Trusting In The Forgiveness Of Sins (Luke 24:44-47)

Introduction

Good Morning.

We continue our series in the Apostles’ Creed this morning, and we are nearly finished. This morning we will be focusing on the forgiveness of sins. Next Sunday, Neil Barham will preach on “The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting,” and then I’ll have a concluding sermon to tie up the series, considering the Creed in its entirety and our confession of it.

After that we will start a new series in February, and I am thinking we will most likely do a book from the Old Testament, as I try to move back and forth between Old Testament and new. Most recently we did the book of Psalms, then Ephesians, so we will likely do a series next on one of the Old Testament books, right now I’m thinking one of the shorter ones like Ruth or Ezra.

But this morning we are continuing on through the Apostles’ Creed, studying this creed together so that we can better confess it with sincere hearts, since Jesus hates vain repetition.

So, if you will please turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 24:44-47

Luke 24:44–47 (ESV)

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray:

O heavenly Father: Your law is indeed perfect, converting the soul; a sure testimony, giving wisdom to the unlearned, and enlightening the eyes. Enlighten our blind intellect by your Holy Spirit, so that we may truly understand and profess your law and live according to it. You have revealed the mysteries of your will only to the little ones; and you look to him who is of a humble and contrite spirit, who has reverence for your Word. So grant us a humble spirit and keep us from all fleshly wisdom, which is enmity against you. We ask this from you, most merciful Father, in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

(Based on a Prayer by Martin Micronius)

This morning we will be focusing on the forgiveness of sins, which stands at the very heart of the Gospel, and therefore, the very heart of our Christian faith.

Jesus has many words that he speaks to us in the Scriptures, but I would say none are so important as these words: “Your sins are forgiven.”

It’s why there’s an assurance of pardon early in our worship service. Few things are more important for you to know. It’s why the preaching focuses on the shed blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, because few things are more important for you to know. It’s why when we come to the Table, there is still yet another call to examine yourself, to repent of sin, and to come and eat the bread of broken body and to drink the wine of shed blood, which is for the forgiveness of your sins.

We need this so much, and we struggle to believe it, because it is, frankly, too good to be true.

So this morning there are three things I want to set before you as we consider the good news and good gift of our good confession: The forgiveness of our sins.

And those three things are:

I. The Problem of Holiness II. The Gift of Forgiveness III.The Consequences of Grace

I. The Problem of Holiness

There is a now famous video that you can find on the internet from the Panel Discussion at Ligonier Ministry’s National Conference in 2014. I’m quite certain that the overwhelming majority of you have seen it, but for you this will just be a little jaunt down memory lane.

The moderator asked the question:

“Since God is slow to anger, and patient, then why, when man first sinned, was His wrath and punishment so severe and long-lasting?”

There’s a brief silence, and then R.C. Sproul sits up and says “Time out. So severe? This creature from the dirt defied the everlasting, holy God. After that God had said ‘the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’ and instead of dying that day, he lived another day, and was clothed in his nakedness by pure grace, and had the consequences of a curse applied for quite some time. But the worse curse would come upon the one who seduced him, whose head would be crushed, by the seed of the woman, and the punishment was…too severe?”

Sproul then screams “What’s wrong with you people?”

He went on to say, “This is what’s wrong with the Christian Church today. We don’t know who God is, and we don’t know who we are.”

And he was right. We do not understand the magnitude of the holiness of God.

1 Peter 1:14–16 (ESV)

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Many men and women (even professing Christians!) are sometimes tempted to think that that Jesus and the Cross means that the God of the Old Testament has lightened up. Rather we should realize the the Cross is what it took to save men and women as wicked as us. The cross does not now mean that God accepts your excuses. Or that things aren’t really that bad.

Rather, the cross is what it took for infinite holiness to draw near to hopelessly selfish and twisted people without destroying us. Holiness is a problem for sinners like us.

You know, at Christmas, which we just celebrated, we love to speak of the good news of Immanuel, God with us.

And indeed it is a glorious promise. Theologian O. Palmer Robertson in his great book The Christ of the Covenants actually puts forward this concept of Immanuel as the principle that holds the whole Bible together.

Adam and Eve, in the Garden, before the Fall enjoy the full glory of Immanuel. God was with them, and for them. And the fall into sin ruined their communion with God, and justly put them under his wrath and curse.

The Immanuel Reality was broken. And the rest of the Bible is about its restoration. You get a sense of it again at Sinai, and especially after the Tabernacle is built.

2 Chronicles 5:11–14 (ESV)

And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (for all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, without regard to their divisions, and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters; and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord), and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

The Tabernacle is built, the music rings out, the liturgy is spoken, and the glory of God descends from the sky and fills up the place, and the priests can’t even stand in there to minister, it’s too overwhelming and terrifying.

