Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished?

Good morning!

Just a quick little announcement - this is the last week of Collide in November. Next weekend, many of us will be at our high school fall retreat and the weekend after is a family Sunday following Thanksgiving. So we will see you on December 3rd!

Check In on Thanksgiving - what is your favorite Thanksgiving food or tradition? For the entire semester, we have been building the foundation of our theology.

Anyone like english?

Anyone do word within the word?

What does the suffix -logy mean? Who knows what Theology means? Study of God - yeah, we have been learning about what God is like a bunch.

Anyone know what Anthropology is?

Study of Man - we are nor just learning about God, be we are also learning a ton about who we are.

Soon we will be jumping into Chirstology - the Study of Christ, but we are not quite there yet.

In the very beginning we learned that belonging to God is our only hope in life and death. And we glorify God by loving him and by obeying his commands and law. We learned that God commands us to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength - and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But we also learned that no one can keep the law of God perfectly. Which causes all of us to think - well then, if we can't keep the law - what is its purpose? We learned that answer a few weeks ago and I want to review this one because we don't have it nailed down yet. That we may know the holy nature of God, the sinful nature of our hearts, and thus our need for a savior. And then last week we learned about sin - that sin is rejecting or ignoring God in the world he created, not being or doing what he requires in his law And that idolatry is trusting created things rather than the Creator

We trust other things in this world for our hope and happiness, significance and security. And honestly, when we look at the NCC, this entire first section is very discouraging. We go through all of these questions and we see over and over and over again how we do not measure up. We see that we can't do all that God has called us to do - that we are filled with sin and idolatry, and then we come to today and - honestly - it feels like it just keeps getting worse!! Last week we learned that sin is EVERYWHERE in ALL OF US. Now we are asking this question.

Today's question is #18 - Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished. A: No, God is righteously angry with our sin and will punish them both in this life, and in the life to come. Goodness, that is hard to hear. I have been thinking about all of the difficult things that you all are going through right now and as I prepared to talk to you this morning after a hard last week , I was thinking to myself - is this what the students of Collide need to hear? And I have to stop myself and remind myself what we're doing with this first section of the NCC - we are building our theology. We are building a full understanding of who God is and what he is like. And honestly, we read the answer to this week's question and we can be tempted to think that God is mean - that God is not loving - that God is just a big bully. That is the way that we are prone to think - to put all of the blame on God for our sin. But what this first series of questions in the NCC is meant to show us is not how mean God is, but how bad sin really is. TRANSITION TO BIBLE If you have your Bible or your Bible app, turn with me to the book of Romans. It is about 1/3 of the way back - past Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts - then you'll find Romans. Romans 6:23 - and first I want to just look at the first part of the verse. Here is what it says: For the wages of sin is death Or, maybe a better way to understand it is - the cost of sin is death.

But not just death, eternal death.

Our sin is so bad that the only fitting consequence is to spend eternity in hell - apart from God in complete misery forever and ever. TRANSITION TO ILLUSTRATION What are some really bad things? Murder Abuse Stealing On and on the lists went. Now, let's say that someone is guilty of murder. That did it - they killed another person and the judge finds them guilty. And then it is time for their punishment and the judge says - you need to pay $1 and sit in jail for 30 seconds. What do you think that punishment would communicate about the crime? The consequences would communicate that murder is not that big of a deal. Oh - just $1 and 30 seconds in jail - must not be a very big deal. Or - let's maybe make it a little more understandable for you in your life. What if ever time you lied to your mom or dad and got caught they said, okay buddy - that's 5 minutes with no video games! You might think - oh, that's not so bad!! There is an old phrase that says the punishment fits the crime - the worse the crime, the worse the punishment. Well, that is what Romans 6:23 is telling us. That is what NCC question #18 is telling us  - sin - rejecting or ignoring God - not doing or being what we requires in his law is a HUGE deal! The Bible here is teaching us that idolatry - trusting in created things rather than the creator is a BIG DEAL!! The point is not that we would think that God is mean or a bully, but to see that our sin and idolatry are so bad that the penalty is spending eternity in Hell. Q: Will God allow our disobedience and idolatry to go unpunished. A: No, God is righteously angry with our sin and will punish them both in this life, and in the life to come. Now, we might come up with other arguments. We might say or think - well, that just doesn't seem right!! Notice that the answer doesn't just say that God is angry with our sin, but that he is RIGHTEOUSLY angry. What this means is that it is right or good for God to be angry about our sin. TRANSITION TO ILLUSTRATION Let's go back to our earlier illustration about the murderer on trial. They are guilty of murder - they did the crime. And this time the judge actually gives them a fitting punishment. 20 years in prison without being able to get out. We might think - well, that punishment fits the crime. This is a RIGHTEOUS or RIGHT punishment. Or, if you lied to mom or dad about your homework and you lose screens for 3 days you might think - yeah - that punishment fits the crime. You might not like it, but it is fair - it is a RIGHTEOUS punishment. It is right for you to receive the consequence of your choice. It is RIGHT for God to be angry with our sin and our punishment fits the crime of rejecting or ignoring God. The punishment fits the crime of trusting created things rather than the creator for our hope and happiness - significance and security. But here is where the good part begins. The turning point of the New City Catechism. Let's look at the rest of Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Sin = death/hell for all eternity BUT there is a free gift that = LIFE for eternity - heaven for eternity and that gift comes through Jesus Christ. We're going to talk about this more and more in the weeks to come - this second part of the NCC is really my favorite part because now that we have built our understanding of how bad our sin is, we get to see how loving and merciful, and gracious God is. See - God doesn't just let us off the hook. Someone else takes our consequences - Jesus takes the punishment of death in our place. The wages or the payment for our sin needs to be paid! It doesn't just go away. Someone pays it!! Jesus lived the life that we could never live. Jesus died the death that we deserve to die. Jesus rose from the grave to give us a new life both now and for eternity. The wages of sin is death - and Jesus raises his hand for you and for me and says - I will die in their place. I'll take their punishment. And when we see this, we are able to see that God is not mean - God is not a bully. God is so incredibly loving. God is overflowing with mercy - which means that you don't get what you deserve. But we have to study the first part of that question because we don't see how loving God is until we see how bad our sin is. Once we understand how bad our sin is and how massive the consequences are for sin - eternity in hell - misery forever and ever - THEN we see how massive the love of Jesus really is!! I've heard this saying before and I think it is helpful. My sin is so bad that what it took to fix my sin is that God the Son had to die. That's how serious my sin is AND that is how wonderful the love and mercy of Jesus is!!