We All Have The Capacity of Evil

The difference between Saul and David was like night and day. David loved God and followed him. Saul was disobedient to God and despised David because he enjoyed God’s blessings. David was a different king—different from Saul and distinct from any other king because he was God’s king. However, the temptation that came with being king was too much for even David.

The story told to us in 2 Samuel 11 is one of the ugliest stories in the Bible. David saw a woman bathing from the roof of his palace. He inquired who she was and found out that she was married. That should have stopped David, but it didn’t. Knowing that, he had her brought to him and committed adultery with her. Everything returned to normal as she returned home. Then David received a message from the woman stating she was pregnant. Immediately, David arranged things so that everyone would think the child belonged to her husband.

This horrible story demonstrates that David was no better than Saul. David had the capacity to do evil, as we all do, much greater than he ever thought. As king, he reverted into a Saul. He saw, took, and now sought to cover up his sin. His plans failed because of the integrity of Uriah. So after several attempts to cover up his sin, he resorted to murder.

It seems unbelievable that David, a man after God’s own heart, would do this. The deceitfulness of the human heart is on full display in David’s attempts to hide the truth from God. David was in a state of mind that made his behavior seem acceptable. David wrote a letter and sent it by the hand of Uriah, the husband of the woman: “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die” (2 Samuel 11:15). One step after another, David had dug himself deeper into deception. Now he was planning a conspiracy to deliberately execute an innocent man to protect himself. We can hardly believe this is the same David who refused to shed blood to defend himself, but now resorted to murder to cover up his own sin.

Joab, his commander, implemented David’s command to camouflage the murder. What David really wanted was accomplished. However, in doing so, other innocent soldiers also died in the folly David had planned. Among those who fell that day was the one who was a problem for David:   “…Moreover, Uriah the Hittite died” (2 Samuel 11:17)

When David was told what had happened, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.’ Say this to encourage Joab (2 Samuel 11:25). What David and Joab did was fine in their own eyes, but it wasn’t in God’s eyes. The account closes with these words: “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27). This story should shock us all to remember that we all have the capacity to do evil. Only in humility and with God’s help will we be able to refrain ourselves against the temptations of the flesh. This is war in ourselves, we cannot win, only with God’s help will we be victorious.

You Are Light

The Apostle Paul told the Ephesians, “You Are Light In The Lord” (Ephesians 5:8). Our light is generated by the Sun but reflected by the moon. It does not originate with the moon, but the moon spreads the sun’s light. This is what happens to those who are in Christ. You come out of darkness and receive that light that comes from the Son. You begin to reflect Christ in your life to a dark world.

Paul instructs us, “Live as children of light  (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord” (Eph 5:8-10).

Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of Auschwitz, shares an experience where her father’s character shared the light with a customer. It was during hard times when the family was in financial need. A wealthy customer came in and purchased a costly watch. However, as her father was closing the deal, the customer mentioned that he tried to get his old watch repaired by Mr. Ten Boom’s young competitor, but he couldn’t fix the fine old watch. Corrie’s father asked to see it, opened it, made a slight adjustment, and handed it back, saying, “There, that was a tiny mistake. It will be fine now. Contact me if you ever have a problem with one of his watches. Now I shall give you back your money, and you return my watch.” Corrie immediately asked her father how he could turn that purchase down when they were so needy. Her father responded, “Corrie, what do you think that young man would have thought when he heard that one of his customers had gone to Mr. Ten Boom? We must honor the name of the Lord at all times and in all ways. As for the money, we will trust the Lord, Corrie. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and He will take care of us.”

If we want to shine for Christ, we must be with him just as Peter and John did.  When they were on trial before the Sanhedrin, they responded in such a way that the Sanhedrin had this reaction: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

A man brought his wife a matchbox that would glow in the dark. After giving it to her she turned out the light, but the matchbox could not be seen. Disappointed, she began looking at it to see if something was wrong. Then the wife noticed some tiny words on the box: “If you want me to shine in the night, keep me in the light.” So it is with us, “If you want to shine in the night, keep in the light of Christ.”

 

 

 

 

Integrity Restrains Us

  

Solomon wrote, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). It is another way of telling us to guard our integrity. Your integrity is your most valuable possession, and once it is lost—it is not easy to get it back.

If you detect that you are prone to veer from the path of honesty in some reaction of self-preservation when faced with a trial, ask God for help. Seek his guidance, and do not ignore a deadly problem that will only worsen with time. You cannot extinguish what you cannot distinguish. You have to acknowledge the problem before you can work on it. You cannot change something you have not identified. Go to work on your weaknesses before they cause your downfall.

