sin - The Text Messages

Last Sunday at Parkway Church Pastor Mike Hurt reminded us from the words found in (1 John) that “God’s love for us shapes all of our relationships:” (https://parkwaychurch.tv/sermon/relational-change) the section we dialed down on (1 John 4) concludes with these words in (v.20): “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”

Those words, as powerful and convicting as they are can lead the proud among us to ask the same question posed to Jesus by a lawyer in (Luke 10:29): “And who is my neighbor?” As if trying to find some way out of the prime directive of love found in both the Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18 Luke 10:27): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself; ” we ask , “who is my brother and who is my neighbor – do I really have to love him or her like that?”

In so asking aren’t we really asking “is there anyone I don’t have to love?”

It’s an honest question and a believer might ask it but asking it may also indicate a far greater area of concern in the life of the person asking. Jeremiah wrote in (Jer. 17:9):

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

Before we met Jesus, our hearts were incurably sick; our hearts were full of the wrong things. Jesus said that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15:19, NKJV) In short, we didn’t and couldn’t love others or God because we loved ourselves too much. Think about it – why do we lie; for our sakes or for others? Why do we steal – to benefit others or ourselves?

The heart is tricky. It so cloaks its true intentions and condition that the one in whom it beats may not even know how wicked it really is – but God knows. He searches the hearts of men (Jeremiah 17:10; Romans 8:27) and while others are making distinctions based on appearances, God looks deeper (1 Samuel 16:7) – “He looks at the heart.”

Does what He perceives in our hearts repulse and repel God from us? No, Paul told us in (Romans 5:8) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This was the mission of the Savior who said in (John 3:16):

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Far from shrinking back from, hating or condemning us, God, in His love made a way for all of us, since all of us suffer from this incurable heart condition, to be made well. The writer of (2 Samuel 14:14) made it clear that God, in His mercy, “…devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.”

When a person believes in Jesus, he is born again (John 3:3) in this sense – God gives him or her “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). Because of that new life, he who once upon a time only loved himself can now love God and others because of the NEW condition of his heart.

When we consider the lengths that God went to in order to express His love toward us and what He had to both overlook and endure in terms of our sin to draw near enough to us so as to forgive us the penalty due for our sin by dying in our place and rising again victorious AND that nothing will EVER separate us from His love (see Romans 8:38-39); when we remember that He did THAT for US and believe it, we will then be able to also see and hopefully treat our fellow man with a similar kind of love.

Is there anyone you don’t have to love? The question might be better put like this – is there anyone you just can’t love? Mankind spit in Jesus’ face – He loved them anyway. Mankind beat Jesus to a pulp – He loved them anyway. Mankind hung Jesus on a cross and mocked Him there – He died for their sins anyway. If anyone had a reason to hate it was Jesus. If anyone had a reason to withhold grace and mercy it was Jesus. What stood between you and the Lord that in love He forgave you of even after you first believed? What now stands between you and those who are like you were “without Christ…having no hope and without God in the world?” (Ephesians 2:12)

May the Lord’s enduring love for you inspire you to love those around you for their sake and to His glory…without exception.

King David, arguably the greatest Old Testament king of Israel was brave in the face of danger, courageous before giants, humble before God, respectful of God’s anointed and a worshipful man of God. Of him, Paul quoting (1 Samuel 13:14) wrote in (Acts 13:22):

“…‘I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.’”

But King David was not without his flaws, he was after all – human and EVERY human since Adam is a sinner at heart. The Bible tells us of a time when David was in the wrong place at the right time; this was at the time (see 2 Samuel 11:1) “when kings go out to battle;” his warriors went out but David stayed home. I do not know why David stayed back but I do know that just as “idle hands can be the devils playground” – “If you are where you shouldn’t be, it is very likely that you will be tempted to do what you shouldn’t do.”

We all KNOW his story and by the way, that is one more evidence that the Bible is a work of God and not men – if men alone had written it of themselves they surely would never have spoken of all the flaws and failings of their lives as the scriptures do. David saw a woman bathing in the evening light, he looked twice (at least), inquired about her, ignored the fact that she was another mans wife, slept with her and later, after learning that she was pregnant attempted to cover up his sin. First he tried to trick Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba by bringing him home from the battle and encouraging him to spend the night with his wife in the hopes that he might claim the child as his own, conceived on that night; but Uriah was more honorable than that and he would not go in to his wife. Then David further attempted to cover his sin up by seeing to it that before Bathsheba began to be obviously pregnant her husband would have died in battle.

Now, I’m not sure that I know what David was thinking except that he was experiencing the same kind of panic we do when we sin and frantically attempt to cover it up as if covering it up changes the fact that we did it.

The fact is that you cannot pull the wool over an all seeing God’s eyes; His word declares in (Galatians 6:7) that “God is not mocked for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” and (Numbers 32:23) “(y)our sins will find us out.”

At least nine months passed from the time of his adultery and the birth of the child conceived between David and Bathsheba when Nathan the prophet came to confront the king (see 2 Samuel 12) about it. It was then that David confessed and the penalty of sin, which is always death was assessed – David would live but the child born in adultery would die (see 2 Samuel 2:14).

Did God act out of spite, vindictiveness, unreasonable wrath or hate? No, He had a plan to forgive and restore David. (Psalm 51) is the prayer which David prayed after Nathan departed and during the fast which the king entered into until the moment he knew that his child was gone. The Psalm is a penitential psalm, that is, it is a psalm of confession and repentance to the Lord from the heart of David. In it we see conviction of sin (v.3), acknowledgement of sin (v.4, 14), sorrow for sin (v.17) and a cry for the mercy and forgiveness of God concerning the relationship damaged by sin (v.10-12). I recently heard a recording of (Psalm 51) sung in Latin and titled “Miserere Mei, Deus” taking its title from the first verse of that Psalm: “have mercy upon me, God; ” reading the Psalm as I listened led me to think that I was literally hearing David’s heart in that moment (click the link to listen to that recording on YouTube https ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3v9unphfi0)

Perhaps you’ve been in David’s shoes and as a lover of God, found yourself in the wrong place at the right time where you took advantage of the moment and sinned big. Perhaps you, like David have concealed and covered up rather than confessed your sin to Him. Perhaps you confessed and were forgiven by Him but failed to forgive yourself. Whichever the case may be, once you have dealt with the sin and understand that God has forgiven it you still need to do a few things:

Put it behind you (Phil.3:13).
Set a guard over your heart (Prov.4:23; Job 31:1).
Cultivate an extreme sense of the immediate presence of the Lord – whenever you’re in a room alone consider that Jesus is actually in the room with you.

My friend, I get the feeling that for those nine months or so King David found it hard to pray and even harder to hear from the Lord. Has He been silent in your life lately? If He has, I’m guessing that you know why and while His silence may be the consequence of some yet to be dealt with sin or a test to see if you’ll wait to hear from Him before you act it is always meant to draw us into a deeper search and greater desire for His voice and presence in our lives.

Draw near to God and He WILL draw near to you….cry out to Him today.

Tag: sin

The Prime Directive of Love

Miserere Mei, Deus