Anatomy of Sin (05-9-18)
September 18 05 Anatomy of Sin
In the movie Grand Canyon, an attorney named Mack played by Kevin Kline is coming back from a Los Angeles Laker's game at the Forum and decides to take a short cut through a back alley to avoid traffic. His Lexus breaks down. Mack becomes surrounded by a gang of armed young men. And when things are looking about as bad as they can, the tow truck arrives, and out steps a An African man named Simon (played by Danny Glover), this is his turf so he knows how to negotiate with a gang:
Simon says to the gang leader, “Man, the world ain't supposed to work like this. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without having to ask you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything is supposed to be different than it is.”
The world ain’t supposed to be this way.
God intended for the world to be a place of justice, peace, and compassion and things are not the way they are supposed to be.
We’ve seen this born out in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina. People were surprised stores were being looted, women raped, and helicopter’s trying to help being shot at… People were shockec to hear that government leaders did not do more to prepare for this hurricane when they had warned beforehand of it’s destructive force.
Here in Canada this week many were taken aback by at some of egotistical and cruel, cutting things said by a previous Prime Minister as revealed in those Secret Tapes.
From a Biblical perspective none of these things should not surprise us because the world ain’t the way their supposed to be.
The Bible teaches humans beings have potential for good, but because of sin we have the propensity to do evil.
Now I know that there are many who would challenge that statement, but over time, people have a tendency to move toward this kind of perspective.
I think of Dr. Ernest Becker, a former professor at UC Berkley and SFU professor and winner of the Pulitzer Prize wrote two books on evil. The first book on evil he called the Structure of Evil and in that book he said we the reason we have poverty and violence is because the privileged are oppressing others through oppressive social structures; therefore, the answer theses evils of poverty and war is good social science applied to government. Right after he died, his last book was published called Escape from Evil. In the preface he says, I am now in this book looking at humanity full in the face for the first time, in my previous works I failed to see how truly vicious human behavior is. He says I now see that there is needed some third alternative to problem of evil in our world apart from social science or despair.
People typically don’t start out saying people are horrible and at end lives find themselves saying humans are wonderful, it tends to be other way around.
In the book of Jeremiah, God’s people are asking why are things falling apart for us in our society (some time later they’d why ask are we being overrun by Babylon), why ain’t things the way their supposed to be. Jeremiah’s answer was NOT we need more cutting edge social science applied to government. His answer was our society is falling apart because of sin, because we have forsaken God.
Over the next several we going to do a series on Sin, specifically the 7 deadly sins and 7 heavenly virtues (as you have may noticed in the last year or so, the Vancouver Sun and CBC have run features on the 7 Deadly Sins).
Today we’re going to begin by looking at how the prophet describes sin.
If you have your Bible please turn to Jeremiah 2. We’ll be looking at various texts in Jeremiah, but lets begin with verse 13:
Jeremiah 2 gives us windows into the nature of sin…
Vs. 13 we read God saying through the prophet Jeremiah
13 "My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Here is vs. 13 Jeremiah says one of the sins God’s people have committed is the sin forsaking of God.
Forsaking God is particular sin God’s people have committed, but all sin involves the forsaking of God at some to one degree or another.
We tend to see sin as breaking some kind of abstract moral code.
Or perhaps we sin as the missing of a target or the aiming at the wrong target.
Biblically speaking, sin includes these things…
But the heart of sin involves forsaking or turning from God…
All sin can be traced back to a forsaking of God, to a turning from God at some level: All sin can be traced back to failure to love and trust God.
All sin has a godward dimension to it.
Professor Bruce Waltke, who taught Old Testament for many years at Regent College, as a boy play to love football on the street near his home (in New Jersey). One day Bruce and his friends were playing on the sidewalk in front of Bruce’s house. Bruce’s mother had said that it ok to that there, there was just one rule, “Don’t kick the ball.” But as Bruce was holding the ball, the temptation was too great… and he dropped the ball and kicked it. He got great air, but not great aim. The ball sailed sideways and smashed through a neighbor’s window.
Bruce says he can still hear his mother screaming, “Bruce!” Bruce said his sin was so against his neighbor, but against his mother who had made the rule.
When we sin, we may hurt others in the process, but all is sin ultimately is against God.
