well.  Earlier in one’s Christian walk, the cycle is repeated more often but throughout life we cycle through the sin-repentance-forgiveness pattern over and over.  Being human, frail and weak as we are, we will fall into sin.  Yet God, being unfailing love and unending grace, responds over and over again with forgiveness and an invitation back into right relationship with Him.

As we look back over our journey of faith we can identify times when we came to realize that we had been sinning.  It was not obvious to us before we reached a certain maturity level in our faith.  As we continue to grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ we come to junctures where we realize that what we were doing was really gossip or being jealous or lust or …  What was before simply part of who we are is one day seen as sin.  So we repent and think ‘not again’ as we are now aware that a certain behavior was sinful.  But like most sins, this one will return again.  Satan knows our weak spots and will continue to hammer away at them for a while.

As we mature in our faith and our relationship with Christ grows stronger, the time between recurrences of a sin will lengthen out.  And being fully human, we know that we may fall back into that sin once in a while.  But as we do mature, we recognize it sooner and come to a place where we stop at the temptation to gossip or whatever.  And then we begin to wrestle with other sins in our lives!

Into our constant battle with sin, into our human weakness, steps God’s love and grace.  God’s love and grace are far greater than our sin will ever be.  It is so great that nothing in all of creation is able to separate us from the love of God.  May we ever be thankful for God’s unfailing love and unending grace that always restores a sinner like me back to the true and loving relationship that is life itself.


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Good, Heaven, Life

Reading: Colossians 1: 15-23

“Christ is the firstborn over all creation… He was before all things… All things were created by Him and for Him… And He is the head of the body, so that in everything He might have supremacy…”  These are powerful words that remind us of who Christ is and God’s intent for Him.

To bow to Christ, to give one’s life to follow Him, to declare Him the Lord and Savior of one’s life, all require a choice on our part.  That choice is part of the free will that God gave mankind.  From the time that sin and evil entered the Garden, making has had the free will to choose good or evil, to choose heaven or earth, to choose life or death.

One does not have to surf a media source for too long to find evil rearing its head in the world.  Warfare here, persecution of someone there, violence in the streets here, the shooting of police officers there.  These acts of violence and hatred, plus the evil that we deal with ourselves, are not God’s intent for His children.  He did not create us to be sinful but evil and sin and temptation are a part of this world, so we encounter these things.  For each of these acts of violence and evil, and for the temptation we face personally, there is a remedy.  But to find the remedy we must be willing to look at the root causes that lead to these acts and to sin and then to address these causes and triggers.

“God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things”.  All things.  God desires to reconcile all to Himself.  God desires to draw all people to Him.  “…and making peace by His blood, shed on the cross”.  The key to helping the lost choose good, heaven, and life is to share the love of the cross with them.  It is what allows us to daily choose Christ.  May we be love in our homes, at our jobs, in our whole life, so that all around us may come to know the love of the cross.