I'm no good

I want to begin today by apologizing. I meant to call several of you but didn’t. I meant to visit a few of you but didn’t. I have told poor Arielle like for the last 3 weeks I would get art work to her and I haven’t.

I didn’t always remember to pray for you. This week I got in an argument at work and I’m still not sure if I was right. I drive the way everyone you have ever yelled at on the freeway drives. I have wronged people. I have sinned.

Perhaps you know this of yourself today. You know the wrong you have done and the misery you have caused. Some of you might actually think that if there really is a God and this really is his church than you should have burst into flames or you needed to have a heart attack or something right when you walked into God’s house. It didn’t happen.

God forgives, but for so many the thought is I have to keep saying “ forgive me” to God every second of every day. God accepts our repentance which is the request for forgiveness, the commitment to follow Him and the gift of God to make a change but we really, really, really need to see the amazing wonder, freedom and grace that comes from a relationship with God so we don’t get stuck in constantly living in a state of miserable guilt. I am bad, God is good. I suck, I am depressed, why even try.

Yes we are not good. I am not good. and God is amazing. He did something glorious which matters in what I think about myself, how I treat others, how I work, how I fight and how I even exist. It’s true for you too, and we can see it in His revealed truths which are found in the Bible.

Galatians 2:16 The Message

16 We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

Application

You have to understand this verse. So many miss this verse. They spend years in churches, make church friends, and then get so destroyed and afraid of God because they believe they are worthless Christians. They quickly come to a realization that they are so bad why even try. It’s sad because the truth of God does not leave us worthless.

This is the revealed word of God that can totally transform your life. Getting into heaven does not happen by you doing good. Being a Christian is not about never saying cuss words, only having sex with your wife or husband, attending church and not stealing.

How are you made right with God?

By being a good person? NOOOOO!

If I asked people about the relationship with God, or how is your faith

I almost always get an answer in behavior:

I’ve been praying a lot. I haven’t been to church in a while. I read a Bible. I haven’t hurt anybody.

But let’s read the truth of God, the revealed truth from Jesus, about how we have relationship with God.

Galatians 2:16 (The Message)

16 We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

You are made right by God by personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith means belief and this belief is that Jesus paid the price for your sins, a punishment has to be paid. Evil, wrong, sin in all it’s forms demands justice.

Today many are rightfully mad that you can walk into a store grab things off the shelf and walk out. You can shoplift with no one working to stop you. The likelihood that you get arrested is so low that some people just brazenly do it. I was at a store this week where minutes before they were robbed by people carrying out shoes. Our city demands justice. Actions demand justice. These actions have to be paid to the government. In our country that is all of us.

But people get away with stuff. Some stuff never gets reported to the police. The awful way people treat other people. Some times the police never find out who did something horrible. What about all those people who could have stopped this horrible stuff from occuring? You know in those facebook posts about the nice person who does something nice for someone so they choose to not hurt themselves or others, they gain hope. What about all the people who knew the good they were supposed to do but didn’t bother. They ignored the other person, too snobby, too selfish, or too busy. The woman who was screaming for help and no one bothered to call.

All of this demands justice. We know in our souls, from infancy that this demands justice. Some say Karma, in the American sense, but my friends we see people all the time have the truth come out about the horrible way they lived after they are dead. We see very wealthy people who do bad things but stay wealthy. We see wonderful people with little. Often what you plant is what grows up, but I can’t go up to the person with a disabled child and say obviously you put nails in someone’s tires that is why this happened. Karma is a horrible, sick concept and has no justice. It doesn’t exist.

All of this evil, all this good not done, demands that something be done, that justice happen. God made a way to be right with him. It is called atonement.

The way to justice with God is through atonement.

Atonement comes through blood being shed. Sin is serious. It is horrible. The loss of blood, death that comes from it, is the final punishment.

Leviticus 17:11 CSB

11 For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the lifeblood that makes atonement.

God made this way so he didn’t have to kill us instantly and as a testimony to the fact that in his nature of love He created a way to be right with Him. It is a horrific way. An innocent animal has to take on our sin as a symbolic act, that we are wicked and the innocent animal’s blood atones, pays the price, settles the score with God. Yet we all know that people keep sinning right after and keeps going. God fixes this.

God himself, became one of us in Jesus, he lived perfectly. He lived an innocent life. He then allowed himself to atone for us. He was arrested and he was beaten and crucified, killed on a cross, He took our death penalty for us. He became the ultimate, perfect sacrifice.

Hebrews 10:11–14 The Message

11 Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. 12 As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God 13 and waited for his enemies to cave in. 14 It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process.

Jesus did it all. All that is owed to God is paid for because Jesus paid the price for your sin. Jesus made it right with God for all those who believe that He made it right with God. A belief of this nature is real.

It is by belief, the kind of belief like you have in the chair you are sitting in right now. If you didn’t believe the chair you are sitting in would actually hold you, then you would sit with most of your weight in your feet or holding on to something you thought would hold you. Ever sat in a child’s chair or a folding chair that you didn’t think would hold you, something you had no faith in? You would barely sit in it. You would do everything to hold yourself up in another way. Maybe your trying to be funny or somebody only has a horrible chair to offer you. You wouldn’t trust it. You would have no faith in it, only pretending to sit in it. Not right now, all of you have faith in the chairs you sit in. All of you are pitted right in your chair, not going anywhere, you have faith in that chair.

