I believe in the forgiveness of sins
Notes
Transcript
Intro/Scripture
Intro/Scripture
Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Pray.
Opening illustration about sin.
Recently, I was leading at a church camp. preaching every night with students and many of our band and community helped to lead that week.
I had the opportunity to preach about salvation and a relationship with Jesus…God moved in wonderful ways, which led to some one on one conversations. Some students wondering what it means to put their faith in the Lord.
There is like this informal formula to do all of this…many of us have experienced it in some way. Sometimes we call it praying the sinner’s prayer. Confessing that you are a sinner and asking Jesus to come into your heart.
There is a lot we can say about this whole process…that is another sermon, but I found myself internally repulsed at trying to get these kids to admit out loud that they are sinners.
Inside my head, I am asking, is this the most important part? Is this helpful? What if what they need right now is grace and not judgement?
I would imagine many of you would agree with this sentiment.
The problem is two fold:
In making light of sin, I downplay the human condition
In downplaying the human condition, I minimize the gift of grace
This thing I feel internally and you feel internally about sin is because in our modern contexts and experiences and influences we have lost the meaning of sin and that has deep implications.
Sin in the Bible
Sin in the Bible
Sin, iniquity, transgression.... different words in the bible that get at similar meanings. They feel antiquated and out of touch but when we dig deeper we find that the bible has a profound diagnosis of human nature.
Iniquity: behavior that is crooked
Transgression: breaking trust
Sin: Khata and greek haramtin.... to fail or miss the goal
Examples:
To not miss the mark. From Judges there were these soldiers who were impressive with a sling shot apparently.....
Among all these soldiers there were seven hundred select troops who were left-handed, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.
and then in proverbs it is about getting lost...
Desire without knowledge is not good— how much more will hasty feet miss the way!
A failure to fulfill a goal...
What is the goal?
Well from the very beginning the calling, the goal, was to live as imagers of God in the world. To love God, to love others.
Think 10 commandments. This famous code of conduct.... half of them are about loving God and the other half are about loving people.
To sin against people is to sin against God.
Sin is a failure to be truly human
The deception of sin
Tim Mackie is helpful here to show something else unique about sin....most of the time sin is deceptive in that the person in sin is unaware or believes they are acting rightly:
When Pharoah wants to build up the Egyptian economy and build up his people for success. He enslaves Israelites and things that he is still doing right.
King Saul hunting down David in the Old Testament
Then Saul said, “I have sinned. Come back, David my son. Because you considered my life precious today, I will not try to harm you again. Surely I have acted like a fool and have been terribly wrong.”
Sin is more than just doing bad things in the bible:
“It describes how we easily we deceive ourselves and spin illusions to redefine our bad decisions as good ones.”
porn
Sin runs deep. it is rooted deep in our desires. Paul says we are slaves to sin. It lives in us, like a beast that wants to devour us.
Enter Jesus: he did not fail. he did not sin.
“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
Doctrine of Sin:
Doctrine of Sin:
Doctrine of sin, seedbed:
doctrine of original sin:
... we are inclined and bent towards sin, we all have this in our very nature. We are not neutral. Fundamentally broken and estranged from God. “No man loves God by nature...”
Total depravity:
sin touches every aspect of human life including rationale. Everything. This is not about the quality of our sin but the scope of our sin.
Sinners in the hands of an angry God
Sinners in the hands of an angry God
Pastoral implications:
gives us language to be honest about ourselves. None are worthy. Confession is important here
how many of us put off going to the doctor to not face a scary diagnosis. But if we will go through that then we can find the good news of healing.
the greater our understanding of sin, the more our understanding of grace. When we are honest about our sin and willing to come to him, then the greater we will understand his love for us.
So one of the things I want to do this morning, is not beat us up....but press upon on us the seriousness of sin. The depth of our brokenness.
Everyday almost there is a falling out of a pastor, of a large church, that we find out something dark going on behind closed doors.
Scandal, money laundering, child abuse, abuse of women.
Violence by police officers that go off the rails
politicians. principals, teachers.
It is easy to isolate ourselves from them, but what the bible teaches us is that in most situations most did not wake up one morning and decide to be addicted to porn, or to be racists, or to abuse someone.
That over time life, abuse in their own life, isolation, and broken from reality led down this road.
Bible: Adam and Eve, Joseph, Noah, Moses, Saul, David, Peter, Judas, Paul
You know what they all have in common.... struggle with sin.
Paul can say without a doubt....there is not one free from this!!!!
Let me say one more thing about sin. Our hearts are prone to wander and the enemy knows it.
Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart (if you have not read this, order it right now):
Willard points out that all it took for the serpent in the garden was an idea
Thus when he undertook to draw Eve away from God, he did not hit her with a stick, but with an idea. It was with the idea that God could not be trusted and that she must act on her own to secure her own well-being. This is the basic idea back of all temptation: God is presented as depriving us by his commands of what is good, so we think we must take matters into our own hands and act contrary to what he has said. This image of God leads to our pushing him out of our thoughts and putting ourselves on the throne of the universe. The condition of the ruined soul and world naturally results. The single most important thing in our mind is our idea of God and the associated images.
The idea that your marriage is not enough.
The idea that you are not respected.
The idea that God’s design for marriage, or sexuality, or even your discipleship is oppressive
The idea that God is absent or God does not love you or God could never love you
The idea that in God there is not satisfaction so we find it in all the other places.
All it takes is a whisper
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven
In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven
But there is good news today friends. For we in the church declare that sin has no say any more because of the infinitely powerful Father sent his son, the king, to die a sinners death, taking with it the whole weight of death and evil of the world. This sinless man lived the life of image bearing in the world as we were supposed to. And being baptized into him means we are grafted into his life, death, and resurrection.
It means his life counts for ours.
Romans 3 describes the sacrificial law of atoning for sins… the law that provided a bandaide for this disease, a precursor of what is to come. Romans 3 continues....
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—
For all those who call on the name of the lord they will find forgiveness, hope, and redemption
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.
and
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Finally,
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.
Forgiveness and Freedom. preach this out.
Are you tired?
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Are you desperate enough?
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Are you lost?
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Let me close with a few thoughts....
Our default position is that God just tolerates us.
God is not disgusted with you. He does not look at you beloved and think.... geez, I thought they would have gotten it together by now.
The apostle Paul says no…before the foundations of the world he was set out to adopt you. Then he says this....
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding,
I love this word lavish. The forgiveness of God is lavished upon us. This word means the grace of God is out of control, over the top, it is abundantly more than is necessary.
“You dont know what I have done...”
The bible is full of murderers, cheats, and adulterers.... try me.
Man or woman in Christ…it does not matter how you came in here today. Our God has forgiven past present and future sins. He is bringing healing.