He Is Good | How Sin Works | Mark 6:14-29 | Coleton Segars

Uh we are in a series working through the Gospel of Mark and have been in it for a bit.

And I finally did like the outline to see where we'd end up and finish this series, and it looks like it'll be Christmas of 2025.

And so then we'll be done with the the we'll be through the whole book of uh the Gospel of Mark.

Um and if we keep having snow days, then it will be January of 2026.

But we're in this series titled He is Good because Mark says, Hey, I have something to write to you.

I want to tell you about something.

He's writing to Christians primarily, writing to them and saying, Hey, uh, I'm gonna tell you the beginning of the good news about Jesus because these Christians are in Rome and they're being persecuted and they're dealing with a lot of difficulty.

Very similar to uh just life in a post-Christian world that we live today.

They were in that particular space in Rome, they were the Christians were seen as the atheists because they didn't worship all the gods.

Um, and uh so it was just an odd space for them to be in, trying to figure out how to follow Jesus in a pagan culture.

And uh and so for us, I think there's a lot of truth to that for us today.

Um before I say that, I had like uh a billion announcements run up to me at the last second I want to share with you.

One, the bathrooms are broken here, but there's some there.

Don't find a corner and just make your peace there.

Don't do that.

There's other bathrooms in the back.

Um, so you can go to those.

Don't use those though, because uh they're they're broken.

Okay, other announcements at the end.

All right, he is good.

The text for today is uh a really light, easy text.

You're gonna love it.

It's definitely not difficult at all.

Um, but this is Mark 6, 14 through 29, I believe.

This is what Mark writes.

King Herod heard about this, meaning Jesus.

For Jesus' name had become well known.

Some were saying John the Bapt uh were saying John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why Jesus is performing these miraculous powers are at work within him.

Others said, No, he's Elijah.

And still others claimed he's a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.

But when Herod heard this, he said, John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead.

For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested and had him bound and put in prison.

He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, whom he had married.

For John had been saying to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.

So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him, but she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man.

When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled, yet he liked to listen to him.

And finally the opportune time came, and on his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders, and the leading men of Galilee.

When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guest.

And the king said to the girl, Ask me for anything you want, and I'll give it to you.

And he promised her with an oath, Whatever you ask, I will give you up to half my kingdom.

She went out and said to her mother, What shall I ask for?

The head of John the Baptist, she answered.

At once the girl hurried in to the king with a request, I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

The king was greatly distressed, but because of the oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her, so he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John's head.

The man went, beheaded John in prison, and brought back his head on a platter.

He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother.

On hearing this, John's disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks, be the body.

Nice, again, light text today, very easy.

Everybody loves to talk about beheadings.

I'm going to talk about sin today, because you can really just look at Herod's life and just trace one sin through his life and just watch the ravaging and the destruction that it does in his life and the lives of others.

Now, in a church, when people start talking about sin or you feel like somebody's going to talk about sin, you know, you maybe you respond in one of two ways.

One's like, oh, well, of course we're at church, this guy's going to berate me or whatever about my sin.

And I don't want to do that, but I am going to go hard in the paint trying to tell you that sin is bad.

But when I was growing up as a non-Christian in a non-Christian home, I remember I was probably eight, nine, ten years old, somewhere around Teddy's age, my son's age.

And we grew up in Atlanta and we were walking through Piedmont Park in Atlanta, and standing on a rock was some person.

I assume that person was a Christian or some version of a religious person, because they had signs and a picket and like fire on the sign, and it was like, you're all gonna burn.

And I had no idea what any of this was because I didn't grow up in the church, and I was like, I think this is what church is, I don't want anything to do with this.

This is terrifying.

But we sat there for a second and just watched the guy, and he was just like just angry, just vehement, just shouting at folks and calling them sinners and this and that, and all these different things.

And um, it was not compelling in any way, it was terrifying for an eight-year-old.

Um and I just remember thinking, like, man, if that's if that's what it's like, I don't, I just I don't want anything to do with that.

That doesn't sound great at all.

It sounds like something that you you don't like me, God must not like me, Jesus must not like me, I don't want anything to do with that.

So that that was my first experience with somebody talking about sin, and I just want to put you at ease.

That is not my goal today.

I do want to talk about sin uh in a way that shows the dangers of it, but I don't want it to be something where I speak, you leave, and you wind up thinking all he did was call out sin and say that I'm a bad person or anything like that.

