Sin & Redemption

Well, if you are visiting for the first time, welcome and I'm sorry.

Because today we are wrapping up.

I'm not really sorry, I'm just being goofy, but we're wrapping up a series that we've been in for the last three weeks, four weeks on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Because there's nothing that says, yay, it's summer, like fire and brimstone and the destruction of an entire culture.

So here's the deal.

Let me back up and kind of explain the context.

We started a series at the beginning of this summer, or of this year, actually, called Getting to Know God.

We are exploring the life of a man in the Bible named Abraham.

And he is a man who, over the course of his life and being obedient to God and sometimes disobedient to God, but never giving up on God and what God had promised him, what God was doing in his life.

Abraham goes from being someone who's a believer of God, like he believes in God, but he becomes a friend of God.

He becomes intimate with God, close to God.

Abraham gets to know God and he gets to know him really well.

He understands his character, his nature.

And through Abraham's story, we get to do the same.

We get to know God.

We get to understand him.

We get to see as Abraham wrestles with God in moments that confuse him.

We get to take part in that process.

And the goal for all of us is to know God.

I mean, what Jesus once said, what good is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?

I mean, what good is it to have a year where you accomplish a bunch of important goals, but you're not closer to the Lord than when you started?

Because at the end of the day, that's ultimately all that has eternal value is your relationship with God.

And I'm very guilty of this very often.

I have a lot of things that I want to do, I have goals, I have things that I want to accomplish, and sometimes those things can take such a precedence in my mind that God sort of becomes secondary.

I've even had that happen in church.

There have been times and seasons in the past, I'll just be honest about it, where my goals for our church have displaced my focus on God, which sounds impossible.

But it's it's easy.

As human beings, it's so easy for us to get distracted, even doing really good things, even things that are connected to God that should be just completely led by God, even in those things, we can lose track of God.

And so the hope for this year is that no matter what we're doing, whether this is a banner year and you're just, man, you're crossing things off the list and you're getting stuff done and it's great, or maybe this has been one of the hardest years of your life, and it has just been struggle after struggle, whatever your situation, through all of it, you can be closer to God.

And at the end of the day, when this year is done, that is going to matter more than any of the rest of it.

Are you closer to him?

Do you know him more?

We've been getting to know God through Abraham's story.

But we got to this moment in the story a month ago, and it's a very famous story.

It's part of Abraham's journey, it's part of his life, it's part of the story that we have recorded in Scripture where there's a city, it's actually two cities that are basically like a large city-state.

It's an entire culture, essentially, called Sodom and Gomorrah, and it's a city that is known as being an incredibly wicked place, and God ends up destroying the city.

And it's kind of a problem for a lot of people.

A lot of people read stories like this and it's like, whoa, that's that's not cool.

It's kind of a problem for Abraham, too.

We looked at this a few weeks ago where Abraham basically has this conversation with God.

He's like, hey God, I mean, this seems pretty intense.

What if there's good people there?

What if there's 50?

What if there's 45?

He actually talks God all the way down to 10.

What if there's ten righteous people living in the city?

Would you destroy the whole city?

And God's like, I would not destroy it if there were ten.

But then God goes, He actually sends two angels.

It's worse than he thought.

And well, I don't know if it's worse than he thought.

I guess he knows, he knew, but it's it's worse than Abraham thought, I'll tell you that.

And there's not ten, and the city is destroyed, and then we get to wrestle with that.

And so we decided instead of skipping this or just trying to go through it really fast, try to reframe it and go, actually, it's kind of a fun story if you think about it through the right lens.

Instead of that, we're like, no, let's let's deal with this.

Because when we get to the hard stuff in the Bible, we don't want to skip it, we don't want to reframe it, we want to deal with it, we want to wrestle with it because as we wrestle with God, we get to know him really well.

And so we've spent a month on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and yay.

We're gonna finish that today, though, and then we get to move on.

We get to move on.

So with that said, hey, I've got a whiteboard that we used last week, and Steve, do you mind bringing that out real quick?

We use the latest and greatest technology here at his hands.

Uh, they're just cutting edge stuff right here.

Let's hear it for Steve as he brings out the whiteboard.

Good job, Steve.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

All right, this will sort of get us caught up on where we were last week, and then we'll move on and finish it up.

