What is Sin? | Pastor Greg Ford

Okay, we're gonna uh step into week two of our series of messages uh that we're calling perfect anger.

Perfect anger.

We're looking at God's anger as it's explained in the Bible.

And this is a very important conversation to do some teaching and learning around because uh the idea of God's anger can be an overwhelming thought to think of God as omnipotent or all-powerful, and then to think of what it would be like if he was angry, and then uh especially if it seems unpredictable or we're not understanding, can be quite confusing.

So I'm taking a few weeks here to really dig into this topic.

Um, we do these series in groups, and so each message kind of builds on the other and they're intertwined.

So if you weren't here last week, I would encourage you to go back and watch it, but I am gonna give just a brief summary.

We we looked at how God's anger is described in the Bible was using an ancient Near Eastern tactic uh that we called anthropomorphism or anthropopathism.

Those are just big words that mean ascribing human anatomy or human emotion to a non-human being like God.

So the idea that God has a hand, the hand of God, uh, or the eye of God, or the ear of God.

Okay, it's not saying making an actual claim that God has an earlobe or an inner ear.

Uh what it's saying is that God's tuned in uh to what's going on, that God hears our prayers.

And so uh the upside of anthropomorphic, anthropopathic language is that it puts God in human terms that we can understand.

Uh the downside is that we have a tendency to ascribe human flaws to a perfect God.

So we think about how we feel when we're experiencing emotions or we're experiencing uh uh anger, and sometimes we might knowingly or unknowingly attribute that to God.

And so we looked at two other words, passion and pathos or pathos.

Passion uh is essentially what humans experience when we get angry intense emotion, fever of the mind.

Um we and we get angry for certain reasons, right?

We get angry because our egos are bruised, uh, we get angry because we lose uh loss of control or fear or a bunch of other reasons, but things that God is not prone to.

So God doesn't get scared uh because he's omnipotent, God uh doesn't get his ego bruised and lash out.

God's not worried about loss of control because he's in full control.

And so we have to look at our own emotions, strip away the rot, and understand God better.

The way that God's anger is portrayed anthropomorphically in the Old Testament is with his nose.

It says that he's hot of nose.

When he gets angry, it's giving a picture of God being like and his face getting red.

So we would say red in the face.

So-and-so got red in the face.

That's essentially what it's saying that God uh is hot in the nose.

So at the same time that we have that visual in our minds, we have to be careful that we don't think of God as flying off the handle like a human being might.

Uh so we ended last week with the idea of what makes God hot in the nose.

What makes God angry, and that's what we're gonna look at today.

Um, two things that when you study the Bible cover to cover, you cannot miss these themes.

They come up over and over and over again.

The two things that make God angry, we're gonna look at closely today.

The first is idolatry, which is the uh I put in there, vertical.

So you think about God's will, God's desire for humanity is shalom, which is right relationship with God, ourselves, and the world around us.

And so idolatry, it represents a fundamental breakdown in the vertical relationship between God and humanity.

Now I'm gonna take you back to Genesis 1.

I want to go back to the very beginning and show you a couple things that will set the tone for the rest of the Bible.

So in Genesis 1, 26, okay, in Genesis 1 throughout the chapter, God it gives us cosmology, in other words, the creation of the world, how the heavens and the earth were created.

And so God creates everything, and then he gets to humans and to create humans, and it says in verse 26, then God said, Let us make mankind, both male and female, in our image, in our likeness.

Now, when we read that, we just think God made humans like him, but you have to think of the original audience.

Okay, this is at Mount Sinai, this is after the children of Israel have been led through the Red Sea out of Egypt, and so God is using Moses to deliver the law, to hit the reset button on their theology.

And one of the things that they were gonna have to detangle themselves from was idolatry.

And with the idols, the belief around the idols was that they had the image of the gods.

So Baal, for example, a Canaanite god, he had a lightning bolt in his hand, in the physical statue or the image of Baal.

He had a lightning bolt in his hand because he was a storm god.

And then he had other symbolic things.

He had horns like a bull.