King David, committed adultery and then tried to orchestrate a major cover up which included the murder of the woman's husband Uriah. Later he prayed in Psalm 51:1-4.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
David’s sin of adultery was against the woman’s husband, against Bathsheba by forcing her to break her marriage covenant (and in that culture a woman in Bathsheba’s station propositioned by the King would have had little choice, but to comply), but David’s primary sin as later he recognized was primarily against God…
When we sin, we sin not only against human beings, but we sin against God in that we break God’s commandment, and we fail to trust and love him…
For example, if we lie… if we say “It’s in the mail (when it’s not), Canadian post is often late.” It’s not simply a breaking of some abstract law, but a failure to trust God… (I am going to look like such a schmuck if I don’t say it’s in the mail because I said it going to be there by today—it’s a failure to trust God for our identity OR we think we’re going to lose this client if I don’t say it’s in the mail… a failure to trust God for our financial well being)…
Another example, if we act in ways that discriminate against women, or against people of color, or the poor, or are cruel to animals, or pollute the environment, we’re showing a lack of respect for what God has made…
Sin is not simply the breaking of a rule that hurts a person, but sin always has a godward dimension to it.
Think of sin that you struggle with… can you trace sin back to a forsaking of a God, a failure to love and trust God?
As Jeremiah says, God’s people have committed a sin of forsaking of God, the spring of living water… All sin involves the forsaking of God and ironically involves the forsaking of ourselves.
Because when turn from God, we also from the only spring of living water… there is none other…
Cornelius Plantinga jr in his engaging, thoughtful book Not the Way it’s Supposed to be: A Breviary of Sin (recommended in the outline) defines sin as the breaking of Shalom.
God has intended the world to be a place of shalom: we tend to define shalom as simply cease fire or peace, but Biblically shalom includes the idea of wholeness, wellness, a flourishing that springs from the blessing of God upon something.
Sin is what disturbs Shalom…
Irenaeus, says the glory of God is a human fully alive…
Sin diminishes life… sin corrodes our soul.
If a human being commands you to do something sound ridiculous… Says your partner says never eats at a restaurant that ends with a odd number… you ask why? And the person says, “Cause I said so…” It sounds arbitrary, petty, and hollow.
But when God commands us to do something—it’s never arbitrary, petty or hollow… God’s decrees are always consistent with the ways things are…
A father tells his young daughter not to leave her bike out in rain, but to store it in it garage, his father is not trying to make life miserable for his daughter, he understands enough of the 2nd law thermodynamics and the principle of entropy to know that if the bike left out in it will rust and will not work as well.
When a doctor says to a man with high cholesterol, he must cut back on red meats and highly fatty foods; she’s not saying that to wreck his life. She saying that because she knows given his heart condition, too much red meat and fat could kill him!
God doesn’t offer his commands as way of wrecking our life but as way for us to live in shalom, as way for us to flourish…
Do you see that if you honor God’s word that you will flourish.
Whatever we sow, we tend to reap with interest.
We love others, we’ll receive love.
If we hate others, people will tend to hate us (probably with 5% interest added!).
Many people tend to think of God’s commands some abstract “ought to’s”
God’s commands are not so much about “ought-ness” for the sake “oughtness” as they are about the way things are.
If you’re checking out an apartment on the 12 floor to rent. And the manager says to even when you’re running behind schedule, don’t jump out off you’re twelve 12th floor to your care, use the elevator. That’s not so much about “moral ought-ness,” as it is describing the way things are in light of the way things are.
When God commands us to do something, God’s commands are not about some “abstract, moral oughtness” as much as they are about describing the ways things are…
If drink that the spring of living water, we will flourish. If forsake the way of God, we forsake ourselves because like the like the law of gravity, we don’t God’s laws, as much as we break ourselves over them.
Sin is about turning away from the spring of living water, sin is the vandalism of shalom… forsaking of ourselves.
As we continue in the text in describing the sin of God’s people Jeremiah says:
We have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
When we turn from God we turn from the spring of living water… we also turn to cisterns that cannot hold water…
When we sin, we’re turn from God the source of the life, the one for whom we were made and there is a vacuum in our souls that we need to fill…
This is true of everyone of us… if don’t turn to God we’ll turn to something else for meaning…
Vs. 11. God says through Jeremiah, But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.
