Song of Solomon 2:9 My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.

Voyeur, Peeping Tom, Paparazzi, all so negative, so sordid, sleazy, how could anyone associate our Lord with such behavior. In the opening verse we might tend to misunderstand because of the reference to the roe and young hart. Those are misnomers. Thinking of animal instincts can be misleading for the roots of roe is glory and honor and the hart is a ram with twisted horns, such as the one caught in the brush upon Mount Mariah, to replace Isaac on the alter.

Presence does not speak to intent. A voyeur seeks one kind of gratification, a Paparazzi another. To distinguish intent look to the line of verse that says “showing himself through the lattice”. He is not hiding, nor is He stalking. He appears to show Himself interested in you and your life. He wants to be part of it.

Does it make you uncomfortable to know that the God of the universe can look into every aspect of your life and that nothing is hidden from Him.

1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

Manifest the counsels of the heart is interesting because it begs to ask; “Who are you keeping counsel with?” Are you in league with the devil? What? You don’t believe in the devil, Satan, that old serpent? Is he just an old wives’ tale to you? That is fine with him as he hides in the bushes of your life, watching every sordid act, being the ultimate voyeur, taking pleasure from watching mess up.

But you cannot believe in God without believing in Satan.

Genesis 15:16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

I spoke of the iniquity of the New Testament yesterday. It was a far cry from what I was taught, so let us return to that understanding, and the source of the differences, the Old Testament. Here by virtue of first use is iniquity defined.

Remember this is God speaking to Abram, who is not yet Abraham. This is prior to the covenant, contract. This is significant for understanding the variance between yesterday’s devotional and today’s.

Iniquity, Strong’s H5772 `avon perversity, depravity, iniquity, guilt or punishment of iniquity; guilt of iniquity, guilt (as great), guilt (of condition); consequence of or punishment for iniquity

In many verses this is considered guilt of the fathers. Now consider this as first use dictates, judges do not exist, guilt cannot be prescribed without first a law, a finding, and then a just punishment.

Romans 5:13-14 For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

Imputed is another one of those confusing words, so we are obliged to define it. In the OT it means to think, plan, esteem, calculate, invent, make a judgment, imagine, count. It is an understanding of our condition. Yet we see that death still reigned regardless of understanding, the sentence being carried out seemingly without an accusation or a trial. In this one point we discover the differences between the NT and OT iniquity.

The only just judge God, had not written the law so that man might understand his own guilt in his decisions and actions.

In the NT iniquity we sense the injustice done to us primarily because we know who we are in Christ, and we know that sin has been dealt with at the Cross.