What happens when we sin?

Here we are, visualizing Abraham's catechism class with the Lord and the question arises what happens when we sin. Again, from Adam, who sinned and blamed to Sodom and Gomorrah, where we are watching God interacting with Abraham, there was sin everyday. Everyday mankind ran further and further from God, until they would have run themselves into outer darkness. God is holy and He cannot involve Himself with sin or sinners. We are still running headlong into sin, if we are not arrested by the Grace of God in the sacrifice of Christ. Abraham would have seen, in the judgment of Sodom the fact that his own sin deserved judgment and was being paid for. He would have seen that, although he is not living in Sodom, God is so holy that he cannot interact with Him without a mediator. Jesus Christ the righteous is that mediator, now enfleshed and sitting at the right hand of the Father, but then the word of God delivered in shadows and pictures for the future. Confession of sin and daily cleansing is pictured in the book of Leviticus and I am so glad that it is. You are going to stumble in this and that way, even when you are trying to walk rightly. The Old Testament saints had serious and exacting prices to pay for each and every situation of uncleanness that they stepped into. We are not like Adam, their sacrifices seemed to say. We are not blameshifting and running away from the only cleansing for sin. We own our sin and we are paying the price that God demands, to show Him that we believe that He has an eternal price for sin that is to come. That price has come and has been paid. Part of the 2 immutable things that God has paid that He does not lie is the one who exacts the price and the payment of the price. Both being in God. God the Father, the demander of righteousness and God the Son, the Righteousness demanded. Jehovah Tsidkenu. Halleluia, what a salvation. We cannot pick ourselves back up. We throw ourselves upon the mercy of God, paid for in Christ. We have betrayed His holiness and we are trying to love Him. We run to Christ and trust His payment. Help me, Lord to want to be like You. Cleanse me.

I imagine Abraham, sitting and looking at the sky and wondering "Who made me?"

God, clearly said, I am so glad you asked that question and what followed was a wonderful conversation that we are still privy to today. God continues to reveal His love and commitment to Abraham and those who follow him in faith and questions. God's catechism to us about Himself is far more abundant and searching and clear. I made you, He shouts, I love you, He bellows in every loud thunder. I am trying to tell you about myself. Let me show you Me, He cries, but first you must see you. You are unfaithful, inconsiderate, untrue. I am making a vow that I will love you, Abraham and I will spend the rest of time showing you myself and fleshing out the reality of our love. One member of the Trinity reveals Himself to Abraham in holiness and power. He gets a glimpse of the triunity of God, at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham, if you were the only sinner on the earth and I was going to love you I would have to have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah to reach to you. That is how sinful you are. All of those people could not pay for your sins. Only a perfect substitute, only the two immutable things by which God could and would and does not lie. Where is it? Abraham must have wondered. We are trying to live right as we can. God thunders and cajoles His holiness in Sodom. Come to me, please. He implores. Do we come? Every question is answered in the truth of God's holiness. What is wrong with us? God is holy. We are not. How do we get there? He provides the means and the way in and through the Lord Jesus. He has paid it all and answered every question of why we are not with God. We are not holy. Abraham was not holy. Sodom and Gomorrah were not holy. The heathen nations were not holy. Let us reason from the greater to the lesser. Why should a holy God care about us? He promised to care. He started this conversation for His own glory. He gave us His commitment to be drawn by His love and we will be drawn. When God starts catechising and showing off the love He has for us, it is breathtaking. Look at the stars, Abraham, He says, I will keep showing you the love I have, in that your children will be numberless like the stars. I am not an impotent God, He displays, but I am showing the lengths to which my love is reaching to make a way for helpless sinners to be mine, my very own, my purchased posession. What can separate us from the love of God? He is committed, when I am not committed; he will draw me with His love. I come in confession and awareness of my unworthiness.

The goodness of God leads to repentance.

