Rainey Segars | The Wages Of Sin | Romans 6:19-23

Well, y'all, good morning.

I'm so happy to be here with y'all.

This is the best day of the week.

Um, well, as y'all know, we are in a series right now in Mark called He is Good.

Um, and we're looking together at the beauty and the freedom of Jesus.

Um, and so today I want to add to this by looking at the opposite side.

I want to appreciate the goodness of the rescuer by looking at what he's rescuing us from.

Um, so to begin, imagine that somebody gave you a book, and the book is a collection of everything anybody has ever said about you.

The wonderful stuff and the awful stuff, all in this book.

Would you read the book?

In my opinion, we shouldn't read it.

We should burn it.

Don't look at it.

There are compliments in there we are not godly enough to handle.

There are insults in there we will carry around like a piece of glass in our foot for the rest of our lives.

We should not read it.

This thing will do damage.

But I think most of us would still read it.

We might even agree that we shouldn't, but we would.

And I think the reason that we would is that even if it hurt, we want to know how people really see us.

Not just what they tell me.

We want to know how we actually come across, how things really are.

Now, thankfully that book does not exist.

But the issue remains that we've got a craving.

We want someone to tell us the truth about who we really are and what's really going on.

We want to know the truth about what our friends and our colleagues really think.

And even more than that, we want to know the truth from our parents, especially our fathers.

For years, psychologists assumed that the mother bond was the most important bond in a child's life.

But it turns out over the last several decades, we have increasingly realized that dad's parenting affects kids more than mom's.

The University of Connecticut did a huge study, and they found that obviously both parents have a gigantic impact.

But this was their summary.

Knowing whether or not you are loved by your father is simply a better predictor of your adult sense of well-being, your adult happiness, your adult substance use, and your overall life satisfaction than knowing the extent to which you're loved by your mother.

Your dad is simply the most psychologically significant person in your life.

Now you all know I love a good close your eyes activity.

We'll do it twice today.

So for just a second, close your eyes, please.

And picture your father.

And we're gonna picture two things: a sad one, then a happy one.

So first think of how you would feel if he said what a waste of time you were.

I'm so disappointed.

You are not at all what I was hoping for.

And how that would affect you.

Then let's get out of there.

And second, picture how you would feel if he said what a treasure you are.

I am so pleased.

You are even better than I was hoping for.

If I could choose out of every person in the world, which one would be my kid, I would choose you.

And how would that affect you?

Now you can open your eyes.

Don't our father's words shape our identities.

They do.

So we crave to know who we are, and most deeply we need to know that from our father.

But the trouble often is your human father is as confused as you are.

Even if he's great and he's doing his best, he screws up a lot of things.

He doesn't always know who's who and what's what.

He's wrong a lot.

And so it looks like we've got a problem.

We've got this craving to know the truth, but our friends and our colleagues and even our parents aren't always reliable.

They drop the ball just as much as you do.

And so it looks like we need a reliable source of who we really are and how things really work.

And so thankfully, a lovely, healthy, holy book does exist that is supposed to give us exactly that.

We don't need that poisonous book of everything your college roommate ever said.

There's already a book about you.

And we're lucky enough that we just heard Jennifer read from it.

That's what our Bible is.

In a culture that is fixated on identity, we have a book that answers who you are, written by the only person who never gets it wrong.

Our Bible is supposed to guide us and show us how the world works so that we can navigate this space well.

And when something is not going to work, when something looks helpful but it's really not, our father calls that sin.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

Now, a lot of people, we don't like the word sin.

It sounds restrictive, it sounds judgmental, but I think we might be less offended.

We might be more open to obeying him if we think of the word sin instead as a warning about stuff that definitely will not work.

This stuff is obedience and this stuff is sin because this stuff will work and will help, and this stuff will not work and will do harm.

It might help us if we consider our Bible like Toyota, writing an owner's manual and putting it in the glove compartment in your new car.

They're not trying to limit you, they're trying to tell you how to drive this car successfully.

And they say, listen, man, you're gonna have to put gas in this car about every 300 miles or it's not gonna go.

Now, I could say, gas?

How closed-minded.

It's my car, I'll drive it however I want.

I'm not gonna get gas.

Wake up, people! The big shots are just trying to take my money.

Not today.

I'm gonna put water in here because it's cheaper and I decide what's right for me.