That was my experience.

I don't want to do that here.

Uh as much as this is, I hope, is a warning for you, it was a it's a warning for me.

And I want to take it as that.

And so, with all of that and that background, let's dive into this thing.

What I want to do today is I want to look really at one sin, just one, uh, in Herod's life, and then track it and see what it does in his life.

And then I just want to figure out what does that teach us?

Here's what sin did in his life.

What does that teach us about sin in our lives?

And so, uh, track one sin.

The sin that I want to look at is Herodias, this woman.

Verse 17 says that uh this was a sin.

Herod had married Herodias, his brother's wife.

Not only was this ultimately an adulterous affair that he moved into into his marriage, um, Mark Strauss says that Herodias was also the daughter of Aristobulus, one of the sons of Herod the Great.

So she was also a niece of Herod, Antipas.

And so in Jewish eyes, Herod's marriage to Herodias would have been both adulterous and incestuous.

Strong start for a story in the Bible.

So he committed adultery and incest, marrying this woman, and he just has to have her, and so he marries this lady.

And so here's what the sin did in his life and the life of those around him.

The first, there's a couple of extra biblical things that we just know from history, things that aren't described in the scriptures, but that you just know about from history, and you can look it up.

It's you can Google it if you'd like.

But one, at this particular time, Herod was already married.

He already had a wife from this, the daughter of a Nebetan king, um, and he was married to her.

But Herodias didn't mind being, you know, committing incest and you know, sleeping with her brother's brother.

Um, but she didn't want to marry a polygamist.

That was too far.

Let's pump the brakes on polygamy.

And so what Herodias was like, hey, I'm into the other and the other, but I don't want to do polygamy, so I need you to divorce your wife, your current wife.

And so Herod, being the strong man that he is, is like, okay, I'll do it, whatever you say.

And so that's what he does.

So he divorces his current wife, which really disgraces her, really angers the Nibetan king, and we'll get to how that comes back and haunts him later in his life.

Then, from the text, this sin of marrying Herodias.

Verse 18 says that it leads him to being called out publicly over his sin.

So there's a little bit of shame in that, a little bit of conviction over that.

The sin led him to be to putting John into prison just to shut him up and to keep him quiet.

So that really hurt John.

That doesn't feel good to be thrown into prison.

Verse 19 says it caused Herodias to hate John, and she nursed a grudge against him, wanting to kill him.

Verse 20 says that this sin then led to a sharp disagreement with his wife, and Herod has to actually work against Herodias to keep John alive.

So I don't know what your marriage is like, but if your wife's trying to kill somebody, or your husband's trying to kill somebody, and you're having to fight against that, that's not the best marriage counseling issue to walk into your therapist with.

Um and so that's what that's one thing that they're dealing with.

Verse 21, Herodias schemes against her own husband.

Maybe your marriage is filled with scheming, I don't know.

But Heredi, she schemes against her husband to trap him into killing John.

Uh my wife traps me just into like buying groceries or doing the dishes.

It's a little different.

Um verse 22.

Verse 22, uh, he lusts after a 12 to 14-year-old girl, which is really his cousinslash stepdaughter at this point.

And so one sin begets another sin, and it just this lust thing just keeps leading to the grossness of this thing.

Uh verse 22, in his lust-fueled state, he offers to give this girl whatever she wants.

Then in verse 25, he's trapped into having to kill John, and then in verse 26, it fills him with distress because he knows that he's been trapped, and this that word, the Greek word distressed.

It's the same word that they use to describe what Jesus feels in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he's he's like literally sweating drops of blood.

Like he is really, like this thing that's happened in Herod's life has led him to such great distress that it's almost like exactly what Jesus feels in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Just like, I do not want to do this, this is agony for me, but I'm trapped and I have to do this thing.

Verse 27 and 28, forced to kill John, which is something he doesn't want to do.

Sin takes more from him.

He's like, I'll give you half my kingdom.

It's like, actually, uh, sin's gonna require a lot more than that.

You need to kill somebody that you don't want to kill.

And then in verse 16, which is all the way back at the top, we learn that Herod is actually haunted by this decision, and he has been haunted by this decision for some time.

That he can't let it go.

It says, when Herod heard about Jesus, he immediately doesn't think, oh, Jesus must be a different person.

Because he's haunted by the sin and everything that's happened in his life, he's like, Oh my gosh, John's come back from the dead.