In fact:

The reality of Exodus and Leviticus is “God has come to live with sinners like us. And that is not good news. That’s a big problem.”

If God descends to meet us with no mediator between us and him, we are done for. We cannot handle holiness. We will be consumed.

And in fact the whole book of Leviticus, all the laws, all the dizzying, high-detail rituals, all the processes for coming into a clean state, all of it is to deal with this terrifying reality that a Holy God has come to live with us.

Immanuel is (in this sense) not good news. It is bad news. If we stand naked with only our sin before the holiness of God, we cannot bear it, and we will be destroyed.

This is why when God comes near, he is always clothing men and women in the death of something else. So that they won’t die.

Our great problem is that we have such unjustifiable faith in our own goodness. We want to ask “How could a loving God send anyone to hell?”

Which is the wrong question. The question should be How could God let anyone into heaven?

Our great sin is that we want to put God on trial because:

The natural religion of every man is faith in his own goodness.

We love to question God’s goodness, but refuse to question ours. Meanwhile, wars rage on, envy and loathing grows, and bodies stack up on the evening news. But we’re the good ones. Sure.

The reality is God could wipe us all out tomorrow morning, and there would be zero injustice in it.

God does not have to give an explanation for his judgement. Mercy is what needs an explanation. Damnation is not injustice. It’s nothing but justice.

But we have taken the moral order and flipped it. So that we can pretend that we are the righteous ones concerned for justice. It’s nonsense. We hate justice. We recoil from it.

And the only way out is awareness of sin and repentance. That’s the only hope for us, for our nation, for our world. We need God’s light—we can’t even see ourselves correctly.

The message of Christ crucified is what shines the light.

This is why we preach law and gospel in that order. You don’t just preach law with no Christ. And you don’t preach Christ with nothing to be saved from.

So what has been given to us?

Immanuel. God with us. Come to live with us and in us. And the blood of Jesus Christ Crucified. So that we are not destroyed, but forgiven, cleansed, and called into the presence of the Holy One.

II. The Gift of Forgiveness

What is given to us in the Gospel, when we repent and believe by God’s light and kindness is the forgiveness of our sins. And that forgiveness is complete and total. The work of Jesus on the Cross means that you are clean. You’ve been cleansed. It’s the promise we celebrate in Baptism and receive by faith. You’re washed clean. There is nothing between you and God. This is Immanuel, and because of Jesus it is finally good news.

And, as I said a moment ago,

God’s forgiveness is complete and total.

If you are forgiven by God at all, you are forgiven by God completely. All the way down to the bottom. No sin left untouched.

Listen to the words of the prophet Micah

Micah 7:18–19 (ESV)

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

God in Christ has tied your sins to a 2-ton boulder, and sank them to the bottom of the sea.

Remember also the words of Paul

Ephesians 1:7 (ESV)

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

You are forgiven out of riches.

How much riches? Is it enough? Enough to take care of you?

I mean you might be pretty bad. But do you really think you’re going to surprise God?

Here’s the thing. Your sin? Is boring.

Your sin is boring. It’s not special.

I’m not saying it’s not destructive. I’m not saying it’s not deadly or damnable. I’m not saying it’s not a clear and present threat to you and those around you. I’m not saying it’s not worthy of hell. It is all those things.

But it’s not special. Your sin is not special. “Oh, my sin is special. That’s why I can never confess it and never let go of my guilt and shame.”

Get over yourself. Your Father has been forgiving sins for thousands of years. But he’s finally found the unforgivable in you, has he? What rotten luck! You and all your sins have finally managed to stump God. Really?

It is possible for you to be born again. To start over. To have a clean slate.

Psalm 103:11–12 (ESV)

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

You know if you were to get in a floating car like the Jetsons have and drive it to the North Pole, and then keep going, you’ve been going hard North for hours. But once you pass the North pole, you will find yourself going south.

But when it comes to going East or West, you will only ever be going one of those, no matter how much distance you cover.

By the blood of Jesus, God has put as much distance between us and our sins as we can fathom and has then pushed it further still. He has removed our sin from us at an infinite distance. Because he took our sins on himself, and then he died and took them to hell, and they stayed there, while he rose again.

And so he has given us redemption for our sins, by his own grace, and not by how hard we work. Not even by how sorry we are. It is not redemption from your sins if you cry about them hard enough. Because if it’s according to anything in you, you are done for. Absolutely done for.

But the grace that Jesus gives us is pure unmerited favor. It is not because we have done enough, but it is because he has done it all.

III. The Consequences of Grace

Grace has real consequences. And the fact that a Holy God has—in Christ—done it all does not mean that we do not have a calling before us to pursue that same holiness.

So what are we to do with this forgiveness? Well, simply put, we pass it on to others.

