1.
Please pray with me. Lord of LIFE, we pray that, by the power of
Your Spirit, You would help us to Live In
Faith Everyday. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Live In
Faith Everyday. It’s easier said than done! It’s one thing to have saving
faith in Jesus as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s another thing to live that
Christian faith everyday. There are strong forces working against us as we
strive to Live In Faith Everyday. They’re
those familiar foes: the devil, the world, and our sinful nature. But they’re
constantly coming up with new ways to try to make it hard for us to Live In Faith Everyday. And they do it
by redefining the meaning of L.I.F.E.
2.
One redefinition of L.I.F.E. is this: Live In Freedom Everyday. Anything goes in our society now—especially
in the realm of sexuality. The message we hear is that we can have sex whenever
we want and with whomever we want. Gay or straight. Young or old. Married or
single. It doesn’t matter! Anything goes! Everything’s o.k.! And to make sure
you know it’s o.k., our society constantly parades a bunch of celebrities in
front of the cameras to assure you that you can Live In Freedom Everyday. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they’re
just being intolerant, old-fashioned, and close-minded.
3.
But, such a redefinition of L.I.F.E.
leads to another redefinition of L.I.F.E.: Live
In Fear Everyday. When moral confusion reigns in a society, the result is
fear. When all moral boundaries are gone, the result is fear. Young people fear
they’ll miss out on something, or not be accepted, unless they go along with
the crowd. Parents fear what will happen to their children if they do go along
with the crowd! Sadly, many give into
their fear of being left out and they dive into this sexual chaos. And they
don’t have to swim long before they realize some new fears: pregnancy, sexual
disease, guilt, and shame, to name a few.
4.
And suddenly, L.I.F.E. takes
on a whole new meaning: Live In Failure
Everyday. And when that’s what
L.I.F.E. becomes, the natural response is to try to cover up our failure. It
can happen to anyone. King David in the Old Testament went down that path with
Bathsheba. Remember what happened? It
was spring time, the time when most kings went off to war with their armies. But
King David stayed behind. Here’s what 2 Samuel 11 says, “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and
was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman
bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about
the woman. And one said, ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the
wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he
lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then
she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and
she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant’” (2 Samuel
11:2-5).
5.
When King David saw Bathsheba, suddenly L.I.F.E.
took on new meaning. King David saw this as an opportunity for sexual freedom. He
took advantage of the situation, of Bathsheba, and of her husband’s absence, to
enjoy the pleasure of the moment. But,
that pleasure of the moment became King David’s failure of a lifetime. What
would he do? He immediately made plans to cover up his failure. In King David’s mind, all he had to do was
give Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, a break from his military service. Let him
come home on leave for a while to spend some time with his wife. Then, when she
begins to show she’s pregnant, everyone, including Uriah, will assume that this
is their child. But, King David
underestimated Uriah. Uriah loved his wife, but he also had an obligation to
his country as a soldier. And he didn’t feel right being home while his friends
were at war. Try as he did, King David couldn’t get Uriah to spend the night
with his wife.
6.
So King David came up with another plan.
He would send Uriah to the front lines, pull back support, and have him killed.
Then, when Bathsheba’s pregnancy became obvious, no one would know that Uriah
wasn’t the father. King David had an
innocent person killed in order to cover up his moral failure. And he thought
that in having an innocent person killed he could cover up the shame of his
act. But his cover up didn’t work. Many
today try to follow King David’s example. But in this case, the innocent person
who is killed is the baby in the womb. In an effort to cover up our guilt from
our moral failure, we’ve killed tens of millions of innocent victims. But the
cover up doesn’t work. The guilt and shame increase. Listen to King David’s words in Psalm 32, “For when I kept silent, my
bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand
was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” (Psalm
32:3-4). King David’s cover up didn’t
work. The weight of the guilt and shame crushed him. We’ve all been there at
times. We know how heavy that weight of guilt and shame can be. And on our own,
there’s nothing we can do to remove it.
7.
Only God can remove our guilt and shame.
