We Need Each Other

Introduction

Good morning!!! I don’t know about you, but I love family weekends.  How many students do we have in the room today?  I’m assuming everyone is back in school by now.  I feel your pain, I’m in school right now too trying to finish up my Seminary degree, see I even have my backpack. This is the same one I had since 8th grade back in 1995.  We’ll put that down for now, but we’ll need it later.

For those you don’t know, I am Ryan Hanson and I have the honor of serving on volunteer staff here at the Local Church helping with small groups.  I am so excited to be here with you.

To start, I’d like to ask everyone to close their eyes.  I’d like to tell you a story of an 11 year old boy.  The summer just ended.  He spent it with his best friend.  They went over to each other’s houses nearly every day, shot Barbie’s off from logs with BB guns, climbed trees, and had a great summer doing all the stuff that 11 year old boys do.  Now picture with me his first day of middle school.  He is nervous.  This is a new building.  There are lots more kids because the various elementary schools have all fed a single middle school.  He has none of his friends in his classes.  The only bright spot is his best friend from Elementary school has the same lunch as he does.  The day starts okay.  He meets a few people, classes go okay, and he doesn’t get lost.  Lunch comes around and he is excited to tell his best friend all about his morning.  He sits at the lunch table they decided to eat at, and waits.  Half way through lunch, his best friend walks up, puts a paper on the table, and walks away.  Finding this odd, this young boy reads the paper.  It said, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore, please don’t ask why or talk to me again.”  This young boy is rather crushed.  He feel rejected, hurt, but being new to the school cannot show any emotion on the first day or he won’t make any new friends.  He soldiers on, but the feeling of rejection stays with him.

Around this time the boy’s brother thinks hockey is something he needs to play after watching the Mighty Ducks movie.  His parents sign them both up for hockey.  This boy gets pretty good and makes the school JV team.  It is now his 7th grade year and a movie comes out he wants to see.  He calls a friend from the hockey team, and before he knew what “gas lighting” was his friend thought it would be funny.  When this boy called his friend to see if he wanted to go see the movie, his friend pretended he didn’t know him.  Confused he hung up.  The next day he asked the friend directly and for nearly two months the kid pretended this young boy didn’t exist.

As you’ve probably guessed, the young boy was me.  These two events changed the way that I viewed the world.  I started to believe that I was not someone that was worthy of being liked.  I started to make all kinds of compromises to become the person that I thought people would like.  I sacrificed the person God made me to be, for the person I thought others would accept.  Isn’t this the way the devil works.  He puts thoughts in our heads that leads us to lose our trust in God’s plans and the promises for our lives.  Once we lose trust in God, these thoughts motivate us to act in sinful ways to fix what we should be trusting God for.  Looking back there are many choices I made during those years, solely for the purpose of fitting in that can be described as nothing less than sin.  I did small things like lie and cheat when socially advantageous.  I look back at those years with regret for what I did, what I gave up, and what could have been.   My largest regret from those years was not what I did, but what I didn’t do.  At that time I thought that I needed to make insulting / mean jokes because they got laughs and look the other way when others were being treated poorly.  In an effort to be liked, I caused the same pain to others that I was running from.

Now, with your eyes still closed I want you to think about your past…

Is there anything from your past that you look back on with regret?

You can open your eyes.  If your neighbor is asleep, a gentle nudge is approved.  J

Today I want to talk about sin.  It is not a topic we talk about very often, but it is something that we all struggle with.  Luckily for us, there is a character in the Bible that knew exactly what it was like to live with the regrets of past sins.  This biblical character ended up writing a good portion of the New Testament and has a lot to teach us on how we can deal with the problem of sin in our lives. In 1 Timothy 1:15 he even described himself as the “worst of all sinners.”

In Acts 7 and 8 we are introduced to Saul.  One of the early Christians named Stephen was put on trial for believing that Jesus was God.  The Jews response was to stone him.  Saul held the coats of those who killed Stephen.  To us, holding coats may not be a big deal, but back then it meant that He was giving permission and taking responsibility for the killing.  This event started a campaign of persecution by Saul against the Christians.