All of these things represented his character.

But then their belief was also that that statue or that idol localized the presence of Baal.

So, in other words, you're like, that's not just a statue, like Baal's in that statue.

So if you were around the statue of Baal or an idol of Baal, you wouldn't deface that statue, you wouldn't mess with that statue because you're like Baal's in there.

So in Genesis 1, when it says that people, humans, mankind, is made in the image of God, it's not only saying that we resemble God, it's saying that we bear his image like what they would have thought about idols.

It's like, no, God doesn't need a statue because he put his image in you.

So how that would affect you would be you would look at yourself differently because I'm an image bearer of God.

But what's also really important is the person sitting next to you is an image bearer of God.

The person living across the world, everybody in this says in Genesis 1.26, mankind.

Every human being is an image bearer of God, so it would absolutely affect how I think about other people.

Um here's more idolatry language embedded in Genesis the first few books.

Verse 3, I'm sorry, chapter 3, verse 5.

This is when the serpent is trying to get them to disobey God and starts with deceit and lies, and it says in verse 5, it says, For God, the serpent says to eat, for God knows that when you eat from it, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, your eyes will be opened.

Your eyes will be opened.

Again, we read that, and we think that means you'll be enlightened.

But it's it's idolatry language.

So in the ancient Near East, whenever an idol was made, a statue was made, they would have a ceremony that would awaken the senses of the idol.

So their ears would be open to be able to hear, their eyes would be open to be able to see, their mouths would be open to be able to eat, and so the sacrifices people brought fed the gods, so to speak.

So when it's saying your eyes will be open, again, this is more idolatry language.

That we can either trust Yahweh as the one who determines right and wrong, we look to him, uh, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, isn't that you won't be able to determine right from wrong.

It's that you will look to God as your ultimate source and ruler, not taking on moral autonomy and letting your your flesh determine for yourself, you know, situate you know, by yourself which thing is right or which is wrong.

We're ultimately gonna look to God to give us those answers.

And so again, this is idolatry language.

So this is super important to understand that when you see idolatry, if you don't understand it right, it's gonna be weird to you because you'll read the Old Testament and you'll go, why does the creator of the universe have this strange obsession with little wooden statues?

And it almost reads like petty insecurity.

It almost reads like uh that God has this fragile ego and gets incredibly jealous when humanity doesn't pay enough attention to him.

Uh and again, what is that doing?

It's projecting human insecurity upward, right?

And human jealousy, it would be like if you were in a relationship with someone who demanded that you only look at them.

And if you pay attention to anybody else, they fly into a rage and start smashing your stuff.

Okay, we would not call that love, we would call that toxic.

So, how is divine jealousy different from human jealousy in that way?

Okay, so human jealousy is primarily rooted by possessive insecurities.

In other words, I'm afraid of being replaced.

I'm afraid that this person I care about uh will actually leave me for somebody better.

That I question if I'm good enough to keep my partner, and I'm I'm I'm scared that they'll move on.

This can this happens certainly uh as an instinct in in romantic relationships, but this shows up in anywhere that you have strong attachment to somebody.

This happens for parents who enjoy the connection that they have with their child.

They enjoy playing a role in their life, and as they get older, you have to come to grips with, okay, they used to come to me for this, now they're coming to somebody else.

And and so there can be a jealousy where you're jockeying in position for feeling like you're losing your sister, losing your brother, losing your son, losing your daughter.

And again, a lot of those are driven by our possessive insecurities.

Please understand, divine jealousy is 0% driven by insecurity.

God's not worried that a statue of Baal is better than him, is more powerful than him.

Uh, he's not personally threatened.

It's driven by covenant loyalty.

God made a covenant not because he's trying to lock us into a contract to boost his ego.

He's doing this because it's for our good.

And ultimately it's part of his plan for us to be in right relationship with him, ourselves, and each other.

Okay, so um that begs the question why does bowing to a statue lead to societal collapse?

This is very important.

It's like, okay, how how what's the chain of events?

How how does bowing to a statue, how does that end up uh causing a society to fall apart?