And that’s what He wants to do! He doesn’t want us to be crushed under the
weight of our sin, and the guilt and shame that come with it. He doesn’t want
us to cover up our sin, because it doesn’t work. He still sees it and it separates
us from the kind of relationship He wants with us. God wants us to live in the freedom of His
forgiveness! Instead of trying to cover up our sin, He wants us to confess our
sin to Him so He can cover it with His forgiveness. Listen to these words from
King David, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm
32:1-2). Instead of being burdened by
the weight of his sin, King David was blessed with the wonder of God’s
forgiveness! How did that happen? Listen to what he says, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did
not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Psalm 32:5 NIV). King David confessed his sin. God covered his
sin with forgiveness. Not only that, God forgave the guilt of his sin!
8.
Guilt can be a good thing, when it comes
from God. As in the case of King David, God’s Word through the prophet Samuel
led King David to feel guilty over his sin and to confess that sin to God. David’s
guilt was replaced by God’s grace. That’s good guilt. But, there’s another kind of guilt that keeps
many people trapped. This guilt is of the devil. It’s the kind of guilt that
Satan wants us to carry around every day. And if Satan can keep reminding us of
our failure, then he can keep us carrying guilt over sins that we’ve already
confessed and that God has already forgiven. And when that happens, it’s as if God’s
forgiveness is rendered useless in our lives.
We don’t have to carry that kind of guilt. When we confess our sin, God
removes the guilt of our sin. Jesus
took all of our sin to the cross and nailed it there. We don’t need to carry it
around as a reminder. There’s a better way to live!
9.
We can Live In Forgiveness Everyday! It doesn’t matter where we’ve been. It
doesn’t matter what we’ve done. It’s in the past! Because we have God’s
forgiveness, we don’t have to be paralyzed by our past. We don’t belong to our past. We belong to Jesus.
And He has a great future in store for us! So we can live in the freedom of His
forgiveness! We can Live In Faith Everyday
because we’re God’s forgiven children!
God’s Spirit guided Saint Paul’s words to describe what it means to live
as His children. In his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, we hear
these words, “Flee from
sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but
the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that
your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20). God’s
Word reminds us that our bodies are holy ground. God’s desire is that our
bodies would be used for the pursuit of His holy purposes.
10.
And why wouldn’t we want to
use our bodies in this way? God created our bodies in our mothers’ wombs. Jesus
redeemed our bodies on the cross. And the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies
through faith. God is the owner, and we’re the tenants of our bodies. And
because of His goodness and grace, we live rent free in them, now, and for all
eternity. If we’re so special to God
that He would create our bodies, redeem our bodies from sin, and dwell in our
bodies through His Spirit, wouldn’t we want to use our bodies in ways that
please Him? That’s what Joseph wanted to
do—he wanted to use his body in a way that pleased God. If there was ever a
person who had to Live in Faith Everyday,
it was Joseph! Forsaken by his family, sold into slavery, seduced by
sensuality, it was Joseph. It’s not just our society that struggles with
constant sexual temptation. Imagine
being in Joseph’s sandals. “Now Joseph was handsome in
form and appearance. And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph
and said, ‘Lie with me.’ But he refused and said to his master's wife, ‘Behold, because of me
my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything
that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this
house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because
you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?’”
(Genesis 39:6b-9)
11.
Joseph was a handsome man. And
Potiphar’s wife thought he would be easy pickings. What servant boy wouldn’t accept
such an offer from such a woman? Especially when the offers continued to come! You would expect that such an invitation
would cause Joseph’s male ego to go crazy. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. And in the face of temptation, Joseph chose
to Live In Faith Everyday. He chose
to be faithful to God, and to his earthly master. He realized that to do
otherwise would be to commit a great sin against his God.
12.
Joseph did the godly thing. That doesn’t
guarantee that the world will accept it. Although Joseph was faithful to God,
he ended up the victim of false charges and injustice. But by God’s grace, he continued to Live In Faith Everyday. And God blessed
him in everything he did. And in the end, because God helped him to Live In Faith Everyday, Joseph was able
to speak these amazing words concerning what his brothers and others had done
to him, “You intended to
harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the
saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20, NIV).
By God’s grace, Joseph was empowered to Live In Faith Everyday. And his life of faith was blessed by God. As
children of our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we’ve also been
created, redeemed, and sanctified to Live
In Faith Everyday by living lives of trust and obedience. And as we do, we’ll
be used by God to show the world there’s a better way—God’s way! So, Live
In Faith Everyday, for Jesus’ sake, and the world’s sake! Amen!
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