In Saul’s story, he had a dramatic meeting with Jesus on the road to Damascus where he was confronted with his sin and called to repent or change the direction of his life.  He was called to become a Christian, preach the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles (non Jewish people), and build God’s church.  Jesus even changed his name to Paul.

We can learn quite a bit from Paul on how we can learn from our past sins and move toward living out the life that God calls us to live. We’re going to review what Paul teaches through the book of Romans.  If you have a bible, please pull it out.  If you need a bible, please raise your hand and ushers will be happy to lend you one.

Today I want to break this down into three parts.  First, I want to briefly define sin, so we are all working from the same definition.  Then I’d like to speak quickly about the why behind the sins we commit.  Then I’d like to conclude by discussing how we can break the pattern of sin in our lives.

What is Sin?

Let’s start by defining what sin is.  Paul writes in Romans 3:23 that

Romans 3:23 NIV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

It is because of our sin that Paul writes in Romans 3:10 that

Romans 3:10 NIV

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

Because God is holy, God demands perfection.  Any sin disqualifies us from God’s presence.

So if sin is that serious, we need to understand exactly what it is.

The Greek word for sin is

Sin

Hamartanó

To miss the mark

So if I were to crinkle up my notes and throw them in the trash right now (throw the notes, but miss), I just sinned in church.  Would any of us think that missing a basket is a sin I should feel bad about?  I would assume not.  So the question is what “mark” should we care about?  I define sin as…

To sin is to miss the mark that God has set for our lives.

So if sin is simply doing anything that God does not want us to do, and we have the Bible that pretty clearly spells out what God wants us to do and not to do, why is it that we cannot stop sinning?  That’s what I want to talk about now.

Why we sin?

About a decade ago, God gave me picture of how sin works in our lives.  I was volunteering in a first grade Sunday school class.  I was freshly out of college, not too keen on following the rules, and decided that my group was going to be the best.  I imagined that kids were going to want to come to church for no other reason that because of how awesome my group was.  The church that I was at had roughly 50 first grade students all in one room with a leader per table of 5-10 students.  Before the program started we would play with the kids.  Every week I would setup Jenga at my table and roughly half the kids would run over to play with me.  What God showed me was that Jenga is the perfect analogy for sin.  Bear with me.  I need my backpack for this.

(take our Jenga game and set it up as you continue talking)

You see Genesis 1:26-31 states that God made mankind in His image and

it was very good

We were made to reflect God’s perfection.  Just like a brand new Jenga tower is perfect, God created us perfect.  The problem is just as Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan in Genesis 3 to sin against God, we are tempted as well.  Just like Eve, we know sin is wrong, but the excitement of the unknown is too much for us to take.

This is exactly what we experience when we take out the first Jenga piece.  (act it out, test many blocks, mark ones that are very loose, eventually remove one)  I would watch, year after year, first graders who were learning to play Jenga start very cautiously.  They would test each block.  They would feel the friction and know that pulling that block out was not a good idea.  They would eventually find a block they thought they could remove without knocking the tower down, but they would be so careful.  They would look around like they were getting away with something bad.  They would remove the block, the tower would not fall, and there would be a look of joy on their face knowing that they had gotten away with something.

Isn’t this the same thing we do when we sin?  We know what we’re doing is wrong.  I believe that our conscience is God’s way of warning us that what we’re doing is wrong.  We approach a sin just as that first grader approaches a Jenga block.  After the sin, we feel the excitement of getting away with it.  Let’s be honest, sin is fun.  Nobody would sin if it wasn’t.  The problem is..

Sin Leaves Scars

Just as the Jenga tower is not the same after the first block is removed, we are not the same after we sin.  We leave a scar on our souls.

The larger problem is that since we got away with the first sin, the next sin is easier.  You see…

Choices lead to habits

Each choice you make, for good or for bad, makes the next choice easier.  After enough choices, you have developed a habit.

To compound the problem after the first sin, we want the same level of excitement.  To get it we need to up the stakes.  In my first grade Sunday school class after the kids got good at removing one block, we’d change the rules.  Instead of letting them test all the blocks, we made a “no test” rule.  (remove a previously marked block without testing).  After they got good at that we change the rules again.  This time “no test, flick”.  (remove more blocks without testing but by flicking them).  It escalated from there.  We’d remove full rows at a time.  (remove bottom row).

