Death

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." (Revelation 21:8 NIV)


This is a rather depressing picture, isn't it?  Rules can't be changed.  When I break the rules, it hurts me and even others around me.  The more I do it, the easier it is to keep doing it.  It's like falling down a deep hole - even bigger than a pothole.  The sides are smooth, impenetrable, and unscalable.  I'm stuck...until I die.


There was a day I would think about "big" sins and "little" sins.  I always categorized my shortcomings as "little" sins.  Somehow they were easier to deal with that way.  The consequences weren't as big...at least in my mind.  


I liked to think that until I read passages like the one quoted above.  Did you notice who will be thrown in the lake of burning sulfur experiencing the second death?  Look at the last category on the list: "all liars."  I'm not safe.  I have lied before.  It doesn't even give me an out for "little white lies" or "lying with good intentions."  Even if I never lie again I'm still a liar when you look at the timeline of my entire life.  


This is not good.  It's really bad news.  The wages of sin really is...death.

Getting Stuck

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. (Romans 7:18-19 NASB)


Christ-followers are not perfect.  They are just a little more honest about their situation.  It's hard to admit that we've done something wrong and call it sin.  It's even more humbling to realize that our sin has caused hurt not only in our lives but in the lives around us.  It's worse yet when we realize that all our futile attempts to stop are not working.  We can't seem to stop the cycle of sin, hurt, and pain...even though we want it all to stop.


The first time I heard someone say one of "those" words, I was working on a construction site.  You know what words I'm talking about - the ones our parents never let us say or the lightning bolt would come down and strike us.  Anyway, I heard a co-worker say one of those words and I was sure lightning was going to strike him down that instant.  I waited.  I watched.  Nothing.


As time went on, it got easier and easier to listen to the language that was forbidden for me to speak.  One day I was shocked again, though, when I heard one of those words.  It struck me to the core because the voice speaking it was mine!  I waited.  I watched.  No lightning.


Over time working with this man, I found it easier and easier to allow my language patterns to match his.  When I finally got to the point that I wanted to stop...I couldn't.  I struggled.  I fought in my mind.  The words still had a sneaky way of slipping out of my mind and through my mouth.  I was stuck.


Sin does that to us.  It gets easier and easier to do what we know to be wrong.  We might even get to the point where we justify it in our minds and decide that it's not wrong.  But we can't change the rules.  We didn't make the game.  No, we're just stuck breaking them...over...and over...and over again.

Hurt

All…have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. (Rom. 3:23 CEV)

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8 NKJV)

"[I]f you do not listen to me or obey my commands, and if you break my covenant by rejecting my laws and treating my regulations with contempt, I will punish you... (Leviticus 26:14-16 NLT)

My back yard bordered our neighbor's back yard when I was growing up.  The neighborhood kids all liked playing in our combined back yards because they were big enough to play whiffle ball, football (nerf style), and any other active game (at least for grade-school sized players).

Toward the back of our yard, close to my parents' detached garage, was a grassy area in the neighbor's yard with a hill that was about 4 feet tall.  It was the perfect place for all of us to play "king of the hill."  We would all try to "take over" the hill and push all our "subjects" down below.  Being one of the youngest (and scrawniest) players I never held the title of "king."

One time when we were playing the game, I was pushed down the hill (which was sort of the point) and found myself with a sharp pain in my hand where it hit the ground trying to break my fall.  I picked my hand up to find a small tree limb sticking out of the heal of my hand where it had embedded itself.  Pain...blood...cleaning the wound...more pain.  I still remember the whole incident.  I still have the scar to this day.

It's one thing to say we should all stay away from the edge of the "potholes" in life.  Our reality, though, is a different story, isn't it?  You've fallen.  So have I.  We've ended up at the bottom of the "pothole" that we were warned against.  And it hurts.  It doesn't matter how we got there.  We can try to blame someone else, but we know where we could have turned back and avoided it all together.  Now it just hurts...and we want it to be all better.  That's the result of sin.

Falling

So then, if you know the good you ought to do and don't do it, you sin. (James 4:17 TNIV)


When I was working construction as a young man, my boss asked me before we went up on the roof: "Are you afraid of heights?"  I made some tongue-in-cheek remark to him because I thought he was kidding around with me.  (Joking was his normal pattern.)  After my remark, he told me he was serious.  He knew some people did not like heights and wanted to know my perspective before sending me on a roof.


One of my co-workers was fearless...almost to a fault.  He would walk out to the edge of the roof and lean over.  He would walk along the top of 2x4 walls that were 2...even 3 stories up without fear.  I even watched him put a ladder up on top of a thin wall two stories up and climb the ladder.  (It wasn't an "approved" move on his part but it was over before any of us could stop him.)


Another person I worked with was a professional football player.  We were building his house and he wanted to help out.  The man was an offensive lineman and bigger than any two of us put together.  He hated being on the roof with us.  He was deathly afraid of falling.  He would stay 5 feet away from any edge and always walk on all 4 limbs when moving around.  It was a sight to see.


I fall somewhere in between these two extremes.  I don't ask for trouble, but I'm not afraid to walk out to the edge of the roof...when there's a purpose (like nailing on shingles or lowering tools down to the ground).  I recognize that there is a real danger of falling and that falling can be painful...even fatal.


God tries to warn us about the "edges" of the potholes in life.  He tries to tell us that when we go over the edge and fall in, it is fatal.  Everyone responds to this reality differently, but the reality is the same.  His rules, like gravity, are something we can count on.  The results (also like gravity) are also something we can count on.  It's best to simply respect what God's telling us and stay away from the edge unless there's a real reason to go there (like pulling somebody back from the edge).  In the end...you don't want to fall.