If we don’t turn to the source of living water we’ll turn to something else for meaning…
When I was working as part of a corporation in Japan, when people discovered I was a Christian, they often would say I’m not religious. I’d often say, oh but you are religious… your religion may not be Christianity or even Buddhism, but you’re religion is your work… this is what you’ve devoted your life to it, it brings you meaning… it’s your de facto religion…
If we’re not turning to the spring of living water, we’ll look for living water in something else our career, our reputation, a person, in some kind of recreational pursuit, in beauty, in a role we play, needing to be needed…
But, nothing but the real God can fill the place that we need in our heart for God…
Last Sunday, just before Emily has baptized, she said I believed happiness and fulfillment sprung success and achievement. That meant, having a job I enjoyed, a stable income, a healthy marriage, and a loving family. All of these things I acquired and enjoyed, but I still felt an emptiness that I could not quite explain.
If we turn to something that does not satisfy, we’ll tend to need more and more of what doesn’t satisfy…
This of course of basis of addiction…
Vs. 14. Jeremiah as says the result of sin, God’s people have become slaves—which would prove true literally in Babylon and spiritually as they addicted to sin…
Vs. 24 of Jeremiah describes God’s people wild donkeys in heat that cannot be restrained, that’s a very graphic picture of addiction.
If are not to turning to the spring of living, we’ll be a turning to some other we hope will quench our thirst… maybe that sometimes seems to bring initial level satisfaction, but the next time it doesn’t bring same level of satisfaction, we need more and more just get first level of satisfaction… and we trapped…
(use the pot and water illustration)…
If we don’t turn to spring of living water, we’ll turned to broken ciscerns that cannot hold water…
How are we healed from something that that destroys shalom, our well being and addicts us…
Notice vs. 19.
19 Your wickedness will punish you;
your backsliding will rebuke you (as obedience is its own reward, sin its own punishment).
Consider then and realize
how evil and bitter it is for you
when you forsake the LORD your God
and have no awe of me,"
declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty.
Jeremiah in verse. 19…describes sin again as forsaking God… And as not be in awe of God…
The key to breaking the power of sin is to become people who are in awe of God…
I’ve shared this image before, but I believe it’s worth repeating. In Greek mythology, Homer tells about the enchanting Isle of the Sirens, where there were beautiful creatures part human, part bird and these Siren creatures sang melodies so beautifully that any person who heard them would become enchanted. Passing sailors who heard the Sirens' songs would hurl themselves overboard and swim to the island of the Sirens. Lured by these strange maidens the men would die upon the jagged rocks around the Isle.
So when Odysseus was about to pass the Isle of the Siren by ship ordered his men to plug their ears with beeswax so that they could not hear the Sirens' songs. Then he ordered his men to tie him to the ship's mast so he would not jump into the sea and swim ashore.
But when the Greater Adventurer Jason, needed to sail past the Isle of the Sirens He invited the greatest of all musicians was named Orpheus to come with him.
When the time came when Jason and the Argonauts had to sail past the dangerous isle of the Sirens, Jason had Orphesus play more beautiful music than the Siren and they were able to sail past the island unharmed.
When it comes to sin there are times, when we need to fill ask someone to fill our ears with beeswax and tie him to mast so that he is not exposed to deadly temptation.
But we also expose ourselves to beauty of Jesus Christ we can be free from this destructive force called.
Thomas Chalmers the great Scottish preacher in his famous sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection said, the only way to break the power of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it an object more beautiful. The answer to temptation is not just saying no (that’s part of it), but it is also saying “yes” to the beauty of Jesus Christ.
Expose yourself to the beauty of God: whether that beauty is discovered in the Word, in prayer, in people, in nature, in art, but mostly his beauty as seen Jesus Christ.
God calls us to turn from sin and to be holy and whole. He calls also calls us to be joyful. Robert Murray Mcheyne, another Scottish minister, once said to his congregation, you think knows but you to be holy, but he also wants you to be happy. As journey with God, we discover that light and heat, holiness and happiness are the same thing.