Is this true in your life?  Does sin escalate?  As we seek the adrenaline rush that sin provides, look what it does to our souls.  That “very good” creation that we started out as is full of scars.  Have you ever felt like this Jenga tower looks?  The problem is

If our choices create habits…

…our habits shape our identity…

…and our identity becomes defined by our sins.

We become someone who is addicted to the sin that started out so innocent.   Does this describe you?  We all think first about the “big” addictions; drugs, alcohol, porn, etc.  But just as easily, and just as damaging, we can be addicted to wealth, popularity, success, power, athletic accomplishments, etc.  If we’re honest, I bet …

We’re all addicted to something that gets in the way of us achieving the mark that God created us to hit with our lives.

Even worse, sin does not just affect us.

Sin pulls others in.

Jenga is my favorite game.  My small group had a game night and I brought my set of Giant Jenga.  Everyone was disappointed, thinking it was stupid.  But they indulged me with a game.  Soon my excitement spread, rules were broken, and well take a look at what ensued…

Show video of Jacob and me

You see, Sin not only creates bad habits, and shapes our identities, but hurts those around us.

How do you stop sinning?

So, what do we do when we hit a point where we cannot bear the regrets of our sins, but are unable to stop?  How do we repent, and turn ourselves toward the path that God wants us to walk?

As I confessed earlier, that boy I described earlier, was me.  I never did anything too horrible, but I had built up a list of regrets in my life that was too much to bear by college.

My first thought is always that I can fix any problem I find myself in on my own.  I’ll just make better choices, that will lead to a better habits, and fix the identity that I have started to believe about myself.  Is anyone with me on this?

Does anyone try to fix their own problems?

How does it turn out?

I have found that trying to fix our own spiritual problems doesn’t work, and it comforts me that Paul reached the same conclusion.  Paul writes in Romans 7:15-19

Romans 7:15–19 NIV

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

If Paul, one of the greatest Christians ever, cannot will himself to stop sinning, what hope do I have?  What hope do any of us have?

The answer is that we cannot live a perfect life.  The rules God gives in the Old Testament of the Bible show us that we need a savior who has lived a perfect life, who can take the consequences of all our sin upon himself, and who can advocate for us, making us worthy of living eternally in heaven with God.

You see Paul writes in Romans 5:8 that

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We do not need to clean up our lives before Jesus will save us.  The truth is we cannot even if we tried.  You cannot fix a Jenga tower mid game.  I’ve tried, (try to put a piece back in) we only make it worse.  It is through our faith in the person of Jesus, in his perfect life, death, and resurrection that we are saved by God’s grace.  That we receive the gift of forgiveness of our sins.  What Jesus does for us is stand between us and God’s judgement.  It is like putting the box back on the Jenga tower (put the box back on).  When we believe in Jesus as our savior and ask the Holy Spirit into our heart, God doesn’t see our sin, but only sees the perfection of Jesus.  Our flaws are still there.  The tower was not fixed, but the work of Jesus on the cross covers us, washes us, and makes us perfect again in God’s eyes.  Paul writes in Romans 10:13 that

Romans 10:13 NIV

for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Doesn’t this sound too easy.  Like a free pass from our sin problem.  If believing is Jesus, gives us a free pass, why not live it up.  Paul writes about that as well in Romans 6:1-2,6-7

Romans 6:1–2 NIV

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Romans 6:6–7 NIV

For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

To believe in Jesus, means that we believe in him so much that we are willing to change our actions.  And whereas we are unable to change our actions by our own effort, empowered by the Holy Spirit who lives within every Christian, we can say “NO” to the temptations of sin, we can live a life free of the addictions that haunt us, and we can experience healing from our past.

We do not need to be perfect to ask Jesus into our lives

God will accept anyone who puts their faith in Jesus, but God loves us too much to leave us broken.  God will not only heal us from the scars of our past, but use them to help others.  You see…

God turns our mistakes into our ministry

God won’t let our past go to waste.  God calls us to use our past, to help others.  Nobody else is more qualified to help someone in pain, than someone who has experienced the same pain and gotten through it.  We are healed, so that we can be used by God to help heal others.