So, all right, let me kind of explain.

Sodom and Gomorrah, a big time story.

And if here's the gist of it, uh, you know, like I said just a minute ago, Abraham has a conversation with God.

Are you sure this doesn't seem cool?

I mean, you're gonna go and you're gonna destroy a whole city, but what if there's good people and there's not good people and it's terrible?

And the angels show up and the men of the city find out that there's two new people, they think that they're people, not angels, and they demand that the men come out so that they can sleep with the men forcibly.

And there's a man named Lot who's Abraham's nephew, and he's like, No, don't do that, and Lot's terrible, he's the worst, and so he's like, Have my daughters instead.

And and the angels are like, no, don't do that, and they shut the doors and they they warn Lot.

They say, Hey, get your family out of here because this place is about to burn, essentially.

And Lot's like, No, please, I mean, I like this city, I've got friends here.

He has a little argument, and they're like, No, you have to go.

And so they go, boom, fire comes down.

Everybody, everybody is destroyed utterly, everybody's gone except for Lot and actually his two daughters.

His wife perishes along with his daughter's uh fiancees.

It's a it's a pretty, or sons-in-law, I don't know, they're married, I'm not sure.

It's a point is they're all that's left.

And it it's it's a horrific scene.

Abraham actually gets up the next morning because he doesn't live there, and this is after he knows that these angels are going to investigate, and he's just implored with God, please, if there's any, if there's any way to spare the city, spare it.

And you know that Abraham probably stayed up that entire night just wrestling with that, praying about that, whatever he was doing.

He gets up and he looks out, and all he sees in the horizon is is smoke just rising from the ruins of this.

We talked last week about the fact that, interestingly enough, this is one of the stories in the the Old Testament we actually have significant archaeological evidence for.

You should look that up if you're interested in that kind of thing.

We have found in the same area that this happened, in the same valley that it happened, there have been ancient sites found that during the Bronze Age, which is when this took place, almost 4,000 years ago, that there was apparently some type of heat event where the temperatures would have risen above 2,000 degrees.

And we have archaeological evidence with layers of melted pottery and all kinds of stuff that shows that something, uh to what historians that you know don't maybe believe the story have to admit, something like cosmological had to have happened.

Like it had to have been a like a meteor, a large one, had to have like hit that city to create what happened there.

Um, and look, we talked about this last week.

Even if a meteor were to hit the earth today, the chances that it would hit a populated area are crazy small.

The chances that it hit a populated area 4,000 years ago, like if that meteor hit that city, someone threw it.

I'm just saying, like that's what I said, like that is the odds are not, they're astronomical.

Okay, so something happened, and we have archaeological evidence for it.

We have this story in the Bible, but then we have to wrestle with the the whole, like, was God out of line?

Was God out of line?

Was this too much?

And that's something I think if we're honest, we all struggle with sometimes.

We've all at least had the thought, maybe not consciously, but if I were God, I would do it differently.

Sometimes, if we're honest, we're like, I would do it better.

I mean, if I were God, I would, I would have handled that.

I would have, I would have found a way to convince them to change and be better.

It's easy to look at these moments in the Bible and have the feeling that God is overreacting.

But as we talked about last week, we should wrestle with this as people.

Is it possible that we're actually wrong and not God?

That's a crazy thought, right?

Like, what if I'm wrong?

What if my filters are off?

What if God knows what he's doing?

Is it possible that God is not overreacting?

In this story and in the other stories, is it possible that God is not overreacting to sin?

But is it possible that we actually underestimate its severity?

We dealt with that last week.

What is sin?

We talked about it.

How serious is sin?

Sin is really, really serious.

Have you ever underestimated the seriousness of a situation?

I'll never forget when I was in seventh grade, we moved to Wisconsin.

And I always have to ask this when I bring up Wisconsin.

Anyone from Wisconsin in the room?

Well, more than normal.

All right.

I don't hate Wisconsin.

I didn't enjoy my time in Wisconsin.

That doesn't mean that your Wisconsin was a it's fine.

I love Wisconsin.

I'm also glad you guys are here.

I'm glad you've escaped the frozen wasteland of Wisconsin.

Because, and here's full disclosure, it was tough.

I moved there in January.

Was we were not prepared for that.

