Sermon manuscript:
John the Baptist testifies: “Look, the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world.” We are beginning our Lent series tonight
with this witness’s testimony: “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world.”
The main thing here is the action. Sin is being removed. The
way that it is removed is by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, who is Jesus.
The only way that sin can be taken away or removed is by the sacrifice of
Jesus. This is not to say, however, that there are no other ways of dealing with sin—not removing sin, but
dealing with it.
There are a lot of ways we can try to cope with sin. The
most common and perhaps most effective way is to forget about it. In each of
our lives we have a whole basement full of things that we have done. We all
have done things that we would be deeply ashamed of if they were brought into
the light of day. We’ve seen things we should not have seen. We’ve said things
we shouldn’t have said. We’ve fantasized about things altogether too much. Why?
Because we thought that such things can never be found out by others. Whenever
we’ve thought that there would be no consequences to our actions, we have been
much more likely to do bad things. After the fact all this stuff gets put into
the basement of our subconscious. Like garbage, if it’s out of sight, it’s out
of mind.
In addition to the things that we have done, we’ve also had
things done to us. A lot of people
don’t know that being on the receiving end of sin does damage. We sense that us
sinning does damage. But being sinned against does damage too. Children are
damaged by their parents’ sins. Those who are slandered are damaged by those
who make fun of them. Victims of scams and theft are often deeply ashamed.
Being a victim of sexual sin leaves tremendous scars.
This stuff as well can get stuffed into the basement: Out of
sight, out of mind. Maybe the main floors of our conscious life are kept clean
enough, respectable enough. But, for heaven’s sakes, you don’t want anybody to
go into the basement. Or maybe there’s so much stuff that is crammed into the
basement it starts to fill up the rest of your life. Then there’s no denying
it. There’s no pretense that’s left. Despair takes hold. You could pretend when
you were more or less successful at forgetting your sins and forgetting your
being sinned against, but it can get to the point where you can’t keep the
garbage at bay.
Although it is very unpleasant to run out of room in the
basement so that your sins start to clog up your life, it’s not a bad thing to
have happen to us. We can cope with sin by forgetting about it and thereby go
on with our life so as to have contentment and happiness. But when sin crowds
into our life we can start to understand how bad sin is. The better we are at
forgetting our sin, or coping with our sin, the worse off we are at
understanding it. What needs to be understood is that sin is terrible and death
dealing. The sins we commit are like
this. The sins that are committed against
us are like this. Sin has power.
It is highly significant that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away our sin, as
John the Baptist testifies. A person might think that since God is God he can
do anything he wants. Since God can do anything he wants he can just snap his
fingers and make sin go away. That’s not how it is, though. The Son of God is
sacrificed. Blood is shed. Punishment is carried out. Death happens. The burden
is so heavy upon this Son of God that he fervently prays that he not have to
drink the cup. He sweats blood. He cries out, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” This is how sin is taken away. This is how sin is removed.
How can we think, then, that forgetting about our sin will
work? How can we image that it is a sufficient way to cope with the things that
we have done and the things that have been done to us? God died to set us free
from our sin. We can’t truly handle sin in any other way than through the God
who died for that sin. Every other way of trying to cope with our sin is always
going to be some variation of what the serpent said to Eve. Eve told the
serpent that they would die if they even touched the fruit. The serpent
responded, “You won’t surely die. It will be fine. Don’t worry about
it.”
To use the analogy that we’ve been working with tonight:
“Your basement’s full of stuff. But it’s fine. Nobody will know. No problem.
Just make sure that you keep it hidden.” But do you know, then, who you will
never want to have over for supper? God can see your mess, even if your fellow
flesh and blood human being cannot. You won’t want to have God over to your
house just as you wouldn’t want to have company see things that would make you
ashamed.
The devil’s lie is bad enough. What’s worse is that those
who believe it can never be comfortable with God. For comfort to remain the
sins have to stay hidden. For stuff to stay hidden you can’t have anybody know.
To keep from anybody knowing, you better stay away from God. So the logic goes.
And the devil can achieve his ends this way. If you want to stay at arm’s
length from God forever, then you will be granted your wish. God doesn’t drag
anybody into heaven by their hair.
On the other hand, God loves you. That’s strange, you might
think, and you’d be right. God knows what’s in the basement. God knows what you
managed to hide from yourself. And yet God wants to be with you. To his supper
he calls us all. Therefore he takes away the sin of the world. Sin loses its
power because Jesus took all that sin can do upon himself. “Look, the Lamb
of God who removes the sin of the world.” This statement is true.
Although this statement is true, we are left with something
important to do. We must believe that it is true. Of course, our believing that
it is true has absolutely nothing to do with what God has already done. Jesus
removing the sin of the whole world is over and done with. Him rising from the
dead is proof of it. But if we do not believe that it is true for us, and for
our own basement, then we are still going to keep God at arm’s length. God
wants us to come to supper. He has removed all our sin. But if we insist that
we are still not clean, (which is a horrible lie, by the way), then we’ll keep
our distance.
Here’s something strange that we all naturally do. We go
from one extreme to the other. First of all we assume that we are fine. We’ve
got plenty of room in the basement. We can carry on and enjoy life. Our sins
aren’t that bad. Plus we’ve got things to look forward to in life. We resist
the truth of being sinners. We minimize the importance and consequences of our
sins.
If we somehow have our minds changed about this, then we go
to the other extreme. We hate the garbage. We hate ourselves. We get engulfed
by guilt and shame and assume that there’s no way out. We think it is Christian
to punish ourselves until we feel that we have punished ourselves enough.
This is no good. It’s very presumptuous if nothing else. Who
are you compared to Jesus? Your punishments are supposed to work better than
Jesus’s? God doesn’t want us to stay in a frame of mind where we hate
ourselves. Hate yourself, hate your sin. Fine. Then move on.
God wants us to know that we are sinners. He also want us to
believe that are sins are forgiven. He wants us to believe this simply because
it is true. “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Believe it or not, God wants to be with you, and he wants you to be with him.
That is why he sent his Son to remove the sin of the world. If sin is removed,
then there is no garbage on the main floor, neither is there anything in the
basement. Sin has lost its power.
No comments:
Post a Comment