What is the Worst Sin? Isaiah 14:12-15.

Contrary to popular belief, all sins are NOT equal.  In fact, the Bible ranks sins.  Some are far worse than others.  But is there one sin that is the worst of them all? If there is, it is probably the devil’s first sin: pride. 

WHAT PRIDE IS NOT—

Pride is not simply knowing your strengths.  Pride is not giving a detailed answer when a job-interviewer asks why they should hire you. Pride is not choosing goals that most people will never achieve.  It is not prideful to go to college, to be confident, to look people in the eye, or to tell an opponent you plan to beat them in some contest.

WHAT PRIDE IS—

Pride is an unhealthy obsession with yourself and your ranking. Pride is believing you are above others, that because of some trait or accomplishment, you are more valuable than others, or somehow worth more than others. Pride is the voice telling you that you are a different breed, a higher class of person than those other people. Satan believed he was different—BETTER—than other angels.

“Bright morning star, how you have fallen from the heavens! … You said to yourself ‘I will ascend to the heavens. I will set up my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the gods’ assembly … I will make myself like the Most High. But you will be brought down to the deepest pit” Isaiah 14:12-15.

In contrast to Satan, Jesus gave up His place, “not regarding equality with God a thing to be grasped, He emptied Himself, being found in appearance as a man…” Philippians 2:6-8.

We are instructed to do the same: “Let each one of you regard one another as more important than himself” Philippians 2:3.

This is no small matter.  When you pridefully think more highly of yourself than you should, you are acting like Satan.  But when you put others above yourself, you are acting like Jesus. And God promises to punish pride, but bless humility:

“God is OPPOSED to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” James 4:6.

God, reveal to us our pride and teach us to walk in humility, as you walked.

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What are Your Goals? What Are You Chasing? 2 Kings 17:15.

Did you know there is a connection between the pursued and the pursuer? One will take on the traits of the other.

Remember playing tag?  All the children darting this way and that?  Remember being “IT” and trying to anticipate the moves people would use: you tell yourself, if he pivots left, I’ll be ready, but then he pivots right and you miss him? Then you play football and it’s all about catching the man with the ball. Chasing people can be so much fun.

Sometimes we do not chase a person, but a goal: being the first across the finish line. Building the fastest car.  Chasing a competing company: CBS wants to catch NBC. Apple wants to catch Microsoft. Twitter wants to catch Facebook.  

A connection develops between the chase-er and the chase-ee. The pursuer adopts the characteristics of the pursued.  It’s like the hunting guide who says the secret to duck hunting is to think like a duck:

“BECOME THE DUCK.”

If you want to tag the child ahead of you, you get inside his head to predict whether he will pivot left or right. If you want to beat a competing company, you copy what they are doing to beat them at their own game. You become like the competition.  Sometimes you become like them on purpose—but often you do it unconsciously. 

You become what you pursue. Spouses become more alike, the longer they live together. Whether we intend to or not, humans take on the traits of the one on which we focus our attention.

YOU BECOME THE THING YOU WORSHIP.

If it’s true that you become what your pursue, then the object of your pursuit better be something of VALUE. Israel pursued worthlessness and lost their value:

“They pursued worthless idols and became worthless themselves” 2 Kings 17:15.

Are you chasing the popular crowd? Or chasing the rich? Are you trying to be accepted by the guys, but the guys are ruthless?  Or are you chasing hard after Christ? Are you trying to be a faithful husband? A loving dad? A friend who has time for people?

“If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and FOLLOW ME” Luke 9:23.

What are your goals?  Because you will BECOME the thing that you pursue.  Chase the right things! Pursue Christ and your life will become infinitely valuable as you become like Him.

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GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS. Micah 7:18-19; 2 Kings 17:8-26.

I read good news and bad news this morning: In Micah 7, the prophet praises God for His mercy:

“Who is a God like You, removing sin and passing over rebellion? … He does not hold on to His anger forever, because HE DELIGHTS IN FAITHFUL LOVE. He will have compassion on us. You will cast our sins into the depths of the sea.” Micah 7:18-19.

That is amazing, and we should always be grateful for God’s mercy.

But He is also a God of Judgment. What you plant is what you will harvest. Consider 2 Kings 17—

Israel sinned. They lived like the lost people around them. (We do that, don’t we? If an alien landed on earth, would he be able to tell that your life is not like the lives of the lost people? What is different about you?)

“Israel lived according to the customs of the nations God had defeated around them… They secretly did what was not right against the Lord their God…. They would not listen, but became obstinate… THEY PURSUED WORTHLESS IDOLS AND BECAME WORTHLESS THEMSELVES.” 2 Kings 17:8-15.

