Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Makes Something Sinful? | Judges | Judges 13

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Who decides the difference between right and wrong? If something seems right to you, does that make it okay? Are there some sins that seem respectable to you? https://twitter.com/KeithSimon_ (Keith) uses https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2013&version=NIV (Judges 13) to describe how although there may be things that appear to be right by culture's standards, they ultimately end in death. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast) Passages https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2013&version=NIV (Judges 13) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the Book of Judges. Hey, Patrick and I are starting a new podcast. It's called Truth Over Tribe, where we talk about cultural and political issues from a Christian point of view. If you're interested, subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player so you won't miss any of the episodes.

Do you get to decide what's right and right? wrong in your life? If not, who does? Now, I think a lot of people would say, of course, you get to make that kind of decision. Yeah, I know there's some caveats they might say. You know, you can't break the law or you need to take into account your family values or the church you grew up in. And of course, you must pay attention to your conscience. But ultimately, it's up to you to decide what's right and wrong when it comes to issues like, should you live together before you're married? Or is it okay to shade the truth in a business deal? Or do you really, do you really, have to tell your spouse about a flirtatious relationship at work that's not going anywhere,

or whether it's okay to not attend church because of kids' sports, or any of the other moral dilemmas that we face. You decide for you. The book of judges speaks to the issue of who gets to decide what's right and wrong in your life. Now, if you've been following along in this series through judges, you won't be surprised how chapter 13 begins. It says this in verse one. Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. So the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. This is the seventh and final time that this phrase, again, they did evil in the eyes of the Lord, occurs in this book. I think we're supposed to conclude that Israel was doing what was right in their eyes, but not in God's eyes.

If that was true of Israel, I'm sure we can identify. I mean, have you ever caught yourself wondering why God? calls something sin? I mean, we think certain sins don't seem like that big of a deal, right? They seem right in our eyes, regardless of how God might see them. In fact, we might call those sins respectable sins. Listen to Proverbs 1412. It says there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end, it leads to death. Wow. There is a way that appears to be right to you and me, but it ends in death. That verse teaches that we can't trust our own intuition about what's right and wrong. We can't trust our definition of sin. The Bible tells us that God gives us a conscience to guide us, but sin has

affected our conscience so that it isn't always reliable. The Apostle Paul says this in 1st Corinthians 4. He says, I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Paul doesn't completely trust anyone to judge him other than the Lord. He knows that even a clear conscience isn't definitive. Think back to the Garden of Eden with me. The snake says to Eve that if she eats the fruit from the forbidden tree, she will be like God, knowing good and evil. In other words, she will become like God and have the prerogative to define good and evil or right and wrong instead of trusting God's definition.

Nothing has changed since Adam and Eve. Human beings still think they can define good and evil right and wrong. But of course, we're not God. We're not equipped for that. That's way above our pay grade. But you don't even have to trust the Bible to know that there are going to be big problems if human beings define right and wrong for themselves. When everyone gets to decide for themselves what's right and wrong and no one can say that what someone else is doing is right or wrong, that's called moral relativism.

For example, maybe you think it's wrong to lie about people and ruin their reputation. But maybe your coworker doesn't think it's wrong to do that at all. And so maybe they think it's okay if they lie about you. Maybe your coworker thinks that's what you do if you really care about building your career and getting ahead. moral relativism asks, who are you to say what that person did is wrong? Or maybe in sports you've heard people say, it's only cheating if you get caught. Well, that's one way of thinking about right and wrong. And according to that definition, everything is okay to do.

Everything is morally permissible as long as you don't get caught, as long as you're not found out. Then it's wrong. Maybe you think that right and wrong is determined by majority vote. Like if the majority of Americans think selling drugs or selling pornography is wrong, then it is. And if they think it's fine, then it is. What makes it right or wrong is that a majority of the people decide. In India, there was a tradition that a widow was required to throw herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre.

The practice was made illegal many years ago, but it still happens. The widows don't choose this voluntarily. They are put under intense pressure and sometimes even drugged. If we're going to say that's wrong, people should not put pressure on widows to throw themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. People should not drug widows to induce them to do that. That's wrong. On what basis do we claim it's wrong? because the majority of the people in that country think it's okay.