Like this thing has stolen his peace and it's taken something from him.

And so that's what we see in the scriptures.

But then beyond that, if you just follow Herodias's and that sin, you just follow it through his life.

The Nibetan princess that he divorced goes to dad and is like, hey, he divorced me, and they're like, Okay, fine, treaty's off.

And then I think we have this quote here.

Uh, the Nibetan princess uh is divorced, fled to her father, and the resulting feud stirred up political trouble for Antipas, and eventually, after the events narrated here in Mark, the king defeated Herod Antipas in battle, uh, and then it doesn't stop there.

Herodias continues doing this stuff in Herod's life.

And Herodias encourages Herod to apply to be called king by the Roman government.

He calls himself king, but he's not actually a king, he's a tetrarch.

He was over a city, but he's not technically a king.

And Herodias is like, hey, go tell the emperor that you want to be a king.

And so he does that.

And uh, I know, I'm getting worked up too.

Um Emperor Augustus denied him, and then Herodias was like, do it again, do it again.

So she pushed him again to do it, denied again.

She kept pushing him again and again to ask to be called king until his own brother accused him of treason against Rome, and then he and Herodias were then banished from their particular town and had to go live in the province of Gaul, where eventually she convinced him to let's take our, let's both take our own lives.

And that's how the story ends for Herod.

And it's like one thing, like I think I'm just gonna marry this person that I'm not supposed to marry.

How bad could it be?

It's like, well, you lost everything.

Like it it went terrible for you until eventually, like it led you to actually committing suicide and actually stole everything for you.

And so that verse in Genesis that says that sin wants to devour you comes to mind.

Like he just made one decision and the ripple effect into his life of this unrepented sin of just, I'm just, I know I'm not supposed to, but I'm gonna marry this woman anyways.

What's the worst that could happen?

And it's like, well, it stole this and did this and did this and did this and did this until finally your reputation's ruined, your kingdom's been destroyed, your fake kingdom, and then now you're exiled and life's really terrible for you, you might as well kill yourself.

And he's like, You're exactly right.

One sin led to the outcome of all those different things.

And so for us, what does this teach us?

What is all of that compiled into one thing?

The fact that one sin did all of this.

Couple of things.

One, it teaches us that sin leads to death and not just physical death, because Herod was dying throughout his lifetime over and over and over.

It was killing things.

That one sin was killing things in his life over and over and over and over again until it eventually actually did take his life.

And I think if you were to ask him, I think if you were to say, Herod, hey, cool, I'm at your wedding, um, incest, your brother's wife, whatever, what do you think this will do for you?

Like, what are you like what are you hoping for?

What's your best bet in getting married this way?

I don't think he ever would have said any of this in a million years.

He never would have been like, oh, I think I think what's gonna happen is I'm gonna end up killing somebody I don't want to, and then eventually taking my own life.

I'm really excited about the wedding day.

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna honeymoon in a different place before we go into exile.

Like he would never would have said any of this stuff that's happened in a million years.

He never would have been like, this is gonna be terrible for me.

It'll it'll lead to my downfall.

What will this sin do?

Oh, it'll lead to my downfall.

For him, he's sitting there going, This is gonna be good for me.

This is gonna be great.

It's gonna work out really well.

What's the worst that can happen?

And then if you see what it kills, it kills his first marriage, it kills his ex-wife's honor, it kills the agreement that he had with another king that leads to a battle and then leads to uh the death of a lot of his soldiers, kills his joy when he's grieved.

It literally kills John the Baptist, it kills his internal peace because he's haunted by this thing, kills his reputation in Rome, kills his safety and his home, and then ultimately takes his life and kills him.

Like it just kills and kills and kills.

Sin leads to death.

Regardless of how small it is, regardless of what, like, I don't think this will do anything bad.

It can only do one thing, and it just takes life and it takes life little by little until the point where eventually for Herod it actually takes his literal life.

This is what sin does.

It's not neutral, it's not a toy, it is poison.

And the longer it gets in there, the more it poisons, and then the more people you interact with with that sin in your life, the more it poisons that relationship and those things.

Like this is just what it does.

Sin leads to death.

I didn't add any jokes in here.

I probably should have.

This is pretty heavy.

You guys, everybody okay?

We're okay?

Okay.

No?

Fine.

Uh Spurgeon likens sin.

Charles Spurgeon likens sin to the small rodent that caused the plague, the black plague.