So I Googled.

What happens if you put water in your gas tank?

And the car production people said this water will corrode your fuel system, your injectors will fail, and your car won't start at all.

This obviously is bad news.

Now, are they being narrow-minded?

Well, yeah.

But they're not being judgmental.

They're telling me that if I put water in my gas tank, it won't work.

And so, for this silly example, putting water in your gas tank is sin.

We disobeyed the manufacturer, and now the car won't run.

Not because the Toyota people are mad at you for disobeying them, their instructions were just supposed to tell you how the car will and will not work.

And our Bible is our owner's manual.

The production person said, do this, don't do this, because this will work and this will not.

And the stuff that won't work, he calls sin.

So we might be more open to his instructions if we see him as warning us or guiding us rather than judging us.

So today I want to suggest a few things for us to consider about sin.

So, number one, sin will hurt, not help.

Unfortunately, you and I hurt ourselves and the people around us a lot.

But it's usually not because we want to do harm.

Often it's not that we're malicious, it's more that we're bad judges of what will and won't be successful.

And so Paul says to us in Romans about sin, he says, think about your past sins.

What benefit did you reap from the things you're now ashamed of?

Those things result in death.

For the wages of sin is death.

When we sin, when we depart from how he tells us to live, we will experience and spread suffering.

Sin will pay us in death.

Now notice, Paul doesn't say the wages of sin is God will hate you.

He doesn't hate you, he adores you.

Jesus is the friend of sinners.

He's saying that what you're doing is going to pay you in death.

He says, look, look, think about the times in the past when you sinned.

When you lied, when you got jealous or materialistic or mean.

What benefit did you reap when you lost your temper and you screamed at your family?

Did it help?

No.

Because sin will never help.

Because sin can only pay us in death.

So, for example, let's say I lie to Colton, but the reason I lie is that I don't want to fight.

I know the truth will upset him.

I just want peace.

And so I lie for the sake of peace.

I'm trying to get peace from lying.

I'm trying to get life from sin.

Now, I don't know if that'll work or not.

And so Paul is telling us here, you can know, actually.

Will it work?

No, it won't.

Long term, will you be happy that you did this?

No, because sin can only pay me in death.

Or for you guys who are young, let's say you don't really want to get blackout drunk.

You don't really want to do drugs or bully this person or sexed things.

You're just lonely.

You're just in love with this person, or you just want friends, you just want to connect.

And so you gossip or you bully or you drink, but your motive isn't malicious.

Your motive is to create friendship and community.

You're trying to get connection out of sin.

We're trying to use sin to get life, but sin doesn't pay us in life.

The wages of sin is never life.

No surprise, Peter agrees with Paul.

In 1 Peter 3, Peter says, Don't lie.

God won't love you anymore if you do.

I'm just kidding, that's a fake Bible verse.

But that's what we often think.

Peter actually says, thank you.

Peter actually says, whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.

It says that lying will give you bad days and a life you don't love.

So we lie, but we're just trying to do well at work.

Or we're just trying to have a good relationship with our parents.

Our goals are good.

We're just trying to use deceitful speech to get there.

We're trying to get good days out of deceit, but deceit can't give you good days.

Evil has no intention of giving you good days.

Jesus says, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy.

I've come that they might have life.

The thief comes only to destroy.

That's what sin wants to do only.

To sin is to step out of a good plan into a bad plan.

God knows we can't see into the future.

And He can see.

And He's trying to show us where not to go.

Because, number two, we do not evaluate danger well.

I got a piece of parenting advice one time that has really helped me.

I highly recommend this.

Someone told me, whenever you can, don't tell your kids, don't do that.

Instead, tell them, if you choose, you have chosen.

So instead of no, you can't go in the water, say, if you choose to get wet, you have chosen to be cold.

If you choose to wear that sweater, you have chosen to be hot.

It helps them to link what they experience to what to their own decisions.

And I think this is what God is often telling us.

If you choose sin, you have chosen suffering.

On our own, we do not see well what the outcome of our choices will be, and we do not learn well from what hurt us in the past.

Now the Bible calls us a lot of things.

It calls us friends and children and brides, but there is one animal image that the Bible uses the most.

Does anyone know, class, what animal the Bible calls us most?

Sheep.

And this is how sheep behave.

Almost all of a sheep's suffering is self-inflicted because they don't learn.

