Chapter 36

Jakob looked at his meager congregation and started his message:

"I believe that sin is real and is when a man rebels against God his Creator. Sin is when man believes that he is smarter than God and tries to put himself in the place of God in his life. It says in 1 Timothy 6:10, 'For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.' Many Christians and non-Christians alike misuse the first part of this verse, and they make it so that all money is evil. The most common form of greed, however, is loving money and profit above all else; this stems from the prideful belief that you deserve something, to the point that once you have it, it isn't enough. John D. Rockefeller summarized this concept in his answer to the question, 'How much money is enough?'

"He said, 'One more dollar than I have.'

"Pride is in reality the root of all evil. Satan said in his heart, 'I will be like the Most High.' (Isaiah 14:14b) The Mirriam-Webster definition of pride is, 'The quality or state of being proud, inordinate self-esteem, a reasonable or justifiable self-respect, and delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship.' All of these, when looked at from a proper 'Christian' point of view, are not very good. As I said last Sunday, 'The definition of humility according to the NCBD is, "A freedom from arrogance that grows out of the recognition that all we have and are comes from God."' So if humility is recognizing that God has given all that we have to us, why do people say to take pride in your work? They say this because they do not understand that God has given you the ability to do your job. If God gave us the ability, why do we say in our hearts the same thing that Nebuchadnezzar did in Daniel 4:30, 'The king spoke, saying, 'Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?' All you have to do is replace a few words and you know that you think the same thing. When a person is prideful, they are putting themselves in the place of God in their life.

"Hate also springs up from pride. Racism, prejudice, and sexism are all the products of hate. It says in 1 John 3:15, 'Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.' The rest of the passage that this verse is from is talking about love, so this is giving a contrast and defining hate for the purposes of this passage. This definition that hate is the same thing as murder works in only some of the verses in the Bible. In Luke 14:26 a very different definition is needed for this verse to make any sense. 'If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.' This verse is one of those that, like baptism, the context changes the meaning. Hate can also mean a willingness to lay down everything, even to the point of death, to follow God. People often think that there is only one definition for a single word, but that is because, in the English language, we often have one word to describe multiple concepts. The two big examples of this are hate and love, which are both misused way too often.

"The Holier-than-thou attitude is a prideful attitude that is well on its way to becoming sinful hate. The only one allowed to have an attitude like this is God, because He is holy. Many 'Christians' think themselves better than another person because they have not done a certain sin that someone else is doing, or has done. A saying I have heard is, 'The worst sin is the one I have not committed.' Yet it says in James 2:10, 'For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.' 'The whole law' spans from Exodus to Deuteronomy, and though God has 'done away with' many Old Testament practices, there are so many laws that a man can break with just a single thought. A good example of this is what Jesus said in Matthew 5:28, 'But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' If we sin just by thinking something bad, and if we are guilty of breaking every law, what right do we have to say to a man we just saw walk by us on his way to the courthouse for murder, 'I am better than you,' and 'You deserve to go to Hell.' We would all be bound for Hell if it were not for our Lord's sacrifice.

"Judging others is also part of the attitude mentioned above. The next verse that I am going to say is used out of context so many times, Matthew 7:1, 'Judge not, that you be not judged.' The rest of passage includes the verse about the speck in your brother's eye and the plank in your own eye. As the song by Casting Crowns goes, 'I'm not pointing my finger, I'm holding out my hand.' If you ever look up the way the court system works in America than you know what the job of a judge is, the judge's job is to 'lay down the law' and 'throw the book at you.' We are the men in a rescue boat on a stormy ocean who came across a man drowning. We pull up alongside him and tell him to grab our hand, not leave him to drown, and once he grabs our hand we definitely should not slap it and let go. We need to pull him from the angry waves and into the boat, where he will get a blanket put over him and we can go back to shore where he will be and feel safe. Our job is to tell people that they are drowning and do our best to save them. We have to be standing in the boat before we can do anything, and that boat is called Christ and the Bible.

"There are many lists of sins in the Bible. The sins that are repeated the most often are homosexuality, adultery, and fornication. God wanted to keep sex as an activity for only a married man and woman with each other, and Jesus confirmed this in Matthew 19. The first practical and scientific sense for this is that God wanted to keep us from venereal diseases, which you would only get in marriage if you were unfaithful or your spouse had it to begin with. The second is that God intended sex for reproduction, and these three sins most certainly are not committed for the sole purpose of reproduction. Now, back during the days of the Old Testament kings women outnumbered men and were not socially given the same chances as men were. Back then a woman basically had to be married to a man to be secure in her living.

"In the beginning of Exodus 20, God gives the Israelites a list of Ten Commandments which He told them to follow. No one was ever able to follow them completely, except Jesus our Savior. He said that the Ten Commandments, or the Law, and the Prophets hinged on two commandments, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' And 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' If what you are doing does not line up with these two things than you are sinning. Now does that mean that you have to follow a certain set of rules, written and unwritten, laid down by your church, which 'says' that it is within these parameters?