This is what he says.

He says, sin is like the pest infected with a disease which came in the shipment of goods from Asia to London.

It was small, but yet it contained in it the deaths of thousands in London.

In those days, one piece of rag carried the infection into a whole town.

And so it is with sin.

If you permit one sin, none can tell the extent to which that evil may ultimately go.

And he just sees that he has this view of sin, not like a high view of sin, but not in a good way, but just in like a humble view of it, to go like this thing is incredibly dangerous.

Like the smallest little thing could infect everything completely.

And I think we need to see our sin that way.

We need to have a healthy fear of it, a healthy understanding.

And I don't want you to be afraid or anything like that, but I do think uh Randy was talking about that, like these people that like are like taking selfies hanging over the Grand Canyon, like you, and then they die because it's the Grand Canyon and you lost your balance.

Um you forgot the fearful thing that's available here.

Like you just did not take this seriously enough.

You didn't think it actually mattered.

And I think Spurgeon and Mark and from Herod's life is like, take it seriously.

The smallest little thing can lead to the greatest of deaths.

I think most of the time as people, and I know that I do this, I overestimate what sin will do for me, the good I'll receive from it.

Because you do receive something from sin.

There is something that it gives you.

But I overestimate what that sin will give me, and I underestimate the destruction that it will actually do in me.

We overestimate the wrong way and we underestimate the wrong way as well.

It will do more than I think, and it doesn't.

It won't take as much as I'm willing to give, and it actually takes more than you're willing to give.

It does this over and over and over.

We are like Herod.

We're like, this isn't that bad.

What could it possibly do?

What will this sin actually do in my life?

This will be good for me, this won't hurt anybody else.

But in the end, he couldn't actually contain it.

Like it wasn't a controlled burn, it was a wildfire.

Like it was this thing that's like, I only want this to affect this area of my life.

And then all of a sudden he watches his life, he's standing there and he's watching it, and it's just taking and taking and taking.

He's like, I don't want it to take that stuff.

I don't want it to take John's life, I don't want it to take my life.

And it's like, you don't get to control that.

You get to walk away from your sin, or you get to live in it and let it take your life completely.

That's what you, those are your options.

Walk away from it and separate yourself from it, or just allow it to do whatever it wants to do in your life, and it will just do that.

It will just take and take and take.

This is what sin does.

It's poison, it brings death.

And so for us, go to the next slide here.

Unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness may seem like a small thing in your life.

Just, it's just, it's just one grudge.

Just nursing one grudge.

Herodias nursed one grudge and it led to the death of John and then ultimately her life.

Like, what's it like to nurse a grudge?

Not great.

It actually could go pretty badly.

Unforgiveness seems like a small thing, but it all it will do, because it's a sin, it will just drip death into your life very slowly.

Holding the grudge, unwillingness to reconcile.

I'm just not gonna do it.

Like, this is just the way that it is.

I'm never gonna say I'm sorry.

I'll only wait until they do a thing, and it's just gonna, that relationship will become, it won't get better with time, it will get worse.

Because that sin is just allowed to sit there.

You're allowing the poison just to stay in that space.

And so the longer it sits there, the more that it poisons, and the more that it does it, and the more that it takes, and it takes something from you, and it takes something from them.

Your lust will do the same thing.

Your pride, your ego, that has been just the experience of my life.

My pride and my ego.

I think I'm better than I am, and everybody should know it.

Like, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure they know it.

And like what that has done in my life has almost ruined my life, my marriage, my fathering, my parenting, I mean, everything.

It's almost just taking everything.

Anger, greed, comparing yourself to others, coveting what other people have, laziness.

What will laziness do?

It will drip death into your joy, into your vision, into God's purpose for your life, into what you're actually called into, and the the impact that you can have in the world, it will kill the impact that you could have in the world.

Selfish ambition, judgment of others, fear, worry.

I don't have time enough to read them.

Rainey said that we should do this thing, you just take 30 seconds and just look and be like, oh, I don't think that one's that bad.

It's like you're pointing at death.

You're pointing at something.

And if you ever harbor it, all you do is harbor death and you just hold on to it.

Like, this isn't that bad.

It's like, I think Herod felt the exact same way.

This isn't that bad.

What could it possibly do?

Like, it will take from you.

That's all it does.

It cannot give you anything.

Paul says the wages, what what sin can pay you in his death, all it has to offer, hey, I sinned, what do I get?

