Streams of Tears

Psalm 119:129-136

Verse 136  Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for Your law is not obeyed.

    We have spent a couple of days talking about being single-minded about God and His Word.  Today we take some time to reflect on what that pinpointed focus will do to our view of sin.

    The more we become focused on God and His Word, the more we will see His absolute purity and that reveals our absolute impurity.  We can’t spend any real time diving in the Word and not see the truth of ourselves.  We are a sinful people.  We can’t deny it if we are truly honest with ourselves.

    Sin is something we often think too lightly about.  We let what we consider “little sins’ slide in our lives and pretend it is ok with God to do so.  But a Holy God can’t allow sin close to Him and therefore the more we allow it to have a place in our life, the further we are pushing Him away.  We don’t like to think about what our sin means to our relationship with the Father, because it would also reveal the truth of our relationship with sin.

    When sin has an open door policy with our hearts we are shortchanging our faith life.  The psalmist was serious in his look at sin, both his and the sin of those around him.  If we are serious about sin and the danger it is to our lives, we need to address it.  It is easy to address it in each other, but the truth is we can’t address it in others if we haven’t honestly addressed it in our own lives.

    Sin is not something we should be ok with in our lives.  As we discussed the other day, we can’t enjoy both God and sin.  To enjoy sin says we don’t care about God and to enjoy God is to hate sin.  That’s right, we can’t just dislike it, we must hate it.  And to hate it means that we are working against it in our lives.  We should also find that we grieve when we find sin in our lives.

    The psalmist says that he had streams flowing from his eyes, he was weeping over sin.  I’m guessing it has been awhile since any of us have wept over sin in general, let alone over personal sin.  Yet, this is the key we need to open the door to full relationship with God.

    Once we have wept for our own sins, the sins around us cause more than they used to.  The Word shines light into the truth of our lives and we see the way we have hurt Christ.  We see the weight of our sins holding Him on the cross.  And this is the true beginning of our new relationship with God.

Making It Personal

    When was the last time you looked at your sin with disdain?  What sin do you struggle as seeing as bad?  What sin needs to be grieved in your life?

Making It Personal Kids

    Did you know that Jesus doesn’t like sin?  Since He doesn’t like it, how should you feel about it?  Is there a sin that you do that makes Jesus sad?

Closing Prayer

    Father, thank You for allowing us to get a glimpse of Your holiness so we can get a proper assessment of the depth of our sin.  Help us deal with the sin in our lives.  In Jesus’ name, amen.