2023_06_19 Insight Post- Kim Feld

Happy Juneteenth! I hope you are all enjoying the day.

This week’s reading takes us into the book of Judges and the story of Samson. As I’ve been reading, I’ve prayed that God would open my eyes to see any connections He wants me to make to my life. I feel like He honored that request with what I learned.

The phrase “did evil in the Lord’s sight” comes up frequently in the Old Testament, and we see it in our reading this week about the Israelites. Sometimes the phrase includes “again” or “once again” to indicate repetition. When something is evil in the Lord’s sight, it’s a sin. We’ve talked about how easy it is to point out sin in someone else’s life but not necessarily see it in our own. I could quickly fall into that trap, but I wanted to avoid it and see what I could learn about myself as I looked at the text.

In The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Kohlenberger (2015) describes a five-stage process that the Israelites repeatedly follow: sin, slavery, supplication, salvation, and silence. In the story of Israel, we see this lived out tangibly as they sin against God, are taken into slavery by an enemy, cry out to God for deliverance which is granted in some way, and then forget what He has done for them (silence). Once they forget, the stage is set for sin to take hold once again. I can clearly see this pattern in scripture, but I also see it in my life.

If we use the definition of sin as things we do to make our lives work outside of God, we can see the beginning of the setup. God created us; He wrote the owner’s manual for how we best operate. We are doomed to failure when we decide that we know best and try to do things our way. Sin, by nature, enslaves; sometimes, we don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Let’s take lying as an example. When we have a casual relationship with the truth, one lie leads to another, and so on and so on. Before long, we lose track of who we’ve told what, and we are enslaved by our strategy.

So, how do we get off this hamster wheel of sin, slavery, supplication, salvation, silence, repeat? Paul uses the entire chapter of Romans 6 to reinforce that Jesus broke the power of sin, and we no longer need to be enslaved. Living in our salvation takes work. Look at what Paul says in Philippians 2:12-13 (NIV):

¹² Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, ¹³ for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Please know that I’m also speaking to myself when I say this: as a child of God, we have all we need to live the way He wants and stop the cycle of sin and slavery. Look at 2 Peter 1:3 NLT:

³ By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence.

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns about those who act religiously but reject the power that could make them godly. I don’t want that to be true of me, do you? Let’s commit to live in our salvation and not forget the power available to us.

Kim Feld
Executive Director of Education and Outreach

Reference: Kohlenberger, J. R., III. (Ed). (2015). NIV Exhaustive Bible Concordance (John R. Kohlenberger, Ed.). Zondervan Academic.