Death.

Here you go.

Would you like that, you know, served on a platter?

Or what like how do you want it?

But it will be death for you.

These things can seem small, but they are things that pay you in death.

They're always more destructive than we ever think possible.

And so, just to pause, just to be clear, what I'm not saying is I'm not trying to like scare anyone with God's judgment over sin or anything like that.

Like I'm not saying like you should be beware, you sinned, beware of God's wrath.

I'm not saying anything like that.

If you notice in this text, Herod's life doesn't go terribly because God is punishing him.

God's doing nothing to this man.

All the terrible crap that's going on in this man's life, sin is doing it.

God has had nothing, he's done nothing in Herod's life.

It's like he sinned and then God made his life go terrible.

God's like, my hands are off.

Like the punishment is big enough just for the sin just to remain.

I'm not even doing anything to this.

I'm not against this person in any way.

I'm not trying to hurt him and that's why his life is bad.

Sin itself is hurting him.

It's doing it to himself, it's its own punishment.

I think sometimes we think God says stuff like this, like, don't sin or I'll punish you.

And if you don't sin, then I'll love you.

We think like he doesn't want me to sin because then he'll love me, or like he doesn't want me to sin because then I'll I fear God's punishment.

And it's not that.

More, it's like this.

It's rather a father saying, Hey, because I love you so much, I don't want you to sin, but it's because of how much I love you.

Because I love you, don't sin because it will hurt you.

It will do something to you.

It's not, don't sin and then I'll love you.

It's like, I love you.

The love is is I already feel that.

I already have that, proven it on the cross.

Jesus loves you.

Now please don't do this thing that will hurt you.

It's me telling Teddy not to grab the live wire in my family.

Like, don't grab that live wire that will kill you and then I'll love you.

It's like, no, I love you.

Don't grab the live wire that will kill you.

Like that will be death to you.

Don't do that thing.

And the father is constantly shouting to I was like, hey, I'm not angry with you and I won't punish you over your sin.

I took punishment on Jesus on the cross.

All of my wrath was poured out on Jesus on the cross over sin.

I have no wrath left to give you over your sin.

Please don't do it, because it will kill something in you and it will kill those around you and it will take and take and take.

It is a warning and not a condemnation to you.

And so he doesn't look at us in our sin and just be like, you idiot.

He looks at us and he's like, I'm so sorry.

This is why.

This is why I warned you.

This is why I wanted you to know.

Because sin, even the smallest sin, leads to death.

Sin isn't dangerous.

Your sin, sinning tomorrow, sinning whatever.

Sin isn't dangerous because of what God will do to you after you sin.

Sin is dangerous because what sin will do to you in your life.

That's why it's dangerous.

We don't have to fear what God's going to do to punish our sin.

We have to fear what sin will actually do in our lives, and all it will do is give us death over and over and over again.

So that's the first thing.

Sin leads to death.

The second is feeling good about your sin doesn't make sin good for you.

Just feeling good about it, like if I could just feel a little better about it, then it'll be, it'll work better for me.

If you notice, Herod thought, all I have to do to make this sin okay and for it not to go bad, all I have to do is silence John.

I just gotta make that man shut up.

If I I don't I don't even want to kill him, I just need to silence him.

And if I can make his bad words about my sin go away, then this will be good for me.

But then notice John is silenced, John is stopped, but the sin is not silent, and the sin is not stopped.

Sin runs into his life anyway.

John's sitting in prison just living his best life.

Just like, I don't know, that's where I'm at.

But the sin itself is free to run into this man's life and take whatever it wants.

Like, I stopped John, now it'll be good.

How'd it go?

Like, oh, it didn't go great.

And John did nothing.

He didn't do anything to make Herod's life harder.

The sin itself did it.

The death kept spreading and creeping into his life.

And I think sometimes we think, what I need, and we can find it too, what I need with my sin, I just need to find somebody who agrees with me.

Like I should not forgive that person.

And if I can find somebody at my office, somebody in my family, somebody to say, you're exactly right, they don't deserve your forgiveness.

Then we think, now it's gonna be better.

I got somebody, and now in an argument when somebody says, you should just forgive them.

Uh uh-uh.

Jane says I don't have to, no offense, Jane.

Like they say, I don't I don't have to do it.

They agree with me.

All that's gonna do is just make you stay in your sin and lead you to experience the death of sin over and over and over again.

And so you can find pastors that may agree with your sin.

