Monday, June 26, 2017

“The Sin We Confess” Sermon 2--Basics of the Christian Faith Series June ‘17




1.                   Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  Amen.  On this Trinity Sunday we continue our sermon series on the basics of the Christian faith as we confess it as Lutherans.  We’re looking at “The Sin We Confess” before God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.                   Several bored high school students were driving around one night, trying to find something to do.  Finally they came across a construction site.  There they saw a sign with a blinking yellow light.  Quickly they put the light into their car, and with squeals of delight they sped from the scene.  Then they tried to turn off the light, but they couldn’t do it.  The yellow light just kept flashing, flashing, flashing.  Again and again they tried to turn out the light, but they couldn’t.  Soon they began to fear that the police might spot them.  And so they returned to the construction site and got rid of the sign.  Afterward, one of the students said, “Wherever we went, that blinking light seemed to keep on saying, ‘Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!’” 
3.                   More than one skeptic has smiled while reading Pastor Jonathan Edwards’ classic sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  If Jonathan Edwards and the other Puritan preachers of the 18th century would come back from the grave and visit our American culture today, they’d probably find the cynicism of today’s culture toward the doctrine of sin unbelievable.  No cynical attitude will ever resolve the problem of sin.  We must face our sin and deal with it and not try to minimize it or overlook it.
4.                   But, maybe you’re thinking that sin is simply the ways we break God’s commandments.  Well, as we face up to the reality of sin we must see it as both a state and as specific actions *(thoughts, words, and deeds) that we commit against God’s holy and righteous will.  The theologian Emil Brunner has described original sin by saying that it’s as if all human beings were connected together by hidden roots, like the runners of a strawberry patch, all of whose plants have developed from one parent stock.  There’s a kind of sin-fluid that flows through the whole root system, bringing with it personal guilt to each individual.
5.                   Adam and Eve were “the parent stock” from which flowed the sin-fluid that now infects the entire human race.  Scripture teaches that we’ve inherited the sinful nature of all humanity that goes back to our first parents Adam and Eve and their condition after the Fall.  We don’t “prove” this doctrine.  We simply believe it because Scripture teaches it.  This condition of original sin leads human beings to commit all kinds of actual sins.  Any thought, word, or deed contrary to God’s Law is sin--not just murder or stealing something that doesn’t belong to you, but gossip, lustful thoughts, having hatred against your neighbor, and yes, even taking things like extra pens or paper clips home from the office without paying for them.
6.                   But, are people born sinful, or do they become sinful through the influence of the world, the devil, and their own sinful choices?  To believe in the lie that people aren’t really born sinful, a person has to ignore many passages of the Bible that speak about original sin.  For instance Psalm 51:5 says, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”  As I said earlier, all of us as human beings have inherited original sin from Adam and Eve.  And this sinful state that you’re in makes it inevitable that you’ll commit what theologians call actual sin.
7.                   Some people think that we as Lutherans place too much emphasis on sin.  This points to the fact that people don’t really want to talk about sin or face up to its reality and consequences.  Some Christians have even changed their own hymns in order to take away references to the sinful human nature and our need for God’s forgiveness.  In their place they’ve tried to substitute a bland “be happy” view of life.  But, we must take sin seriously because God Himself takes sin seriously.  It’s your sin that brings down the wrath of God.  God must and will punish sin.  In fact, the Bible makes it clear that each of us stands guilty of sin before God.  As Martin Luther once wrote, “For we daily sin much, and indeed deserve nothing but punishment.”  And finally, sin always has to pay its wages, which is death, and not just physical death, but eternal death in hell.
8.                   What makes all of this worse is the fact that we are all responsible for our actions.  You can’t just blame the forces around you for the wrong choices that you make.  God holds you accountable.  You can’t walk into heaven’s courtroom claiming with the comedian Flip Wilson, “The devil made me do it.”  You’ve chosen to do wrong over righteousness and you stand guilty as charged.
