John 8:34-37
Keeping Room for Jesus' Word
34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word.
Matthew 19:11-12
Following Jesus' Word
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Romans 7:25
Slave to Sin
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
In our lives it seems that something often gets in our way of keeping God's Truth and holding on to His Word...And so we sin...Making room and taking the time to follow Him is not any easier now, than it was for Abraham's descendants two thousand years ago...Something just keeps getting in our way, and I would bet something kept getting in their way too...One might think that we would follow God's Truth completely now and all the time, each and everyday...We all can do God's Will...And one would think, that after all these years, that we would and could make room for His Word -each and everyday...Or can we make the excuse that there is so much more to do today than thousands of years ago that we have less time...Did our ancestors have more time for God than we do...
There have been many, many years now to study Jesus and His resurrection and even more years written about the Bible and the study of His Word and Bible -so shouldn't we want to give God most of our time each day and think about Him more and more...But by our nature -we do not to make room for His Word and not to accept His Word on an everyday, daily, and regular basis...Is this just part of our sinful nature?...
Jesus said to the descendants of Abraham that they are actually slaves to their own sin...And Paul, when he is doing his best to follow God, says that he too is a slave to the law of sin...Sin just gets in our way...The temptations of doing what we want, when we want seems to trump God's Word and His Truth much of the time...Our comfort and our need seems to lead us very much along...
Jesus said we have to make room for His Word...And not everyone can accept His Word...He said to His opponents that they have no room for His Word two thousand years ago...Today I still think this rings true, as much as it does when He spoke these words...The people around Him had seen His miracles, they heard about all the things He had done, yet they had no room for His Word...His Word was still hard for them to accept after all they had seen Him do...And they found it hard in their day to make room for it...
In our lives on earth, I think that is still true today that we have to make room for His Word and to accept His Word...But this is not easy...There was a lot going on in the ancient one's lives, and there is a lot going on in ours...Do we really want to make room for His Word and for Him?...We want to do what we want to do...We want to control our days...We don't want to be bogged down or bothered or interfered with in our daily lives with by things we do not want -even though they may be the Perfect Truth and the Truths from God Himself...It can be an annoyance...Or so we think...We want to control the hours of our days...
I really think we want to follow His Word...We want to love our enemy, but we cannot love our enemies...We want to be perfect, but we cannot be perfect...We want to be holy, but we cannot be holy...We want to be able to promise to God that we will do all the right things for Him, but we just cannot seem to do all the right things day in and day out...Something does gets in our way...What gets in our way is our sinful nature...We are slaves to sin as Jesus and Paul points out...We do need to thank God for sending His Son to us...We need to thank Jesus for dying on the cross for our sins...And when I think about the passion of Christ and how He suffered and bled on the Cross -I think these are what my sins did to Him...He really did pay my sin debt...God delivers and saves me through His Son Jesus...