You may find churches that align with your sin.

You may find other people, parents, authorities in your life.

You could go on Instagram or Facebook and find a group that's like, we sin like this.

This is gonna be great for us.

We all get together and talk about it.

We love it.

And it's like, how's that gonna work?

It's like, all it's gonna do, you can silence and make it feel good, but it does not mean that it'll be good for you.

Sin still pays in death, even if we don't call it sin.

The people in my life don't call this sin.

It's like, okay.

All it's gonna do is continue to breathe death into your life.

And this is why God hates sin, not sinners.

This is why God hates sin.

He deceives us.

It doesn't matter if you don't see the negative effects that sin is actually having in your life.

You can look at some of these things like, I don't think I my lust is pretty controlled.

I don't think anybody knows.

Able to hide it, still married.

I don't think it's really doing that much to me.

I don't see any negative effects.

It doesn't mean that it's not having negative effects.

There's plenty of things that we don't see the negative effects of it, and it has negative effects in our lives.

And again, this is why God hates sin itself.

Because he's like, it is deceptive, it does lie to you, it will make it look like you should overestimate what I'll do for you.

I will make your life great.

And then what it actually does is it makes your life terrible and steals from you, and then you blame somebody else for that problem.

And if you blame someone else, like well, I only sinned because of them, it's still death to you.

And so it doesn't matter if you can make yourself feel good about your sin the way that Herod does, it still took and took and took, and that's just the way that it works.

This is the way sin works, it just works that way.

So, what should we do?

What should we do?

Because we're gonna struggle with sin.

First is we should repent.

We should repent, which maybe goes without saying.

Um we talked last week or a couple weeks ago just about that repentance sounds like this horrible thing with a guy standing on a rock with flames of fire picketing and saying, You're all gonna burn, and like you should repent.

And that's not what repentance is.

Repentance is a compelling message.

We tell people to repent all the time, and we only ever do it when we believe that we have something better for them than they're currently experiencing.

And we're telling them, change your mind that this is the best thing and do this thing.

This is the best thing.

Like you think that show's the best, repent.

This one's the best, watch this.

You think that food is the best, repent.

This food is the best.

You think that whatever is the best, and so on and so forth.

Like you do, we we do this all the time.

We use repentance as a way of conversing with people.

Oh, you think that music's great, you haven't heard this.

And so consistently it's supposed to be this compelling message that we offer to people, and this is what Jesus was offering.

This is why his message was repent.

The kingdom of God has come near.

Something better exists now, something far better is available to you.

You don't have to stay where you are.

And so for us, we should repent.

We know that um Herod heard John's message, which was likely to repent because that's what he was saying.

And we know that he found it compelling.

It says in verse 20, when Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled, but he also really liked it.

He's like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I like it.

And what John was saying was like, hey, you know you don't have to live this way.

You know you can start fresh.

You know that this doesn't have to define your life.

You know that this sin doesn't have to steal from you.

You know you don't have to be in this argument with your brother.

You know you don't have to constantly be fighting against her to keep me alive.

Like, you don't have to do any of this.

There's a better way for you to live, but it's on the other side of your repentance.

If you will just announce and acknowledge this was bad, I shouldn't have done this, and turn from it, you can experience a completely different life.

But we know, like, he doesn't do that.

He doesn't respond to that message.

But he did like it.

I think he liked the idea of going, is that real?

Like, is it really possible that I could experience some fullness?

Is it really possible that I could start again?

Is it really possible that there exists a life where I actually enjoy my marriage and not have to fight against killing people in my marriage?

Like, is that really something that's available?

God would really forgive me?

It sounds so compelling, but he couldn't move into it.

But if he would have repented, it would have changed his entire life.

He would have missed out on all the tragedy and all the different things that happened in his life if he would have repented.

I just want to show you this real fast.

If he would have repented, here's what the text would have looked like.

So this is Herod being unrepentant, okay?

If you remove that one sin, just remove that one sin from the text we just read.

Here's how the text reads King Herod heard about Jesus because his name had become well known.

Some said he's Elijah, and still others claimed he's a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.

The end.

Remove one sin and the whole story is changed.

Like there's nothing bad that happens in Herod's life or those around him.

Remove the one sin.

Repent of the one sin and your whole life is different.

The whole thing shifts and changes.

And I think for us, and what Jesus is constantly trying to do for us when he calls us to repent is not trying to condemn us.