And I mean, I grew up in southern Missouri, which kind of gets all four seasons, and snow's a pretty normal thing there, but we were not prepared for the level of cold that you have in Wisconsin and why those people didn't just keep going south.

There's plenty of room in Iowa.

I don't know why, but they stayed there.

Most of them are German, and I guess they were accustomed to that.

I don't know.

So I lived in Wisconsin, moved there in January of my seventh grade year, and one of the first nights we lived there, it snowed like two feet.

And we get a knock on our door, and it's our neighbors, and they said, you know, hey guys, we just noticed that you're not out shoveling your driveway.

And we said, Oh, we'll do it in the morning.

And they were like, oh no.

Well, actually, hold on.

They were like, oh no.

That's what they said.

We had to get used to that.

Oh no, no.

That won't work.

Like, that's what they said.

Um, and they were they were like, Look, your your driveway's gonna be frozen in the morning.

If you don't shovel it now, you're not gonna be able to get out of here tomorrow.

Like, you have to do it now.

And I'll never forget the feeling, the the bitterness of being out in that driveway, being so mad at my father for moving us to Wisconsin, shoveling snow.

It was miserable.

We underestimated the seriousness of the snow.

In our minds, it's just, ah, we'll get it in the morning.

But our neighbors were nice enough and kind enough, they had enough southern hospitality to come to us and say, hey, you guys have underestimated what's happening, and if you don't deal with it, you're gonna be in a lot of trouble.

It is so easy for us to underestimate things.

It's so easy for us to have situations in life where we go, that's not that big of a deal, but uh but it is.

When it comes to sin, we have to we have to discern is sin serious?

And we have a tendency, and part of this we'll get into this, is because of the culture that we live in, we have a tendency to underestimate the seriousness of sin because, and we can just be honest with this, we have a culture that's very comfortable with sin.

In fact, we have a culture that has stamped approval onto many, many behaviors that the scriptures clearly describe as sin, as not being within the boundaries that God would like us to live.

And our tendency is to underestimate it and to say it's not that big of a deal, and God shouldn't be that serious about it, but could it be, and I believe it is, obviously, that we are underestimating sin.

Sin is incredibly serious.

Now, we looked at Romans chapter 1 last week, and I won't read the entirety of it, but this is where this came from.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 1 is often used as a companion piece to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

You should read it.

If it's actually, we on our website, if you guys don't know this, we actually have something we post every Sunday morning called the Message Companion, and you can go to our website and click it, and it has all the scriptures that we're gonna read.

Um, has everything there.

You can read along, you can go back and look at it later, and that's just there to be a tool to help you if you're what was that scripture we looked at?

That's there for you.

We have all of the Sodom and Gomorrah story and Romans chapter one in there from last week, but I'm not gonna go through and read all of that again.

Romans chapter one is this long explanation of what happens to an entire culture when a culture becomes, not just individuals here and there, but but holistically, when a culture becomes so disillusioned with the truth, rejects the truth of God, embraces sin, can a culture get to a point where it has to be destroyed?

And the answer biblically is yes.

And so we explore these these four elements that Romans chapter 1 lays out.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

First, there's the rejection of truth, it's ultimately the rejection of God.

And when God is rejected, something has to replace that.

We have to understand, even if you're new to the whole idea of God and faith, we are all worshipers.

We are built, we are hardwired to worship.

We will all worship something or someone.

And if you don't worship the true God, the God who created everything, you'll replace that with something else will be your God.

It could be money, it could be yourself.

Many people worship themselves.

They worship their own desires and they elevate that.

And what happens after the rejection of truth, we see in Romans 1, is the elevation of self.

Now we become the ones who decide what is right and wrong.

It's not that the God who made everything has a say, and that he has the authority and the right to say, hey, I want you guys doing this, but stay stay away from this.

Now we're the ones that go, you know what, I'll choose what's good for me.

I'll choose, I'll decide what's right in my eyes.

When you reject the truth, when you reject God, you replace that God, the real God, with something.

And usually it's it's yourself, it's your own desires, your own thoughts, whatever it is.

And so you have rejection of self, elevation of, a rejection of truth, elevation of self, that leads to a moral collapse.

Because if everybody is just deciding what is right and wrong for them, that's that's chaos.