Please pray with me, this prayer that I use almost everyday from the Common Book of Prayer…
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
In the movie Grand Canyon, an attorney named Mack played by Kevin Kline is coming back from a Los Angeles Laker's game at the Forum and decides to take a short cut through a back alley to avoid traffic. His Lexus breaks down. Mack becomes surrounded by a gang of armed young men. And when things are looking about as bad as they can, the tow truck arrives, and out steps a An African man named Simon (played by Danny Glover), this is his turf so he knows how to negotiate with a gang:
Simon says to the gang leader, “Man, the world ain't supposed to work like this. I'm supposed to be able to do my job without having to ask you if I can. That dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you ripping him off. Everything is supposed to be different than it is.”
The world ain’t supposed to be this way.
God intended for the world to be a place of justice, peace, and compassion and things are not the way they are supposed to be.
We’ve seen this born out in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina. People were surprised stores were being looted, women raped, and helicopter’s trying to help being shot at… People were shockec to hear that government leaders did not do more to prepare for this hurricane when they had warned beforehand of it’s destructive force.
Here in Canada this week many were taken aback by at some of egotistical and cruel, cutting things said by a previous Prime Minister as revealed in those Secret Tapes.
From a Biblical perspective none of these things should not surprise us because the world ain’t the way their supposed to be.
The Bible teaches humans beings have potential for good, but because of sin we have the propensity to do evil.
Now I know that there are many who would challenge that statement, but over time, people have a tendency to move toward this kind of perspective.
I think of Dr. Ernest Becker, a former professor at UC Berkley and SFU professor and winner of the Pulitzer Prize wrote two books on evil. The first book on evil he called the Structure of Evil and in that book he said we the reason we have poverty and violence is because the privileged are oppressing others through oppressive social structures; therefore, the answer theses evils of poverty and war is good social science applied to government. Right after he died, his last book was published called Escape from Evil. In the preface he says, I am now in this book looking at humanity full in the face for the first time, in my previous works I failed to see how truly vicious human behavior is. He says I now see that there is needed some third alternative to problem of evil in our world apart from social science or despair.
People typically don’t start out saying people are horrible and at end lives find themselves saying humans are wonderful, it tends to be other way around.
In the book of Jeremiah, God’s people are asking why are things falling apart for us in our society (some time later they’d why ask are we being overrun by Babylon), why ain’t things the way their supposed to be. Jeremiah’s answer was NOT we need more cutting edge social science applied to government. His answer was our society is falling apart because of sin, because we have forsaken God.
Over the next several we going to do a series on Sin, specifically the 7 deadly sins and 7 heavenly virtues (as you have may noticed in the last year or so, the Vancouver Sun and CBC have run features on the 7 Deadly Sins).
Today we’re going to begin by looking at how the prophet describes sin.
If you have your Bible please turn to Jeremiah 2. We’ll be looking at various texts in Jeremiah, but lets begin with verse 13:
Jeremiah 2 gives us windows into the nature of sin…
Vs. 13 we read God saying through the prophet Jeremiah
13 "My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Here is vs. 13 Jeremiah says one of the sins God’s people have committed is the sin forsaking of God.
Forsaking God is particular sin God’s people have committed, but all sin involves the forsaking of God at some to one degree or another.
We tend to see sin as breaking some kind of abstract moral code.
Or perhaps we sin as the missing of a target or the aiming at the wrong target.
Biblically speaking, sin includes these things…
But the heart of sin involves forsaking or turning from God…
All sin can be traced back to a forsaking of God, to a turning from God at some level: All sin can be traced back to failure to love and trust God.
All sin has a godward dimension to it.
Professor Bruce Waltke, who taught Old Testament for many years at Regent College, as a boy play to love football on the street near his home (in New Jersey). One day Bruce and his friends were playing on the sidewalk in front of Bruce’s house. Bruce’s mother had said that it ok to that there, there was just one rule, “Don’t kick the ball.” But as Bruce was holding the ball, the temptation was too great… and he dropped the ball and kicked it. He got great air, but not great aim. The ball sailed sideways and smashed through a neighbor’s window.
Bruce says he can still hear his mother screaming, “Bruce!” Bruce said his sin was so against his neighbor, but against his mother who had made the rule.
When we sin, we may hurt others in the process, but all is sin ultimately is against God.
