S3 E13 Why God Cannot Sin And Why It Matters

We trace a clear line from God’s holiness to our hope, challenging the idea that calling God unable to sin limits Him. John’s eyewitness testimony, the meaning of covenants, and the rainbow as a warrior’s bow reveal why divine light steadies a fearful heart.

• God is light with no darkness at all
• Why “God cannot sin” safeguards trust
• Fear-based theology and its harms
• 1 John on confession, fellowship, and truth
• The Spirit’s nature never goes dark
• Covenants versus contracts and their signs
• The rainbow as God’s bow faced away
• Hebrew “remember” as action, not recall
• Communion as the sign of the new covenant
• Anticipating the Abrahamic covenant

Transcript

Framing God’s Holiness

Can God Sin Or Not

Fear, Performance, And Theology

1 John: God Is Light

No Darkness In The Spirit

Covenants And Their Signs

The Bow In The Sky

Remember Means Action

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Good day, good day. This is Barb in Minneapolis of Biblically Wired. So I have to tell you, now, my editor, I was writing the Abraham story or Bible study, and I have an editor, and I wrote about Noah being rescued from this ark, but also about God's faithfulness to his own promises and to his own word, and the fact that God, having no darkness in him, needed to preserve Noah, right? And I said, God has limitations, he cannot sin. Well, she thought that was too, I don't know, like I'm making God have a limitation. And I pressed the other way. I think what we ended up doing is we changed the wording to God will not sin. There is no darkness in him. Now, I don't consider that to be anti-God, to talk about God having a limitation, that God's goodness is through and through, that he is infinitely holy to me is not anti-God. Now, the book of Leviticus is the first book that Jewish children study. All the young boys and the young girls and in the home, the mom recites it. And the book of Leviticus to them sets this tone about God, and that is that God is holy. Between 90 and 150 times, depending on your translation, we're going to read about holiness in Leviticus, and it is going to be described. Without holiness, there is no moral law, there is no divine anger. Holiness is God's nature. And in that respect, he cannot sin any more than he could become Satan. Now, the reason I don't want to mince words about this or maybe give up a little bit on this is probably my past from a congregation, a cultish congregation, and they built all this theology on fear and human performance. When you are raised in a culture of fear, your brain will go to the next, next, next, next, next location. So if I start thinking God could sin, then I think he could be involved in sin. And before long, again, I'm going to go back to uh blaming God or thinking God might be involved in something that was very hard for me. Also, I could start thinking that our security in heaven, which is so solid in scripture, is actually not secure. So if you want to go where you cannot say God cannot sin, you have a lot of verses, a lot of verses that you've got to tweak a bit. And also, why? Why? It's very fascinating because people will say that, oh, my grandma could never do that. My grandma would never watch porn. Never. So are there there are things that people we know would never do, but apparently we can't say that about God. Also, let's say you're approaching a bear. What is a bear? A mother bear's nature through and through with its cubs. Are you gonna take the chance that that mother bear is not gonna use her nature to protect her cubs if you're approaching the cave because you want to take the meat inside that cave for yourself? No, you're gonna say it's impossible. That mother will. She has no other choice. It is her nature. She's gonna defend her children. Another way I look at this is to say that I could not be a mother once I am. I am a mother to six children. That will never change. Nobody can change that. That cannot be taken away. I can't flush that out. I am their mother. We've adopted two children. We talk about their birth moms. They have a mom out there, out there. And that won't change. It's impossible. And I see that with God's character. And until we grasp that, that He is through and through absolutely pure moral perfection, we will not really have that peace that comes in relationship with God. So I'm going to read from 1 John, and I just have to go through this because I want people to know where I'm coming from. And yes, sometimes my past might give some flexion in my teaching, but sometimes my past is a gift to my teaching because I just I can't, I can't tell somebody that God could change his mind about you. That will never ever come out of my lips in any serious fashion. All right, so 1 John 1, we are talking about the disciple John, and I want to read the first 10 verses. This is insanity. John walked with Jesus. John knew Jesus was fully man and fully God. John knew Jesus was there before creation. Now listen to this introduction of 1 John. What was from the beginning? What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Oh, wow, that's the first four verses. How many times does John say, I am someone who saw, who heard, who touched, who proclaimed. I have seen and heard and proclaimed to you also. I have been with the Master, I have been with the King himself, I have been with the Messiah. Now look at what he has to say about him and about God. Listen to this. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete. This is the message we have heard from him and announce to you that God is light, capital L, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Boom, boom, boom. Look at what John is saying. The purity of God is impossible to explain. But I don't care how much you test it, it will be pure, it will be solid, and it's infinitely true that he is holy, and it's something we can't picture, it's something otherworldly. Now, even the fact that we have the Holy Spirit in us, it will never go dark. It's not gonna lead us into darkness. It's impossible. It's impossible. So if any of you thought that was anti-God, to say God has a limitation, He does by His nature. He's not gonna unlove us. He's not. And I just I love that about God, how solid He is. And in our study, where God is the main character, it is being fleshed out and fleshed out and fleshed out. He is sovereign over all. He is hesed, he is full of mercy and kindness, he wants relationships, he will always pursue, he transcends time and space. We cannot put God in a box, right? Now we're gonna see as we move on, especially around Mount Sinai, God desires to be uncomplicated, He desires to be known for who He is. So why complicate the matter and ebb and flow around the fact of God possibly having a limitation in which fact he cannot sin? That's just ridiculous. Let's just know he cannot be part of darkness, and we cannot