Devastation and Hope, 2 Samuel 24

What a horrible thing! What stabbing imagery from a true story. It demonstrates the deep distaste that the Almighty has towards sin. Counting the fighting men demonstrated before God, and all the people, that David did not trust God to defend them. Israel was to represent God, and the king was to lead the way in trusting God for defense in the face of hostility. David’s counting (with Joab’s ironic role as the voice of conscience) was a deliberate act of pride, declaring that he will defend Israel, independent of God. What do you make of how this passage says that the Lord incited David whereas the parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 21 says that Satan did?

The hand of the Angel of the Lord is eventually stayed at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite (Jebusites were ancient dwellers of Jerusalem). The hand was stayed at the word of David’s confession. Note that his confession owned full responsibility and was directed fully upward first. He knew he needed to own his stuff before God and with the strength he found there, could then go and deal with the outward consequences. That led him to a special hill where Araunah threshed his grain. It is there that David comes to worship and purchase land to build an alter to God which later becomes the site of the temple in Jerusalem (click on the photo).

This hill became a place where a purchase was made to redeem David’s shameless pride and heal the senseless pain his sin caused. It became a place where God’s presence would dwell and offer hope and salvation for all who looked up to it. A thousand years later, just a few hundred yards away, on a different mount, Jesus would die to purchase redemption for the sin of our shameless pride and heal our senseless pain. May we never forget the cost of our salvation and the horror of our sin which requires such a payment.

What’s Next?

There are two new series to look forward to in Bible for Everyday. Steps Towards the Cross will begin tomorrow and continue through Easter, emailing pertinent scriptures that led Jesus to the cross. (Our writers will take a short 2 ½ week sabbatical from commentary.)

After Easter, 50 Days to Freedom will begin and run up to the day of Pentecost. This series will focus on God’s meeting the people of Israel in Egypt and leading them out of slavery into freedom; paralleling it with the freedom the gospel offers us. With bold faith and the grace of God we will learn how to be freed from the bondage of sin and to walk in the freedom of being God’s children.

2 Samuel 11: Danger – Hazardous to Humans

Prayer

Heavenly Father, Your mercy is great and you are faithful to us even when we are not. Forgive us for so often falling into sin. Lead us away from temptation and deliver us from the bad influences. Help us to recognize the signs when we are in danger. Strengthen us so that we may live rightly before you. Bring people into our life that can keep us accountable and strengthen us when we are weak. Amen.

Reflection

Temptation is not the problem, it is sin. David’s problem was not what he saw that only the only got the ball rolling. David’s problem was David; it was what he allowed to be conceived in his heart after what he saw. When David inquired about her, he was already too far down the path of sin to stop. Even when the messenger told him she was married, David was too far down the path of sin to stop. When she became pregnant, David was too far down the path of sin to stop. Sin is like that; with persuasive words it leads us astray and seduces us with smooth words. And like the adulterous woman in Proverbs 7, sin takes us further than we want to go and takes more than we want to give. The house of sin is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. Too many have stumbled down this path, never to get up again.

Ask Tim Haggard, he walked a path similar to David’s and it took more than he ever imagined. Temptation is dangerous and when we are tempted we should think of it as a warning sign of “Don’t go there.” We can think of it like the warning labels on the side of the household cleaners: “Hazardous to humans.” The only exception is that temptation has no useful purpose; unlike household cleaners sin can’t cleanup the mess that it makes.

Questions

• What temptations do you struggle with?
• Read Romans 8:1-17 - What hope do we have in defeating sin? What has set us free from the law of sin and death?
• How does Jesus treat the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11? What can we learn from his actions and response?
• One of the best ways to defeat sin and temptation in your life is to have people who can regularly keep you accountable. Do you have anyone in your life who can keep you accountable?

Posted by Aaron Miner

Judges 19: Sin and Restoration

What a horrendous story! In those days Israel had no king. Have you ever had those situations that you have no idea why they had to happen? We read a story of rape and murder in the Bible and guess what, there’s really no deep life lessons attached to it. Sure, there are some basic principles we could pull out of the story but really Israel has decayed terribly. It has no king. Israel is not following God or a leader God appointed. Horrendous stories were happening. We see the world that’s lost in sin in Judges 19.