And this is what we can be like.

As is so often the case, we can see what's true of us in the story of Adam and Eve in Eden.

So we see our first parents in the garden with God, and God says, Look, without your help, I have filled the world with panthers and parrots and peaches.

I am very clearly trying to give you loveliness.

I am trying to give you light and life and color and music and beauty.

Stay with me.

Walk with me.

If you disobey me, if you distance yourself from me, you are distancing yourself from health and beauty because those are my things.

I'm beauty.

To go against me is to go against beauty.

If you disobey me, your life will get worse.

Not because I hate you, but because you have created distance between yourself and loveliness.

Don't do that.

So we see him warn Adam.

You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.

But do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of evil, for when you do, you will certainly die.

If you choose, you have chosen.

But then the enemy comes in next and he says what he always says.

No.

You will not surely die.

Notice in this story, the enemy does not convince them to do harm.

He convinces them that they won't do any harm.

You will not surely die.

This warning isn't real.

The enemy does what he always does.

He points at sin and he claims, This is not death.

When Adam and Eve ruin the world, they don't mean to ruin the world.

In fact, they think the result of their disobedience will be that they're wise like God.

They think the outcome of their disobedience will be wisdom.

They think the wages of their sin will be life.

But it won't.

The author of Hebrews says, solid food means our scripture, solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

God has to train us to distinguish good from evil constantly.

Without his word, we have a very hard time telling what is helpful and what's not.

Adam and Eve badly misunderstood what the actual impact of their choice would be.

But once evil's in, it does not ask what it can break.

Which leads us to number three.

Number three, evil takes more than we meant to give.

The enemy promises them wisdom.

And so they reach out in disobedience, reaching for wisdom.

But as soon as they let the evil in, all of a sudden, without their consent, they don't feel wisdom.

They feel embarrassment and fear and disconnection.

They hide in the bushes, they hide from God, they blame him, they blame each other, they hate their bodies, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

All this destruction.

And not one of those things is what they thought they were choosing.

And then God starts to describe the new life they picked.

He says to Eve, you have chosen pain in your sexual life.

This word does not only mean childbirth, it means the whole journey of having children.

So now human sexual life will have abuse and infertility and pain and rejection that I never meant it to have.

And he says to Eve, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

Now the word desire here is not nice.

It doesn't mean love.

It's the same word from Genesis 4 that God's gonna use to say that sin desires you.

So the way sin wants you, that's how you'll want him.

Now your reaction to your husband will be to rip.

And he'll be no better.

His response to you will be to silence and to squash.

Death has come into your home.

And you, sir.

Now your work will be stressful.

You'll work and you'll sweat and you're you'll just get thorns.

You and the earth were supposed to delight in each other.

Suffering in sex, suffering in your home, suffering in your work.

All these things that evil came in and took.

And not one of these things is the impact Adam and Eve meant.

Evil never has the effect it promises it will have.

And our Father knows that, and he is warning us.

So it's worth considering this morning.

Where am I sinning?

And I just don't see the harm.

I think I might be clever enough to get life out of sin.

Now maybe the Holy Spirit is already poking you.

You already know what it is for you.

If that's you, then stop listening to me and spend the rest of this time in prayer and ask for the wisdom and the boldness to chop it off.

I know it's sin, but what should I do?

Jesus says, chop it off.

There's no other way.

Not because I'm cold, but because you don't realize what you're dealing with.

There is no letting sin in a little.

There is no taming it.

There is no compromising with it.

Sin is not a spatula that we can use how we want, and then when we're done, we just set it down and it just lays there.

It's not a spatula, it's termites.

It is eating and breaking stuff that we won't see for a while.

So if the spirit has already brought something to mind for you, then spend the rest of this time asking for his help to chop it off.

There's no other way.

But if nothing has yet come to mind, then I want to spend the rest of our time this morning looking at four common ways we might be sinning, and we just don't think the damage is as great as it really is.

So, common sense.

Number one, envy.

Through his servant James, Jesus warns us where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

So, what choices are we making?

Not out of wisdom, but out of comparison?

Choices about the clothes I wear or what I'll allow my kids to wear, choices about my job or my house, or where our kids go to school, or my look online?

Is there somebody that we're trying to impress or keep up with?

What choices are we making?

And the real reason is envy and reputation.