He's like, please let me write you a different story than what your sin is gonna write you.

Like it's gonna do so much worse for you than you understand.

Please let me define your story, let me write your story.

Because if you allow sin to write your story, it affects you and everybody else around you.

And it's filled with tragedy and death and just heartache and all this stuff.

And he's like, I just don't want your story to be filled that way.

Jesus is going, I want you to repent so that I can actually write something better for you.

It's not condemnation.

He's not trying to do that.

He's just trying to save us from something that will ultimately drip death into our lives to where it steals from us.

So we should repent.

We should turn from believing that any sin in your life is worth keeping.

We should turn from believing the idea that any sin, the smallest ones, aren't that big of a deal.

Don't believe that.

Change your mind.

That's what repentance means.

Change your mind and go a different way.

It will do that to you.

And it's not do this or else.

It's just like do this because.

Don't, I mean, like turn from this because there's something better for you.

You don't have to experience the heartache and the pain and the death that these things have in your life.

You can actually turn.

Repent.

Second thing that we need to do is that we need to keep coming to Jesus when we sin or with our sin.

Keep coming to Him with your sin.

You will be sinful throughout your lifetime.

You will one day, that's what glorification is, the big word, you know, theological word.

You are justified.

Justification, justified.

Jesus made you right with God on the cross.

Boom, his blood covers you.

You are justified and seen right in the eyes of God.

Sanctified, sanctified is being saved from the power of sin.

That's where you are right now, all of us.

Jesus wants to sanctify us.

He wants to form us into his likeness where sin no longer has power over us.

It's being saved from the power of sin currently in our lives.

Glorification one day with the Father is actually being saved from the presence of sin altogether.

There's nothing there.

So justification, there's a penalty for sin that we're saved from.

Sanctification, we're saved from the power that sin has of our life.

Glorification, saved from the presence of it altogether, we never experience it whatsoever.

Right now, we experience sin having power over us, gripping us, deceiving us, lying to us, having power over us.

And so while we struggle with that, and while we walk in that and unable to stop some of the sins that we wish didn't write our story, we're unable to do that.

We need to keep coming to Jesus with our sin and going, I think you've told me this is poison.

I don't want it.

I don't want this.

I would like anything other than poison, please.

I'll trade you.

You take this and I'll take whatever you're gonna give me.

And what he offers is life, and we're handing him death.

Will you take my death so that I can have life?

And he's like, Absolutely.

I will do that every time.

First John, not John the Baptist, but one of the disciples of Jesus, wrote this about Jesus.

He says, if anybody does sin, and that's all of us, if anybody does sin, we have an advocate.

You have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, not only for ours, but the whole world.

And so I love that.

If anybody does sin, don't worry.

You have an advocate, not a condemner, not a judge, not a disappointed father or parent, like, how could you?

Like it's not that.

What do we have when we sin?

You have a friend, you have an advocate.

You sin and come to him.

What he says is like, I got you.

I got you.

I'll take, I'll take care of this.

Don't you worry about it.

I'm your advocate before him.

I'll knock it out, no problem.

Thank you for bringing it to me.

Love you so much.

See you later.

That's what he does.

You have an advocate before the Father.

And so every time that we sin over and over and over again, and we struggle to believe, it's like, I just don't know that I can keep coming to him.

I don't know that I can keep coming to him.

Like when you sin, you have an advocate.

So you when you do that thing, you should constantly move forward knowing I can walk up to this person because who is he to me?

He is an advocate for me.

He will always stand on my side and stand on my side against my sin and never on my sin against me.

He will condemn sin and not me the sinner.

He will never do those things.

He is our advocate.

And so we need to keep coming to him with our sin.

And then John also says, this is one of the reasons we need to keep coming to him, because this is what he does to our sin.

He says, if we will confess our sins to him, Jesus is faithful and just.

And what this means is like there's this idea that exists which like the thing that you did, you put unrighteousness into your life.

You put impurity into your life.

You put poison into your life by sinning.

But if you will just bring that to him, he will remove from your life the poison that that thing would have had in your life, and he will prohibit it from spreading into your hands and your feet and your eyes and your mind.

He will actually remove all the unrighteous things, all the poison.

He will actually get in there and do something to remove things out so that it doesn't have the effect that it would have had in your life.

And this is what was available to Herod.

You can start again.

Just confess that this was wrong, repent, turn from it, and then he will write you a new story.

