Sun.’s Devo - Love and Good Deeds

Read: Ezekiel 23:1-49; Hebrews 10:18-39; Psalm 109:1-31; Proverbs 27:13
God compared Israel’s capital, Samaria, to a prostitute named Oholah and Judah’s capital, Jerusalem, to a prostitute named Oholibah. Oholah means idolatrous sanctuary which was how God looked at Samaria. Oholibah means my tent is in her because God’s tabernacle was in Jerusalem.
God gave the people a vivid analogy of the idolatry they had entered into. It’s not a passage you would want to read out loud in church because it is so disgusting and distasteful. But it was the perfect picture of their sin and their lust for the power and the gods of other nations. God had entered into covenant with his people to be their father, their husband and their god. They had rejected them in all three and as a loving father, he would have to discipline them.
Even under the new covenant, there is no room for deliberate sin. Jesus took our sin from us so to keep sinning after salvation is to face judgment. Eve was seduced into sin, but Adam chose to sin. Sin didn’t enter the world when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin entered when Adam ate it. The devil can seduce us to sin and we can be forgiven of that sin, but when we know it is sin and choose to defy God, that is to crucify the Lord again. In my limited understanding, I think that God is saying that there is nothing other than Jesus blood that can forgive sin. So, when we apply his blood to our lives we are forgiven once and for all. We become new creatures that don’t have a heart to sin and to defy that is to step outside our salvation into death. That is why the writer of Hebrews tells us to think of ways we can encourage one another to love and good deeds. If we are trying to turn from sin and do good, we will not be choosing it.
Lord, help us in our weaknesses to overcome the tricks of the enemy. Show us ways to encourage one another in love and good deeds.