Note that—You will become like the thing that you worship. Make sure you worship THE RIGHT THING. The passage reports the Assyrians had taken over Israel:

“They did not fear Yahweh. So the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them…because the people don’t know the requirements of the God of the land” 2 Kings 17:25-26.

The lions were so bad the idol-worshipping king of Assyria had to find an Israelite priest to send home to Israel to teach the Assyrian settlers how to follow God so God would stop the lions from slaughtering them.

God is merciful, but God will not tolerate idol worship. Check your heart: what is on your throne? You? Your goals? Your friends? Your free time? Your entertainment? Your insecurities? Remove these idols from the throne of your heart. Give God your WHOLE HEART. Ask Him to show you anything that needs to change.

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HOLINESS.  Micah 6:6-7.

Close your eyes and imagine.  Imagine a world WITHOUT JESUS.  Imagine that you are going to HELL unless you can make up for your sins.  What will it take?

What does it take to please God?

Micah suggests several answers:

“Should I come before Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves?  Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand streams of olive oil? Should I give my firstborn for my transgression, the child of my body to pay for my sin?” Micah 6:6-7.

Of course, none of these would ever be enough. You could sacrifice thousands of rams and give your firstborn child, but God would still not forgive you. 

Sometimes it is valuable to consider the seriousness of sin.  Bachelor and bachelorette parties are on my mind today.  Could there be an event more perfectly designed to destroy a marriage?  I have personal knowledge (but was not there) of parties involving grooms sleeping with hired prostitutes, and male “dancers” forcing themselves on drunk women.  The whole idea—the justification—is to “de-flower” the bride and groom before the wedding, as if that will make them more faithful.  Of course, that never works. You don’t beat gluttony by overeating.  And you don’t defeat lust by being lustful.  All you have accomplished is sin, heartache, and regret.  Such events are an abomination to a GOD WHO IS HOLY.

Stop and think about that: GOD IS HOLY.  What are we doing? Why are we swimming in this sea of sin? Why do we laugh and make movies about it and tell ourselves it’s no big deal?

If it matters to God, then IT MATTERS.  Sin is a BIG DEAL.  If you can’t see that, imagine trying to earn forgiveness.  If you could afford to sacrifice ten thousand rams, it would not be enough.

If we loved Jesus, we would beg Him to help us do better.

God, humble us before your staggering HOLINESS.

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Let Jesus Wash You Clean—Again and Again, Forever. Micah 7:19.

Hogs like to wallow in the mud.  The muddy places they frequent are called “hog wallows.”  But we are not hogs. People like to be clean.  We shower every day, sometimes two or even three times. We wash our hands so often we stop counting.

We have one type of soap for hands, another for bodies, a third for hair, a fourth for teeth. There is laundry soap, dishwashing soap, car wash soap, pet soap, horse soap, soap for precious metals, soap for glass, soap for tile floors, soap for wood floors, and soap for power washing concrete. Americans spend over $85 per person, per year on soap and detergents. We are obsessed with cleaning.

When a lost person gives their life to Christ, they sometimes feel an incredible sense of being clean after Jesus washes away their sin. But then they sin again. And again. And that requires adjusting to a new reality: as a believer, your sins are forgiven, but your habits don’t change overnight. It is easy to begin to wallow in your sin—to feel discouraged and end up stuck there.  It’s as though you keep stumbling into a hog wallow and finding yourself covered in mud. At some point, you stop getting up to wash it off. 

But don’t do that! If you have given your life to Christ, then you KNOW He forgives you. You have no right not to forgive yourself. That’s like saying, “Well, Jesus, I know you forgive me, but my standards are just a little bit higher than yours….”  Do you see how crazy that is–and how prideful? You must forgive yourself.  Over and over.  Get up out of the mud. Stop wallowing in it.  Let Jesus wash you clean again and again forever, and keep trying to do better.  You WILL begin to do better.  Show yourself some patience.

The prophet Micah wrote: “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” Micah 7:19. 

I like the way Corrie Ten Boom paraphrased it:

“God buries our sins in the depths of the sea and then puts up a sign that reads, ‘NO FISHING.’” 

Stop fishing!  Stop dredging up old sins and making yourself crazy with guilt over them.  Forgive yourself and move forward.  Wallowing in your sin will only cause you to keep sinning—and punishing yourself for sin is often motivated more by pride (also sin!) than by any godly impulses.  There is a place for repentance and fasting—we must take things seriously. But if you are sincerely seeking God and striving to improve through His power, don’t fight His grace.  Let Him restore you so you can get out of the mud and begin to bear fruit for His kingdom.

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BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS. Micah 4:3-4.

The ability to resolve conflicts is a gift.  Being a peacemaker does not mean compromising everything.  Peacemakers have integrity—they won’t yield the key point, but they will yield pride and anything else that might get in the way of peace.  Ronald Reagan never compromised on SDI, but was able to make peace with Mikhail Gorbachev and the USSR, ending the Cold War. 