And so again, when we move past the idea that this is an ego thing for God, you can see it more clearly.

It's humanity actively, idolatry is humanity actively attaching itself to a false and inherently destructive system.

Okay, how does that happen?

Well, when you worship the God, let's go to the ancient Near East, let's go back there for a second and pick on them, and then we're gonna see it kind of applies to us too.

Actually, it really applies to us.

But let's just start there.

If we're in the ancient Near East and the surrounding nations and we bow to gods like Baal or Molech, okay, you're worshiping a fertility and weather deity.

Okay, now what's the big deal with the weather?

Well, the weather, don't think weather, think economy.

They're an agrarian culture, agricultural.

If we don't get rain, okay, we don't have crops.

Number one, it's a threat to our survival, but two, it's a threat to our economy.

Okay, we're trying to be able to trade with other nations.

This is what we have to offer.

And so the idea that they're, you know, economy's not bad, fertility is not bad, again, also tied to our sense of security.

But what happens is these securities and this idea of security and prosperity become such a craving that then it makes them vulnerable to these deceptions of these false gods.

And then what happens then?

Well, theology dictates sociology.

In other words, what I believe about God ultimately spills out into how I behave, how I act, how I treat other people.

I heard somebody say one time something profound, they said, you know, you're making God into your image when he just happens to hate all the same people you do.

So if you really closely examine your behavior, especially how you treat people, it is a diagnostic for your theology.

So now think about it.

If you're following Baal or Moloch, you believe the universe is controlled by a chaotic God who requires blood and sexual rituals to ensure that the rain comes down and the crops don't fail.

Okay?

So of course that's gonna cause you to treat your neighbors transactionally and violently because you believe the gods treat your neighbors transactionally and violently, or they're treating you that way.

So you start believing that human flourishing requires exploitation.

Right?

So this led, again, historically, we love to look at the history and the literature to build our theology.

You look historically, the idolatry led to systems of oppression, temple prostitution, and eventually the ultimate horror of child sacrifice.

So, just to say it plainly, God's jealousy is not about his bruised ego, it's about his refusal to allow humanity to attach itself to a parasitic system that will eventually consume them.

Um, think about again this idea of shedding human blood and sacrifice to appease the gods.

You remember the story of Abraham?

God makes a covenant with Abraham, I'm gonna make a great nation out of you.

One problem: he has no kids.

And he's getting older, he's beyond childbearing years, his wife is beyond childbearing years, he gets to a hundred years old, eventually has a son Isaac.

So Isaac is not only his pride and joy as a son, like anybody who has a kid, is amazing.

But this is connected to God's covenant and promise.

So there's this really, it's almost cringy story until you see it for the beauty that it that it is.

That God says, I want you to sacrifice Isaac.

I want you to sacrifice Isaac.

If you've ever read that story, you're almost a little bit disoriented as to why Abraham really didn't flinch.

He's like, Okay, I'll go do it.

Why?

Well, because the ancient Near Eastern surrounding nations, the chaotic gods, the theological perversions of the gods, required for you to prove your loyalty, to prove how serious and how loyal you are to the gods by being willing to put to death anything, especially the thing you love most, your children.

So that this happened.

They killed their children.

So God says, I want you to kill your son.

So he takes Isaac up, they go up Mount Moriah, he sets up a sacrifice, he's like, Isaac, lay down for a minute.

Isaac's like, Dad, what are we doing?

He's like, Don't worry about it, you'll find out in a second.

Isaac lays down, he takes his knife, okay?

He takes it, he brings it, he's he's ready to follow through.

Why?

Because this is what he believes about the cosmos.

This is what he believes about the gods.

He's still he's still trying to unlearn bad theology.

So he takes the knife, he's going to really he's going to stab his son, and God says, Do I have your attention now?

I'm not that God.

That's a perversion, that's a distortion, that's Mullock, that's Baal, that's not me.

I'm not the God that has you stabbing your children.

I'm not the God who has you shedding blood for me.

I'm the God who sheds my blood for you.