9.                   Now all of this talk about sin makes us want to ask the question, “Is God a God of wrath, or a God of love?”  Well, God’s wrath against human sin is sure and it is just.  That would be frightening beyond belief if it were not that His grace is just as sure and truly amazing.  In his book “Why People Join the Church” Edward Rauff tells about a woman named Danielle, an intelligent woman who had been raised in a Jewish family.  During childhood, she saw churches as places of brutality and oppression, but as an adult she found herself drawn more and more to Christianity.  Danielle began to realize, she said, “that the popular Christianity that I had always heard around me had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity at all.” 
10.               Danielle recalled how the movies brought her pictures of Cecil B. DeMille Christianity.  Still she said, “Even with all of that junk in there, the center of it, God sacrificing Himself in that way, I guess that was the first thing that drew me to it.  The enormity of that act.  That, I think, is still the center of my faith.  The fact that kind of love existed.  That’s the beginning and the end of it--the cross is the center of faith.”  Think of it!  Paul says in Romans 5:8, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!”  In the face of our rejection, God completed the blessed act of atonement!  In Jesus, God has completed His work of atonement for the sins of the whole world in spite of our own unworthiness.    
11.               In Jesus we see the amazing reality of God the Father’s love for all of humanity.  Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to take our place under the Law in order to fulfill perfectly all the demands that he in His boldness and justice makes upon us.  In fact, Jesus assumed your guilt and the consequences of your sin.  He suffered death and even the torture of hell itself in your place.  This is a mystery of love beyond our capacity to understand.  As Tobina Dalton has said, “God suffers in the suffering of Christ and cries out with the forsaken God: ‘My God, why have You forsaken Me?’…So God in Christ’s death entered into our god forsakenness so all the godless and god forsaken can have reconciliation with Him…When non Christians lay aside their diminutive conception of God and cope with the ‘god forsakenness of God’ they will have confronted the true God.”  A grieving father once asked, “Where was God when my son died in Vietnam?  His friend responded, “The same place He was when His own Son died on the cross.”
12.               But, is repentance, a turning away from your sin, simply just being sorry that you got caught?  When we hear of love like this, when the Holy Spirit by His grace drives it home to our hearts, we can’t help but respond.  Love like that can’t help but change you.  Change your mind about the direction you’ve been going.  Change you heart, warming and softening it in a deeper love for God and for those around you.  And, little by little, change your own words and actions so that they become more like Christ.  That’s what repentance is.  It involves genuine sorrow over sin, and by the power of the Holy Spirit a true change in a person’s life. 
13.               Listen to the words of the Explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism, “By Baptism we have been made to share in Christ’s death and resurrection.  As He has buried our sin, so we too can and must daily overcome and bury it.  And as He is risen from the dead and lives, so we too can and must daily live a new life in Him.”  The Apostle Paul put it this way, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  We were therefore buried with Him through Baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:3-4).
14.               As we’ve seen, sin is much more than a set of check marks beside our name in God’s heavenly record book.  It involves both what we do and who we are by nature.  Born sinful (original sin), we proceed to commit all kinds of actual sins.  And it’s impossible to take this situation too seriously, because God takes human sin very seriously.  Your own sin brings God’s wrath and would separate you from Him forever if He had not, in Jesus, acted on your behalf to free you from it.  In love, you Heavenly Father has done just that.  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8).  We will never fully grasp the enormity of the love that lies behind that simple sentence. 
15.               But, as that love covers over our hearts, it can’t help but change you.  That’s what repentance truly is--a change of mind, of heart, of attitudes, of actions.  As we bask in Christ’s love, we become more and more like Him.  We turn away from our sin as we turn ever more fully to our Savior Jesus.  And all of this is brought about by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Your conscience no longer needs to flash the verdict, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”  Instead, you can stand beneath the cross of Christ and hear those words that bring the peace that passes all understanding, “Forgiven! Forgiven! Forgiven!”  Amen.

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