February 18, 2024 • Jason Ewart
What is it about the human condition that we know what we shouldn’t do, we know the consequences, yet we do it anyway? The Bible’s explanation isn’t just that we sin but that we are slaves to sin. Sin is not just an action in our lives. It is a power in our lives. In this message, we’ll see how God liberates us from our layers of slavery so we are free to serve God.
One of the metaphors for sin in the Bible is leprosy. That’s because it slowly devours us, and we are numb to reality. In this episode, we’ll look at how the sin of pride is all-consuming. Pride is the opposite of faith. Pride destroys both love and wisdom. It refuses to acknowledge the need we have or embrace humility and receive grace from God. In this message, Naaman teaches us that to be healed from sin, all we need is a need that we know we cannot heal ourselves. God is quick and gracious to heal.
Addiction doesn’t kill people as much as a denial of the addiction kills people. In the same way, self-deception is not the most terrible thing that we do, but it allows us to do the most terrible things. And until you defeat self-deception, you will never overcome the destructive power of the sins we do to ourselves. In this story, King Saul tries to prop himself up and build esteem for himself. But to do that, he disobeyed God. And, he thought he had perfectly good reasons for disobeying God. We think the same thing. We are brilliant at finding perfectly good reasons to disobey God. In this message, we’ll see that it’s only after we realize that Christ has made us great and filled us with his esteem that we’ll stop letting sin deceive us.