It’s never too late to do the right thing. No matter how far you are into a decision, if you realize it is wrong, take immediate action to reverse it. Cut your losses and run the other way. It’s never too late to do the right thing! From the moment you begin to do the right thing, you are changing your life, even if you don’t see the immediate effects of your decision. It may take a while before you feel whole again, but you will be on the right road.

No sin or mistake is made in isolation. It will cost you and the people around you. When we forget God, we forget the world around us. Someone will pay the price beside us when we venture away from our integrity and fail to guard our hearts. Our testimony before the world will suffer credibility. Our dependence on God helps us protect our hearts and maintain our testimony to the world.

Let Justice Roll Like a River

In St. Louis, Missouri, we are accustomed to rivers. We have the Missouri River that joins the Mississippi, making it the 4th most extensive river system in the world. It’s a big river, and it never stops flowing south toward the Gulf of Mexico. Amos, a prophet who delivered some powerful messages to the people of Judah about 750 years before Christ, talked about a mighty river. One of the illustrations he uses is that of a river. He says, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). The context for this statement is that justice had become scarce in the land of Judah.

There was so much perversion of justice in the way people treated each other in Judah that it repudiated God. The morality of fairness and equality had disappeared. Honesty and integrity were rare, and cheating, lying, and taking advantage of each other was the norm. When the people went to worship—their worship meant nothing to God. He said to them, “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps” (Amos 5:21-23). These words carry deep emotion as God rejects their attempts to worship him without their living righteous lives.

God’s solution was that he wanted transformation of their hearts, “But let justice roll on like a river,

righteousness like a never-failing stream!” He wants justice all the time, not just when it is convenient. Justice is not supposed to be a faucet you turn on and off but a mighty river that runs all the time. Justice is not an option with God but a requirement.

Maintaining this kind of integral consistency seems impossible to many people. The truth is that by ourselves, it is impossible, but it is not impossible with God’s help. If we learn to depend on him, he will help us be just and righteous. That means that we always do the right thing. If we fail to do the right thing in life, we own our mistake and make it right. This is what God wants from us and expects from us.

The Nitty Gritty

Abram, the man who answered God’s call and made an 800-mile trek from Ur to Canaan, now stumbles in his faith. The first test of his faith was whether he would trust God to take care of him and his family. A famine came to the land of Canaan, and Abram made an impulsive decision to go to Egypt for help because there was an abundance there. There is no record that he asked God for direction, but instead, he forgot to ask what God wanted him to do.

You can expect tests in your own journey of faith, but God does not use difficult circumstances to find out what we will do. Charles Swindoll observes, “He does not test us to observe our response of faith. He already knows us better than we know ourselves, and He already knows what the future holds. He uses tests to reveal us to ourselves!” Abram’s weakness was exposed in this test of faith, and that was his tendency to lie.

I have observed that there are two kinds of lies. The first is intentional, lying to deceive for fraudulent and malicious purposes. The second is lying to deceive for self-preservation and avoidance of conflict. Both are wrong and sinful, but the first is much worse while the latter is more common. The second category of lying is prevalent in marriage. It usually starts early in life but becomes a coping mechanism to avoid conflict. It was this second kind of lying that Abram resorted to, and it brought no good to his life and sullied his testimony before the world.

Abram agreed with Sarai, his wife, that they would refer to her as his sister because he was afraid for his life. He never calculated what would happen with this plan. Sarai wound up in Pharaoh’s haram. Sarai immediately suffered being isolated from Abram in a strange place while Abram prospered. He received from Pharaoh: donkeys, camels, and servants—a dowry. Abram got himself in a mess that he would never have been able to dig himself out of if God had not intervened (Gen 12:10-20).

Those new riches would prove to be more of a curse than a blessing.  The ill-gotten gain indeed drove a wedge between Lot’s herdsmen and those of Abram.  Then there was a young Egyptian woman named Hagar, most likely part of the gift of servants, who caused Sarai and Abram much grief. There are lessons to be learned from Abram’s experience of self-preservation vs. trusting God.

Guard your integrity:

If you detect that you are prone to veer from the path of honesty toward self-preservation when faced with a trial—then ask God for help. Seek his guidance and do not ignore such a deadly problem that will only get worse with time. You cannot extinguish what you cannot distinguish. You have to acknowledge the problem before you can work on it. You cannot change something you have not identified.

