Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrott.

When you think about the word sin, the idea of sin, what images come to mind?

Many people think about sin as the breaking of a rule. And certainly,

sin does involve violating God's good commandments and design for our lives. But when we look at the

Bible, we can't help but notice that sin is actually far worse than just breaking a rule. It's the breaking of a relationship, the breaking

of reality that was meant to be full of goodness and beauty. Sin is a lot like a sickness, a parasite,

infecting the good thing God created. That idea of sin as a parasite is one of the metaphors Cornelius

Plantigan uses to describe sin in his excellent book, not the way it's supposed to be. He writes this,

sin is a parasite, an uninvited guest that keeps tapping its host for sustenance.

Nothing about sin is its own. All its power, persistence, and plausibility are stolen goods.

Sin is not really an entity, but a spoiler of entities. Not an organism, but a leech on organisms. Sin does not build Shalom. It vandalizes it. Key to this concept is the idea that our world is meant to be a place, a reality that's full of Shalom. This is the biblical idea of peace, wholeness, integration,

completeness, beauty. Sin is a culpable violation of that shalom, that wholeness,

an intruder that, like a parasite, spreads through its host, attempting a violent takeover. Now, if you think about the human

body, parasites aren't visible to the naked eye, but they can be seen when a small sample of

tissue is viewed under a microscope. In a way, our passage today is like that sample that goes underneath the microscope.

The effects of sin are portrayed in countless ways throughout the Bible,

and this passage is like one sliver of a tissue sample that we're putting under the microscope

to see the parasitic nature of sin spreading into the life of a person, but also see how it spreads

through the life of a people. Examining this passage will force us to honestly diagnose the nature

of our greatest ailment, yet it will also point to the cure that brings Shalom back into our

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