Rationalized Sin

Sermon Notes, Lent 3, 2021 Ps. 19:13 Keep your servant also from presumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over me; * so shall I be undefiled, and innocent of great offense. I went before the judge with hat in hand, fully prepared to defend myself against the traffic ticket I received for speeding. My defense was innocent ignorance. I did break the law. I was caught speeding. But I didn't intend to break the law. A large semi blocked my view of the change in speed limit sign, I was ignorant of the law I broke. That may be true, said the judge. But you were still going 75 in a 60 zone. 60 bucks. The Psalmist writing our Psalm 19 asks God to shield him from presumptuous sins. Those are the sins he knows are sins and does them anyway. In his understanding of God's justice, these sins weigh heavier than unintentional sins. Presumptuous sins result in great offenses. He may escape with a warning for the unintentional ones. We are at that point in Lent when sin is the focus of our meditation. If we must stand before God and confess our sins, we had better have a good idea of what they are and how they are regarded by God. We may separate presumptuous sins from unintentional sins, but that is our rationale and not necessarily God's. God is pretty clear about what sin is. We read through the Exodus 20 version of the 10 Commandments this morning and that is God telling us what is sinful in his eyes. God not only tells us what is sinful, but why and what the consequences will be. The Hebrew for "commandment" is "Word." This is God's word about sin. His word is that He is the Lord God alone. His word delivered Israel from the bondage of Egypt. A good thing. His word now will determine how we relate to him and to each other. Also a good thing. We don't have to wonder if God approves or disapproves of what we do because he's given us his word on the subject. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them," This is God's word on idolatry. And he gives the why. "For I the LORD your God am a jealous God." And if that is not enough, the consequences of defying God's word. "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." That is more of an explanation than we have a right to expect from God. God's generosity shines through even his commandments. So we may view a glimpse into the mind of God through his word given to Moses and Israel. Jesus summarizes the Father's word by saying, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The ten commandments and the summary of the Law and the Prophets constitute God's word on sin. The "problem of sin" is that we (that is mankind) try to put our spin on sin. We have several ways to do this: we can rank sins like presumptuous vs. unintentional, venial vs. mortal, big vs. little, and thereby justify some our sinning as of lessor account than others. We can overrule God and declare some sins not to be sins. We can accept some sinning if the end is a greater good. In other words, justify sin if it is a path toward righteousness. We can forgive and absolve ourselves because of ignorance, like I did with my speeding ticket. The result of these rationalizations is to make us appear less sinful than we actually are. That may improve our image among mankind, but it's unlikely it will have the same effect on God. The Truth is that we will have to stand in our guilt beside the Apostle Paul when he says, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" In our Gospel reading from John, we find Jesus confronting rationalized sin. The money changers and sacrificial animal sellers have rationalized their right to be where they are, inside the temple gates doing their business. Historical evidence suggests that Caiaphas only recently approved such a thing, though it had been practiced before throughout Jewish history. In any case, it didn't look like sin to anyone but Jesus. We can tick off the rationalizations: justified for the sake of greater righteousness. After all, they provided for a pious practice: sacrificial worship. It was of lesser consequence than paying the temple tax with the currency of Caesar. The temple grounds were not technically the temple proper. Not to mention other related sins such as usuary, false scales, and intimidation that are the hallmarks of hucksters everywhere. Jesus' rage goes out against not just the practitioners and enablers, but the very Jewish people who have become so accustomed to sin that they no longer recognize it. Insidious sin. Sin that creeps in without our knowledge and takes hold of us, individually and as a people supposedly set apart as God's chosen. The Psalmist recognizes this power of sin and asks God to save him from it, "lest they get the dominion over me." Now the full picture begins to emerge. Sin controls us even as we assume we have control over it. We don't. Like Paul, our best efforts come up short because our sinful bodies gnaw at our righteous intentions until we are weak and defeated and the best description for us is wretched. Our enemy is Satan. The battle is spiritual. Sin sets up his table in my body, the Temple of the Holy Spirit just as the money changers set theirs in the Temple of Jerusalem. But there is an alternative ending. The story doesn't have to end in our subjection to sin. The Resurrected Jesus throws over the tables of sin in us just as he did in the Jerusalem Temple. Paul concludes, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." That dichotomy between spirit and flesh is healed through the Resurrected Body of Christ. What shall we say on our behalf before the judgement seat of Christ? Only this, that we are sinful and forgiven. That we are lost and found. That we stand guilty as charged and redeemed as Christ's own forever. Glory be to God. Amen.