Through his servant James, Jesus is warning us that will not create what you wanted.

If we make choices based on jealousy, the result will be disorder.

Ironically, because the result of all that money.

All that weight loss, all those vacations, all those clothes, the intent of all of that was loveliness.

But when we're motivated by envy, we make different choices than we would have.

And the result of those choices won't be loveliness.

It will be disorder.

Maybe this happened to you in your own family.

Did your parents harm you by carrying too much what you weighed?

Or what your grades were, or how successful you were in sports.

Your parents almost certainly didn't mean to harm you.

Ironically, they probably meant to set you up for success.

But like all of us, they tried to arrive at blessing by taking a path that doesn't lead to blessing.

They tried to make good choices with envy as a motive, and we don't make good choices with envy as a motive.

We cannot sin our way into a good place.

So for our church family, this might include our conversation about whether or not to buy a church building.

My understanding is that this is an ongoing conversation, and please know I have no opinion either way, and I have no authority to decide.

So email Colton.

If our motive is how we look, we envy other churches, so we buy a building from that motive.

Will that go well for our church family?

It will not.

Our motive was envy of other churches, so the result will be disorder.

A building isn't good or bad.

A building actually is a spatula.

A building is a neutral tool.

If we can genuinely say, no, no, I want this church to spread the gospel and welcome the lonely and serve the poor.

And I genuinely believe that we could do that better with a building, then great, if you have the money, buy it.

But if we make that decision based on how it looks, he has already told us what we'll find.

The building is neutral, the motive is not.

So for us, where are we experiencing conflict or disharmony?

One possible reason is that at some point we made choices based in envy.

And we need to admit it, apologize, and then back up to where we made the error and choose a different way.

Okay, number two, unforgiveness.

Now I am still getting to know everybody here, so if this example hits too close to your story, I apologize.

I really didn't know that.

I don't know all your stories yet.

So um, but take a second and think of a divorced couple you know, and they hate each other's guts.

It is not amicable, it is mean.

And somehow they spin every conversation to how horrible their ex is.

And maybe their ex really did do something awful.

And yet God is asking them to forgive.

Well, that feels so unreasonable.

It can actually feel cruel.

He clearly doesn't understand.

He clearly doesn't get it.

Does he really not understand?

Or does he actually understand that if you don't forgive, if you dig into bitterness, more death will spread to you.

And he doesn't want that for you.

He doesn't want your hatred to harm you and everybody near you.

He doesn't want you to become somebody that no one wants to talk to, because we don't want to hear anymore what a witch your ex is.

And now your daughter's graduation's coming up.

And she should feel joy.

But instead, she feels anxiety.

Instead of joy, she's scared that y'all will come and you'll fight and you'll embarrass her and you'll ruin it.

And look at that.

The sin of unforgiveness has transformed joy into anxiety in your child's life.

I think we don't forgive because we don't want to be a doormat.

We don't want to say that what happened didn't matter.

We want respect.

But actually, from unforgiveness, did you get respect?

Didn't we actually get anxiety and rage?

Because unforgiveness can't pay you in respect.

When Jesus tells us to forgive, we think he's being so unreasonable.

You just don't understand that I have trauma.

But actually, after her abuse, Hagar calls him El Roy.

She says, You're the God who saw everything.

He's never telling us to forgive because he doesn't understand what happened.

He's telling us to forgive because he knows your ex, your mother, brought death to you.

I know.

I saw.

And unforgiveness will only pay you in more death.

He knows you've been the victim of meanness.

He knows you've been the victim of abandonment or betrayal.

And he wants healing for you.

He tells us to forgive, not because he didn't see or doesn't care, but because he saw.

And he doesn't want us to suffer double, which we will.

Okay, number three is porn.

Now I realize this is the big scary one.

This is a big scary one.

I know this might feel awkward.

Um, please know I do not feel awkward about this at all.

This is now a gigantic situation in our culture.

The evil of this is incredibly proactive.

This seeks us out.

And so I think the church needs to talk about it and not be silent because we feel awkward.

Um, and I think this is also a very useful example of how sin works in general.

So, to say in 2024, porn is sin, who cares?

That sounds so outdated.

Don't shame me.

Don't limit my curiosity.

If I like it, that is my business.

In general, that is the modern sexual mindset.

If you want to explore it, you should.

And that's what's healthy.