It’s never too late to do the right thing:

No matter how far you are into a decision, if you realize that it is wrong, take immediate action to reverse the decision. Cut your losses and run the other way. It’s never too late to do the right thing!

How Much Will Your Sin Cost Me?

No sin, no mistake is made in isolation. It will cost the people around you. When we forget God, we forget the world around us. When Abraham went to Egypt with his plan of survival, he left God out of the picture. His testimony before the world suffered. Our dependence on God provides for our needs and maintains our testimony to a lost world.

Integrity

Integrity is the ability to remain unimpaired morally, spiritually, and rationally through a firm adherence to biblical values. Solomon said that integrity is our moral GPS guidance system: “The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out” (Prov 10:9). The Apostle Paul gave an excellent illustration of how biblical integrity works. In a passage found in 2 Cor 4:7-12, he starts with calling all of us just ordinary clay pots. Nothing to brag about— only regular containers. However, God chose to place an incredible treasure in these common pots—the Gospel. Then Paul demonstrates how we are tested by life’s difficult trials and how by God’s grace we can stand firm. Paul said that he sometimes felt pressured on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not abandoned, and knocked down but not knocked out. That is unrelenting integrity. In standing firm as Paul did, we reveal Jesus to the world.

 As clay pots, we are fragile, our time on this earth is short, and we have many weaknesses, but still, God chooses to place in us his surpassing great treasure. That treasure is powerful because it is the transforming gospel of the Lord. Having this treasure does not make us great; it only displays our weaknesses and his great power at work in us. When we become men and women of integrity and learn that we will be pressured from within and without, we don’t have to be crushed. We learn that no matter how difficult life becomes, we do not need to despair. Even though we are at times persecuted, and we will be, we know we will not be abandoned. Also, though life deals us some powerful blows that knock us down—they never knock us out, and we get back up.

When we live this way, our integrity reveals Jesus to the world. That incredible treasure becomes attractive to people who see us live. Every Christian who lives with integrity is giving the world a testimony of God’s transforming power. They can see what Jesus has done in our lives, and that gives them hope that he will do the same for them.

The fact that many trials pressure us but never crush us is a display of our integrity. The fact that we are perplexed but not in despair is a display of our integrity. No matter how confused we get, when we do not despair, it is a display of integrity and trust in God. We may feel the way Jesus did on the cross, that we are forsaken because the persecution is so real, but we know that God will never abandon us.  We can be confident of God's abiding presence regardless of how we feel. Even the most potent blows don’t have to knock us out of the fight. The fact that we get back up is integrity on display. For Paul, the whole point of life was that Jesus would be revealed. He lived for those opportunities that people would see Jesus in his life. Is this not the life we all want as believers?

Complete Honesty

Solomon said that “Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value a man who speaks the truth” (Prov 16:13). Actually, we all like it when people are truthful. It is like a kiss on the lips it is so pleasurable (Prov 24:26). However, honest people are becoming more and more rare. Why is that? Maybe it’s because our sinful natures encourage us to be dishonest and our culture encourages us to lie. After all, everybody does it. God, however, doesn’t give us any wiggle room when it comes to telling the truth. James wrote that “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless” (James 1:26). That’s pretty stringent! God says he expects us to be completely honest. Let’s consider a few of the kinds of dishonest speech people fall prey to.

Lying is choosing to abandon the truth for falsehoods. It is misleading with deceptive and untruthful words. People lie because they don’t want to admit the truth. They lie because they exaggerate their own importance. They lie to sell a sham. Whatever the reason, lying produces untrustworthy people.

There is of course gossip, one of the oldest and most deadly forms of dishonest speech. Gossip is enticing like choice morsels of bread, but no matter how appealing it destroys relationships (Prov 26:22). A truthful person always keeps a secret because that is what it means to be honest (Prov 11:13). A gossip says things about a person behind their back that he would never say to his face.

Then there is flattery, this is lying from the other side of the tongue. Job warns us about the danger of flattery “I will show partiality to no one, nor will I flatter any man” (Job 32:1). If you think about it, flattery is like gossip but saying to the person’s face what you would never say behind their back.[i]

What is needed today is for fathers and mothers to be completely honest and accurate in their speech before their children. When they do, their children learn the importance of telling the truth and the danger of lying. Lies are a form of deception, and God is looking for authenticity in all of us. Being completely honest means taking responsibility for our words and striving to be accurate.

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[i] R. Kent Hughes, Luke, Volume Two, Crossway Books, Wheaton, IL 1998, P. 264.