King David, committed adultery and then tried to orchestrate a major cover up which included the murder of the woman's husband Uriah. Later he prayed in Psalm 51:1-4.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
David’s sin of adultery was against the woman’s husband, against Bathsheba by forcing her to break her marriage covenant (and in that culture a woman in Bathsheba’s station propositioned by the King would have had little choice, but to comply), but David’s primary sin as later he recognized was primarily against God…
When we sin, we sin not only against human beings, but we sin against God in that we break God’s commandment, and we fail to trust and love him…
For example, if we lie… if we say “It’s in the mail (when it’s not), Canadian post is often late.” It’s not simply a breaking of some abstract law, but a failure to trust God… (I am going to look like such a schmuck if I don’t say it’s in the mail because I said it going to be there by today—it’s a failure to trust God for our identity OR we think we’re going to lose this client if I don’t say it’s in the mail… a failure to trust God for our financial well being)…
Another example, if we act in ways that discriminate against women, or against people of color, or the poor, or are cruel to animals, or pollute the environment, we’re showing a lack of respect for what God has made…
Sin is not simply the breaking of a rule that hurts a person, but sin always has a godward dimension to it.
Think of sin that you struggle with… can you trace sin back to a forsaking of a God, a failure to love and trust God?
As Jeremiah says, God’s people have committed a sin of forsaking of God, the spring of living water… All sin involves the forsaking of God and ironically involves the forsaking of ourselves.
Because when turn from God, we also from the only spring of living water… there is none other…
Cornelius Plantinga jr in his engaging, thoughtful book Not the Way it’s Supposed to be: A Breviary of Sin (recommended in the outline) defines sin as the breaking of Shalom.
God has intended the world to be a place of shalom: we tend to define shalom as simply cease fire or peace, but Biblically shalom includes the idea of wholeness, wellness, a flourishing that springs from the blessing of God upon something.
Sin is what disturbs Shalom…
Irenaeus, says the glory of God is a human fully alive…
Sin diminishes life… sin corrodes our soul.
If a human being commands you to do something sound ridiculous… Says your partner says never eats at a restaurant that ends with a odd number… you ask why? And the person says, “Cause I said so…” It sounds arbitrary, petty, and hollow.
But when God commands us to do something—it’s never arbitrary, petty or hollow… God’s decrees are always consistent with the ways things are…
A father tells his young daughter not to leave her bike out in rain, but to store it in it garage, his father is not trying to make life miserable for his daughter, he understands enough of the 2nd law thermodynamics and the principle of entropy to know that if the bike left out in it will rust and will not work as well.
When a doctor says to a man with high cholesterol, he must cut back on red meats and highly fatty foods; she’s not saying that to wreck his life. She saying that because she knows given his heart condition, too much red meat and fat could kill him!
God doesn’t offer his commands as way of wrecking our life but as way for us to live in shalom, as way for us to flourish…
Do you see that if you honor God’s word that you will flourish.
Whatever we sow, we tend to reap with interest.
We love others, we’ll receive love.
If we hate others, people will tend to hate us (probably with 5% interest added!).
Many people tend to think of God’s commands some abstract “ought to’s”
God’s commands are not so much about “ought-ness” for the sake “oughtness” as they are about the way things are.
If you’re checking out an apartment on the 12 floor to rent. And the manager says to even when you’re running behind schedule, don’t jump out off you’re twelve 12th floor to your care, use the elevator. That’s not so much about “moral ought-ness,” as it is describing the way things are in light of the way things are.
When God commands us to do something, God’s commands are not about some “abstract, moral oughtness” as much as they are about describing the ways things are…
If drink that the spring of living water, we will flourish. If forsake the way of God, we forsake ourselves because like the like the law of gravity, we don’t God’s laws, as much as we break ourselves over them.
Sin is about turning away from the spring of living water, sin is the vandalism of shalom… forsaking of ourselves.
As we continue in the text in describing the sin of God’s people Jeremiah says:
We have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
When we turn from God we turn from the spring of living water… we also turn to cisterns that cannot hold water…
When we sin, we’re turn from God the source of the life, the one for whom we were made and there is a vacuum in our souls that we need to fill…
This is true of everyone of us… if don’t turn to God we’ll turn to something else for meaning…
Vs. 11. God says through Jeremiah, But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.