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” Matthew 5:9. 

The ultimate peacemaker is God Himself. Jesus died to make peace between man and God.  God is in the peacemaking business: between nations, between spouses, between warring armies, and between feuding friends. 

“He will settle disputes among peoples and provide arbitration for nations.  They will BEAT THEIR SWORDS INTO PLOWS AND THEIR SPEARS INTO PRUNING KNIVES.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, and they will never again train for war.  But each man will sit under his own grapevine and under his own fig tree….” Micah 4:3-4.

The prophet says famously, ‘they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’  In other words, warriors will become farmers and weapons will become farming tools. 

Which would you rather be?  In the movies, war is all glory and adventure, but farming is the real glory.  Soldiers destroy cities, crops, and lives, but farmers build and rebuild. 

War is the most destructive force on the planet.  Growing food may be the most beneficial.  God wants you to be a grower, a builder, one who makes things right.  Be a healer. 

Be the lawyer who can SETTLE a case, not the one too angry to make peace. 

Be the athlete who can congratulate the team that beats him. 

Be the teacher who can work things out with a challenging family.

Be the writer who can draw people together, not force them to choose a side.

Be the coworker who makes the office run smoothly, not the one spreading mistrust.

God, make us peacemakers, and send us leaders who are peacemakers.

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Don’t Let Prosperity Make You Weak. Micah 4.

I made a bumper sticker today.  It has a picture of hiking boots and says, “We will walk in the name of our God forever and ever.” Micah 4:5.  When I read the verse, it got me thinking of the great stickers in the tee shirt shops along the Appalachian Trail. But I’ve never seen this verse on a sticker.  So for this devotional, I made my own using CANVA, a free bumper sticker generator online. 

This verse follows Bible passages about the ravages of war—women raped, children slaughtered, entire cities starving under siege. Such things are hard to relate to while we sit around eating potato chips and watching a stream of entertainment that is unfinish-able.  We are the most prosperous people who have ever lived. The only thing keeping our wealth from making us fatter than Jabba the Hutt is that we can afford the time and money it takes to hike and get fit.

Why are we so wealthy? Because your ancestors did some things right.  America has stood for justice and fought off sin in many forms.  Not in all forms—we tolerated slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racism for too long.  But during those times of great sin, many Americans found Christ through revivals such as the Great Awakening. Lost people turned from sin by the millions.  Americans repented and sought the Lord and our generation is reaping what they sowed. 

In the words of Micah 4:3, our forebears “beat their swords into plows, and their spears into pruning knives.”  Men traded war and bloodshed for families and farms.  Consequently:

“Each man will sit under his grapevine and under his fig tree, with no one to frighten him … Though all the peoples of earth walk in the name of their gods, WE WILL WALK IN THE NAME OF YAHWEH, OUR GOD FOREVER AND EVER.” Micah 4:4-5.

What American has failed to notice the incredible salaries paid to top-performing movie stars and athletes?  Keanu Reeves was paid $30M for Matrix Reloaded.  Max Scherzer was paid $56M to pitch—and though he is the highest-paid baseball player, he is ranked #26 on Forbes’ list of highest-paid athletes.

Do you know why we can pay entertainers this way (and yes, athletes are entertainers)? Because Americans have a surplus of both time and money.  Our jobs pay well enough that we can work fewer hours, leaving ourselves time to pursue a gluttonous diet of entertainment—and we have enough money to pay far more than we should.

If you can afford to devote both time and money to recreation, then you are rich. And we are rich because our ancestors took their weapons of war to the blacksmith and he beat their swords into plows. 

Our ancestors sought God instead of greed, and we are the ones who got rich.

God, teach us to live lives of holiness and hard work in spite of the EASE with which we are surrounded.  Never let us become soft, weak, selfish, and fat though we live lives of relative ease and comfort. 

“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion” Amos 6:1.

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Birth Announcements. Isaiah 9:6-7.

When birth announcements arrive in the mail, husbands across America get in trouble for not paying attention:

“How tall is he?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“What does he weigh?” 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you?”

“I know they put him in a Dallas Cowboys jersey for the picture.” 

Some birth announcements take a more poetic turn.  Blues songs often include references to prophetic words spoken over the singer at his birth:

Gypsy woman told my mother,

‘Fore I was born,

You got a boy-child coming,

Gonna be a son of a gun.

Gonna make pretty womens’

Jump and shout,

And then the world gonna know

What this all about”

(from “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters). 

George Thorogood adapted the device for his song, “Bad to the Bone”: 

“On the day I was born,

The nurses all gathered ‘round.

And they gazed in wide wonder

At the joy they had found.

The head nurse spoke up.

Said ‘leave this one alone.’

She could tell right away,

I was bad to the bone.”

