Sermon Tone Analysis

The skeletons in the glass closet

I remember this time where

For some of you, you might feel like you accepted Jesus and know his story, but yet as hard as you try you can never reach the feeling of saved

For some of you, you might be feeling like there is some sin that still lingers in your heart that is so deep and dark you don’t want anyone to know about it

For some you might even try to hide it from God.

We are talking about how our past does not define us but more importantly how to move forward away from Sin and towards fullness and intimacy with Jesus.

Think of your best friend - do you keep secrets from them?

Why/ why not?

Jesus is the one we want to get really close with that we would know all about him,

what was told about him,

what he did

who he is

However Jesus wants to get to know us, all about us which is werid cuz early this year we said he already knows everything about us.

But he still wants to hear about you, that you would let him know

Your highs and low

Your hates and loves

Your victories in Him

Your Sins that hurt Him

You see most of those sound easy but when it comes to Sin we take a big step back and say: “anything but that, that is off limits”.

I know that feeling of, don’t make me bring that up.

Let me just rebuke that first, I want to call you out of that posture, that if you have that sense of “oh man Liam I don’t want to sit and hear you talk about how I need to confess my sin” then let John say it in 1 John 1:5-6

I don’t want you to walk in darkness, I want you to live the truth of Jesus every single day, it’s so much better than any other way.

God is light, he has no darkness, he cannot enter the darkness because he is radiating light all around him.

All that He is, is light.

Take a dark room for example if you put a flashlight in it and turn it on there is no more darkness.

So if we say God is light, and we want to feel the darkness, we need to do that in how we walk.

Imagine this now, if you are walking with an atlas ball around your ankle, then you are not going to be able to walk that far compared to someone who is not bound.

Now that ankle ball is sin, the bad things we do

when we lie

we steal

we cheat

we hate

we disrespect

we fight

The list goes on, of these things that God does not approve of, you can sin against others and even sin against yourself.

These sins, even if we did them years ago can shackle us down and make it so that we cannot get anywhere in our relationship with God.

The ball of shackles can restrict us and it’s filled with sin, either stuff we just picked up or stuff we have been holding onto for years that we never decided to let go of.

See sin is a trick thing, it’s everywhere in life but the Lord still wants to stick with us.

The only thing is that that does not allow us to:

keep living it.

We need to get rid of reoccurring sin in our life.

Take romans 6 for example, now I am not going to read the whole chapter, but rather I would recommend this week reading Romans chapter 6

So we got this awesome grace that covers all things like a blanket of grace.

We say it is like rain, or waves, or snow and it covers everything.

So we have to try to stop our sin, stop doing it, there is no reason to keep going in sin when you can go forward with life in Jesus who frees us of sin.

All in all we cannot keep sinning if we have Jesus but we also cannot:

2. keep living with it.

Sometimes we get bogged down in sin that is in the past, but we keep believing that Jesus won’t or has not forgiven it.

These are the sins where we are always asking God to forgive them.

If you find yourself asking Jesus to forgive a specific sin every-time you pray then you are still shackled with it.

You are essentially bring it with you in your arms instead of around your ankle.

Both of these SUCK bad, who wants to live with sin when Jesus gives forgiveness for free.

So, I want to suggest that if you are in either of those areas that you should seek the light that is Jesus.

One more thing to help you with that; Jesus gives freedom so easily because he already knows the sin you carry before you pray.

Let me read to you Psalm 69 and I want you to close your eyes and just imagine the psalmist in his writing.

Psalm 69:1-5

God knows it already, he is just waiting for you to ask for forgiveness.

He wants to give it to you so that you can continue to have freedom in following him.

This week I want to encourage you to move past your sin, becuase God already knows it.

If you want to have the freedom of Christ, then you need to ask for it and recceive it.

Here is the process:

Confess - You tell God about those sins that you want covered up or put away

Receive - you ask for his forgiveness and start to live in a free life not jumping back into your old ways of sin but living like you have his freedom.

Repeat - not that you would go back to your sin or still feel unforgiven about something, but that each time you sin becuase it’ll happen, I promise you that I still sin, do I mean to no, sometimes I revert back to my old self, someone who says mean things or tries to lie to get ahead.

I try my hardest to leave that life, but I still can slip up and end up heading to Jesus in my prayer life for forgiveness.

So this week I want you to seek out Jesus, living a deeper life with him through the forgiveness of the Sin you might be stuck in or the Sin that you might feel like

How did you feel about the quiet time with God?

Do you feel the freedom from sin? it’s kinda like pressure being reliefed

How can you keep that freedom from sin going into this next week?

Think about to what Liam said at the end of the message.