I'm the God who sacrifices for you.

I'm the God who sends my son, he who had no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God.

So what you have here is God showing and cleaning up in a profound way what was a theological distortion.

So this is what is such a big deal about idols.

Uh the second thing that makes God's nose hot or that makes God angry is injustice or horizontal.

So the vertical relationship with God, and then we've already kind of started talking about it, but how what I believe about God will affect how I behave towards other people.

Let's go back to Genesis, and I'm gonna show you something very cool.

I hope that you can never unsee after we get done with this.

All right, Genesis 2, at the end of Genesis 2, the very last verse, if you if you have your Bible and you're looking there, you'll see that I'm telling you the truth.

Verse 25 is the last verse.

And it says, Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

They were naked, they felt no shame.

Now, the Hebrew word here that's used for naked is the word arumim.

Arumim.

And there are other words that are used even throughout the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament for basically having no clothes or being naked.

Uh a rumim or arum is one of them.

And this one has more of a connotation.

It's it's not so much about being unclothed, it's about being vulnerable.

It's about being vulnerable.

So notice this is they were exposed or they were naked, they were vulnerable, but they weren't ashamed.

Most of the time when we are vulnerable, we are self-aware because we know somebody might take advantage of us or or might, you know, uh, might exploit our insecurity.

But they weren't, they didn't feel that way.

They felt safe.

They felt safe and comfortable in their own skin, comfortable with each other and comfortable with God and their environment.

So they were exposed or they were vulnerable, but they felt no shame.

If you go one verse later, which is chapter 3, verse 1, it says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the other animals God had made.

Isaiah 3:1

If you look at the word for crafty in Hebrew, it's the word arum.

So naked, they were naked, arumim, and crafty is arum.

So this is a play on words.

Now, keep in mind, when the Old Testament was given originally, for a long time it was given, it was verbal.

So before they wrote it down, they were storytelling, and it's lost on us when we read it because we don't catch the link between, you know, vulnerable, naked, and crafty.

But when you're talking arumim, arum, right in the next sentence, okay, they would have caught the relationship or the link for years.

This is a big part of the point, that the original deception was that the serpent took advantage of the exposure, took advantage of the vulnerability, understood their vulnerability better than they did, and took them through a series of questions and deceptions that ultimately exploited their vulnerability.

So one of the things we see that God punishes early when he punishes the serpent was that he saw vulnerability and exploited it.

And this pattern now you're gonna see all throughout the rest of the Bible, uh, and this is something that makes God extremely hot in the nose.

Okay, this is a pattern throughout scripture that God is angry when people exploit other people's vulnerability.

I'll tell you how angry.

Two thousand plus times in the Bible, it either says God's angry about it or commands us not to do it.

Two thousand times.

You would have to turn a blind eye to two thousand different references in the Bible to miss the point that God cares greatly.

Then when someone is in a state of vulnerability, again, it'll use it doesn't always say vulnerable, but it might say the poor, it might say the widow, it might say uh someone who's sick or a foreigner or something, somebody who's at a disadvantage, and it says, do not exploit them, do not take advantage of them.

Um, okay, let's look at, I'm gonna show you some really intense language.

This is in in uh Exodus 22.

Exodus 22, this is God is giving the judicial law.

In other words, here's how you administer justice as God sees it.

And look what he says here in Exodus 22, 21.

It says, do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

Now, God is not only telling them what to do, he's teaching them how to think.

Let's think about this.

Let's think of the tendency we have as human beings.

We all, both consciously and subconsciously, are categorizing machines.

In other words, we categorize nonstop.

Categorizing is how you essentially make sense of the world, it's how you organize.

Some of you have a real strong need to categorize or organize, and and and in your home, you got one of those label makers, and you labeled everything.

You put you stamped your kids' foreheads with a label.

All right, you labeled like a toothbrush, right?

It's like, oh, okay, good.

I didn't know I was supposed to do with this.

Okay, the the idea of organizing, but we categorize nonstop because our brains need to make sense of the world, so we map patterns.