And so imagine that if someone wants to watch porn and then the Christians go, you shouldn't, it's sin.

The Bible says not to covet your neighbor's wife.

Or you shouldn't, Jesus says not to look at a woman with lustful intent.

So don't watch porn because watching porn is sin.

Well, modern sexuality has no interest in that.

Do not restrict me.

If I want to watch porn, I get to be free and have fun if I want to.

It'll help me relax.

Maybe I'll even use it to connect with my partner.

And I most certainly don't care about Jesus' judgy one-liners about lust.

I will keep it under control.

I won't let it create distrust or disconnection with my partner.

I won't let it create unmeetable sexual expectations.

I won't let it sink into my mind so deep that a real, regular human partner is permanently disappointing.

I will not surely die.

So I watch the porn, and the impact that I want is freedom or fun or relaxation or connection.

That is the impact I want this to have.

Now, Jesus warned us not to do this.

Don't look at other people this way.

But who cares?

And so we do it anyway, and we promise that we'll keep it under control, and the impact will be freedom and fun.

So, if you've been on a journey with pornography, the obvious next question is, was it?

Was the impact freedom and fun?

Can we say, oh, I've watched porn for years, and overall the impact on my life has been really positive.

My life is a lot more relaxed and connected than before.

That's what it promised.

So did it deliver?

Or did it actually come into your life and take a lot more than you meant to give?

Did it actually start to ruin stuff you didn't mean for it to ruin?

What we cannot see is that evil does not love you, and it does not care what you meant to happen.

She is not a believer, she's not religious at all.

Um, this is what she says about pornography.

Pornography is so not what we want people to be seeing.

What we see is not what goes on in healthy, loving relationships.

Sex can be wonderful and mutual, or it can be dark and aggressive.

And what's available in pornography is the second kind.

It is not what your love life should look like.

It all looks like rape.

And yet we like looking at it, and so a pairing gets laid down between what we see in porn and what we can now enjoy.

As we look, what we want in real life slowly starts to become more violent.

You do not want to pair these two things.

You would not believe the number of people I work with who cannot stop looking at porn all night and they are tortured about it, but they can't stop looking at it.

These last lines are so good.

I feel like we could apply this so beautifully to all sin.

She says, don't minimize it.

Porn is not tame.

I don't use this word lightly.

Porn is traumatizing.

Once we see porn, the only question that remains is how do we mitigate the harm?

Now, this lady is not a priest or a pastor.

She doesn't mention the word God or sin.

She is just a scientist looking at how we are affected.

She does not say anything about how pornography doesn't respect the image of God in those people, although that's true.

She doesn't say anything about how Jesus tells us not to look lustfully, although that's true.

She doesn't say that because this woman's not a Christian, she's a doctor.

Looking at the impact of pornography, and the impact is trauma when it promised you that the impact would be fun.

Now, I love Dr.

Lisa, but psychologists can only tell us what will traumatize us after we've been traumatized.

They have to wait.

Let us be traumatized, and then they can collect data and tell us what traumatizes us.

But God is trying to tell us before the trauma.

Wouldn't you rather know what will traumatize you before it traumatizes you?

Isn't trauma a place we don't want to learn from experience?

I think this is true of all the Bible sexual teaching.

And yet, he suggests these things and we call him toxic.

The body and sex are both biblically excellent, marvelous things.

Maybe your maker adores your body and wants it to flourish and knows what won't help.

God's ways are the paths of life.

Now, please don't hear me say this morning, you're only suffering because you sinned.

That is not true.

That is not biblical.

The disciples thought that, and Jesus shut that right down.

Jesus promised us that we would suffer and that we would have trouble in this world.

Obeying God does not equal my life is happy and I have lots of money.

That is not true.

But I do think often we walk in paths of difficulty and disconnection and suffering, and we wonder why.

And the reason is that somewhere in the story there is sin.

And if we would identify it and turn from it, we might have some relief.

He understands the world better than I do.

When he and I disagree, I'm the one who's wrong.

I'm the one who can't see.

So if we buy that this morning, then I want to offer one suggestion of an upcoming opportunity that we have to obey or not.

So number four is politics.

Enough with sex.

Let's go to politics.

I'd like to tell you who to vote for.

Just kidding.

Um just kidding.

This is an election year, and our fellow citizens are about to go ballistic with mean, terrified name-calling, and online comment fighting.

