And then there’s some excuse. Sunday night was another one of the “special Sundays” where church was at my house. My mom brought up a good point that I had really had not thought about, and that is: trying to justify our sin. That may seem like it’s an okay thing to do … until we see in the scripture how large of sin it really is. I’m going to focus on King Saul for a minute; God gave Saul specific orders in First Samuel 15 that Saul was to “go and completely destory the entire Amalekite nation” (verse 3), which was a nation known for their guerrilla terrorists who lived off of raiding other nations. Saul went out and did part of what he was commanded to do. He left the better of the livestock alive, when God had said that everything had to be destroyed. When Samuel confronted Saul about this Saul stated that his “troops brought in the best of the sheep and cattle and plunder to sacrifice to the LORD” (verse 21). Then Samuel said one of my favorite quotes in all of Scripture:
“What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Obedience is far better than sacrifice. Listening to him is much better than offering the fat of rams. Rebellion is as bad as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as bad as worshiping idols. So because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you from being king.”
1 Samuel 15:22-23 NLT (emphasis added)
I don’t know if Saul was really planning on offering those as sacrifices, but what is evident is that he used an excuse for his sin. There was no fear of the Lord there — he was therefore rejected as King.
How many times do we travel on the highway over the speed limit and then we try to justify our sin with, “everyone else is doing it” or “people will get mad at me for going slow”. What if we really believed what Paul said in Romans 13? “Obey the government, for God is the one who put it there. All governments have been placed in power by God. So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. For the authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong.” (verse 1-3a NLT) I’m definatly not saying I go the speed limit at all times — however, I do always try to. And honestly, there is no justification for going over the limit. If you see a state trooper and you’re frightened (and thus slow down and tick the people going the speed limit off) then obviously you’re doing something wrong — you’re sinning. Of course, this isn’t fun to hear because we, as humans, don’t like going slower than the limit … it means it’ll take us 2 more minutes to get to work or school. Even if you’re speeding to get to church … there is no excuse.
I wanted to share that because I thought about it earlier today, and I wanted to expand upon it.
I went, for a third time to see The Chronicles of Narnia. I do believe it’s the first movie I’ve saw three times in the theater. Honestly, I want them to make as much money off the movie as they can — not for Disney’s sake, but as a statement of the type of movies people are really interested in seeing. Also, I found it interesting that at a 1:00pm showing it still had a pretty large crowd — after almost a full month after it’s release. I’ve still yet to read the books, although I am planning on doing so sometime soon.