We Are Tolerating Sin in Our Lives and Not Making Disciples
- Jack Selcher
- Oct 9
- 4 min read
My first job was working on my uncle’s celery farm. I spent many hours weeding his celery plants, which grew in rows thirty inches apart, with plants spaced six inches apart. The goal was to pull every weed. Any missed weeds lived to steal nutrients that the celery could have used to grow larger and healthier.
My next job was working at a local orchard. One of my tasks was picking sour cherries. The owner's goal was to harvest every cherry from the trees to maximize his profit. He paid me for every ten-quart bucket I filled. Picking the cherries around the top of the trees was a slow process, and I made less than 50 cents an hour doing it.
These experiences, and perhaps perfectionist tendencies, motivate me to do most jobs as well as I can. People who do half a job irritate me. But there are areas in my life where I do half a job without thinking twice about it. I am guessing you do also. We will return to that thought in a bit.
Today I read Numbers 33. The beginning of the chapter traced the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the threshold of the Promised Land. I confess that I read over it quickly. I couldn’t locate most of the 35-plus places that they camped on a map, nor could anyone else. It was a very long list of difficult-to-pronounce place names that have disappeared from history.
The last part of the chapter caught my attention. The LORD told Moses, who would not be leading the Israelites during their conquest of the Promised Land, to deliver His instructions concerning it. He commanded that they must drive out all those living in the Promised Land, leaving no survivors.
His warning was, “But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live. And I will do to you what I had planned to do to them” (Numbers 33:55-56 NLT).
God knew that the sins of those He commanded the Israelites to remove were communicable. If they did half a job completing the task God had assigned, the sins of the current residents would inevitably infect the Israelites.
Biblical history records that they did an incomplete job of carrying out the task that God assigned them. They eventually practiced the same idolatry of the people whom God told them to destroy, and other evil practices that went with it.
God sent legions of prophets to try to turn them away from their sins, but they stubbornly refused to change their ways. They clung to their sins, and the prophets who told them to repent couldn’t convince them to do otherwise.
We easily condemn them for doing a half job in fulfilling God’s assignment and later in dealing with the sins that contaminated their lives. We could probably benefit from descending from our judgment seat and looking at ourselves in a spiritual mirror.
Are we, like them, tolerant of sin in our lives and the spiritual weakness it produces? Are we content with practicing periodic religious rituals, such as church attendance, and living the rest of our lives following our agenda instead of God’s?
Where in our lives does “craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions” have an ongoing foothold that we tolerate (1 John 2:16 NLT)? We are playing with the sin Jesus died on the cross to kill.
Why are we conforming to this world’s ways of thinking and behaving and trying to fit in when God commands us not to (Romans 12:1-2) but instead to “keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls” (1 Peter 2:11 NLT).
Why has the percentage of those who identify as Christians in the United States decreased in 48 states and increased only in Alaska and Delaware since 20141? Do we think that making more and better disciples as Jesus commanded is someone else’s job (Matthew 28:19-20)?
To summarize, “These things happened to them [the children of Israel] as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age. If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall” (1 Corinthians 10:11-12 NLT). God likes our half job no better than He liked theirs. See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians. #freediscipleshipresources #freeevangelismresources #freechristianleadershipresources
God has empowered me to write His Power for Your Weakness—260 Steps Toward Spiritual Strength. It’s a free, evangelistic, devotional, and discipleship e-book. Pastors have used it in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia to lead 6,714 people to Christ and teach the basics of Christianity to 15,936 people. I invite you to explore and use it in your setting.
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