And they all with one consent began to make excuse—Luke 14:18
Did you ever hear the humerous song that says,”Excuses, excuses, you hear them everyday” ? It’s really true! It is amazing what people will do in an effort to justify their bad attitude and actions.
I had a dear preacher friend who used to jokingly say–“I’m an atheist in the morning until I’ve had my first cup of coffee”. But that’s nothing compared to what I read a few minutes ago. Listen to this—-
A man in Newport, Ky. (where we used to live) is accused of strangling his wife to death and his defense is “caffeine intoxication”. Really! I’m not making this up. The man’s defense attoreny filed notice that he plans to argue that his client “ingested so much caffeine in the days leading up to the killing that it rendered him temporarily insane”. Isn’t that amazing? I’m sure there will be a lot of jokes made about this, but it isn’t funny. A woman lost her life. A man committed murder, and now he is trying to blame it on too much coffee. Ridiculous!
But, although we don’t go to the same extreme, most of us are sometimes guilty of making up lame excuses. People will go to almost length to shift the blame, trying to excuse their bad behavior. It started with Adam and it has never ended.
As a pastor more than 40 years, I’ve heard just about every excuse imaginable. In many instances the excuse is so far fetched that it is amazing that they think anyone would believe it, but that doesn’t stop them. Now they have a new excuse in their arsenal. Next thing you know our courtrooms will be filled with people saying, “caffeine made me do it!”.
Do you remember the phrase that was so popular with teens several years ago –“Get real”? Well, that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to stop making excuses and accept responsibility for our actions. When Flip Wilson said,”The devil made me do it”, he was a lot closer to the truth than most excuses that we hear. Listen–if God holds us accountable for our bad attitude and sinful actions, and He does, we don’t have anyone to blame but ourself. Let’s “Get real” and admit our sins. God doesn’t accept excuses! Think about it!
