From the desk of Pastor Ben

Ways To Cause Sin – Part1

“Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks!
For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe
to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!”
(Matthew 18:7)

Eve is the original example of a person who directly tempted another to sin. After falling to Satan’s temptation, Eve lured Adam into joining her disobedience. Moses’ brother Aaron caused Israel to sin by condoning creation of the golden calf for worship while his brother received God’s commandments on Mt. Sinai. Jeroboam was the supremely sinful king in Israel, the one to whom other kings were compared as “walking in the sins of Jeroboam” (1 Kings 16:31; 2 Kings 3:3).

Jesus indicted the hypocritical Jewish leaders with causing others to sin. Although not always guilty of physical adultery themselves, the Jews enabled others to commit it through the human tradition of allowing a husband to divorce his wife without proper cause (Matthew 5:32). Our Lord rebuked the churches at Pergamum and Thyatira because members in both places tolerated false teaching and sinful standards of living (Revelation 2:14, 20).

Today, a husband might tell his wife, “Let’s claim this deduction on our tax return. Maybe it doesn’t really qualify, but we need to save as much tax as possible, and no one will ever know.” In doing this, the man commits the double sin of cheating on his taxes and inducing his wife to go along with they fraud.

Those examples are ways of leading another, especially a child of God, to sin. It’s amazing how reluctant we are of exposing our physical children to harm. Yet it’s sad how we often are not nearly as eager to protect those in our spiritual family from evil.

Ask Yourself:
Could you identify some pockets of compromise in your life where you have allowed dishonesty, or bitterness, or impatience, or revenge to interrupt not only the free flow of relationship with God, but also the integrity of your relationship with others? How could you correct this?