The picture of Ephraim in Hosea was as close to a gentile as the people of God could perceive in that day. ie. Inbred duplicity in the ranks. Heathen for years and years, born of Israel, but a heart that is half of Egypt and half of Israel. Can they be saved? No, says the religious heart. God saw something good in me and that is why I am here, we imagine, if we are self righteous. He couldn't have a plan for Ephraim or the heathen nations. God called Hosea to lay out the reality of God's love, even for the heathen nations to Israel. Could God love them? Could God really pay the price of sin for heathen people? The religious heart thinks itself somewhat worthy of the love of God. That is the greatest deception of all. God didn't choose Abraham to make self righteous deceived people. He paid for Abraham and all who come to God in faith in Christ. He loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives and that plan is to make us holy. To clean us up, like a mangy puppy and help us learn to be clean. My heart walks like an Egyptian and is black, can He cleanse it? He is Holy! Make us know our true estate and humble ourselves to know You more.

Fred Hammond has a way of reminding me what our elders did to us.

I heard this song from Fred and I said, "Fred, Wazzup, where is the doctrine and the depth that I have come to appreciate from your songs." In my spirit, by the middle of the song, I saw the elders and the mothers of the church who taught us to "receive the Holy Spirit!" I saw the faces of sometimes bored and boring god-seeking teenagers who looked to our elders for direction and they gave us the gift of repetition. We received the message and we received the real Holy Spirit and all of the good gifts that He gives. Godly households, happy marriages, love and peace and help in the storms and all because some people gave us repetition. Doctrine is Okay, I heard Fred say in this song, but there is nothing like saying it again. I still think that Fred is the best theologian of our generation. Thank you for helpin' us to "PRAISE HIM!"

Lord, Teach us to Praise!

You are worthy of worship and glory and honor, Lord. You are mighty and one of the first instructions of the difference between God and the gentiles that You spoke to the woman at the well was that the Father seeks such to worship Him. You who need nothing or no-one, would seek the likes of "dogs" to worship You? It seems unfathomable, but it is true and drove that woman to testify. The Father seeks such? He knows me? He knows where I've been? and the Father seeks such, unworthy, inept, unlovely ones? He can and does clean us and make us and remake us to be...worshippers? Broken hearted, jaded, disenchanted people can find purpose in prayer, seems to be what that woman found in Jesus. You can be a vessel for the honor of God. Praise and Worship is due to our God, whatever we are or have been. After repentance, praise is our purpose. The fruit of our lips and our lives. Give us the words to worship and praise You, Lord. We haven't the words or the gumption. Amen.

Seeing and Savoring the Sufficiency of Christ!

The message from Pastor Piper brought the sacrifice of Christ into perspective in my life. He discussed the reality of Christ sacrifice on behalf of my impotent soul being the fuel that empowers the sacrifices of love that I am called to exhibit. We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. I don't feel like praising God, sometimes. I don't see with my eyes the answers to my prayers, sometimes, but I am called to focus my minds eye upon Him and that evokes worship. Pastor Piper seemed to make a parallel with the service that I am called to give in response to His care for me. I bring the sacrifice of love to my family, in imitation of my Savior and in response to the great care that He has placed upon me. I may faint in my service, at times. I may be limp and powerless in some aspects, but my exertion is empowered by the thought that I am the recipient of infinite mercy and grace and love from a perfect God and blessed beyond measure. I faint when I look at the journey. I faint when I look at my feeble efforts. I faint when I look at the hand that are attempting or at the recipients, but when I gaze at the great and infinite Savior. The perfection of His passion, the perfection of His Love and of His service, I can cook one more meal, discuss one more problem, open one more subject, for Him and not for me and not even for them. Thank you Pastor Piper for turning my eyes upon Jesus.

The Power of the Efficacious Work of the Savior!

His Blood atoned and that is the strength that we can have to arise... from guilty fears. From Guilty fears? The upright soul imitates God and stands upright because the blood of Jesus paid for my sins. I would be in hell today, were it not for His eternal payment for the punishments for my sins. Each new day is a new measure of the mercy and grace that keeps our eyes and our souls heavenbound. I needn't keep my eyes on the ground and my shoulders slouched under the weight of the guilty fears. Fears that my sins which ever chase me, will overtake me, unawares and eternally consume me. That is Christ's job to subdue them. He ever lives to make intercession for us. He is the stronger than the strong man. He is the one those guilty fears have to answer to. Guilty fears {I speak to them in my soul} You have to answer to God. You are confessed to the Father and under the blood of my risen Savior. Dear Holy Spirit, bring comfort and peace to this battered heart this morning, distressed by guilty fears that haunt and howl. Arise my soul. Amen.