"The Trouble We're In"

Sermon Transcript for November 5, 2000

By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn

Scripture Reading: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-19

 

Now, how do you follow something that beautiful with a sermon on sin? How do you go from the sweet sound of those bells to a sermon on sin? I’ve asked Shawn to help me demonstrate a point. And maybe in the next couple of minutes I can help us see how much this beautiful sound is like our lives when we are living in total surrender to God. Show me how you ring the bell when you want it to be loud and clear and resonate beautifully. (Shawn rings the bell.) Now show me what you want to do when you want to stifle that noise. (Shawn rings the bell and quickly dampens it.) Okay. Thank you very much. Let’s be like science class. You know, you have a little demonstration. See, I was faced with a dilemma when I found out that I was going to have the sermon on sin. Mike went on vacation and left me sin and I tell you it’s just...And then, to make matters worse we have beautiful music!

But there is a point that I heard in the bells and I asked Shawn to demonstrate it for me. And it’s really what it’s all about when we are talking on the subject of sin. Even though sin is kind of a dirty word and we’re sort of avoiding it these days in churches, it’s something we have to deal with. Because without sin, what’s the point of coming to church? Is there anything we need to repent of if there’s no sin? Is there anything we need to worship God or bring before God if there’s no sin? Is there anything about your life you’d like to improve? Anything about yourself you wish were better?

Well, I happen to think that it is sin that makes our life so much harder. I asked Shawn to demonstrate with you the bell because I have come to the conclusion that a life really focused away from ourselves toward others and toward God is a life that rings loud and clear and resonates with beauty. While a life that is self-centered and drawn into ourselves stifles our beauty. And that’s really what I want to talk to you about today. Because that’s what sin does to our life. Sin causes us to be stifled and to become ugly.

You see when Adam and Eve found out the truth, when they had committed that first sin, the first thing they realized was that they were naked. I take it a step further and say that they were ashamed of their nakedness, of their ugliness. And so they hid; they stifled what God had created. They stifled what God had made part of them. And it’s been that way ever since. Now some would say that sin is something you can’t define. Some would say that you can’t put a label on sin and you can’t narrow down what it is or what it isn’t because they’re thinking of sin in terms of conduct. But thinking about sin in a way that you live your life, according to other people’s rules for living, and in that respect there are those who have come to the conclusion that eventually we’re going to lick this thing.

I love Star Trek. I don’t know how many Star Trek fans we have out there. I see a lot of older folks who may not even know what I’m talking about. Star Trek was written by G. Roddenberry and it was a science fiction show where humanity had gone past all of its evil, twisted ways and now everybody lived in harmony. And this spaceship flew through outer space filled with people of every nation and race getting along and talking about how they use to have wars and how they use to fight and disagree. It’s a nice dream, but it’s not very biblical. In fact, they came around to that reality sooner or later because after a few episodes of all that peace it got boring. They had to boost the ratings so they interjected some war and disagreement. Seems like sin makes life interesting, apparently. Especially if you don’t understand what it’s all about.

Is there anything humans can do about sin? I don’t think so. Unless we all have to watch shows like that with my Bible and my theology tucked in my back pocket. Because when it’s all said and done, those kind of people they just say, "What is sin if it doesn’t hurt anybody? I mean, if I’m not hurting anybody else, what do I care?" You know, that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? If I don’t bother anybody, than I’m not doing anything wrong. Again, looking at it as a matter of conduct. And that sounds like a reasonable question.

Another reasonable question people ask about sin is "I just need to be happy. I just want what I need. I’m just trying to fulfill myself. God would want that, right?" That’s a reasonable question. And that reasonable question is the closest most people get to the real issue. What God wants. Because God is the issue. God is what it’s really all about. And the definition of sin is really not that complicated because it’s not really about conduct. It’s not really about obeying a set of rules as much as it is about whether you choose to accept God’s ways or to deny God’s ways. Sin is to deny God.

Now what does that mean? What does it mean to deny God? Well, that is something the ancient Israelites stressed and worried over. And so much so that Moses finally brought down the Ten Commandments for them to follow. And say, "Well, okay, God wants you in a spiritual relationship with Him. God is the benefactor and your friend. God loves you and God understands that you’re stressing yourselves out over this. So here are some basic guidelines for living." Well, they started asking more of those reasonable questions. Well, what if... and how about if such and such happens? And they eventually took the Ten Commandments and turned them into something like 670 rules. They didn’t want to deal with God in a personal way so they took God and listed him in a long set of rules and thinking that they could follow the rules and everything would be fine. And if God wasn’t watching well, that was okay too. You know how that is don’t you? You know, it’s like when you obey the speed limit out here on 31 as long as there’s a cop around. And that’s exactly what they did in those days. They said, "Get us a set of rules and as long as you’re watching we’ll obey them; and we will be considered sinful."

