Stuff About Things
Preachers are asked out to many homes, and when there are small children in the home, we can picture what takes place before we arrive. Mother has prepared her favorite fancy foods plus some new recipe she wants to try on the preacher. She has borrowed a lace table-cloth, with the uneven knobs and swirls; and perhaps some dinner candles, to cast shadows. She gets out her best dishes, the tall stemmed water-glasses, the best silver. The top-heavy water glasses balance precariously on the knotty lace cloth; grape jelly is put in a cut-glass bowl, and one is expected to fish the jelly across that lace cloth with a tiny glass spoon. The gravy bowl is a booby-trap: sometimes it is attached to the plate below, sometimes it is not. Woe is me!!
The children are then washed and polished, and given a little lecture. The preacher is coming to dinner, and I expect you to sit at the table like little ladies and gentlemen. You are to mind your manners: say Yes Sir, Please, and Thank you. Keep your fingers out of the food; and if you get one drop of that grape jelly on the table cloth, if you make one bobble, so help the, Ill skin you alive and send you straight to bed.
The kids may as well take their licking and go on to bed. There is no way they can make it through the meal— she has put them under the curse!!
Would you believe that Paul wrote about this to the Galatians? Well, would you believe this illustrates something about which he wrote?
Gal. 3 :10 reads: For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. He does not blame the law (Rom. 7:12-f), nor can we blame a mother for wanting her children to be perfect. But do. .all has an ominous sound to those who recognize their bent for failure. In a system of law (nothing but law and the penalty for failure) there is no forgiveness — and mother laid do the law with no hint of mercy.
But Christ became a curse for us when he died on the cross (Gal. 3:13-) so that through faith in Him, we who strive but fail may be forgiven. The demand to sit up straight is still there, and a spill is a sin; but our hope is in Him who understands and forgives those who come to Him.