|
03-24-08 Moral Fault Lines!
Hardly a week goes by that I do not learn of someone caught in some type of sexual sin. With his grieving wife by his side, the Governor of New York recently stood before the news media and confessed to repeated trysts with prostitutes. Some reports stated that he had spent tens of thousands of dollars over a number of years. When he was cleaning up Wall Street and straightening everyone else out, he was in fact participating in this immoral behavior.
You have probably asked yourself the same kinds of questions that I have asked myself:
- How could this be?
- He’s a governor, how could he stoop so low?
- He was married, how could he do this to his wife?
- He was a father, how could he do this to his children?
- He was a lawyer and leader, how could he violate his office and his calling to lead the people in the state of New York?
I’m not sure any of us can answer these questions in a satisfactory manner. We can, however, look at some lessons to be learned from this moral failure. The ringing truth of Numbers 32:23 surfaces in my spirit, “be sure your sin will find you out…” Surely we can all be warned by his failure and be instructed by the warning of the text.
Moral Fault Lines……we are all living just one step away from moral failure! Proceed with caution. The old saying is true: “You can live up in one night more than you will ever live down in the rest of your life….!”
From the teenage girl that becomes pregnant out of wedlock, to the man or woman in the business office that commits adultery with someone, everyone is close to falling! As the great Apostle Paul stated, “Let him that thinks he is standing take heed lest he fall…” All Christians should remember that there is an incorruptible crown to be won for those who keep their bodies under the subjection and rule of the Holy Spirit!
Moral failures start deep within the heart and a parallel can be drawn to earthquakes in the earth. Earthquakes don’t just happen but are caused by things beyond our sight, well beneath the surface of the ground. The seams between the earth’s various plates are called “faults”. Usually, pressure along the fault line remains fairly stable, but over a period of time stress builds up. The tension finally exceeds the strength of the rock plates and a “jolting rupture” results!
It should be noted that moral earthquakes follow the same pattern. They don’t just happen. A prominent congressman, a well-known pastor, a missionary, a successful businessman, no one is exempt from the fall. Take heed how you live and how you respond to the various temptations in life.
I remember a two-fold prayer that I was taught years ago. I use it in my life and it has served me well: “Lord, when I’m tempted don’t let me have opportunity, and Lord, when I have opportunity don’t let me be tempted!”
Probably everyone reading this “blog” today is familiar to some degree with a man in the Bible named Samson, a classic example of moral failure! His all-too-familiar story is told to us in the book of Judges. He was a man who had everything going for him. He was young, strong, handsome and influential, a natural leader. He came from a good family and enjoyed all the advantages of a solid moral upbringing. Yet in the end, his life was ruined by a moral earthquake. Some blame Delilah because she tempted and troubled him, but in reality you cannot blame her. Samson’s problems started many years before he met her. In fact, Judges 13-16 show that his problems started some twenty years earlier! (Judges 13-16 reads like the New York Times and sounds like nightly news!)
Remember this simple truth: Moral earthquakes are always preceded by secret faults!
Paul summed it up and cautioned us when he wrote in Galatians, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap…” (Ga 6:7)
God’s moral laws are safeguards to keep us! Break them and they most assuredly will break us!
Until next week, Pastor Sears
|