Potholes

The woman said to the serpent…God did say, 'You must not eat the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Do not even touch it. If you do, you will die.'" "You can be sure that you won't die," the serpent said to the woman… (Genesis 3:2-6 NIrV)


When I was early in my years at college, I used to carpool with a group of friends.  We all lived off campus, so it made sense to save the precious gas-money in this way.


One day, it was my turn to drive.  I was sporting a styling 1963 Plymouth Valiant with a push-button transmission.  I really liked that car.  There were four of us riding together and I was navigating the highway through downtown Cincinnati to make it over the bridge into northern Kentucky where our school was located.  It was cloudy and raining pretty hard, making visibility much lower than normal.


Then it happened.  BOOM!  The whole car shook and it took a second for all of us to realize what had happened.  I hit a pothole...a big one.  It was filled with water, so the rain had hidden it from my sight.  Not only that, but the pothole was bordered on one side by a metal expansion bar in the road.  My rear tire was sliced cleanly across the entire tread in one instant.  Before I could react, the metal rim of my tire hit the concrete, the car began spinning, and we ended up only a couple feet from the concrete divider facing in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic.  The car behind us was able to slow down and stop only inches away from our front bumper.


Hazard lights were turned on.  Police were called and arrived.  I changed a tire in the rain.  The policeman stopped traffic in three lanes when we were ready to go, allowing us to turn the car around in the right direction.  We went on our way.  All in all, we were grateful for the outcome.  It could have been much worse!


Potholes can do that, you know.  They can stop you in your tracks.  They can disrupt your whole day.  They can become the focus of your attention, frighten you, hurt you, and even take your life and the lives of those around you.  It's really better to avoid potholes altogether.


God has a different name for potholes: temptation.  You see, God doesn't want our attention focused away from Him.  He doesn't want us to be frightened, hurt, or to die.  He warns us about the potholes in life so that we can avoid them.  Then it's up to us.  After all, we are in the driver's seat.

The Game of Life

Forever, O LORD, your word stands firm in heaven. Your laws remain true today, for everything serves your plans.  (Psalms 119:89, 91 NLT)

When I was growing up, my neighborhood friends would play all kinds of games.  One of them was the Game of Life.  In it, you would spin the spinner, move your car, get a job, get married, have children, make decisions about how to spend money, and eventually reach the end where you became rich!  (I'm not going to comment on how close this is to reality.)


One of my friends always liked to be the banker.  She also didn't like the tedium of doing the math for different people with different paychecks on payday.  So, she would give us all the same job, skip the first part of the game, and move right on to the marriage part.


Now I ask you, did she change the rules?


Let me ask it a different way.  If there were a "Game of Life" tournament with local, regional, and national finals, would they play using my friend's rules?  Of course not.  They would use the rules printed right in the box top (they used to do that back in the day).  My friends rules wouldn't count at all.  Why?  Because she didn't make the game.  They did!  As the maker of the game, they get to set the rules.


Our life really is the same.  As the maker of life, God gets to set the rules.  We may think we have the ability to change them, but we don't.  We only get to follow them or break them.  We can set up little (or big) groups of people who all agree to "change" the rules, but none of us have the right to change them.  We didn't make the game.  We don't get to make the rules.


Ultimately, God's rules bring us down to one question.  Do we want to be with Him or not?  He makes the rules.  We get to choose.

Rules

And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."  (Genesis 2:16-17 NIV)


When I was living in Cincinnati, OH, the last home I had was an old farm house on Springdale Road.  The road was fairly busy with cars day and night.  Most of them did not stick to the speed limit.  The road had a fair amount of hills on it with the top of one of those hills peaking right in front of our driveway.


Down a little from our driveway directly in front our house was a cross-street leading to a subdivision.  People would often drive up over the hill, down a little, then stop and wait to turn left into this subdivision.  There were no lights, stop signs, or warning signals of any kind.  When the car was low enough to the ground, it was often out of sight to the oncoming traffic behind it.  When the conditions were right (or wrong, as the case may be), the oncoming car would not be able to stop in time and we had an accident right in front of our house.  This happened with regular frequency (once or twice a year).


When we first moved into this house, our children would play outside on a concrete parking pad right next to the house.  The remainder of the driveway was gravel and the yard was green grass over bumpy dirt.  Our son was little more than a toddler.  Even though the gravel, uneven dirt, and grass would have tried to stop him, he headed straight for the road.


Our neighbor across the street called and alerted us to the expedition our son was taking and I ran out to find him only a couple feet from the road.  With everything I had inside me, I yelled, "JOSHUA!  NO!"


He froze in his tracks.  I ran to him, scooped him up in my arms, and began carrying him back to the house.  I kept saying over and over again, "I love you, Buddy.  No street.  No street."  He, I'm sure, couldn't hear me over all the screaming and crying he was doing.  He was terrified of me for awhile after that.


Now I ask you, was I being a mean father?  I made my child cry.  I yelled at him!  I also told him I love him.  Why did he keep crying?


He wasn't able to process everything that day, but I laid down a rule that he could understand.  Later, he understood the complexities of the situation and why that rule was in place.  When he was little, though, all he understood clearly was, "No street."


I think about that story often.  God has given me rules to follow, but I get upset at Him for it.  I think that somehow He is being mean or that I need to completely understand the complexities of the reason for the rule.  I really don't.  In the beginning, all I really need to understand is "yes" and "no".  The rest of the understanding comes with time.


Now that I'm older, I find myself grateful for His rules.  They really do lead me down a much better path.


How about you?  How do you feel about His rules?