Sometimes when life takes these ugly turns we need to look to the future. Ultimately Jesus comes into the story and starts restoration. Ultimately he will come again and make ugly sinful situations ancient history.

Until then what is a person supposed to do? I suppose one could simply continue to redeem the world while praying to God to come again quickly. But that doesn't seem to give us much hope for today. The Lord's prayer indicates that we can experience some change today, "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Through Christ's death on the cross we can experience some of heaven today. We can help restore this broken world to what God intended, because Christ has already begun this work. It may be frustrating as we see the problems around us and it may seem futile at times but God is stronger and more gracious than we can imagine. Therefore our service to him is never in vain.

Posted by Danny

Romans 7: A New Allegiance

Let’s be honest. We all know personally what Paul is experiencing here. We all have known the good we should do and haven’t done it. We all have known what we should resist and we gave in. The guilt we feel in the face of these things is a sign that we are healthy enough to still know right from wrong. It is completely illogical and foolish. But sin can have such a hold over people that it seems to do things against their own will.

Even Paul knew what that was like, before he met Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9, Rom 7:14) he could not stop doing the evil he hated (Rom 7:19). Paul found out that his Judaism was unable to empower him to do the good that he desired. Within him, an insidious and powerful law imprisoned him. Though he delighted in the law of God, he was powerless to live it.

We all know and understand that dilemma, knowing what to do and cannot do it. It is not freedom but bondage, and it is extremely destructive. Few good things come out of that state. But hope do we have?

Paul places his hope solely and definitively in Jesus Christ our Lord who alone can free us from the bonds of the law of sin. But this requires complete surrender to Christ as our Lord and there lies the rub and the difficulty. To be free I must become a slave to Christ. There are only two options a slave to sin or a slave to Christ. A change of allegiance to Christ set us free therefore we are free and empowered to do the good we desire to do.

Posted by Aaron Miner

Romans 3: Excuses

If you’re a sport’s fan—and maybe even if you’re not—you’ve heard the news about Plaxico Burress. The star receiver for the New York Giants carried a concealed weapon into a nightclub then accidentally shot himself in the leg. He didn’t have a permit to carry the weapon, so he was in clear violation of the law.

So, caught dead to rights, what does Plax do? Does he do what all parents teach their kids to do: Tell the truth, admit your wrongdoing, and face the consequences? Not exactly.

He tries to check into a hospital under the name, “Harris Smith.” He claims that the gun went off while he was eating at Applebee’s. He turns himself into police but enters a plea of “not guilty.” Classic evasiveness. We all do it. We know the truth but find it impossible to face. Instead, we scratch and claw to justify ourselves, all evidence to the contrary.

This instinct lies behind the teaching of Romans 3. It’s a tough passage, but the gist of it is this: Jews and Gentiles alike are sinners before a holy God, and it does no good to protest this fact. Nevertheless, some will. Jews will say, “Well, what good is it to be Jews if our Judaism doesn’t save us?” Or they’ll say, “If we’re unfaithful and God condemns us for it, then He’s unfaithful too—because He promised to keep us as His chosen people!” Or they’ll say, “If our sin shows, by way of contrast, how holy God is, then how can He judge us? We’re fulfilling our purpose! We’re glorifying God by sinning!”

It’s all childish and ridiculous excuse-making. The Scriptures are clear: Everyone is a sinner, so everyone should hold his tongue and stand accountable before God. But not just so they can hear their sentence, but so that they can receive His grace!

In one of the most important paragraphs in the entire Bible, Paul explains how Jesus Christ shed his blood to atone for our sins. This allows God to justify us—to clear us of all charges—and to do so justly. Our acquittal is not a miscarriage of justice. It’s the fulfillment of it, for Jesus absorbs the death sentence on our behalf. As a result, we no longer have to justify ourselves, either by perfect obedience or persuasive excuse-making. We just place our faith in Jesus and walk free.

