Just what is the sin that the widow says Elijah has come to
expose? When she first appears to Elijah
she is scrounging for a few sticks with which to light a fire so that she can
cook a little cake with what is left of her food stocks and then lie down and die
with this same son. Her hospitality
extended to Elijah in the midst of her own despair is rewarded with constant
provision. Now, she has grown accustomed
to God's provision and this disaster, she believes, is brought upon her as
punishment for some sin in her past. All
around her there is suffering from this famine and drought from which she has
gained relief but the son she was prepared to lose only recently has died and
she concludes that it is because of this sin.
Why had God blessed her only to punish her now? Sometimes our logic isn't good. Now she has to decide why God would raise her
son from the dead. The answer in all
these things is God's sovereignty and love.
What kind of God do you believe in when painful things happen in your
life?
Was the woman committing adultery all by herself? Where is the man with whom she was surely
consorting? How did this crowd happen to
find them together? It seems like a
set-up to me. Jesus is teaching in the
temple and suddenly a woman caught in the midst of adultery is brought before
Him in order that He might opine on what to do with her. The penalty in the law is indeed stoning but
there are few, if any, records of such penalty being carried out. Everyone wants to know what Jesus wrote in
the dirt (did you notice that he writes twice).
He poses a simple test, if you are pure then get the party started. He could have done so and once He had begun
the stoning they could have joined in.
Instead, as He wrote the second time they heard it (whatever it is) and walked
away, beginning with the older ones until only Jesus and this woman were
left. The only one who could condemn her
does not, He extends grace and mercy but truth is there, go and sin no more. This is one more sin He will die for.
John meets the resurrected and glorified Jesus in the spirit
and the vision is incredibly real to him.
His reaction is to fall at the feet of Jesus as though dead so holy and
awesome is this vision. He is aware of
his own sinfulness just as Isaiah was in the temple when he saw the Lord high
and lifted up and heard the cherubim and seraphim crying "Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord." John might not have
survived this encounter if God were not loving, merciful, gracious, and
forgiving. Sin should not keep us from
Him, it should take us to Him for cleansing and pardon through Jesus'
sacrifice. He already knows your sin and
died for it. Don't let sin keep you in
hiding.
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