11-18-2023

Good Morning All,

Luke 16:13; “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

    When we perform the rites of Baptism and Confirmation, we begin with the same basic set of questions.  “Do you renounce the devil, all his works and all his ways?”  Of course, the answer is, “Yes, I renounce them.”  It is pretty basic stuff.  If you are willing to follow Jesus, you must renounce the devil.  The devil and Jesus are complete opposites.  So of course, we renounce the devil and all his ways, or do we?

    Do we really renounce the devil and all his ways, or do we keep a few of the “good ones”?  Maybe we like to gossip, you know just so we know what is going on in the community.  Maybe we are greedy and want to have “my fair share.”  Maybe we hold onto those lustful looks and thoughts.  Maybe our anger rules us more than we rule it.  Maybe we are a little quick to let the tongue run on and on.   They all seem so harmless.  Just little things that we keep around because we enjoy them and we take pleasure in them and, after all, no one really gets hurt; they are “innocent” sins.

    Yet they are sins and sins, no matter how small we make them out to be, separate us from God.  Sin has us serving the devil.  The selfish and self-centered nature of sin always causes harm and pain.  It causes us to lose respect for others, to lose respect for our self and to lose respect for God.  Sin is always saying, “I am more important than God.”  All sins do this.  It does not matter whether we think of them as small or insignificant; sin causes a chasm to form between God and us. 

    This is why Scriptures so clearly tells us that you can’t have both.  You can’t profess or live a life dedicated to Christ if you are going to hold onto old sinful ways.  We have to throw them away.  It may even take a drastic change in our life.  Maybe we need to avoid those places where we like to gossip or perhaps, we need to make a conscious effort to avoid anger or a sharp comment.  All these contribute to our brokenness as humans.  The healing is not complete until we rid our lives of the baggage of sin.  It destroys us, little by little, and leads us down the path of sorrow.  It leads us away from Jesus and into a place of darkness and pain.

    So, if we truly do renounce the devil, we need to fully trust in God for all that we need.  We need to stay away from those things and places that lead us to sin.  Yet above all, we need to recognize that these “little things” are sins.  We need to repent and ask God to help us move away from them.  God is gracious and will help us to do so but we will only succeed when we truly renounce the devil and his ways and only have Jesus as our master.

Father of all mercy, in you we have our only hope.  In you is our only way forward.  Help us to renounce the devil completely.  Help us to live as children in your kingdom.  Help us to serve you with our whole heart and body.   Give us the strength to throw out the devil and his lies and to trust only in you.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret