It’s time for another visit. Although I hesitate to open every conversation with a weather report, here goes. We have been enjoying some nicer conditions, after our little taste of winter last week. I am seeing some harvesting machinery in the fields, as it begins to dry out from the recent moisture. With the improved weather comes a reminder to pray for a safe and bountiful harvest season.
Occasionally, my mind wanders way back to my earlier days. The other day, we were discussing the misbehavior of children, and as sometimes is the case, we were being somewhat critical of today’s young people. Suddenly, I was taken way back to my youth, to a time of personal rebellion, and remembered my mother threatening to send me to a military type school, because she was at her wit’s end. Maybe the youth of today aren’t much different than they have ever been.
In fact, if you read the Bible, you soon understand the whole human race is in rebellion against God, and has been almost from the beginning. Early in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve rebelled against God, and it continues today.
In the time of Noah, God described mankind as being all evil, all the time. “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).
“There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth in not in us” (1 John 1:8).
Praise be to God, for sending Jesus to die for our sins and restore our relationship with Him. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Sin is a word that isn’t used much these days, but it needs to make a comeback and people need to understand what it means. After all, it is the root cause of all that is wrong with our world. Without an understanding of sin, it is impossible to sort out the good from the bad, the wrong from the right, and finally, to see that the solution to the problem is Jesus Christ.
In Him,
Pastor Jerry
sandhillspastor 