This series is taken from Burning Heart who are an organisation who are passionate about equipping churches with high quality, professionally produced and theologically rich teaching films and series. The Director is David Ingall who was the Rector of Holy Sepulchre London, an HTB Network church plant in the City of London. For more information visit their website https://www.burningheart.org
In this third session David turns to Shakespeare for help in understanding how judgement may actually be a good thing.
10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. 15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.
16 Then the Lord raised up judges,[a] who saved them out of the hands of these raiders.
18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.
This image of sin as poison is one that is really helpful. It helps us
to get our heads around why sin matters so much more than we often realise.
The idea of judgement is something that most of us struggle with and shy
away from. One key reason for that is that we don’t really get why sin is
such a problem. We know we’re not perfect, but most of the things that we
do wrong just don’t seem that big a deal to us. That means that the
punishments and judgement we read about in the Bible seem a bit much.
Why can’t God just forgive us and let it go?
This image of poison gives us one answer to that question. Poison is not something you can ignore and just let go. However small and innocuous it may seem to begin with, if left unchecked it spreads and festers until it kills you.