The Best Bargain

Do you love to find a great bargain at the shops?  I know many people who will haggle or bargain even over fixed prices with great enthusiasm.  For me, however, I feel uncomfortable with haggling in shops even when it is the norm.  My bargaining has improved over the years after trips to Cambodia, Israel, and from buying appliances at local stores in Sydney, but I still don't enjoy it.  The time spent going back and forth debating over dollars never feels worth the effort in the end.  Even when I have obtained a better price, I wonder if I could have done better.  Anyone with me?

It occurred to me this morning bargaining may be more common than we recognise.  Even for those who hate haggling, it is in the self-centred nature of man to look for or be open to a better offer.  We make these kinds of bargains with ourselves all the time.  We weigh our options concerning eating, drinking, and exercise.  We reduce our calorie intake or increase exercise one day because we want to have dinner and desert at a restaurant that night.  People reduce consumption of alcohol or tobacco to have more money for other things or for health reasons.  We make sacrifices in one area and reward ourselves with other things.  Much of our lives are lived with constant tension between needs and desires, moderation and excess, indulgence and abstention.  Our motives and issues may be different, but this inner haggling happens.

As with decisions which effect the health of our bodies, we can bring this same approach to moral, biblical, and spiritual issues.  We make a mistake when we try to bargain with God concerning repentance and sin.  This happens so subtly it often escapes our notice.  We attempt to trade abstinence in one area for dabbling or indulgence in another - complete with arbitrary, self-imposed boundaries.  We will repent and put sin away from us if we see how it is negatively affecting our lives, but not just because God said so.  We can go so far as to refuse to obey unless our demands are met.  My patience runs thin quickly when it comes to making what I consider drastic changes to my diet.  In the past if I didn't see tangible, quantifiable results quickly from sacrifices, it wasn't long until I went back to my old ways.  In a spiritual sense we can do the same thing.  We can choose to love a person in obedience to Jesus but when it doesn't seem to work in our favour our unbelief rises up:  "See?  I loved that person and it didn't do anything!  What a waste."

The people of Israel provide a good example in the book of Judges when they found themselves oppressed by their enemies.  They cried out to God and He pointed out their chronic idolatry.  "I have saved you many times in the past but you chose to forsake Me.  Cry out to the gods you have chosen and see if they will save you," He said.  See the response of the people in Judges 10:15-16:  "And the children of Israel said to the LORD, "We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems best to You; only deliver us this day, we pray." ¹⁶ So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD. And His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel."  God's people confessed their sin, made their request, but did not make their repentance contingent upon God doing anything for their good.  They put away their idols and served the LORD.  And guess what?  They were still oppressed.  They remained in a miserable season and God's heart went out to them.  Eventually God would deliver His people according to His mercy, but He would lovingly refine them as long as it took.

How good it is when God's people unite with His will and the revelation of His righteousness.  To bargain with God is an affront to His holiness and exposes our selfish unbelief.  Let us be numbered among those who repent and serve the LORD without haggling, not making our obedience contingent on benefits we want God to guarantee us.  Like the good example provided in Judges, let us keep seeking God, keep repenting, and keep serving Him.  Satan and self provide offers which appeal to our flesh, but all they do is deliver us into bondage and death.  God's offer is a fixed price which He has already paid in full through the Gospel, and the cost for us is repentance, trust, and obedience.  God exchanges our sin for righteousness, distance for intimacy, bondage for freedom, and death for eternal life.  We are called to do our part, and He will deliver in due time.