So we have categories for colors, we have categories for cars, okay, we have categories.

For food, uh, your job is it has a bunch of categories.

We could go on and on.

We have so many categories in our heads, we do it both instinctively and on purpose.

So we do this for inanimate objects, but we also do it for human beings, right?

We categorize people, uh, color, we categorize people, culture, we categorize people, gender, we categorize people uh politically, we categorize people where they live, what language they speak.

You fill out demographic information, it's giving categories.

This is not wrong, it's a normal thing to do, but what you have to understand is when it comes to human beings, if you're not careful and intentional, categorizing can lead to depersonalizing.

So it's okay.

We are you're like you could look at me and I could look at you, and we could put us each other into some categories.

That's not like a sin, but it could open a door if I'm not careful.

I go, oh, she's just one of those.

He's just one of these.

So to categorize, if you're not careful, if you're not intentional, if you're not ready and one step ahead without even knowing it, you took somebody and you categorize them, you depersonalized them.

You didn't fully dehumanize them yet, but you reduced them to a category, and none of us like that.

None of us like that.

If you've ever been put in a category, okay, you looked at me and you you put me in a category and you don't know that you don't know the personal nature of me.

This this is what God is doing here in Exodus 22 when he says, when you look at the foreigner, okay, you're gonna look at somebody who uh is from another place.

He says, Don't depersonalize them.

How does he help them do that?

He said, remember, you were just in Egypt and you were a foreigner.

Remember what it was like.

You were a real person, but they looked at you and all they saw was your race.

All they saw was your culture, all they saw was something different.

You spoke a different language than they did, and you knew how that felt.

So make sure now that you've got a promised land and you've got something, when you see a foreigner, you don't do the same thing.

Remember that they're a person like you are.

So the the process of not dehumanizing is understanding categorizing is gonna happen.

But once I start depersonalizing, it's a slippery slope to dehumanizing.

And he said, if you get to the level of dehumanization, you'll start oppressing and mistreating someone because you'll think they're a less human than you.

Uh he takes this even further.

Oh, oh, oh no, this is good, by the way.

Okay, so so so no, seriously, hang with me.

Genesis three, when the serpent shows up, you you can fact-check me on this.

You don't have time now, but go later and check me on this.

In Genesis 3, when the serpent shows up and says, starts talking about God, it only uses the word Elohim.

And Elohim is like the uh the title of the role of God.

It's not personal.

Yahweh is the personal name of God.

So in Genesis 2, in the previous chapter, 11 times God is referred to as Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God, the Lord God.

Look how many times it says the Lord God, eleven times in chapter two.

So Adam and Eve related to God not just as God title, but Yahweh personal.

And so it was the Yahweh, personal God, all through chapter two.

And in chapter three, what the serpent does is takes away the name Yahweh and just says Elohim, Elohim, to depersonalize was the first step in deceit.

Um, when you see, uh let's go back to Exodus 22, because it says about the foreigner, but look what it says here, verse 22.

So Exodus 22, 22.

Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless.

In their culture, uh uh, a widow and a fatherless child were totally exposed.

They were arumim, they were vulnerable.

It says, if you see a widow and a fatherless child, do not take advantage.

Look at this, verse 23.

If you do, and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.

And my nose will get hot, my anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will become widows, and your children fatherless.

Okay, God.

Uh we get it.

Your nose is hot, okay?

Let's let's dig into this.

Because you read something like this, it's like, whoa, what do I make of that?

Because it sounds like God is saying, I'm up in heaven with a sword, and if you mistreat, okay, then I'm gonna kill you, and then now your wife and kids will be in the same position.

Okay, which is um that would be problematic because we'd be like, Well, my mom taught me don't two wrongs don't make a right.

So, what did the kid and the wife do to deserve this?

That now they're widows.

How does how does another widow and another fatherless child make anything better?

So you'd have to go, is God making that claim?

God's not making that claim.

He's doing the same thing he just did in the other, which is when he said, Don't forget you were a foreigner, he's forcing this man who's in a position of power who could exploit vulnerability.

