Scripture Nugget 3.30.2017
Scripture Read Job 25-26
Nugget Job 25:4
“How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure?”
Devotional thought: Two great questions, if one believes there is, and seeks the answers. It is possible to be righteous before God. God created humankind in the image of God by breathing His Spirit into them. (Gen 1-2) Enoch walked with God; then was no more, because God took him.” (Gen 5:24) “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.” (Gen 6:9) Job was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. (Job 1:1) Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, were both, righteous before God and lived blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. (Lk 1:6) Simeon, the man who would not die until he saw the Lord’s Messiah, was righteous and devout. (Lk 2:25-26) Jesus, born of Mary, is the Son of God. Even though born sin prone, he never sinned. How is a mortal made righteous? By faith in Creator God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By God’s love, grace and mercy present and active from the beginning until the end. Grace, love and mercy that reaches into the future and the past. This is the point of the Lenten season, realizing that forgiveness, restoration, redemption and resurrection are all available from and found in God. Pause a moment, a week and half out from Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, a week of tremendous spiritual, emotional and theological highs and lows, and ask God to reveal to you; “What sin separates me from being righteous and blameless before God? Once revealed, confess, ask forgiveness, receive forgiveness, then as Christ instructed the woman as he lifted her off the ground, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (Jn 8:11)