August 29, 2017 – Devotions
Your G-d Is Too Small — What is the Truth about Sin and Forgiveness? – part deux

“The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” Exodus 32:7-14

Sin, or our inability to “hit the mark of G-dly living”, is a complicated thing. Recognizing our sin means we have to be able to see ourselves as we really are. We often try to compare our behavior to others – like the Pharisee does with the Tax Collector – and like to point out how others are worse sinners than ourselves. One comparison we cannot make is to compare ourselves to G-d – thinking we can live exactly like Jesus – always have his temperament, always have his forgiving nature, and always live being welcoming, loving, and all inclusive like Jesus. If we set our righteous living on the standard of “being just like Jesus”, then why even try to “hit the mark”? Trying to live up to those standards will only leave us feeling hopeless and viewed as failures. In ancient times, G-d did set standards for living. G-d gave Moses the Ten Commandments – and the people standing at the foot of the mountain told Moses to tell G-d “We will do whatever you tell us or ask of us.” And then the people failed time and time again to meet those standards – but G-d did not break G-d’s covenant with them. Yes, they were banished to wander in the wilderness for many years because they could not be obedient – but G-d saw it as a people who could not keep their eyes on the target – people who were hard of heart and stiff-necked. And so G-d punished (some would say humiliated) one generation of the people until those people had passed away and a new generation repented and recognized their complete need for G-d.

To have a real sense of sin is by no means the same thing as being humiliated. Thank goodness we have done away with the stocks and the pillory – whose sole purpose was to humiliate the offender into leading a better life. Setting standards of living where we only hope we might feel less hopeless, feel less inadequate, or any feeling of being “less than” is not what recognizing our sin is about. Recognizing sin requires us to know ourselves, to have insight into our motivations and behaviors, and then to repent of our ways that are not of G-d. Repentance means a complete turnabout in our lives. Repentance means we stop going down one road, that being a road without G-d, and we turn around and go down a different road, that being the road of living in relationship with G-d and setting our eyes on the teachings of Jesus. (Themes come from the book “Your God Is Too Small” by J. B. Phillips)

Pastor Dave

August 28, 2017 – Devotions – Your G-d Is Too Small — What is the Truth about Sin and Forgiveness?

“The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” Luke 18:9-13

Do people really understand the word “Sin”? Do people really understand how sin affects their lives? Probably not. I can feel fairly safe saying “Probably Not”, because it seems to me that if people do not have a sense of G-d, then how can they have any sense of sin. One must understand or at least have a sense of one to even try to understand the other. And when a person comes to believe that a G-d exists, he or she soon also understands the concept of being in relationship with that G-d – and the parameters of a right and a wrong relationship – and that something must be done. In ancient times, when bad things were happening in the community, or with crops, etc. the people believed they had sinned and angered G-d. To appease the G-d or G-d’s, they would sacrifice animals, crops, even children – something had to be “done” to repair the relationship with their G-d. There are tribes in the Americas who, during a solar eclipse, they would shoot arrows at the sun hoping to bring it back – something had to be done. Something must be done, they thought, so that the bridge between the holiness of G-d and the sinfulness of man could be built – and not temporarily. The Greek word for sin is “Hamartia” – it means “to miss the mark” – as in shooting an arrow at a target, and missing. We could say that sin is not just making an error in judgment in a particular case, but missing the whole point of human life; not just the violation of a law, but an insult to a relationship with the One to whom we owe everything. Sin therefore is more than just that “guilty feeling” we get when we think we have not “toed the line”. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector gives us a glimpse of how deluded we can become. The Pharisee feels he is “upright because he truly believes has done all the right things – so, by extension he is right with G-d” – while the Tax Collector’s guilt is overwhelming, because he sees himself only as “a sinner” – he sees his life as sinful no matter what he may or may not have done.

When we are not in relationship with G-d, or when we live as if we do not need G-d, or we truly believe we are so good that our lives are without sin, then we are square in the target of living in sin –because sin is not about what we have done “for” G-d, it is about diminishing what G-d has done “for” us. (Themes come from the book “Your God Is Too Small” by J. B. Phillips)

Pastor Dave