#DailyDevotion The Cure for Your Addiction To Sin
Lent day 36 Tuesday
Read Ex 9:29—10:20
Exodus 9:29-34 29 Moses said to him, “As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s. 30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” …33 So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. 34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. 10:16-20 16 Then Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you. 17 Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the Lord your God only to remove this death from me.” 18 So he went out from Pharaoh and pleaded with the Lord. 19 And the Lord turned the wind into a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and drove them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust was left in all the country of Egypt. 20 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go.
Pharaoh is like your typical alcoholic at about 3 am and 10 am in the morning. Kneeling at the porcelain altar he cries out to whatever god he thinks he believes in or acknowledges and says, “I swear if you get me out of this, I’ll never do it again.” Yet we know by 1 pm at the latest if he is awake, he’ll be sippin’ a little bit of the hair of the dog that bit him and he’ll be at that altar again soon. We note a couple things about this incident with Pharaoh. First, it is Pharaoh who hardens his heart against the Lord before the Lord begins to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Second, that is the way it is with us.
You don’t need to be an alcoholic to act this way, but it helps. Indeed, we are all addicted to sin. We can never get enough of it. We turn to it to solve all our problems in life. When it comes around and bites us in the rear, which it always does, we turn to the invisible deity and cry out, “If you get me out of this, I swear, I’ll never do it again.” And it seems to be more often than not the Lord goes, “Why not.” And lo and behold we are out of whatever mess we made for ourselves. Then we forget the deity which has delivered us and we go back to doing whatever it was that got us through the night before we prayed.
God in Christ Jesus does want to and does indeed deliver us from sin, death and the power of the devil. He renews our minds and gives us the Holy Spirit, so we may turn from depending on sin and start depending on and trusting in Christ Jesus in our every need. He’s even given us a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer or Our Father that we can pray every day and whenever we feel we need assistance. We simply need to trust that God the Father hears and answers that prayer and live as if indeed the help has come. Jesus has taught us that when we pray give thanks as if you have already received it.
Lord Jesus Christ, by your suffering and death, by your resurrection, you have freed us from our addicted dependence upon sin to supply us our every need. Grant unto to us true repentance that we not harden our hearts and return to the sin that enslaves us. Amen.