He's forcing him to imagine himself dead, his wife without a husband, and his children exposed.

And now this one over here who I've been looking at, going, I can exploit them because I'm in a position of power.

I could take advantage in one way or another, or every way, if I want, and no one's gonna do anything about it.

And so you're getting ready to prey on someone, and then he says, I want you to imagine you're dead, and I want you to look at your wife and kids exposed.

I want you to switch and go, you're out of the picture, and there's a new man.

There's a new man who's looking at your wife and your kids the same way that you're looking at this lady and her kids.

So that's what I want you to imagine.

So he's forcing them to think about not only the right thing to do, but how God thinks.

And he says, by the way, you think you think that they don't have a father?

They do.

It's me.

And when they cry out, I'll hear it.

So don't think you can get away with it.

Uh I'll keep going.

It says in in verse 25, it says, if you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal.

One of the issues they had at that time, we're gonna look at this more in a few weeks, but that people were taking advantage of poverty, and instead of people with power and resources and wealth trying to help people to become free from that, to be out of it, they actually found creative, crafty ways to exploit the poverty, to keep people in poverty, and then to capitalize on it.

So he says, if you're in that position, he says, don't treat it like a business deal, charge no interest.

And if you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering the neighbor has.

Okay, so here's the thing if you're using your cloak as collateral, that means you are broke, broke, broke.

Okay, you've sold everything off.

The last thing I have is the thing that keeps me warm at night.

So this is the I'm down to the bare bones.

And so some people would give a cloak as collateral, and he says, that's fine.

They give the cloak as collateral.

He said, But understand that's what's keeping them warm at night, and so don't just take that cloak.

I want you to think about if you don't take it back to them, they're gonna be shivering at night, trying to get a good night of sleep so they can get up and work to pay you back.

So put some honor on their life.

He says, Don't have them come get it from you, rich guy.

You go give it back.

You march your rich rear end over to his house, knock on his door, and go, here's your cloak, have a good night of sleep, I'll be back in the morning.

You want me to come get it?

No, no, no, I'll come get it.

You're putting dignity back on their life, and you what are you doing?

You're you're you're personalizing this person.

You're not just going, here's somebody who's needy.

And he says, uh, if the cloak is the only covering the neighbor has, he says, What can they sleep in?

When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

You're gonna see all throughout the Old Testament, God has special instruction for kings.

Why?

Well, because kings have an unusual amount of power and authority to either really help a lot of people or really hurt a lot of people.

Psalm 72, 1 through 4 says, Give your love of justice to the king, oh God.

Give your love of justice to the king, oh God, and righteousness to the king's sons.

King's son, help him judge your people in the right way.

Let the poor always be feed treated fairly.

May the mountains yield prosperity for all, and may the hills be fruitful.

Help him to defend the poor and to rescue the children of the needy.

So the vertical and the horizontal responsibility of the kings are completely intertwined, they're inseparable.

Of course, this is why when Jesus shows up, he makes this announcement in Luke 4.

He opens up the scroll of Isaiah, verse 18, he says, The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

So, what what we have when we see Jesus, right?

He shows up as the fulfillment of God's covenant.

He shows up as like Israel, but fulfilling where Israel was unfaithful, he was faithful.

So he crosses through the waters of baptism like the Red Sea.

He does 40 days in the wilderness like they did 40 years.

He goes to Mount Sinai, like where they got where they received the law, and he gives a sermon on the mount.

And he says, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

By fulfill it, he doesn't mean to complete the teaching.

He meant to show you how to do it.

So Jesus, who at the Sermon on the Mount, the text says, is surrounded by vulnerable people.

He's surrounded by people who are sick, people who are poor, people who are blind, people who are lame, people who are on stretchers, people who had a need.

And he's showing not only through his miracles his power, but he's showing the priority of God.

And so when he's done with the Sermon on the Mount, what does he do?

But he goes and he touches a leper, somebody who's vulnerable and in need.

He goes across the Sea of Galilee to the demoniac, somebody who had been cast off by the community and society, and he sets them free.

