Harp seal

I watched agnostic Bill Maher on Bill O’Reilly last night and as usual he stated that anyone who believed in God was a moron. Putting aside the inflammatory, poisonous, hateful rhetoric for a moment, he did bring up an interesting point while he was attempting to ridicule the Bible. He misquoted a verse which he stated was in Deuteronomy, (actually in Exodus), in which he said that the Bible instructs us kill our neighbor, (stone him to death), if he happened to work on the Sabbath.

Actually the Old Testament states in Exodus that death is the penalty for the violation of the Sabbath, but God is the one who exacts it, and at its deeper level is analogous to spiritual death and not physical. Maher is right in the fact that the Old Testament indicates that extreme punishment by today’s standards will be exacted on anyone who violates any one of God’s laws. And if we were to go by the logic of today’s society, (instead of God’s logic), we would be hard pressed to state that it’s a reasonable punishment for such a seemingly minor offense.

Maher uses this type of argument to demonstrate that no “logical” person could endorse the Bible because of this and similar examples of what he believes to be Christian fundamentalist extremism as well as a host of other things that he does not understand about the Bible.

What many do not realize is that Maher is entirely correct in that the Old Testament is indeed written in such a manner as to make the point that the penalty is severe for ANY violation of God’s laws. God is righteous and is perfect and His laws are stringent and there is no middle ground. Either you follow the law TO THE LETTER, or you die a spiritual death. That is His nature. Think about it, if we were capable of following God’s laws on our own there would have been no reason for Jesus Christ to come and die on the cross. Instead we could have been good enough on our own to do it and thereby could have saved Him the agony.

The Old Testament with its stringent requirements of the law sets up the message of the New Testament, namely that if we were to be saved, then Jesus Christ had to come as our Messiah or Savior. The Bible plainly tells us that we cannot follow God’s stringent laws and indeed if we break just one of them, (the very least of them), we will be found guilty and the punishment is death, which is spiritual death and eternal separation from God.

Further the Old Testament drives home the point that sin is inevitable. The New Testament states that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God and that includes people like Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, or for that matter Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, David, Abraham, and Noah. We cannot measure up because we are not perfect, thus the need for a Savior who was perfect in every way to come to this world, live a perfect life exemplifying love and compassion, and then present Himself as a perfectly acceptable sacrifice on the cross in order to atone for the sins of people like Maher, and you and me.

Because of His sacrifice and what HE did, God’s righteous justice can now be satisfied since the harsh punishment for breaking His holy laws has been fulfilled and is entirely sufficient to reunite us to Him.

When Christians are judged, the blood of Jesus Christ will cover our sins and we are told in the Bible that God will see it and remember our sins no more and He will welcome us into His presence for eternity. Without it we will be eternally separated and suffer our own punishment.

The Old Testament symbolism of this was when the Jews put blood on their doorposts in order that the angel of death would skip over that household and spare their first born in Egypt. I’m sure that Bill Maher, who sits on the board of PETA, would interpret this literally, miss the symbolism, and object to the blood of innocent little lambs being smeared on doorposts. Another harp seal story Egad!

Sigh pray for the man – will you.

I John 1:7
“The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.”