Application

So what do we do?  That depends on where you are in your spiritual journey. I am going to offer four ways we can apply todays teaching.

Accept Jesus as your savior and invite the Holy Spirit into your heart

First, if you are still exploring religion and have not made the decision to accept Jesus as your savior, I pray that today is the day you make the decision.  Without the power of God, we are not able to live the life we were created to live.  I want that “best life” for you.  God wants that “best life” for you so much he sacrificed His Son so you could have it. In a few minutes I am going to give you the opportunity to accept Jesus as your savior and invite the Holy Spirit into your heart.  If you feel that inner nudge, I believe that is God inviting you into His family.  Move past your fear and accept God’s invitation today.

Find an accountability partner

Second, if you are a Christian, and are struggling with sin, find an accountability partner.  I believe that everyone needs someone (that they are not married to) that they can call at any time when they are struggling.  The Bible says in James 5 that through confession to God that we are forgiven of our sins, but it is through confession to fellow Christians, and the power of the Holy Spirit, that we are healed of those sins. Get someone in your life you can confess your sins to.  With your accountability partner identify the triggers in your life.  Maybe there is a time of day that is harder for you.  Maybe there is a situation that you need to avoid.  When you go on a diet, you don’t surround yourself with donuts.  In the same way get an accountability partner that can help you remove the triggers from your life.

Join a small group

Third, if you are a Christian, I encourage you to join a small group and get into Christian community.  We were not made to live alone, but to be in community.  Small groups are a place where we CARE for each other, CELEBRATE with each other, and CHALLENGE each other to become the people that God created us to be and hit the marks that God gives us to hit.  We need others to call us out when we drift.  Get into a community, and give them permission to call you out in the areas you need to be called out on. We are re-launching small groups on October 7.  If you are not already in one, I encourage you sign up.  If you would like to lead one, please come see me or e-mail me and we can discuss what that entails and get you signed up for the training. 📷

Serve others who struggle from sins God has freed you from

Finally, if you are a Christian that is on the path toward freedom from Sin, don’t waste your past.  Allow God to use it.  Find ways to serve people who are hurting from the same sins that God has freed you from.  There are tons of non-profits in Grand Rapids that are hurting for volunteers.  Find one and get plugged in.  If you are struggling to find something, please let me know and I can help you. No matter where you are at in your spiritual journey, know that God loves you and wants the best for you.  He created you for a purpose and wants to free you from the chains of sin so that you can live the best life possible. At this time, I am going to ask everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes for prayer.  If today is your day and you want to accept Jesus as our personal savior and invite the Holy Spirit into your life, please silently pray along with me.  If you have already accepted Jesus, but strayed, feel free to pray along with us as a statement of your decision to recommit to living the life God calls you to live.  Please join me in prayer. God, we are naturally prone to sin.  We seek what is wrong in the pursuit of short term excitement.  I confess, I have sinned against you.  I know what I have done is wrong and I ask for your forgiveness.  I believe that Jesus is your son.  That you sent Him to earth to live a perfect life and die on the cross so that I can be forgiven of my sins and have a relationship with you.  I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead and that He is in Heaven with you now.  I ask that you fill me with the Holy Spirit.  Speak to me, guide me, and direct me toward the life that you created me to live.  Help me use the mistakes of my past to minister to the hurting in the world.  I love you and can’t wait to start this journey together.  Amen. Now with heads still bowed and eyes still closed, if you prayed that prayer, please raise your hand.  (thank those that raise hands).  I am going to ask you to come see me after service concludes as I want to get your name and e-mail so I can follow up with you as this is the start of an amazing lifelong journey.  I am so excited to see what God has for you. For everyone, go out this week empowered by the knowledge that God loves you and wants the best for you.  You do not have to continue in the sin you’re struggling with.  Find a small group.  Find an accountability partner.  Confess to a trusted friend and experience the healing that only the Holy Spirit offers. Stick around immediately after service for evangelism training by CityFest and don’t forget to bring your non-Christian friends to the festival next Saturday at Ah-Nab-Awen park right in front of the Ford Presidential museum.  Have a great week.