INTRODUCTION
When I was young, the most common sermon topic of our
preachers was “the way of salvation.”
Usually, the preacher would begin with informing us
that we were all sinners.
The message would include Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and come short of the
glory of God.”
Then, sometimes, they would go to the Old Testament
and quote this great verse from Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who
can know it?”
We memorized both of these verses in Sunday school.
They embody a necessary truth about our human predicament.
I. Our sinfulness isn’t a very popular subject. We are
willing to talk forever about the sins of other people, but most of us don’t
feel especially wicked.
A. For a several years, I worked as librarian at the
state prison at Mt. Pleasant.
Our inmates had been convicted of serious crimes—terrible
crimes. But most of our inmates didn’t seem to feel especially guilty.
I had many conversations with these men. Some of them
became friends. Generally, our prisoners considered themselves pretty good
people. They liked to talk religion. They would admit that they had “made
mistakes.” They would say things like, “Everyone does stuff; I just got
caught.”
Those inmates were typical of people everywhere who
have not yet met God in a life-changing way.
B. Most of us don’t realize that we are sinners until
we have experienced God’s grace. We may cheerfully sing, “Amazing grace, how
sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” But usually only depressed people
feel like “wretches.”
Here is something I have learned: We are not sinners because we sin. Rather, we sin because we are
sinners. There’s something deep within us that is amiss. The sins that
erupt from time to time in our actions or in our talk come from that corrupt
nature within—that we mostly keep hidden, even from ourselves.
How would you feel if a friend was standing beside you,
reading your mind? noting your sense of superiority? your fault-finding? your pleasure
in the misfortunes of people you don’t like? your preoccupation with your own
pleasures and unconcern for the sorrows of others?
Our problem with sin is not so much the things we do
or say, but the wrong within that we manage to keep hidden—mostly, even from ourselves!
A pastor had a clock that always ran slow. He used it to
teach a lesson. He put a little sign below his clock: “Don’t blame my hands; my
trouble is much deeper.”
When I was in Korea during the Korean war, most of my
time there I was a low-ranking soldier, and I dug a lot of holes. Everywhere we
went we dug several latrines—one for the enlisted men, another for the
officers, and another for the major and the colonel.
One day I was digging, not a latrine, but a shower
point. I was digging a hole in which to put a pole that would hold up one of
its walls. As was I hacking away at the hard earth, I hit something hard. I
thought it was a rock and I pounded it harder and harder with my shovel, trying
to dislodge it.
But suddenly, as it came into view, I realized that it
wasn’t a rock; it was an unexploded mortar round! It frightened me. It could
have exploded and blown me to smithereens.
I stopped digging and began to cover it up again. I
changed my plan and dug the hole another place. I didn’t want to have anything
to do with that unexploded mortar shell.
This is a parable: If the mortar shell could have
spoken, it might have said, “Why do you shun me. I’ve never done any harm!”
And I would say, “It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what
you’ve got inside of you!”
Our problem is not as much what we’ve done but what
we’ve got inside us.
B. St. Paul, was, before his conversion, a very
religious man. He was zealous for God. And he was satisfied with himself. He
had a clear conscience.
But after St. Paul met Jesus, he had this to say about
himself: “I know that nothing good
dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot
do it. …For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my
members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the
law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue
me from this body of death? (Romans 7:18 and 22).
C. Remember Jesus’s teaching about judgment in Matthew
25. Jesus tells how, as judge, at the end of time, people of all the nations
will come before him, and he will divide them as a shepherd divides his sheep
and goats at the end of the day—the sheep at his right and the goats at his
left. The sheep, on the right, represent the righteous.
It’s the people to his left—represented by the goats—that
I want to talk about.
Jesus will say to them:
“I was
hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me,
and sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
Then they
will answer, “When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or
sick or in prison?”
Then he will
answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it not to one of the least of
these, you did it not to me.”
And these
will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:42-46).
Notice, that Jesus doesn’t accuse these people of any
particular sins. Their failure was simply that they failed to extend practical
love to those in need.
Sin, for
most of us, is not the evil things we have done but the good things we failed
to do.
There is a famous old prayer that goes like this—
Almighty and
most merciful Father,
we have
erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep.
We have
offended against thy holy laws.
We have left
undone those things we ought to have done,
and we have
done those things we ought not to have done,
and there is
no health in us.
II. The truth
is, it is only when we have experienced the grace of God that we can understand
the depth of our sinfulness.
A. The Cross of Christ shows us the seriousness of
sin.
If God could just wave his hand and say, “That’s all
right—you’re forgiven—try to do better,” there wouldn’t have been any need for Jesus
to have died that terrible death on the Cross.
The detailed stories in the gospels about the horror
of the crucifixion impress upon us how much it cost God to grant us
forgiveness.
St. Paul expresses the deepest meaning of the Cross of
Christ this way: “He who knew no sin,
God made to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in
him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
B. Our sense of our sinfulness comes from an
experience of God’s grace—God’s generous love. Our sense of sinfulness comes
from a yearning for God and his goodness.
Grace comes before we recognize our sin.
Grace comes before we confess our sin.
Grace comes before we change our ways—to determine to live
to for God rather than for ourselves.
Maybe the truth is that it is only after we have come
to experience God’s costly love that we can face up to our failings and come to
God for healing.
C. And the grace of God is something more than merely
forgiveness.
We may think of forgiveness as being let off from the
consequences of our misdeeds. People can feel forgiven, and yet be unchanged.
But, with God, forgiveness includes being made right
with God. God begins a new work in us that he will continue our whole life long.
And when the process is complete, we
will—as Jesus expressed it—“ enter into the joy of the Lord.”
D. The experience of God’s grace is the greatest
incentive to look deeply into myself, to humble myself, to own up to our
sinfulness, and to seek God’s healing for our life.
At the end of each day, before I go to sleep, I
confess my sins. The trouble is, most nights I can’t think of much specific to
confess.
I know I’ve fallen short in many ways. I don’t know the
details, but I own my need and ask God for forgiveness and healing.
Sometimes, a part of my prayer is the prayer of the
tax collector Jesus told about who prayed in the Temple. The guilty man simply
cried out, from the depths of his heart: “God
be merciful to me, a sinner!”
That was his prayer, and Jesus approved of that
prayer. Jesus said, “That man went home made right with God!”
CONCLUSION
Here is a prayer I use to search my heart. It is from
a hymn by Charles Wesley, written 275 years ago, but it speaks from my heart—
Show me, as my soul can
bear,
the depth of inbred sin;
all my unbelief declare,
the pride that lurks
within.
Take me, whom thyself hast
bought,
bring into captivity
every high aspiring thought
that would not stoop to
thee.
I conclude with some words from the great prayer of
confession in Psalm 51. If you open your Bible to the middle, you will quickly
find it. I offer it as a prayer from all of us:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
According to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my
sin. …
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
(Psalm 51:1-2
& 10-11)
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