But when everything gets mean, there's no need for us to wonder what to do.

Our instructions here are incredibly clear.

This is what we are under orders to do: pray for the leaders and pray for our enemies.

The end.

If we think our situation is different and special, and we will not pray and we fight online instead, we will not accomplish what we wanted to accomplish.

The response to this election has to be prayer for the leaders.

And if we hate the leader, then we are called to pray double because he is both a leader and an enemy.

Thank you.

So here are our candidates.

Pray for them both.

And pray twice for the one you don't like.

The end.

Now, this is very hard to do.

We are scared, we get angry, everybody else is fighting.

This is a very hard space to be marked by Jesus.

So I want to suggest a fast to us for this election season, an exercise.

When we are about to say anything or post anything about either of these men, I encourage us to notice when we're about to say anything or post anything, stop, don't say it, and pray for both candidates instead.

30 seconds for the one that you like and 60 seconds for the one that you don't.

And lift them both to Jesus.

So I actually want to give us a minute to step into that obedience right now.

So take a second, it won't take a second, and choose the one that you dislike more.

Might be both.

And I invite you one more time to close your eyes.

And we're gonna pray for him.

Not for all the leaders in the world everywhere, for him.

God of all power.

With your spirit of wisdom, we ask that you would assist these men.

May they feel tenderness for the people that they govern.

May they be treated fairly in the media.

May the voices in their lives give them good advice.

We pray that they would make decisions out of wisdom, not out of bad temper or peer pressure.

We pray that they would be able to maintain good relationships with their families during this time in the public eye.

We commend these men to your mercy, and we ask for your help on their behalf.

And after their time of service in this life, may they be welcomed into your kingdom.

And may we one day stand with them both in your heavenly country to sing your praise forever.

Amen.

This is not what we will see online, but this is the way.

The result of this will be life because his ways are the paths of life.

Maybe you have wondered before, maybe you've checked the website, to see if C3 has a political stance, and we do.

Our stance is that if either of those men ever walks into this church, we will offer them coffee.

And we will invite them to sit with us.

And at the end of the service, we will hold out the bread and the cup and we will say, This is the body of Christ broken for you, Joe.

This is the body of Christ.

Broken for you, Don.

And if you'll let us, we would be honored to pray for you.

Will we follow Jesus this election season?

Or will we join in malice?

If we choose not to obey, Jesus won't hate us, but we have chosen to spread death.

So for us, where do we need to take a step this morning out of sin back towards freedom?

Maybe you need to ask the Spirit to show you your sin.

Show me where I'm lying, but I'm just trying to help.

Show me where I'm screaming at my family, but I'm just trying to motivate them.

I'm going deeper into debt, but I'm just trying to give my kids a nice childhood.

Where are we hoping that the wages of our sin will be life?

And let's not think about somebody else's sin.

Let's not say, like the Pharisee in the temple, thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men.

Maybe we need to ask the Spirit to show us our sin.

Maybe we need to ask another believer if they see our sin.

Adam and Eve weren't trying to ruin the world.

The enemy just told them, this is disobedient, but it's not dangerous.

And Eve said, it doesn't look dangerous.

And part of the tragedy of the story is that Adam says nothing.

Eve's community is silent.

We need other believers to help us remember that sin will do harm when it seems like it won't.

So do you have anybody in your life that you trust enough to ask?

He is never calling us into shame.

Shame is the enemy's thing.

But maybe he is inviting you to get more relaxed and more comfortable with the fact that the sinner in the situation is often you.

Jesus had to come and die for mistake-making, error-prone, short-sighted ball droppers, and that includes me.

Rather than self-loathing, we might feel some freedom if we could get comfortable calling our sins sins and considering how we can start to take steps out of death into life.

Now, I know today might have been a little heavier than normal.

Sin, sins, in, love sin.

And I think that we are right to be honest about its danger.

But fear of sin is not what Jesus died to give us.

Our story's not a story of sin, our story's a story of Jesus.

So I wanted to end today with how beautiful Jesus is, not with how bad sin is.

So I'm writing a sermon and I'm making my little outline.

I got my envy, I got my unforgiveness, make my little outline.

And the last bullet point in my outline just said good news, and it was blank.

And I'm just staring down that empty little bullet point, and I'm trying to come up with some fresh, lovely way of presenting Jesus, and I would write something and it stunk and I'd delete it, and I just had nothing.

