Promises to Sin

We have all been in a situation where we feel stuck and pressured to do what someone else is telling us to do. It may have been our first 10-foot high dive. It may have been eating something gross. The worst is when we were actually convinced to to do something we knew we shouldn’t do – to sin. Perhaps it was drinking too early or too much, having sex before marriage, having a different definition of marriage than Scripture, painfully hurting someone out of anger, or gossiping about someone and harming their reputation. I know these situations are “taboo” and you may be shocked that I said them (or in this case, wrote them down), yet they bring us back to a place where we remember being tempted. Maybe it’s a part of your life you would like to forget.  We all have those situations were we debate good and evil. In some cases, for whatever reason, we know what we should do, what we want to do, but we fall into sin anyway. We know what God wants of us, and we may have role models in our lives that show that us as well, but we go ahead with the sin anyway. In an essence, the moment we fall into sin, we “behead” those models so they are silenced. It is a horrible, gut-wrenching feeling.

Last week we read about Jesus telling the 72 how to share the Gospel, and this week we move into a reading where people are confused about who is Jesus. They are so confused they think He is John the Baptist. Herod, knowing he had killed John the Baptist, knew that wasn’t true. To me, this is one of the oddest readings in Scripture. In this story, we see odd details like the fact that Herod didn’t want to kill John the Baptist because he knew John was a holy and righteous man. Yet, one night Herod is partying with his friends at his own birthday party when his niece comes and dances for them. Herod promises to give her anything she wants, and after conferring with her mother, she says she wants the head of John the Baptist on a platter. No doubt Herod felt trapped, just like we do when people are encouraging us to sin.

Herod was in one of those moments where he fell to sin, but there is a big difference between him and us. Herod didn’t have Jesus in his life to know forgiveness and to move forward afterwards. Herod had to cover up his sin, or keep justifying to himself. No matter how hard a person tries to bury a sin, however, it always resurfaces.

Mindy and I have watched it happen in some real life mysteries. Recently, we watched one about a young man who killed a girl working at KFC. Now, 23 years after the incident, he had become the chief of the fire department, and he thought he had gotten away with his crime. In the end, a tiny piece of foam from his shoe left at the crime scene linked him to the murder. Whatever pressure he felt to kill that girl 23 years earlier, had affected the rest of his life.

Like Herod and the killer above, we are also people who have caved into those pressure situations and to the promises we made to sin. Unlike Herod, we are redeemed by the grace of God, because of the promise Jesus made to us through dying and taking those sins on Himself. This week, we’ll spend time on this odd story in Scripture, realizing we can relate. However, thanks be to God we no longer have to live in the eternal consequences of our promise to sin!