God’s Statue Reminders

by Rick Shrader

I am glad that God didn’t remove the reminders of our sin from the Bible. Those reminders are like statues that stand in public places to remind us of things that should not be done again. Only if we think that humans are perfect and without sin would we think to destroy these because, as some think, sin must be society’s fault, not ours. But if, as we know, men are sinners, we would be careful to make the statues of our past sins prominent as reminders of what can happen if we again neglect the truth of inborn sin. Adam’s fall and sin in the garden; Noah’s drunkenness; David’s adultery and murder; Solomon’s serial fornication at the end of his life; Elijah’s fleeing from Jezebel in abject fear; all of these and more stand as unfailing statuaries of potential sin. The monuments of Israel’s sins in the hallway of 1 Corinthians chapter 10 are prominent reminders of a nation’s failures: the golden calf at Mt. Sinai; Balaam’s sin when 23,000 died; the fiery serpents that came as a plague because of murmuring; the utter failure at Kadesh Barnea when all over 20 years old eventually died in the wilderness. Paul at the foot of these statues wrote, “Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition.” These are the kinds of things that unbelief would tear from the Bible if God would permit. But God pronounced woe on anyone who would take these reminders from His Word. Woe to any nation that removes the reminders of their negative history. They are doomed to repeat them.