IT LOOKS SO GOOD ON THE OUTSIDE.....

     When our family gathers together, someone usually brings a game.  One holiday our youngest son brought a game to play with his brothers called Jelly Belly BeanBoozled.  Now we all know that Jelly beans can be delightful, but in this game, each person has to select one of two jelly beans to taste.  Some of the delicious flavors include:  marshmallow and cappuccino.  However, the other flavors include:  liver and onions, stinky socks, dead fish, booger, stink bug or old bandage.  Watching them play the game made us all laugh as we saw the expression on their face when they got one of the nasty jelly beans.  They all looked so good on the outside that it was impossible to tell which one to avoid!

     Games like this are good, clean fun, but it also reminds us of something else we have to face in this life: sin.  Just like the bright colors and attractive promise of good tasting candy, sin comes dressed up in very attractive ways.  It is not until we bite into it that we find the taste is not what we expected.  As my husband loves to say, "It all started in the Garden of Eden." Since that time, man has had to deal with  the reality of sin in our hearts.  Jeremiah puts it very bluntly (17:9): "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?"  The Apostle Paul goes on to make it clear that "... all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).  Because we have this sin nature, we are not capable of living to God's glory based on our own good works.  Instead, we are dead in our sin, but the Good News is given to us as Paul goes on to say:  "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23).  Even after our hearts are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, we still have the old nature that wants to give in to temptation.  It is a struggle as Paul describes in his own battle with the old flesh (Romans 7:15-25).

     What we all have to realize is that if we want to make the right choices in order to glorify the Lord, we need to make certain we are living according to the truth of His Word.  The Bible is the foundation of our faith and in its pages we learn who God is and who we are.  Not only that, we learn God's character and His laws which teach us how to live a holy and righteous life before Him.  When it comes to His character, we know that God is immutable (unchanging).  Therefore, we know that His Word is also unchanging.  We cannot delete passages we don't like or agree with.  We cannot claim that the Bible was written for a different time and now things have changed so we can ignore certain passages.  Some have claimed these very things, but God reminds us in Isaiah 40:8 "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever."  Jesus further confirms this in Matthew 24:35 when He says:  "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will never pass away."

     In the end, we can make all the excuses we want to concerning our behavior in light of the Bible, but sin is sin.  As believers, our obligation is to obey the Lord in all He has asked us to do morally, spiritually and in our thought life.  Jesus plainly told us, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."  He did not say "some of them", "those we like", or "only those in the New Testament".  We are to keep "all" of them that we might be holy as He is holy.

     Writing to encourage believers, the Apostle John wrote that we have a remedy for sin.  He said, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9.  Therefore, we can maintain a right standing with our Lord if we confess those times that we have broken His commandments in how we live.  The beauty of redemption is that before we came to Christ, we had no choice.  We were bound by sin.  In coming to Him, we now have the freedom to choose to obey Him or go our own way in defiance of His Word.  While we may want to candy coat sin, the taste will still be bitter to our lips just like the Jelly Belly game I referenced above.  Let us instead, choose the sweet taste of obedience that our lives will serve as a light to others and a glory to the Lord.  Selah!