You know, it wasn’t until the time of David, the king of Israel, who had that really personal relationship with God and became a man after God’s own heart. It wasn’t until then that people began to realize that it was a very personal thing. That it wasn’t about obeying rules or being good. It was about your relationship with God. When you deny God, you’re not denying God’s rules, you’re denying God the person, your friend and your benefactor. You’re denying someone who loves you very much and only wants what’s best for you. Only wants you to be all you can be--just like the old Army slogan. He just wants you to be happy and at peace and in union with Him.

To be righteous is to believe God and to believe in the qualities that God represents. And to sin is to deny God and to look for the gain that comes from self-centeredness. The cold-hearted honest truth to all of us gathered here today is that we’re here because we’re seeking a more personal relationship with God. We’re here because we know we’re sinners and we need God’s help. We struggle with this every day each in our own way and each to some degree or another falling on our face before God regularly and saying, "I can’t manage this without your help."

But, what about the ones on the outside? What about the ones who don’t know God in a personal way? The ones who are out there saying, "I don’t go to church because I don’t need those Christians who know Jesus condemning me and telling me that there’s something wrong with the way I live my life." You know, it’s really astonishing when you get right down to it, that anybody chooses to be good. It is so hard for us believers who call upon God, and it’s just virtually impossible for the rest. What are we to do?

We believe in God’s goodness and we want to live in God’s goodness, but we fall away because sin is so much easier. And because sin seems to be always present and available and easily accessible. God left the garden, so the writer of Genesis tells us, but the tree of knowledge remained in the garden. I guess it was just a matter of time really. And then, when they finally were tempted to take the fruit that was forbidden, it wasn’t something they did immediately. The temptation crept in. What happened first? The serpent, the crafty snake, said to the women, "Did God tell you you can’t eat from any of the trees?" And she said, "No, God said just the tree of knowledge. Just that one tree is forbidden." But what Satan had done at that moment was create doubt about God. That’s where sin starts to creep in. That’s where sin starts in all of our lives. Nobody chooses the consequences of sin. I don’t know anybody who’s ever committed adultery because they were looking forward to having a broken home and losing their family. I don’t know anybody who’s committed the sin of thievery or stolen from another person or from an institution because they wanted to go to jail.

Now we rationalize our way into it. And that’s exactly how Satan brought sin into humanity. He rationalized. He allowed them to doubt God’s intentions. And forgot whether God cared about what was best for them. And so now, humanity sins because humanity is thinking about themselves. The focus is inward. "I just want to be happy. Surely God would want that for me?" But God loves you so much that He gives you the freedom to choose not to do His will. To choose not to abide by His ways or to choose to be in close friendship with Him. He loves you so much that when you choose to go the other way, when you choose to deny God and you reap the consequences, that He won’t abandon you. Adam and Eve reaped the consequences. They got exactly what God said they would get--death. Now this doesn’t mean death in the literal sense that the minute they bit that fruit, they died. But what entered into their lives was the death of their souls. The death of who they really are. They ate from the fruit and they knew that they were naked. Suddenly they were ashamed and embarrassed by who they are. They hid from God. You know what that’s like, men. That’s like when we walk in front of a big store window and suck in our gut and pull out our chest. We’re not fooling anybody. They all know the truth.

Everybody knows somebody who knows the truth about them; who knows them better than they would like them to. And what do we do to people like that? We avoid them at all cost. We hide from them. If possible we dispose of them in a literal sense. Try to remove them from our lives. Because they cause us to see what’s ugly about us. There are a lot of broken relationships that started out with something that felt like betrayal. Because both parties in one way or another had to deal with what was ugly about them and how that other person knew it. It’s our nature to hide from our sin. It’s our nature to hide from the ugly stuff. God came looking for them even after they sinned, though. God came into the Garden and found them. And even though they knew he’d be angry with them and even though they knew that they’d done something wrong and they knew that God had a right to be angry, they still responded to His call.

When we deny God we open the door to all manner of confusion and dysfunction. We allow ourselves to suffer the consequences. And one of the consequences is a deep misunderstanding of our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. Did you hear what Adam said when God confronted him about the sin? "That woman you gave me." Now do you see that? In one sentence he blamed two people and none of them was him. Well, it was that woman you gave me. And then her response was, "That snake is the problem. We go to that denial of the truth pretty easily once sin has been committed and then this dysfunctional kind of living is born.

