The Solution to a Sewage Problem

The emotion of law rising up in my heart is indignant with rage.  There should be no second chance for such an act, or if there is, only after clear punishment has been administered and the person who did this feels to the uttermost his crime.  But leave no doubt that the crime is severe enough that he may not move forward afresh without the weight of the record clinging to him.

Does this paragraph conjure up in your mind’s eye a possible crime that would fit it or ignite a feeling of indignation for something in your memory?  For probably as many readers as there are to this article, there are likely just as many possible crimes elicited in the minds.  This indignation we feel against evil comes from God, since we are made in His image, yet I know I miserably misapply it.  God has shown me the indignation He justly feels towards me as I arrogantly bob my head thinking that my own crimes are justifiable while those of others around me are not.

If any of you are like me, we want to self-justify.  We ask ourselves, “Have I actually committed ‘crimes’?” One time, when I was a young adult, I was tutoring a group of high-school students who were disrespectful in class--constantly talking out and causing a great lack of opportunity for students to focus. I decided to set up a discipline system and listed a group of behaviors that would not be acceptable. I inadvertently used the legal term "misdemeanors" for my title of unacceptable behaviors, not realizing that I had chosen a serious legal term and not a mere word that meant "failures" or "errors," which I had intended. One of the parents came back at me vehemently angry. How could I dare put such a term on their child's mere "talking out" in class!? Well, although this was a mistake on my part, it is actually teachable concerning how offended and angry the parent was over that mistake. The fact is that people belittle sin. Not realizing disrespect to be as serious a sin as any is overlooking the root heart attitude of self-centeredness, which is the opposite of love. Anything not done out of love is breaking God's law, and God's law is meant to show us where we fall short. Ultimately, not acting out of love will lead us--without consequences hedging us in--to horrific deeds such as committed by the likes of Hitler.

As I have walked in the secret place with God, He has been showing me the horror of my heart.  The “little” feelings of lust, anger, impatience, attitude, harshness, arrogance, self-reliance, rebellion, judgmentalism, etc. that we harbor are only the roots of much deeper evil–criminal, beastly hearts within us.  There’s a reason Jesus equated anger in one’s heart against one’s brother as murder and a lustful look as adultery.  To God, just the presence of that root is damning because it shows Him who we really are at the core.  We are wicked criminals.  Owning that in all its horror is the first step to salvation because it should lead us to repentance, humility, and brokenness and the utter vacating of our own self-righteousness.  Only then can we embrace the perfect righteousness Jesus offers us.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it” (Matt 23:34).  Owning our criminal hearts should hopefully cause us to re-read and rethink the application to the first paragraph.  Do I want the kind of judgment from God that I am all-too-ready to give to another?

We can’t change our hearts; that’s the bad news.  However, the power of Yahweh can, through the perfect mediation of Jesus Christ!  He is the authority over all streams of good or evil that flow into our souls.  He releases life and death in us.  The streams of bitter waters that condemn us as adulterers against the holy, holy, holy God are spirits of evil that cause us to feel the power of sin in us and our incapacity to obey the law.

1 Samuel 16:14: “Now the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh terrorized him.”

Num 5:27-28: “So he will have her drink the water, and it will be that, if she has defiled herself and has been unfaithful to her husband, that the water which brings curses will go into her to cause bitterness, and her abdomen will swell and her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. 28But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, she will then be free and conceive a seed.”

The water in Numbers 5 is a parable.  Scripture tells us that water refers to the Word of God (“so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” - Eph 5:26).  The Word is also considered the foundation of our faith: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17).  John makes clear that Jesus is the personification of the Word: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  Paul likewise testifies to this incarnated foundation of our faith when he says, “For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11), and Peter narrows this down even more by calling Him the “cornerstone” on which we stand or by which we stumble and are crushed (1 Pet 2:6-8).  We see there is a divide that occurs among people when they are faced with believing the truth of Jesus and His Word.  That divide is seen clearly in the parable of Numbers 5.  The Word is that which teaches us how we are to understand the sin within us (the sewage problem), enabling us to embrace Jesus as our mediator and covering.  Those who do not embrace Him by embracing His Word–the whole of it: both law and gospel–are destroyed by unbelief, even as those in the flood were swallowed up by the water; those who believe in Him are saved “through the water” (1 Pet 3:20).  As we consider the application of Numbers 5, the accused adulteress is the image of a wayward human race who have not submitted to the revelation of God but have adulterated themselves to the idolatry of the world, the flesh, and the devil.  Who has not defiled themselves by perfectly worshipping our holy God?  (1 John 1:10: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”)  We are all condemned as adulterers before Him.  And yet, when we must drink the water of God’s Word, does it come to us as a curse or as a blessing?  Since we are all adulterers, it would be reasonable to say that it would come to us as a curse.  At first, it did appear to do just that at Mount Sinai when the law was given and the Word of redemption had not yet been fully revealed.  It was being revealed in the types and images provided through the Tabernacle and the Levitical sacrificial system.  Thus, it appeared to be a hopeless word of condemnation and blood, which even the people had to provide in the sacrificial animals.  Yet this word was not the final word!  “For the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that comes by faith from start to finish, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’ (Rom 1:17, BSB).  However, we need to see the severity of our condition as guilty adulterers before God before we can grasp the glorious good news of Jesus’ redemption.