So it is for those who have faith that Jesus Christ made us right with God. They know that Jesus died for their sins. They don’t have to make it right with God. Jesus did it. They don’t have to be afraid of Karma. God is the just one.

it is why yesterday I could walk worshipping Jesus listening to meth addicts, sex addicts, all kinds of people with all kinds of pasts praising God together and we had full faith in Jesus that He has made us right with God.

It is why you, whatever you have done, can believe by Faith, by trust that Jesus died on the cross for you. You can accept Jesus made you right with God, God is not mad at you, God doesn’t hate you, in fact God delights in you, because Jesus made you right and you accept that by faith.

Ephesians 1:7 The Message

7 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!

Romans 3:25–26 The Message

25 God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. 26 This is not only clear, but it’s now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.

You know what people say when they learn that their actions of being good doesn’t make them right with God? You mean I don’t have to do good things? I can do bad things?

This isn’t a new line of thinking, it is as old as the Bible and the question is actually answered

Galatians 2:17 CSB

17 But if we ourselves are also found to be “sinners” while seeking to be justified by Christ, is Christ then a promoter of sin? Absolutely not!

This is exactly what people are saying when they say if Jesus forgave my sins than I can just keep sinning. I can do all the bad I want and than just come back to yay I ask Jesus into my life and boom I’m forgiven.

At the heart of this statement is a genuine belief that living without God is better, more fun, more easy, more wonderful than following Jesus.

I’m sorry friends that just isn’t true. Yesterday Victor taught me a lot about living in the streets. We were walking up to people in the heart of addiction, with homes they worked hard to put together, as they living in the hard heat of August outside. We know they are hated by the public, as 209 times reminds us almost weekly. Yet even my friends would admit it is hard to leave the homeless life because of the addictive nature of not having the responsibilities all around.

My friends I have known so many, I’m sure you have to who aren’t homeless but don’t follow Jesus. Those who might not be homeless but still would be doing what even they know is wrong. I have seen, I’m sure you have to the families destroyed by violence, addiction, focus on money, lack of self-worth and care for others.

I once was in a high school and a young girl said I wouldn’t want to go to heaven. I wouldn’t want to be where nothing bad was happening. I replied to her, Just imagine a place where you no longer have to wonder if people are lying to you because everyone tells the truth. Emotions are actually displayed.

Yesterday, with Victor’s help I was able to live out a verse.

We saw people we had just met, who were homeless, definitely not interested in Jesus but sitting near The Encounter. Victor and I had a quick conversation about whether we should go over there, and I could honestly say, “Let’s go, I am not afraid.”

This is new for me, and for some of you, you might be saying what’s the big deal, that’s not a huge thing. Others of you could never imagine walking up to 5 homeless men sitting at a park bench and just sitting with them. It would have freaked me out before but Jesus reminds me,

Luke 12:4 CSB

4 “I say to you, my friends, don’t fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more.

My friends in Jesus we have courage. We have boldness. We have joy. We have love. We have peace. These things are not in sin. They are found in the Holy Spirit. Self - control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. These are amazing things love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. You ask the most anti religious person you know if they want those attributes in their life and I can almost promise you that you will get a 100% yes and they are available to all who follow Jesus Christ.

Galatians 2:18–20 CSB

18 If I rebuild those things that I tore down, I show myself to be a lawbreaker. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

My friends we do not lives as those who need rules so that we can make sure God loves us. Instead we want to be as close to the one who loves as we possibly can. We want to follow Him and his ways. We want to experience the joy of salvation which comes through living out a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

This is what we are building up in our lives. We seek recovery because that is self-control. The way of the Holy Spirit, the way of Jesus. We seek to be nice to others because that is kind, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit.

We seek the good, as God defines good. When we fail, when we screw up. We don’t go back to day zero. Because we are always at day zero. We aren’t the ones earning our way into heaven by personally overcoming. We are forgiven by Jesus through faith, we are delievered through faith. Thus we can glorify God for 30 years of sobriety or 15 years of generosity, or 5 minutes of right living because in each one, in each one, it is God who takes the credit. Only through His amazing Grace are we made right.

Punishment doesn’t get you that joy in the Lord. Only faith in Christ does.

This week I’ve been trying to teach my students to stay in one spot and wait. At this point in time they need to do that by sitting. A couple of students don’t want to sit. We kept having them sit. Over and over but they kept getting up over and over. Later in the week we put in an example of what happens when you receive the blessings of righteousness. When students sat, they got a piece of candy, and an opportunity to listen to their favorite music.

You know what happened: students sat.

My friends we can trust that accepting by belief that Jesus atoned for our sins, that he died on the cross and made it right is a huge blessing. The joy doesn’t stop there. We can know live as ones who aren’t owned or controlled by sin. We are set free. We can know it. We can learn it. We can believe it. We can believe that all can be set free by the power of His love.

Galatians 2:20 CSB

20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.