The Bible tells us that that’s part of our makeup thanks to Adam and Eve. We don’t need to debate the theological implications of that today. The bottom line is I doubt that you’ve heard anything just now that you didn’t agree with in one way or another. Because we’ve all experienced it. We’ve all suffered from the dysfunction, the misunderstanding, the pain that comes from sin. The fact is that God’s judgment is severe, but the consequences are far more tragic and God didn’t bring them. We brought them on ourselves. We’re really bent on our own destruction when it comes right down to it. First, by God’s judgment, but secondly by the consequences that we seem to consider normal.

But do you know what the worst consequence of sin really is? The ultimate dysfunction that sin brings into our lives? It is the loss of self. Now I’m talking about the person you really are. You see, if you live in sin long enough, if you’re outside these walls for example saying, "I don’t want those Christians and their Jesus condemning who I am", it may be that you’ve already gone to that point where you don’t even know who you are any more. You may have already reached the point where you think you know who you are and you think that’s the way it really is. I had a friend put it to me like this about 25 years ago and I’ve never forgotten it. She said that probably on judgment day all God would have to do is stand us before the throne and introduce us to the person we might have been. And we would weep like we’ve never wept before.

The Bible says that we were created in God’s image. It says that God made us like Him. And as soon as we sin we hide from God. We cover ourselves and we’re no longer who God made us to be. And sin just moves us further and further and further away from that. Go to any bookstore any library and there are dozens and dozens of books with all kinds of self-help messages, all kinds of ideas of how to become like yourself. How to be good and perfect and speed read and lose the weight and be more assertive and sing better and talk better. There’s books on everything. And the bottom line is there’s a whole section in the bookstore telling you how to be yourself and God already knows who you are. God is inviting you to come back into the relationship with Him because to be in a relationship with Him is to know yourself better.

It’s ironic when you think about it. Because we seek to serve ourselves. When we have a self-centered life, we turn everything inward and then lose who we are. We’re too busy to get beyond ourselves to find out who we really are and who God made us to be. And the big question is, "How do we do that? What’s the answer?" Because as far as I can tell, sin is an impossible problem to deal with in earthly terms. With all the advances of technology and enlightenment, all the industrial improvements and everything, the 20^th century has just become the bloodiest on record. We haven’t cured sin. We’ve cured every other kind of sickness, we’re on the verge of curing cancer, but we can’t cure sin. It’s an impossible problem, but there is a way out. It’s really very simple.

People understood in those days that sin brought the death penalty. In ancient days, when our Bible was written, they understood that sin brought death. And the only way to offset that was with another death. If it wasn’t going to be me to pay the price for my sin, then something would have to take my place. And for a long time that was a perfect sacrifice--a bull, a lamb, some sort of offering. It was very personal, but seemed pure. And that took the place of our sin. It took our place suffering the death penalty. We talk a lot of blood, and the blood of Jesus, for example, because we’ve been told in the Old Testament by the ancient people that blood is the source of life. And when the blood is poured out, only then can sins be forgiven.

God made a way that was perfect for us. And that’s why we don’t sacrifice anything on our alter. At least not animal flesh or anything like that. God gave us Jesus. Jesus, who was God in the flesh. He dwelt among us to be like us except for one thing. He lived without sin. He was never in a habit of denying God. He was never outside of a relationship with God. And so he was the perfect human. And it was Jesus who died on the cross for one express purpose. And that was to be the last sacrifice ever offered for the sins of humanity.

Do you want to know the way out? You except that sacrifice in your place, for your sin of denying God and selfishness. And then you can be forgiven. Do you want to know the way to salvation? You say, "Thanks, Jesus for paying the price for my sin. I’ll accept that gift. I’m anxious to get to know myself better. Let’s get started."

The Psalmist put it this way in Psalm 32, Verse 5, "Finally I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord’ and you forgave me. All my guilt is gone." And that’s a call for everyone here today who has never responded to that gift of love. And Jesus was only there temporarily because, after all, He is God. So He paid that price for us. And the sign of His victory over sin was His restoration to life. He is alive today anxious to enter in to that relationship with you in a very personal way. All you have to do is bow to your selfishness and self-centeredness and draw the focus that once was turned inward, outward toward God and other people.

And for those of you who have already accepted that gift, and I know there are many here that feel that way, there’s a call for you to respond as well. Because everyday we live with the temptation to turn our focus inward to self-centeredness. Every day we risk sinning again. And while our sins are forgiven, we want to be everything God called us to be. We Methodist call it "moving on to perfection". You can be stifled like that bell in that journey if you begin to turn your focus inward. So there’s a prayer for you Christians today too. Hold the bell away from your chest and let it ring loud and clear so that the beauty of what you are in God’s eyes can be visible to all people.

The Psalm we read at the beginning of the service said in Verse 17, "The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, oh God, you will not despise." May God add His blessing to the hearing of His word.