Sin in Full View

While reading Hosea 7 this morning, Kay Arthur shared some great cross references in her book Finding Hope When Life Seems Dark.  I wanted to share this title to give her credit and not plagiarize.  She is a teacher I return to over and over, as she guides me in going to the word of God and letting the Spirit highlight what His personal word for me is, which in turn prompts me to share on this blog.  Check her inductive study method out!
The Israelites (the tribe of Ephraim who was left in the land after the Assyrians captured the other tribes) were stuck in sin and lying to themselves that God couldn’t see it.  What conviction I found with these words this morning as just minutes before doing my study I was playing around with a sin in my mind.  Like a cat toying with a mouse, I was fantasizing about a conversation I could have and if I said this, how would it make me look?  Forgetting of course, that God can see all the things I think and that He cares immensely.
Look up each of these verses and answer the question for yourself, Can we be engulfed in sin without God knowing about it? Paraphrase each verse into your own words as you reason for what the Bible says about the answer to this question:
·        Numbers 32:23
·        Job 34:21-22
·        Psalms 10:4,11
·        Isaiah 29:15-16
·        Jeremiah 23:23-24
·        Ezekiel 8:12

One that really got to me today was the progression of thoughts that encourage sin, in the non-believer and I think at times even in the believer.  What “gives us permission” (in our minds of course, there is no permission to ever sin) to sin is that we start to think God has forgotten us.  Satan comes in with this lie when bad things happen to us.  We start to think that God doesn’t care or can’t see us.  For of course, if He could, why would He ever allow that to happen to us? Then the slippery slope is formed.  We then take it farther to think if God doesn’t care and always protect us from every harm, He can’t see, doesn’t know or care that we sin.  Nothing could be farther from the truth!  I hope studying these verses brought light into dark places and exposed that lie for what it is.  Your Creator is everywhere, sees and knows all.  If you are a daughter of God, make it your aim to please Him in all things, not denying who He is.  

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