Tag: Sin

Morning Musing: 1 Samuel 2:17

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“Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Religious sin is disgusting.  Are you with me?  There’s something about seeing people use religion as a means of committing some kind of sin that is particularly repulsive.  We may not be able to give precise wording to it, but something inside of us recoils with especial revulsion when we see it.  There’s just something rotten about it.  Do you know what?  God feels the same way. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Joshua 7:1

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“But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things, for Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things.  And the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The story of Achan is an interesting and sad one.  The people were coming off a major victory.  Their first stop on their tour through the land of Canaan had ended with them sacking a significant military outpost in the city of Jericho.  The city was famous for its incredibly high and thick walls.  The walls were so massive that archaeologists today can see in the various layers of rubble around the city where this battle took place.  So, the people are high on a sweet victory, but then things take a turn for the sour.  What happened? Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Judges 21:6-7

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“And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin their brother and said, ‘One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.  What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives?'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

You would think that here at the end of the book we would get some kind of a happy ending.  And as this chapter starts, it looks like we might.  The people collectively realize what they have done in nearly completely eliminating the tribe of Benjamin by civil war.  They also consider the gravity of having sworn an oath to the Lord together that they would not give their daughters as wives to the surviving men, thereby guaranteeing their eventually disappearance.  It leaves the reader finally cheering a bit: “Here, now they will finally turn back to the Lord and get back on the right track.”  But, that’s not the kind of book this is. Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Judges 19:1

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“In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, who took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Here we arrive at what is arguably the darkest narrative in all of the Scriptures.  The Passion sequence is bad, to be sure, but it at least ends with hope.  From nearly the first words of this chapter through the end of the story in chapter 21 not a single thing goes right.  Everything is wrong. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Isaiah 30:18

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“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.  For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The people of Israel were in a pretty hard spot.  They had turned on the Lord.  In fact, they had been turned away from the Lord for a long time.  They had been turned away from the Lord for a long time and it was beginning to show.  Their world was teetering on the edge.  Some of them had started to realize just how dire their situation really was.  They could read the international tea leaves.  They saw the Assyrian army moving steadily in their direction, gobbling up nations in their path and spitting out nothing but ruin and destruction.  But, instead of heeding Isaiah’s call to return to the Lord for their hope and salvation, they were running everywhere but to Him. Read the rest…