James 4:4-7: “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God. 5Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’? 6But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, ‘GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.’ 7Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

2 Corinthians 12:7-9: “...there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! 8Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. 9And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’”

This “greater grace” James speaks of, and this “power perfected in weakness” Jesus promised to Paul is not the promise of the removal of the adulteress’s accursed water of testing--the law, and the accuser (messenger of Satan) that seeks to condemn us by the law--but rather, the grace and the power of the gospel by the Holy Spirit is the giving of a stream of living water that overcomes it and flushes it out.  The serpents still bit the Israelites in the wilderness, and yet that venom did not hurt them if they looked to the symbol of Jesus’ redemptive cure–the accursed cross on which He shed His own life blood for all who look to Him.  “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

While Jesus is the authority over the bitter waters of the law’s accusation and judgment, He is also the authority and source of living waters by which He has identified Himself as the Savior.  He walked through this life freeing the oppressed (Mark 9:25: “He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again’”), not bringing judgment (“I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” - John 12:47), and offering the hope of eternal life.  The floodgates of evil that we experience in our hearts or homes are not whims of chance.  God wants us to see that He has all power over them so that we will fear HIM above all evils, knowing that who we become as people, what spirit we are given over to (bitter or holy), and the fate of our eternal destiny is in His hands.  Yet fear of God is not meant to paralyze us; it is meant to lead us to the curse-bearing Lamb of God, Jesus Christ!  When we drink the water of the Word, we are drinking all of Jesus, both His severe consternation over our sinful hearts and His life-giving resolution.

Galatians 3:19, NLT: “Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised.”

Isaiah 6:3-7: “‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is Yahweh of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory.’  4And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called out, while the house of God was filling with smoke. 5Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts.’ 6Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7And he touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is atoned for.’”

God intends for us to feel the weight of the law so that we will run to the promised Savior and not have to suffer the ultimate curse of the law–God’s wrath.

Seeing the sewer of evil that is stopped up beneath the surface of our own souls should give us pause when fellow brothers and sisters in Christ fall to the waves of their current.  Instead of pointing fingers of accusation at all the wrong things that were done in the case, we should be weeping with trembling at the vulnerability of our own person and in loving concern for the restoration of our brethren.  “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil 2:12-13).  We should be begging God to save us from falling and to show us where we are blind to where we have already fallen.  We should be pleading with Him to have mercy on the oppressed by these evil forces, for His own glory, to demonstrate that His mercy and power of redemption is greater than the cesspool of evil that birthed us.  “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22).

This is not to say that we should tolerate evil within the body of Christ, the church (starting with ourselves).  On the contrary, we should be jealous for God’s glory in His living tabernacle (1 Cor 5).  The church has failed miserably at such purification, and yet, does that give us the self-righteous qualification to reject her outright and not identify with her as part of the problem?  If anything, it should show us that our Chief Shepherd is making a statement about the massive disqualification His body as a whole, composed of individual sinners, has in inheriting the Kingdom of God because of our own merit.  This way, when He does intercede with the power of the Holy Spirit, He will receive all the glory.  “The base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are, so that no flesh may boast before God” (1 Cor 1:28-29).

Isaiah 48:8:11: “I knew that you would deal very treacherously;

And you have been called a transgressor from the womb.

9For the sake of My name I delay My anger,

And for My praise I restrain it for you,

In order not to cut you off.

10Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;

I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

11For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act;

For how can My name be profaned?

And My glory I will not give to another.”

Ezekiel 16:14-15, 49-52, 60-63: “Then your name [church] went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My majesty which I set on you,” declares Lord Yahweh. 15“But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your name, and you poured out your harlotries on every passer-by who might be willing…49Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had lofty pride, abundant food, and quiet ease, but she did not strengthen the hand of the afflicted and needy. 50Then they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. So I removed them when I saw it. 51Furthermore, Samaria did not commit half of your sins, for you have multiplied your abominations more than they. Thus you have made your sisters appear righteous by all your abominations which you have done. 52Also bear your dishonor in that you have made judgment favorable for your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. Yes, be also ashamed and bear your dishonor, in that you made your sisters appear righteous… 60“Nevertheless, I Myself will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. 61Then you will remember your ways and feel dishonor when you receive your sisters, both your older and your younger; and I will give them to you as daughters, but not because of your covenant. 62Thus I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall know that I am Yahweh, 63so that you may remember and be ashamed and never open your mouth anymore because of your dishonor, when I have atoned for you for all that you have done,” declares Lord Yahweh.