And over and over again, whether it's the woman with the issue of blood or the woman at the well, person after person, he shows the heart of God.

So what do we do?

What do we do about this?

I want to give you a little chart I made up that I think will help us a little bit.

It's we're trying to hit the mark.

The word for sin that we have in the Old Testament, one of the words for sin that talks about sin, is to miss the mark.

It's actually used in other places for archers or or uh projectile warriors.

Uh so the idea of sinning being to miss the mark in some way.

Go ahead and bring this chart up.

I want you to think about this, okay?

What's the goal?

Well, the goal that we have is to do the right thing for the right reason.

Leave this up for a second.

Right thing for the right reason.

So, in other words, what's the right thing?

Well, one right thing I could do would be to give, to give you something generously.

And what would be the right reason?

Would be to help you.

In fact, I might give, it's a good thing, and do it anonymously.

You don't even know it was me.

So you don't owe me a thing.

I don't want to leverage anything.

I just want to help you.

Or to give to God as an act of worship.

Okay?

So right thing, right reason, bullseye.

It starts getting gray when I do the right thing for the wrong reason.

In other words, I give, but I give out of greed.

I give trying to buy God off.

I give because I want God to bless my business.

I want because I heard a preacher say, you can't outgive God.

So I'll give him one, he'll give me two, and then I'll give him two, and he'll give me four, and pretty soon it's, you know, I'm the richest guy in the world.

So if I'm doing it because I have a greed issue, then I'm doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

I start to enter into some gray area.

Or you could do the wrong thing for the right reason.

In other words, you steal to help someone.

Okay, stealing bad, stealing's bad.

To help someone, well, that's what Robin Hood did.

You know, he's a pretty good guy.

It's a great movie, by the way.

The cartoon is the best one, but you you get the idea.

You could do the wrong thing for the right reason.

And if you closely look at the Old Testament law, you'll see the judicial system makes room for people who do the wrong thing for the right reason.

There's, again, it's gray, it's situational.

That's why we have trials.

Okay?

And then, of course, way missing the mark is I do the wrong thing for the right reason.

I steal because I'm greedy.

When it comes to our lives and trying to hit the mark, it's going to require a process of repentance.

Repentance, in its purest sense, isn't just I did the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Although, if you do that, repentance would be a sense of regret, remorse, apology, and then change.

The sincerity of the apology is proven in the follow-through.

So I change.

But there's a whole gray area in there that maybe I have good motives, but I'm doing the wrong thing.

Like the Apostle Paul, who was persecuting the church, thinking he was defending God, and on the Damascus road, God said, Why are you persecuting me?

Paul's like, Excuse me, why are you persecuting me?

Oh, all of a sudden, repentance.

He realized I'm doing the right thing or wrong thing for the right reason.

When we think about repentance, what about that gray area where you might be doing the wrong thing for the right reason or the right thing for the wrong reason?

Lord, help me to see more clearly, to see where I might be getting it wrong.

And what I believe is, and what the Bible teaches, is that if we will come to Him and we will pray and we will, like David says, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me, put me on trial and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me, Lord, into the way everlasting.

I believe that if we'll come to God, He'll help us to see and to correct these areas and to put us in alignment.

But any area where we have an idle, a vertical breach that ultimately bothers God because of what it ends up doing ultimately to the horizontal, we need to ask God to help us to see that as clearly as we possibly can.

So let's take a moment, let's quiet our hearts, and let's allow the Lord to begin speaking to us now.

God, we come to you in Jesus' name.

We thank you, Lord, that in moments like this you cut through the noise to speak to us.

Lord, we are sober and serious about the things that you're serious about.

The things that anger you, that make you hot in the nose.

And Lord, we understand what your anger is not.

It's not erratic, it's not ego-driven, it is predictable, and it is connected to your unfailing love.

So I pray, God, that as we open up our minds and are willing to see what you want to show us, that you would help us to see into the gray of our lives, to ultimately repent and to change our minds, to align ourselves to you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.