The Wages of Sin

We don’t like to talk about sin these days. One of the reasons we need the prophetic word of the Old Testament is to see God’s love in all its aspects writ large across the landscape of Scripture. In our text this week, and I humbly ask you to read in advance II Kings 13-17, we see the darker aspect of God’s love for his people manifest. Or, at least, that is what the Bible seems to say about why Israel wound up exiled to a strange land. We have to ask ourselves when we get to the parts of the Bible where God brings hard things or even judgement into his peoples lives - why? How did this happen? Is God fickle? Does God just flip out one day and bring down the hammer? Or does God make good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people?The writer of our text is very calculating in his instruction, the road to judgement for Israel is littered with God’s acts of kindness and mercy. It is as if God is begging his people to “wake up.” Yet, like the love a father has for his son, or an artist has for his most precious work, love demands the unloveable parts be dealt with and the ugly things be removed so that the beauty can shine through. That, or something like that, is at work when God finally says, "No more, I will spit you out of the land." God is not saying he is through with Israel, but he letting them feel the “wages of sin.”At St. Patrick we believe that “grace is everything” and it really is. But we always have to remember why grace is amazing and why it is everything - it is because what we have been rescued from is very, very, very bad. Maybe you have forgotten. Maybe you have taken God’s grace for granted. Or maybe you have forgotten how bad sin is. If any of these are true you need to join me Sunday. Grace is not amazing until sin is very, very bad.Blessing,Jim