S-I-N

I believe that God has his hand on our oldest grandson. He loves the Bible and listens to the Bible on CD everyday. With his excellent memory he remembers Bible story details that I will never be able to keep in my aging brain. It's a challenge to keep up with him. The other day I asked him why he was afraid of the dark and he spelled it out: "s-i-n." He knows that Satan dwells in darkness and he's aware that he sins. When I told him that he has the purest heart that I know he disagreed with me and confessed his sin like lying to his mom and dad. His parents' goal right now is to help him balance his fear of sin with the truth that he is safe in God.

On the other hand, most of us are too complacent in our sin, including myself. I think one of the reasons God put us with other people is to help us see the sinfulness in our hearts: the selfishness for our own way, anger when things go wrong, the desire to lie in order for others to approve of us, even the shame of being a Christian in a non-Christian setting.

John Piper's sermon this week says that, "We Are Stiff-Necked, Rebellious, and Unthankful. We should learn from this how stiff-necked and rebellious and unthankful we are. That’s why 1 Samuel 12 begins the way it does reminding the people how God saved them from Egypt and then gave them the promised land and then rescued them from evil kings. And each time they forget God and go after other things. That is not just the story of Israel. It’s the story of humanity. It’s the story of my life and your life. Even as Christians, we are not steadfast in our affections for God. We have thankful days and unthankful days. And even our thankful days are not as thankful as they should be. Just think of how joyful and thankful you would be if your heart responded to God himself and his ten thousand gifts with the admiration and gratitude that he is worthy of. So God gives us pictures of ourselves in stories like this. He allows his people to drift into this kind of ungrateful and idolatrous seasons so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world held accountable before God (Romans 3:19). "

As always, Piper cuts to the quick.