No New Newspaper Articles

We should be aware that we have the same propensity for sin as anyone else.   #daybydaylw   Interested in learning more about becoming a devoted follower of Christ? Go to follow.lifeword.org!   ~~~   In my family growing up, it was a normal routine for everyone to sit at the dinner table and eat supper together. We all had our assigned seats. We prayed. We ate. You had to ask permission to be excused from the table. And during that time mom and dad talked to one another about what was going in their day, or they talked to us about our schedules or sports or homework, etc. Normal stuff. One night dad came to the supper table with something in his hand. We went through our normal routine that night. We prayed. We talked. But before my brother or I could ask permission to be excused from the table, dad handed me what he had brought to the table. It was a newspaper clipping from when he was in high school. The article talked about how, as a junior in high school, Uriel Johnson and another of his teammates, were some of the fastest sprinters in the Little Rock area. They were the ones to watch, the ones to beat. My eyes grew wide in amazement. I had heard of my dad talking about running track before for Central High School, and he had told me some of his times running the 100 yard dash and the 400. But I didn’t know he was this fast! After I read that article, my dad said something to the effect of “They didn’t write any articles about me my senior year. I got cocky. And lazy. And didn’t put in the work. Don’t let that happen to you.” I don’t know why dad decided to bring that up at that point in my life. I was in high school at the time. I may have even been a junior, like he was at the time that article was written. I don’t know if he saw some complacency or arrogance building up in me in my attitude towards baseball. Regardless, he wanted to warn me. “Don’t let what happened to me happen to you.” Paul gives us the same type of instruction in the book of Romans when he tells us that what was written in the OT was written for our instruction. It is meant to teach us about the pitfalls that God’s people fell into so that we may avoid those same pitfalls. In essence, Paul is giving us newspaper clippings and saying, “I see the same propensity in you. Be aware!” And that is what we have been doing over the last several weeks as we have studied David’s fall into sin with Bathsheba. We will continue to do so today. But I also want us to see another feature. The OT is not just a compilation of stories warning us about the sin we need to avoid. The OT is more about the relaying to us of the nature and character of God.