If we don’t turn to the source of living water we’ll turn to something else for meaning…
When I was working as part of a corporation in Japan, when people discovered I was a Christian, they often would say I’m not religious. I’d often say, oh but you are religious… your religion may not be Christianity or even Buddhism, but you’re religion is your work… this is what you’ve devoted your life to it, it brings you meaning… it’s your de facto religion…
If we’re not turning to the spring of living water, we’ll look for living water in something else our career, our reputation, a person, in some kind of recreational pursuit, in beauty, in a role we play, needing to be needed…
But, nothing but the real God can fill the place that we need in our heart for God…
Last Sunday, just before Emily has baptized, she said I believed happiness and fulfillment sprung success and achievement. That meant, having a job I enjoyed, a stable income, a healthy marriage, and a loving family. All of these things I acquired and enjoyed, but I still felt an emptiness that I could not quite explain.
If we turn to something that does not satisfy, we’ll tend to need more and more of what doesn’t satisfy…
This of course of basis of addiction…
Vs. 14. Jeremiah as says the result of sin, God’s people have become slaves—which would prove true literally in Babylon and spiritually as they addicted to sin…
Vs. 24 of Jeremiah describes God’s people wild donkeys in heat that cannot be restrained, that’s a very graphic picture of addiction.
If are not to turning to the spring of living, we’ll be a turning to some other we hope will quench our thirst… maybe that sometimes seems to bring initial level satisfaction, but the next time it doesn’t bring same level of satisfaction, we need more and more just get first level of satisfaction… and we trapped…
(use the pot and water illustration)…
If we don’t turn to spring of living water, we’ll turned to broken ciscerns that cannot hold water…
How are we healed from something that that destroys shalom, our well being and addicts us…
Notice vs. 19.
19 Your wickedness will punish you;
your backsliding will rebuke you (as obedience is its own reward, sin its own punishment).
Consider then and realize
how evil and bitter it is for you
when you forsake the LORD your God
and have no awe of me,"
declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty.
Jeremiah in verse. 19…describes sin again as forsaking God… And as not be in awe of God…
The key to breaking the power of sin is to become people who are in awe of God…
I’ve shared this image before, but I believe it’s worth repeating. In Greek mythology, Homer tells about the enchanting Isle of the Sirens, where there were beautiful creatures part human, part bird and these Siren creatures sang melodies so beautifully that any person who heard them would become enchanted. Passing sailors who heard the Sirens' songs would hurl themselves overboard and swim to the island of the Sirens. Lured by these strange maidens the men would die upon the jagged rocks around the Isle.
So when Odysseus was about to pass the Isle of the Siren by ship ordered his men to plug their ears with beeswax so that they could not hear the Sirens' songs. Then he ordered his men to tie him to the ship's mast so he would not jump into the sea and swim ashore.
But when the Greater Adventurer Jason, needed to sail past the Isle of the Sirens He invited the greatest of all musicians was named Orpheus to come with him.
When the time came when Jason and the Argonauts had to sail past the dangerous isle of the Sirens, Jason had Orphesus play more beautiful music than the Siren and they were able to sail past the island unharmed.
When it comes to sin there are times, when we need to fill ask someone to fill our ears with beeswax and tie him to mast so that he is not exposed to deadly temptation.
But we also expose ourselves to beauty of Jesus Christ we can be free from this destructive force called.
Thomas Chalmers the great Scottish preacher in his famous sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection said, the only way to break the power of a beautiful object on the soul is to show it an object more beautiful. The answer to temptation is not just saying no (that’s part of it), but it is also saying “yes” to the beauty of Jesus Christ.
Expose yourself to the beauty of God: whether that beauty is discovered in the Word, in prayer, in people, in nature, in art, but mostly his beauty as seen Jesus Christ.
God calls us to turn from sin and to be holy and whole. He calls also calls us to be joyful. Robert Murray Mcheyne, another Scottish minister, once said to his congregation, you think knows but you to be holy, but he also wants you to be happy. As journey with God, we discover that light and heat, holiness and happiness are the same thing.
Please pray with me, this prayer that I use almost everyday from the Common Book of Prayer…
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
posted by Shigematsu at 8:35 AM
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