And the death that this was going to do in your life over and over and over again, he will remove that from you so that you don't experience it.

And so we need to continually in our sin come to the advocate.

That's like, I'm for you and not against you.

And then we need to confess it to him, not in fear of being condemned or punished.

We need to give it to him because in confession, you offer him the poison and he hands you some type of freedom or some type of life.

We're trading him.

And so the gift of confession that we can actually announce here's this thing that I deal with, here's this thing that I did again, here's this thing I did again.

We get, again, I think we sin so much that we get tired of like, certainly I can't confess this again.

Certainly I can't go to him again.

Certainly his grace runs out or his forgiveness runs out, but you can never out sin his grace, you can never outsin his forgiveness, you can't.

But it's in confession.

If you choose not to confess it, then what you're choosing to do is just to hold on to it.

I'm not going to confess it.

I don't think he'll forgive me.

Don't hold on to that poison.

Confess it to him and be like, I did it again.

Here it is.

I don't want it.

And I don't want whatever that is to break into my life, affect my family.

I don't want to affect the generations that come out after me.

I don't want a generational sin that I pass on to my son.

Please, I do not want this.

I give it to you.

Please remove your faithful and just.

You'll remove the unrighteousness from me.

You'll take it away and give me something else.

Charles Spurgeon says, what a killing thing.

What a killing thing sin is.

It is a pestilent disease, a fire.

But the good news, when we confess, the knife of mercy cuts at the roots of the ill weed of sin.

God's pardons are deep and thorough.

Like he won't miss ever.

And what he wants to do is not just be like, I don't know, let's just band-aid that thing.

We'll see how it goes.

He doesn't want to do that.

He's like, let me get in there.

I will get stuff out that you're thankful comes out of there.

I will make sure.

And I will set you free from it.

So for us, I think we need a healthy view, a healthy fear of sin and what it will do.

And then we need to repent from any small sin that we think this isn't a big deal.

It's a huge deal.

It will become a bigger deal.

And then all of a sudden, what it will eventually happen is it won't just affect your life and your marriage or your relationships.

You will pass it on to a generation.

You will pass it on.

And it'll become a big deal for them.

And then they'll be like, How did I get this?

It's like, well, I think it was passed on to me through my father and my mother.

And then it's theirs and they have to bear it and see if they'll continue to cast on all these sins over and over and over again.

Or you can deal with it and be like, even though I sin, I'm going to go to the advocate and confess those things to him.

We need to repent.

And then we need to constantly bring those things, bring the poison to Jesus and let him take it from us.

Because he wants to, because he doesn't want us to experience the death that sin brings.

This is why he came to the cross and was like, joyfully, joyfully I go to the cross.

So that I can, I will take the death, the ultimate death that sin will actually do, the picture of what sin actually does, I will take that so that those who come to me can experience life and not death.

And so we have to continually bring our sin to him.

Alright, let me pray.

Lord, um I think my view of you is just constant kindness.

I think when I when I think of you, when I think of everything that you write to us, and uh every hard thing that you say is just a kindness that you are trying to pour into our lives and go, I swear to you, that I am not trying to steal from you, I am not trying to hurt you, I am trying to lead you into peace.

I am trying, I gave my blood and my body to lead you into life.

I promise I will not lie to you.

Those things will hurt you.

That stuff is poison.

God, by your grace and your spirit working within us, you gave us this spirit that now wants to choose righteousness.

You gave us power over sin so that we can step away.

Power to confess, the ability to come to the throne of grace, not the throne of condemnation.

We get to come before you to the throne of grace anytime to receive mercy and help.

And so, God, I pray today, would you place in our hearts just things that maybe we're holding on to?

Things that we're saying, I don't think this is that big of a deal.

Things that other people may have told us, yeah, that's sin, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Well, the Bible says, yeah, but it's fine, don't worry about it.

I pray that you would set us free to see the truth.

That thing will just kill us over time.

It'll kill our joy, our peace, our hope, our love that we have for you, for ourselves, and for other people.

It will take from us and not give to us, but you want to give.

And so, Father, I pray that you would show us in our hearts and in our minds where you're trying to set us free.

And will we be bold enough?

Uh and as Bonhoeffer says, would we risk being a sinner in front of you?

Would we dare to be a sinner in front of you?

In front of our advocate who will not condemn but will cleanse us and set us free.

Would you do that for us in Jesus' name?

Amen.