If we say that what someone else does is wrong, we're appealing to a higher law that transcends individuals, that transcends the laws of people groups or nation states. Whether we know it or not, we are appealing to divine law. God defines right and wrong. We must submit to it. And don't forget, sin deceives. A Puritan pastor once said,

Satan paints sin with virtues colors. Satan makes sin look good and righteous and noble. The book of Hebrew says this in chapter three. Now, listen, it's really good. He says, see to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily,

as long as it's called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. So he tells this, group of people, these believers worshiping together. He says, look, you need each other. You need each other to help you identify and fight sin. Fighting sin is a community project. And the reason we need other people is that this verse says that sin is deceitful. Sin lies to us. Sometimes we can't see your own sin. We can't see the damage that it's doing us. You ever have food on your face? You're sitting at a nice restaurant and you have something on your face.

You can't see it. You're dependent on a friend pointing it out. Well, sometimes sin is like food on your face. Somebody else can see it in our life, but we can't see it. Think about it the other way around. Do you ever see sin in another person's life? Like, it's clear to you, but it's less clear to them. Don't you think the same thing is true of you?

Don't you think there are probably sins in your life that everybody else sees, but for some reason you can't because sin has you deceived. Of course there are. See, you and I, we need other people in our life to help us identify and fight sin. We don't have a lot of those kind of friendships, do we? Those friendships, the kind of friendships that point out sin, the kind of friendship that graciously speak truth in our life, even when it's things that we don't want to hear,

those kind of friendships are hard to develop. They take a lot of trust, a lot of time, you have them, do not take them for granted. Proverbs 276 says, wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. When a friend says something hard to you, something that hurts you,

man, that's a really good friend. The kind of friend you don't want is the kind of friend that always tells you what you want to hear. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. If people don't point out sin to you, why don't they? Maybe it's because you don't have any sin, and that's why they don't point out your sin. You don't have it. I'm doubting that's true.

Maybe it's that you don't have good enough friends, people who know you well enough and who can see your sin. Or maybe, maybe you have made it too hard on them. Like they've tried to point out something to you, but you got defensive. You started denying and giving excuses, and they thought, this just isn't worth it. Or maybe they tried to point out something to you and you counterattacked. You said, well, let me tell you what you did wrong. If that's your reaction, people are just going to kind of shut down. Or maybe you made them pay in some other way. They started pointing out something to you that you needed to work on and you didn't like it. So you shut them down. Maybe gave them the cold shoulder. Maybe gave them the silent treatment, didn't hang out with them as much. What if you just said to

people, thank you so much for sharing that with me. I'm sure that was really hard. Let me think about it. Let me pray about it. I bet you're right. Just let me take it before God. Wouldn't that be a far better response? Now let me turn it around for a moment. Do you ever point out sin to other people? If not, why not? Maybe you care more about your friendship than you do for that person. Like you don't want to lose them as a friend. And so you won't tell them hard things, even when those very things that you're afraid to tell them are destroying their life. But one of the things that a good friend does is they value the person more than the friendship. Or maybe you're afraid that they'll return the favor, and you'll tell them something that they're doing wrong,

something that's destroying their life, and they might feel free then to share with you similar, how sin is affecting your life. And you're like, well, I don't really want that. So you do you, let me do me. and we'll just ignore how sin is at work in our life. See, I want to get to a point in my life where I see sin as it really is, and that is a destructive force who is lying to me, deceiving me, trying to defeat me, steal my joy, pull me away from Jesus and the good life he has for me.

I want to want Jesus more than the fleeting pleasures of sin. I want to wage war on sin, not consider sin my friend. I want to expose it, not to hide. hide it. And therefore, I want to be open, whether it's God or my own conscience or other people or a sermon or a book or a small group. However God wants to point it out in my life, I want to see my sin, expose my sin, fight against my sin, be honest about my sin. Because more than anything, I want the promises of Jesus more than the promises of sin. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

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