Train Yourself to Be Godly

Have you ever seen a rude and obnoxious Christian? How is that possible? Aren’t we supposed to display the fruits of the Spirit like love, joy, peace, patience and kindness? The answer is of course, yes, there are rude Christians, and not all believers have the fruits of the Spirit. The truth is that just because a person gives their heart to Jesus and receives the gift of eternal life doesn’t mean they are automatically transformed into a nice person. We need training to become a godly person. Mind you this godliness of which I speak of has nothing to do with earning salvation—that is a gift. I am referring to pursuing godliness in our individual lives.

The Apostle Paul referred to godliness fifteen times in the New Testament, and thirteen of those times are in his pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus. Paul saw Jesus as the source of this godliness which develops each of us into godly believers if we are willing to do the training.

Paul writes, “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance (and for this we labor and strive), that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe” (1 Timothy 4:7-10).

We are to recognize and reject bad teaching. Heresy is all around us, but if we know the Scriptures, we will be able to reject the bad. Then we are to accept the good—the good being the truth of God’s Word. This discipline of training ourselves seems to make sense in every other field except godliness. My wife Marilyn and I recently saw a man sit at the piano and play a thirty minute symphony with a full orchestra with not a single note in front of him. He never missed a beat. How could he have done that? Who knows the thousands of hours of practice and the discipline he has done to be able to deliver such a masterful performance of skill and art?

We are to begin a regimen of the Word of God in our lives. This training ourselves to be godly refers to training ourselves in the Scriptures. This is where the rubber really meets the road in Christians’ lives. That is whether they will learn to exercise themselves in the book of books. This is the path to godliness.

When Daniel’s colleagues tried to find some dirt in his past they could use against him, they found none. So they determined to use his religion against him. They contrived a new law that prohibited anyone from praying to anyone but the king. What was Daniel’s response? “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before” (Daniel 6:10). Notice the words “just as he had done before.” These words speak of the discipline in Daniel’s life. He had trained himself to do the right thing.

Do you have a daily habit of reading and studying God’s Word? I invite you to begin one. There are many tools available, such as online reading programs or a Bible phone app.  Whatever method you use, the point is to study God’s Word and develop a love for Jesus that transforms your life into a godly person.

Doing What’s Right

Doing what is right instead of what is popular is not easy. Two names come to mind of people who had a hard time in this area. They are Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and Aaron, Moses’ brother. Lot seemed to make most of his decisions based on what people thought of him and how beneficial it would be to his comfort, rather than on biblical principles. He chose the well-watered plains of Jordan because they were beautiful. Lot’s ability to make critical decisions would continue to weaken over time until, in a major crisis for his life and family, he would choose what people wanted rather than what was right.

Aaron is a classic example of this pattern of behavior. It was the first time Aaron had been left in charge of the people while his brother Moses was up on the mountain. The people came to him demanding he make them gods to worship: "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him" (Exodus 31:1). Aaron found himself intimidated and unwilling to take an unpopular stand, so he chose what the people wanted.

Anytime and anywhere someone pressures us to do the wrong thing, we must do what is right regardless of what they think of us. This is a major challenge for teenagers and even college-age students who often please the crowd more than they do God. Whenever we choose an agenda that compromises our convictions and corrupts our morals, we are caught in a web of deceit. Today, one of the major compromises for Christian young people is whether or not they will remain virgins until they are married. The popular thing is to be sexually active—to not be is to be weird. This lie is very prevalent today, but it’s not new. Whenever we put our self-centered interests or our desire to be popular over principle, we sin. We always lose more than we gain in the bargain. Aaron’s and Lot’s decisions were disastrous, and they not only brought shame and disgrace on themselves and their families, but they also failed to give God the glory in their decisions.

On the other hand, Daniel and Joseph are examples of men who did what was right even if it was unpopular. Daniel’s entire life represents an uncompromising stand for what is right even if it meant he might have to suffer. Joseph overcame sexual temptation, thereby showing all young people it can be done. You don’t have to be a slave to your biological drives or a puppet in the hands of your peers. You can choose to do what is right even if it is very unpopular.

You ask how a person makes good decisions like Joseph and Daniel. It begins with developing a faithful commitment to God. This is a commitment to trust God in all situations, enabling you to make tough decisions that from the outside look as if you are the loser. However, on the inside you know God will not abandon you, and therefore you will not abandon your principles. Never has there ever been a day when we needed men and women who are willing to do the right thing, even if it is unpopular, more than we do today.