The Enemy Within

What is the greatest threat to the Church?

Have you ever sat down and thought about this question? It may seem odd for me to even pose the question to us this morning.

Sin is everywhere!

Scripture constantly shows us this truth. Listen to these words from Paul in Romans

Romans 3:10 The Message

There’s nobody living right, not even one,

This includes you and me. Nobody means nobody. Yes some of us may be better and have a longer history of battling sin but none of us gets it right.

The consequences of sin is everywhere!

Even if today we could all stop sinning forever, the results of sin would still be around us. Since the beginning of time the effects of sin has only gotten worse. This is why all of creation is groaning for redemption.

We have seen flooding in parts of our country, extreme heat in other parts, building collapses, death upon death, etc. All this happened just this week in our country, not including what is going on in other parts of the world.

Judges shows these two truths!

As we have been travelling in the book of Judges I hope you have seen these two themes being taught. If not, our passage for today should help with that.

Gideon’s sin of pride sets up the sin of Abimelek.

The story of Abimelek must be seen in connection, or as the end of the story of Gideon. Pride is awful and we should always be on our guards against it. Yet, it can also be very passive in how it shows up. Though I believe it is at the foundation of all sin, sometimes it doesn’t become active in how we behave.

Sin is never satisfied.

As the story of Abimelek goes we see this starting to be true.

Sin will de-value others.

The price given to Abimelek for him to hire followers and kill his brothers is roughly $700-$1000 by today’s standards. The value of life was not very great, was it? I wonder though, if we value life any better today. I wonder how I de-value the life and value of others.

Sin takes what is not “ours”.

Abimelek usurps the power for himself. Yes his name means “my father is king” but he never came to his position by the will of others. How are we individually and collectively grasping power which was not meant to be ours?

Sin results in destruction.

This is always the end result of all sin.

The greatest threat is from within.

This is the lesson of Judges for the nation of Israel and for us. I started the message with asking a question about the greatest threat for the church. The answer has been, is and will always be: those of us on the inside. Yes, there are threats from outside the walls of the church. Yet, these are not the greatest.

But, God...

The story of Abimelek turns into the judgeship of Tola who rescues Israel. But by the grace of God sin does not need to have the last word in your life or mine.

Only the power of Christ conquers sin.

You cannot do it on your own. We by ourselves do not have the power to overcome sin. We must submit to Christ who conquered sin in order to see freedom from sin.

My challenge: to live holy lives.

This is called sanctification. As we celebrate Independence day this coming week and naturally think about freedom. True freedom will only happen when we tackle the sin/enemy within us and all Christ to rescue us. This only happens when we give up our pride and submit, become a slave to Christ. Freedom is not doing whatever we want. Judges teaches us this will not end well. Freedom is doing what Christ wants.