Jesus told his disciples when he sent them out “Freely you have received, freely give.”

God has given us his forgiveness, and now he says “Alright. Now, then. You go forgive.”

Who?

“That person who just popped into your head, and you thought “I hope he doesn’t mean him. I hope he’s not talking about her.”

As we observed earlier from the prophet Micah, God’s forgiveness is like an ocean where he sinks your sin to the deepest parts. To spin that metaphor another way, God’s forgiveness is like an ocean that he fills you up with. Can you hold an ocean? No. What’ll happen? It’ll come spilling out of you. So it is with God’s forgiveness. It spills out of you and gets on everybody else.

As one theologian has observed, some people hear “Forgive 70 times 7” and they rejoice. But there are others who take out their calculators.

But we can’t be grumpy or stingy about this forgiveness.

1 John 4:20 (ESV)

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Which means:

If you refuse to forgive, you demonstrate you have not been forgiven.

“Oh, sure. I have been transformed by grace alone. But I still loathe that piece of garbage over there. I’m so superior to him, thank God.”

You’re walking in darkness, Johns says.

So how do you treat your wife? How do you treat your husband? How do you treat your parents? What kind of grudges or grumpiness do you still hold on to and protect?

Because the reality is that if you are clinging to un-forgiveness in your heart, the act of praying the Lord’s Prayer—as we did just before the sermon—should terrify you.

When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you should think about the person you have the most difficulty with. The person who gets on your nerves the most. The person that gets you the most annoyed, most grumpy, most offended, most easily bothered. And you should think “Lord, please treat me in your thoughts the way I am treating that person in mine.”

Because that is what we ask the Lord to do in the Lord’s Prayer every day that we pray it.

Now, I am not saying that we earn forgiveness by forgiving. I am not saying that if you forgive enough people, then maybe, perhaps, God will consider forgiving you. This is not a negotiation.

What I am saying is that when God forgives you, you demonstrate your understanding of the Gospel (and whether you believe it) by how you forgive others.

In fact, what’s really interesting about that part of the Lord’s Prayer is that it’s the only part that Jesus offers follow-up commentary on.

So Jesus lays out the Lord’s Prayer

Matthew 6:9–13 (ESV)

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

And then in the very next verse, he says

Matthew 6:14–15 (ESV)

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

What’s weird about that is that if you removed all the other petitions of the Lord’s Prayer—which I am not saying you should do. But if the Lord’s Prayer was “Our Father in Heaven, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, Amen” that follow-up commentary would still fit and make sense. It’s the only thing Jesus comments on.

That’s how seriously we should take it. But if it’s not a negotiation, then what is it?

Well, think of it this way: Forgiveness is not a work we must preform in order to earn our own forgiveness. No. It’s simply the truth that when God rescues you, he doesn’t leave you alone to figure it out. Jesus did not rescue Peter from the water in order to leave him at the bottom of the ocean.

But to stick with that metaphor, when you are drowning in sin, the thing that really gets into your lungs is pride. People can get tied up in sin for a lot of reasons. Anger, bitterness, hurt, loneliness, fear, women, men, sickness, drugs, money. Lots of reasons.

But the reason there are so many carcasses on the bottom of the sea is because they are proud.

This is why we confess sin together during the worship service. It is the murder of our ego. Which is what must die so that we can be brought back to life.

If a man is forgiven, certain things will result and they must.

What this means is that a forgiven person no longer gets to decide who they are. Because that’s the ego, and Christ has taken that to the grave with him. When Christ rescues you, he changes you. You don’t get to keep your life from being different. You don’t get to hold on to bitterness. If you need more help with this, come talk to me, or come to the Wednesday Night Series on Biblical Peacemaking in February.

What we must be clear on is that all of this is grace. Your forgiveness from God is all of grace, and your forgiveness from the heart of that other person is also all of grace.

And this is a Gospel that actually saves and transforms. Today. Now. In this life. It does not matter what you have done or when you did it, whether it was before your conversion or after. In Christ there is forgiveness of sin.

"Oh I know, Pastor Bryan. God forgives ordinary sinners.” But abortion?

Christ forgives sin.

“But I’ve got really bad sexual sin. You don’t even know.”

Christ forgives sin.

“I’ve hated a family member for years.”

Christ forgives sin.

“I’ve despised my parents for decades.”

Christ forgives sin.

And you have no right to resist the forgiveness of God. You are commanded to receive it. It’s not optional. If you refuse it, you are sinning and that’s just more sin on top of your sin, well done.

Christ died and rose again.

So call upon him while there is still time.

Romans 10:13 (ESV)

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Call upon him and be changed forever.

Be changed. Be fed here at the table. Lift up psalms and hymns with loud and glad voices. That’s why we are here, and there’s no other way but what he’s given us.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.