These songs are silly, of course.  No one said anything like that when these songwriters were born. They were born tiny, innocent babies, and the ladies cooed over them like any other babies. 

But the Bible records powerful words spoken over several newborns. Angels brought messages from God to the parents of a number of children, including Isaac, Samson, John the Baptist, and others. But you will never find a statement to rival the words spoken over Jesus—particularly the history-changing words spoken by Isaiah 400 years before His birth:

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government of the world will rest upon His shoulders. He will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor,’ ‘Mighty God,’ the ‘Everlasting Father,’ the ‘Prince of Peace.’ And His kingdom will never end … from now on and forever.” Isaiah 9:6-7. 

This was not fictional nurses in some imaginary delivery room.  This was Isaiah the prophet, speaking four centuries before Christ. The God who put the stars into orbit is telling His people what is to come. I can just see myself opening that birth announcement:

“Oh honey.  Looks like Mary and Joseph had their baby.”

“How many pounds?” 

“I don’t know.”

“How many inches?”

“I don’t know.  But I know this—they’re saying He is the going to be the KING OF THE WORLD and will sit on a throne that will never end.”

“Well, can you at least tell me what color eyes He has?  Who does he look like?”

“Doesn’t say.  But apparently his shoulders are broad enough to support the weight of the whole world.”

“For the Lord Himself will give you a sign: a virgin will conceive and bear a son and you will call his name Immanuel” Isaiah 7:14.

Now that’s what I call a BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT!

–And you know what else?  God has plans for you just as He had plans for Jesus.  If you can imagine the excitement of first-time parents staring at their tiny baby, you can understand the way your future excites the One Who made you.

God is up to something … and He is excited about your part in it!

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FEAR GOD OR FEAR EVERYTHING ELSE. Isaiah 8:12-13.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “When you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.” 

It’s not easy to have faith that strong—but it is true:

“Do not fear what they fear; do not be terrified.  You are to regard only the Lord of Hosts as holy. ONLY HE should be held in awe” Isaiah 8:12-13. 

Isaiah argues that we can be so consumed with God that we are not afraid of threats around us.  But how? Honestly—how can a Christian reach a point where your thoughts are so filled with the truth of God that things like a terminal illness or sudden joblessness seem small and not so scary?  We can’t all be prophets, right? 

Is it possible for a regular person to worship so deeply he has no fears but the fear of God?

YES.  Focus on God’s greatness—talk to Him about His qualities.  Begin by praying through His qualities in Isaiah:

God, we praise You because a virgin conceived and brought forth a son, Immanuel. We praise you that Gentiles walking in darkness have seen Your Great Light. That on those living in darkness, a Light has dawned.  You have shattered our yoke of slavery, delivering us from our oppressors. A Child was born to us, a Son given to us. And the government rests on His shoulders. He is called ‘Wonderful Counselor,’ ‘Mighty God,’ ‘Everlasting Father,’ and ‘Prince of Peace.’ He will reign on the Eternal Throne of David, and Your zeal, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.  God, we praise You because a branch from the line of Jesse will bear fruit and Your Spirit will rest on Him, a Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, of Counsel and Strength, of Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord, and His delight will be in the fear of the Lord.  Isaiah 7:14; 9:2-7; 11:1-4.

Remember: “He INHABITS the praise of His people” Psalm 22:3.  When you are scared and need Your Heavenly Father to hold you—PRAISE DRAWS HIM NEAR.

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CAN YOU SEE WHAT GOD IS DOING? Isaiah 5:11-13.

God’s children suffer because they miss God’s work.  But why are we blind to God’s activity? Because we focus on our appetites.

“Woe to those who rise early to drink beer, who stay up late drinking wine. At their feasts they have music and wine. They DO NOT PERCEIVE the Lord’s actions, and they do not see the work of His hands. Therefore my people will go into exile because they lack knowledge” Isaiah 5:11-13.

It is hard to perceive God’s actions if your day begins and ends with alcohol—or any of numerous other distractions.  You must SETTLE YOUR MIND and carve out time for God.

But it’s hard. Want to make it easier? See God’s holiness.  When you encounter holiness, everything changes:

“In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Seraphim flew above Him, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. One called to another: ‘HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD OF HOSTS, HIS GLORY FILLS THE WHOLE EARTH.’ The foundations of the doorways shook at the voice and the temple was filled with smoke. Then I said, ‘Woe is me for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!’  Then one of the angels flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with tongs, and he touched my lips with the coal and said, ‘Now your wickedness is removed and your sin atoned.’” Isaiah 6:1-7.

Isaiah SAW GOD’S HOLINESS, and He was struck with fear. He would never again struggle to make time for God—and he would never fail to perceive what God was doing around him.

God, show us Your HOLINESS.  Help us see Your work around us and join You in it.

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