Lesson 40 Washing at the Cross: Jesus Removed the Poison of Sin
Question 3
Yes, by adding flour, that is, by putting substance into the pot, God performed a miracle and removed all the poison and death from the pot and left nothing but life-giving stew. Possibly that flour drew to itself all the poison so that the stew would be healthy to eat and would sustain the lives of the prophets.
What does this story have to do with our struggle with impurity? What does this passage teach us? Is it just about how to make stew? Is it a Wilderness Survival Handbook? Of course not. We know that every passage of Scripture is designed by God to reveal the work of His Son that we might be transformed as we look at Him (2 Corinthians 3:18).
So, first, we can learn that we will not be able to rid our lives of every individual sin by attempting to pick them out one by one, even as these men could not have removed the poison from the stew by trying to pick out each piece of poison. It just doesn’t work that way. Sin infuses itself into our very being (Isaiah 1:6). It permeates all areas of our lives.
And when we choose to sin sexually, we become enslaved (John 8:34), and sexual impurity becomes infused into our very beings. This is why our thoughts can be filled with impure scenarios, and even our dreams can be polluted. There is poison in the pot. And that poison has worked its way through the entire pot, so that there is nothing but death in the pot!
Now let’s look at God’s solution and remedy.
Two thousand years ago, God looked down from heaven and saw death throughout the “pot” of humanity. Sin had poisoned us and worked its way clear through us. Our thoughts were defiled, our actions were motivated by impurity and lust and carnal reason. Humanity was polluted by sin of every form and kind (Genesis 6:5); there was “nothing but death” in the pot (Romans 3:23).
But God so loved the world that He sent His One and only Son to take our punishment, die our death, and make us right.
Romans 8:3 NIV For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh.
Question 3. According to Romans 8:3, the law was powerless to make us holy, so what did God do?