Part 1
OUR SIN
He's bred that way!
Jack Russells are bred for hunting and only a dog that is willing to chase, dig, and never give up can make a good hunter. In fact, we were told that if a Jack Russell chases a rabbit and traps it inside it's burrow the Jack Russell will pursue the rabbit into that burrow for days, without food or water, until the Jack Russell perishes.
The Cajun and I bought Zeus the year we got married. For the last 12 years we have battled his nature. Zeus has proven to be quite the Houdini, able to escape every fence and boundary placed around him. We provide him with a warm, loving home, plenty of food and fresh water. But despite our efforts we have never been able to overcome his nature to yield to temptation.
One night we came home to find that Zeus was gone. He had gotten out of the fence and was nowhere in sight. We searched the neighborhood and called his name into the night. The next morning a neighbor knocked on our front door. When I opened the door I hardly recognized the mangled wad of fur in her arms. It was Zeus. He was soaking wet, bloody, clumps of fur were missing, and if he had not been shaking profusely I would have thought he was dead.
On her morning walk our neighbor had heard a commotion coming from a house that was under construction. When she went inside she saw Zeus. It seems that the night before Zeus had set his sights on a stray cat wandering through our yard. One bad choice led to another and before he knew it Zeus had left the safety of his home and had given chase to that cat. He chased the cat into an unfinished home where a battle ensued.
His salvation came when my neighbor was willing to put herself in the middle of that battle. She stood between Zeus and his temptress, taking a few scratches from an angry cat, she scooped a battle weary dog into her arms and brought him to the one who could clean him up.
As I looked at this mangled creature I had to ask, did he ever think he had the upper hand. The cat was fighting for survival. Why was he fighting? Because of his nature. The cat was trapped by a dog but what kept Zeus trapped in that house? His nature. He was willing to give up his home, his family, his safety, even his life if it was required of him to satisfy his nature.
Isn't that just like sin?
We see something with our eyes, we desire it in our hearts, we pursue it with our minds, then we serve it with our bodies willing to forsake all to satisfy our nature.
You've heard the saying, "every liar is a thief and every thief a murderer." Sin is not self contained, each sin does not exist in a vacuum.
That harmless flirtation, that little "white" lie, taking a few dollars that don't belong to you. These innocuous acts tie your hands and guide your feet. You are walking down a destructive path with a lie here and a lust there until you realize you have become so entangled that you are nothing more than a marionette being manipulated by your sin.
You have become a slave to that which you thought you owned.
Why are we talking about this?
Because the journey into the wilderness started with slavery (Exodus 1). The land of Egypt had once been a salvation to the Hebrew nation but it had become a house of bondage.
Exodus 1:11 "So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king."
John Wesley says, "They not only made them serve, which was sufficient for Pharaoh's profit, but they made them serve with rigour, so that their lives became bitter to them; intending hereby to break their spirits, and to rob them of every thing in them that was generous: to ruin their health, and shorten their days, and so diminish their numbers: to discourage them from marrying, since their children would be born to slavery; and to oblige them to desert the Hebrews, and incorporate with the Egyptians."
I think in order to appreciate your freedom you have to recognize your bondage.
Christ says in John 8:34, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin."
But God would not leave the Israelites in their bondage. Even in Chapter 1 He is waging a war on behalf of His children and the first weapon wielded in that war was a baby's cry. A baby in a straw basket would win the heart and move the hand of a princess, and the man that would come forth would deliver a nation and fulfill a covenant.
In the same way a baby, laying in the straw of a feeding trough cried into the darkness. That cry was nothing less than a declaration of war upon hell itself. The Son of God coming into our wilderness, standing between us and sin that traps us. He takes the beating meant for us as He scoops us up into His arms and carries us to the foot of the throne of God.
Run from sin!
Run to Jesus!
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