blame him for our own sins or someone else's. There is no way he's part of sin. Okay. Now, another thing I wanted to say because we went through Noah and we're gonna get to Mount Sinai and we are gonna talk about covenants. Now, covenants are different than contracts, there are several covenants within scripture. As a matter of fact, the word for old and new testament is rather old and new covenant, and what they're talking about is the Mosaic covenant in general, and then the and then the new covenant, which we're under now, and the differences are profound. But I want to talk about the rainbow and how there is often a sign of a covenant. There is often a sign of a covenant. So Adam and Eve's sign of the covenant was the tree that they were not to eat from. It stood there as the thing not to do, as the sign that we are in relationship. And if you do eat from that tree, I will still love you, right? But you will not be able to be as close to me as you are now. So it took some obedience to stay close to the Father. Now, in the case of the covenant with Noah, he also gives a sign, right? He gives that rainbow in the sky. And I wanted to say something that I just think is super cool about it because we got to think again about what did that mean to an ancient person. Well, the rainbow was a bow, it wasn't a rainbow. In the best translation of the Hebrew brew, it is a bow, like someone would use in battle. All right. So when the rainbow is in the sky, notice that the arch is facing away from the earth. So if God was to put an arrow into that bow and pull back on the line or arch that bow up tight to let that arrow fly, it would not hit the earth. Now, in ancient times, bows were a big deal. Bows were a huge deal. If an army was to stop at your kingdom, or maybe a bunch of bandits, or maybe one king sent a crew of their men over to talk to the king on the other side, or a group of soldiers were surrounding a certain diplomat to keep them safe. When they came into the territory of the new king, what they would do is they would turn their bow around. So they would have the bow facing backwards, the arch of the bow. So basically, they were saying we're not going to shoot your bows. Now the rabbis say that even the salute comes from this same picture. The salute that we give to a general, to an officer, I actually don't give it, but if I was in the army and I was to give a salute, they use their right hand, and their right hand is the hand they would use to pull out their gun. And what they're saying is, my hand is removed from my weapon. And that's not all they're saying, but that is part of what a salute is. When a person kneeled before a king, they were less apt to be able to pull their sword from the sheath. So we don't think about that kind of stuff because people aren't usually approaching me with weapons, but it does make sense that that's kind of in the background of what God is doing. So this rainbow, it is just light, right? Science can prove how the rainbow comes and comes for us, and we can see rainbows. We can see it in a water glass sometimes. We know it's natural. So was this the first time that Noah saw a rainbow? Did God place it into the sky then and he had never seen it before? There are differing, differing opinions on this, but the opinion that I tend to go with is the fact that we have to remember the atmosphere changed. So when the flood happened, all this water came down from the sky and the water came up from the ground, and the earth was flooded very fast. So what happened is the vapor around the earth that was keeping the world moist and was keeping the harm of the sun off of humans and plants, it was giving it this greenhouse effect, that was now gone. And what we know about rainbows is if the clouds are too thick, you won't get a rainbow. Rainbows come when the clouds are wispy thin and receding. And we think that's possibly the first time that happened, especially in the life of Noah. Now that rainbow is a sign, and God says when he sees the rainbow, he will remember his covenant. Remember in Hebrew is a lot bigger than what we would say today. I'm gonna write down your birthday so I remember, right? I can't forget that. Help me remember. And actually, I can kind of see some of this overlapping meaning in the way I use it today. Remember includes action in Hebrew. Remember includes action. So what God is saying is when I see that rainbow, I will remember not to flood the earth again. So it includes this whole array of meaning. It's very fascinating because in Revelation 2 and in Ezekiel 1, it describes the halo, the crown of God as a rainbow that encircles his head in every color of light. And I just thought this is just crazy to me because if you read in Revelation and you see John seeing the throne of God, there is a rainbow there. And it almost can seem childish because of the way I've always seen the rainbow and colored it on coloring sheets. And it it's like something you might put in a child's room, uh Noah's Ark theme, so to speak. And actually, it's powerful. This is God's bow. God's bow is light, his ammunition is light, he is light. It's a powerful, powerful sign. Now, for kudos here, or just for a little extra info, what is the sign of the new covenant? What is the sign of the new covenant? I'll tell you the sign of the Mosaic covenant is in Genesis 17, and that is circumcision. And circumcision is a sign of the Mosaic covenant. Circumcision does not save them. Actually, obedience to the Mosaic covenant does not save them, they are saved by faith alone. So that doesn't change with the new covenant. We are also saved through faith alone. But the sign of the new covenant is communion. Is communion. So there's some sort of power behind communion that that I don't understand. Uh, some some beauty, some real, real ah, it's just so precious. And doing it often in memory of Jesus Christ is a sign that we are in covenant with him. And I just find that that's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. So I hope that uh cleared up a few things as we're going forward. I just wanted to talk about God's holiness and stress the fact that there's no reason to go down any alleyway where we think God would be involved in anything outside his promises and his purity. We're gonna talk about the Abrahamic covenant in a couple teachings, and you're gonna be really, really shocked about how God shows up with that covenant. As a matter of fact, as I've taught through the Abrahamic covenant, I've actually had people tell me, why have I never known this? Why have I never known this? It's it's really, really cool, and it really represents God's holiness and God's pursual of humanity. So that will be coming in the next few teachings. I hope that uh today is a good day for you. And no matter what you're going through, remember you have a holy God on your side. So keep your chin up out there in Jesus' name.