They turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. Judges 2:19b
My mother is not an envious woman. Even so, I heard a bit of envy in her voice when I told her how much gasoline was selling for in St. Louis: $2.75-a-gallon.
Do I hear some envy in your voice too?
Mom said that it was going for more than $3.50-a-gallon in Chicago. For people on a fixed income, the skyrocketing price of staying on the road has been a difficult burden to bear. Indeed, gas prices in May caused the Consumer Price Index to shoot up faster than it has in a year-and-a-half.
Now, what I’d like to point out is this. My mother thought $2.75 was a good price for gas. Can you remember back a few years when one dollar seemed outrageous for fuel? Then, when the price went up to $1.50, we thought a dollar was a good deal. Now, almost any reader of this devotion would run right out and top off the tanks on all of his vehicles if he could find any service station with a pump price set at two dollars.
This is just one way of saying, “People can get used to things.” In my mother’s lifetime, Clark Gable scandalized the world when he left Scarlet saying, “He didn’t give a (hoot) what happened to her.” Today, foul language is common in almost every movie and television program we see. People got used to it. There was a time when almost every pastor proclaimed the Bible as God’s inspired, inerrant Word. Now, it’s difficult to find a pastor or parish where the fundamentals are still being preached. People have become used to it.
The Lord doesn’t like people to get used to sin. He doesn’t like it when one generation builds on the transgressions of the previous generation. That’s why, in the book of Judges, the Lord let people know He isn’t pleased when they turn their back and become “more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them.”
God doesn’t want us to get used to sin because, as our Holy Lord, He has never become used to it. Scripture is clear. God hates sinful stuff. He hated it enough to wipe out the world with a flood. He hates sin enough to condemn all who are blackened by transgression. He hates it enough to send His Son into this world to live, suffer, die, and rise, so that we could be divested of all our sinful stuff.
God doesn’t want us to get used to sin, and for that reason He gives us a Savior who calls us out of our sinful darkness into the marvelous light and life of His blood-bought salvation.
THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, keep me from sin and keep me always in the Savior’s forgiveness. In His name, Amen.
Today's Bible Readings: Proverbs 27-29 Acts 5:1-21
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