"The answer to the question can be said in one word, no. The reason for this is something that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 8. In this passage Paul talks about Christian Liberty, which he talks about elsewhere, in regards to eating food that is offered to idols. The point that he makes is that eating the food is not a sin and is not specifically prohibited by God, but to a new believer who has just come out of paganism it could be a problem. Another example of this is someone who was a rampant gambler, among other things, who turned to the faith and stopped gambling completely. Gambling is not specifically prohibited in the Bible. Is it a wise thing to do? No, considering that the money could be put to better use elsewhere. If you are a Christian God said that everything that was yours was given to you by Him and remains His, and He told us to be wise stewards of all that He gave us. Now some people could argue that all of life is a gamble. God did not tell us to take chances with money for the love of money, but He did tell us to take chances in life with Him as our foundation. Also, taking chances is part of life. Gambling is often associated in people's minds with drunkenness, dishonesty, theft, etc. One thing that is associated with Gambling is a deck of playing cards. Some people view owning playing cards as a sin, because of a background, or knowledge of a background, and fear of an addiction to gambling. Paul told people to abstain from doing certain things, for the sake of the weaker brother.

"One point of confusion for many Christians is killing, because God says in Exodus 20:13, 'You shall not murder.' This verse is one of the Ten Commandments and some versions add to the confusion by interpreting the Hebrew word ratsach as kill, which is a way to translate it, but if you look at the different variations of translating the word it generally involves some form of planning. Only one possible translation of it in this verse involves the idea of an accidental killing. This verse is meant for individual people, but God has given governments the power to go to war for the defense of their country, which would tend to indicate that there would be loss of life. If you are soldier and your country is at war, God doesn't condemn you for killing the enemy. God made provisions in the Mosaic Law for people to kill others in the act of self-defense. The belief that Pacifism is the only way may have started from people trying to perfectly mimic the life of Christ, which is impossible. God has given it to us to defend ourselves and others impartially from public assault, but not from private insult. Jesus's teachings about turning the other cheek and giving up your cloak were dealing with the private insult.

"God has said in the Ten Commandments to put Him first in the first two commandments which are in Exodus 20:3, 'You shall have no other gods before Me.' And in Exodus 20:4-6, 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.' He made us, so we are His and in the end we will be accountable to Him. It is made pretty clear throughout the whole Bible that this is the case, the greatest example is the Great White Throne Judgement of Revelation 20:11-15. The Father had the Son come into the world to be the light in our darkness and to save us from ourselves, because our very existence is allowed by the God who created us with His own hands, loves us more than we can ever understand, and we have scorned for our own way of doing things. Idols and 'false gods' do not have to be what we would think of as gods. Anything that we give more importance than God is an idol and a 'false god' in our life. If watching the football game on the television is more important to you than anything that has to do with God, you have a problem. Does that mean that all television is wrong? No, but everything is bad for you in excessive amounts.

"Witchcraft and magic is evil in one of its purest forms, because when it is truly being used, the power of it comes from demons. For this I will just uses what God tells His people when they are preparing to go into the Promise Land in Deuteronomy 18:9-14, 'When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.' This is also one of the things that transcends the barrier between the law of the Old Testament and the grace of the New Testament, because God says through John in Revelation 22:12-17, '''And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie. "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star." And the Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let him who hears say, "Come!" And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.' God has spelled it out that those miraculous deeds or great powers that are not of Him are of demons, and he has made it quite clear that following demons is a sin. Those of you who believe in white or good magic are sinning against a holy God in practicing or trying to practice it, because the Bible says that magic is magic and that it is wrong.

Obedience is the number one thing that God commands of us. Jesus said in John 14:15, 'If you love Me, keep My commandments.' The Bible semi-explains this through the situation when God 'disowns' Saul as the king of Israel for his disobedience in utterly destroying the enemies of Israel. Saul was power hungry and prideful, and God told him to spare nothing from death in the city of Amalek. Samuel answered his excuses for not doing so with the statement of 1 Samuel 15:22, 'But Samuel replied: "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.'" The definition of obedience that I gave at the beginning brings it all back to this, if God has expressly commanded something and we do not follow what He has said in His Word we have sinned. The Bible tells us to obey those in authority over us, unless they ask us to do something that is against God and what He has commanded.

"There are many things in the Bible that are black and white, but there aren't as many as some would like to think. Sometimes, there are things that we need to decide for ourselves as to whether or not they are sin. If everything you do brings glory to God and Him only, than you are a holier man than I am or will ever be. There is nothing wrong with having fun, but we must be careful as to whether it is the right kind of fun or not. If not, may God get a hold of your heart and show you what He would have you to do.

"A possible prayer that I have thought of is as follows:

"'Lord, please help me today to know what you would have me to do. Please bring me closer to you and keep me from sinning against you. Help me to know what the right thing to do is, and please give me the strength and courage to do it.'

"Amen"