I was just watching that awful little cursor mock me.

So I was sitting there struggling, and I finally got very frustrated.

And I prayed and I said, Lord, I really want to tell them the good news.

What do you want to say?

And y'all, I promise I felt like I heard him as clear as a bell.

Fast, too.

So I'm not.

Sure, who this is for, but I think maybe Jesus said this to me for one of you.

I think I clearly heard him say, tell them my reaction to them is not disgust.

I thought I clearly heard the word disgust.

I think he said, tell them what I feel towards them is not disgust.

All this sin, they might feel like my reaction to them is disappointment or exhaustion, but it's not.

I see you in your sin, and I'm sorry that you're hurting, and my instinct is to help you.

So I'm not sure who that's for, but I think maybe someone.

Mark says about Jesus with the rich young ruler, he looked at him and loved him.

And I think we should read that today with our names in it.

He looked at Georgia and loved her.

He is not an exhausted mom who has to deal with you.

He's the good shepherd.

I'll end with this.

Last fall break, we got an Airbnb on this farm in Arkansas, and it was fantastic.

Um, and they had these big fields with these cows, and Teddy got to feed the cows, and it was great.

And while we were there, we talked a lot to Farmer Andrew, who owned the cows, and he told us there was a baby.

He told us about the baby cow, and he said that when the baby was born, it almost died.

It had just been born, it was only a day or two old, and Farmer Andrew came out in the morning and the baby wasn't there.

It was not in the field with its mother, which I learned is very bad, that young, it would die without its mother very fast.

Um, so he knows something is wrong, and he hops in his four-wheeler and he starts zigzagging out into the pastures looking for the baby, and he can't find it.

And finally, he passed this little muddy ditch.

And this big log had sort of fallen over the ditch, and he said he just saw these two little hooves sticking out from under the log.

The baby had sinned.

It had wandered out of a good space where it was supposed to be, and had somehow fallen into this ditch, and then panicked and like gotten itself wedged.

And so Farmer Andrew said he goes over and he lifts the log off the calf, and it was almost dead.

He said its eyes and its skin were covered in maggots.

And the way it was stuck, its back legs were up, and so it was down in the mud, and there was mud all in its nostrils and its mouth, it could barely breathe, and it had had to like wrench its neck way far around so it could breathe.

There was no way it could free itself.

So his farmer Anders said, He lifts the log, and he finds the baby, and he looked at the baby and he said, That's what you get for wandering off, idiot.

Put the log back on top of the baby, left it there, found it there dead a couple of days later.

No! We know that's not true because that's not what the good shepherd does.

Farmer Andrew found the baby that had caused its own problems, and he lifted the log off the calf, and he picked it up and ruined his own clothes with the mud.

And he started wiping the maggots off, getting the maggots out of its eyes and the mud out of its nose.

And he put the baby in his own lap in the four-wheeler and drove it back to its mother and saved its life.

That's what the good shepherd does.

That's how Jesus wants to treat you.

He's a good farmer who has found us near dead.

He's the good shepherd.

He's the prince who came to kill the dragon.

He's the dad squinting for you down the highway.

He's the doctor who came for the sick.

He's the friend of sinners.

If you will just wink in his direction, he will spring into action because in his guts he is a savior.

He sees us in the death and in the suffering, and his reaction to us is affection.

And he says, Let the wages of your sin be death to me.

I'll die for it, not you.

He hung on the cross, dripping in our sin.

And God the Father looked at him and looked away.

He took that rejection for us.

So now when you approach God, he has no instinct to reject you.

He already rejected and punished the stuff you did.

He doesn't have any instinct towards you left.

But warmth and welcome.

Our story is not a story of sin.

For the wages of sin is death.

But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, may we let you rescue us this morning.

By your spirit, show us our sin.

Help us not to resist what you want to do, but to welcome what you want to do.

Help us not to think that we're not the problem.

Help us not to think we know better.

Help us not to think we're too far down in the mud that none of this applies to me.

Help us not to think anything we've done is irredeemable, which it is, except with you.

Because with you, death equals resurrection.

And you bought that to give to us.

Help us to allow you to rescue us this morning.

Help us to allow you to banish doubt or unbelief, to break strongholds.

May your effect in our lives be life.

Help us to love you and trust you.

Amen.