Posted by Greg

Ephesians 2: Grasp this

“I pray that you may have power to grasp…” (3:16)

This chapter hold out almost every aspect of the believer’s experience of meeting God through Jesus Christ by faith in the gospel. Paul will pray in the next chapter that the believer’s have power to grasp all these dimensions of Christ’s love. The truths are as follows:

· We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We had submitted ourselves to the kingdom of this world, were submitting ourselves to its rules in thought and in deed; and were therefore enemies of God and objects of his wrath.

· Jesus himself takes the wrath instead of us (1:7) God who was rich in mercy made us, who have faith in Jesus, alive. We bring nothing to the table. If we did, we could boast.

· God has given us a new heavenly identity and a new heavenly destiny (5-7). This changes everything.

· Out of our new heavenly identity and on our way to our heavenly destiny, God has already prepared good works for us to do (10). We are his workmanship. He has made us to be a new creation that would do his work in remaking this world.

· The blood of Christ is the effective end of any hostility that can be held between any races. If Jesus can die and show grace to reunite enemies to his father, there is a solution for every racial problem. In that day, it was the divide between Jews and Gentiles (11-18).

· All people can now pray to the father—a royal priesthood- through the Spirit (18).

· Believers are throughout the world being made into a new living temple stretching to every culture in every place through every time in order to demonstrate a living body of people who would bring the rightful praise to God the Father and Jesus the Christ. Each person who is united to Christ by faith is a piece of the wall of this temple that stretches throughout the world and is united and held together by the very Spirit of God. This temple can never be defiled because is cleansed by the once and for all blood of Jesus Christ and kept holy by the Holy Spirit who dwells there (19-22).

Oh, for strength to grasp that…
Posted by Marc

Galatians 5: All the Freedom in the World

What would you do if, with one spell, you were freed of all of your obligations and were completely free, bound to no one or no thing? It is an intriguing concept that, no doubt, has been the theme of a few sci-fi novels (I don’t read them, so this is just my ignorant impression). Do you remember what happened to the Israelites when they were given their freedom from Pharaoh? They wanted to go back. There is security in bondage—even if it is abusive at least there is security in it.

Jesus freed us from the abuse of the sinful nature. Paul is particularly concerned with sinful bondage to religious ceremony and tradition. Religion becomes sinful when it becomes a mechanism that replaces works for the approval we can only find in God. In short, religion becomes sinful when it is used as a means to avoid God.

Religion is the easy way of having the security of bondage AND the affirmation that comes from faith. But Paul says you can’t have both. God gave the Israelites a new vision when he led them out of bondage in Egypt. Go take the promised land! But they didn’t have the courage to enter into the new life that God had promised (Num 13-14). Similarly, Jesus has given us a new vision and direction by which we may indulge our freedom—love. We are to take our freedom and use it to serve one another in love.

Jesus was fully free and he bound himself to us allowing our sinful nature to drag him to the cross and to the grave. The Spirit liberated him from that grave and seated him in heaven for eternal life. Paul speaks of the fruit of this Spirit. The Spirit that we have is the Spirit that binds us to Jesus in his freedom. Because we are bound to Him, we can walk in his freedom and enjoy love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control and gentleness.

1 Corinthians 15: Resurrection = Freedom from Sin

What is so important about the resurrection? Hearing of dead people, people all dead not mostly dead, walking around is weird and reminiscent of something out of a science fiction or horror movie. Do I even need to believe such a thing to be a Christian?

This is the same question that Paul was facing in the Corinthian church. People were denying the resurrection of the dead (v. 12-19), but Paul would have none of that. In fact the resurrection is so central to the Christian faith that without Christ rising from the dead there is nothing to believe in (v. 19). So what does the resurrection effectively do for those who trust in Christ?

Verse 22 states, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (NIV) Simply, being human makes us sinners—just turn on the news and we can see that—but those who trust in Christ are raised with him into new life. Though this may be difficult to understand, it means we are born again (John 3:3) and a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). We are now something different from what we were before, sin has been defeated in us and we can live freely from it (1 Cor 15:55-57).

In verse 58, Paul charges the Corinthians and us to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord our labor is not in vain. We are able to do these things because Christ has been resurrected. Therefore, the resurrection gives us the hope and strength to live lives worthy of Christ. The resurrection may seem strange to us at first but it is foundational to the Christian faith and life.

Posted by Aaron