In fact, the book of Judges frequently has this uh multiple times has this statement that in those days, Israel had no king, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And that might sound like a utopia.

Well, that sounds great.

There was no king, and everyone's just doing what they feel like doing.

That sounds like a nice place to live.

No, it's horrible, terrible.

It was a constant mess.

Because when everyone is pretending to be God, when everyone is saying, I have the authority to decide what is right and wrong for myself and for other people, it's chaos.

So there's this moral collapse that happens, and then what ultimately happens is the celebration of sin.

And where sin is no longer something that is looked at in a negative light, where, even if it's a negative light, but with love and grace, saying, Hey, that's something that you struggle with, and I'm sorry that you struggle with that, and I want to help you get over that, I want to help you get through this, where a culture says, no, no, no, no, this is not a struggle, this is good.

And we're gonna celebrate it, we're gonna encourage it, we're gonna endorse it.

And obviously, when you read a list like this, it's easy to look at a world like ours and go, wow, I kind of feel like I've lived there.

Or at the very least, you see some similarities.

How do we as believers navigate that?

We talked about this last week, and this will be kind of the end of our recap.

What do we do when we read stories like Sodom and Gomorrah, and there's certain behaviors listed in there?

We talked last week about homosexuality being an example that's very often talked about, connected to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What do we do as believers if we're living our lives with God's word and his truth through scripture as the authority to help us know what's right and wrong?

What do we do when we encounter stories like that and we live in a culture that doesn't view things that way, and we have loved ones or people really close to us, friends, and they have different views on that and they live differently?

How do we navigate all of that?

It's really tough.

One option is just to be a jerk.

That's always an option.

You can just be self-righteous like the Pharisees were.

You can believe that you're better than other people, you can uh completely and totally isolate yourself from anyone who doesn't agree with you.

Another option is just to go, well, I mean, I'm part of the culture.

When in Rome, you know, I'll just, I guess I'll just adopt all the values of the culture that I'm in because I don't want to, I don't want to look like I'm judgmental.

But the reality is that we have the Holy Spirit, and we have the truth of God through his word, and we have the example of Jesus, and he did this perfectly, and we have this ability to have discernment, where we can actually say, I recognize that something is not right in God's eyes.

I do not endorse it, I do not agree with it, but I can love someone and accept someone even though I don't.

And so we looked at these words love, accept, agree, endorse.

These are four words that we use very often on our staff to kind of navigate situations.

Who am I called to love as a Jesus follower?

Everybody.

There's no exceptions.

It's actually really hard.

There's zero exceptions.

There is not a person on this earth that as a follower of Jesus, I do not have an obligation to love.

Now, our culture wants to redefine what love means.

And our culture says if you love, you must accept, agree, and endorse.

And anything short of that is hate.

And that is childish.

Because if you can only love people you agree with, I mean, come on.

That's not hard.

That's not hard at all.

If you can only love the people who agree with all the views that you have, I mean, is that really even love?

Because it requires no sacrifice.

But loving people that you disagree with, even passionately disagree with, like that's that takes God.

And God does that every day, by the way.

Like that's every person God has ever loved.

Imagine being Jesus and loving everyone and disagreeing with pretty much everyone.

Because they're all wrong, right?

You know what I mean?

Every conversation someone had with Jesus about God, they were off in some way.

I mean, it's just very rare that he's like, ding, ding, ding.

I mean, a couple people, he actually said, You get it, but that was very few.

Even his own disciples, he's like, You guys do not get it at all.

You're wrong.

And so we love and then we accept.

Now that doesn't mean you have to accept a behavior as good or whatever, but we accept people.

Like, yes, you are, I can, I can know you, I can have a relationship with you, I can spend time with you.

There can be situations where someone has an agenda and it's it's mean-spirited, and you might say, hey, look, I love you, but I just, this isn't working.

That there's a place for that.

But for the most part, we love people, all people.

We accept people, but we don't have to agree and endorse.

And we can't be bullied into that, and we can't be guilted into that, and we can't have Satan try to twist love and use compassion as a weapon to make us believe that if we really love people, then we just have to let go of all of our principles.

No, we are believers.

Guys, you're we are believers.

That's what the followers of Jesus have often been called, believers.

And if what defines us, this is what's amazing about our faith, by the way, and then we'll move on.

I just bear with me.

Our faith is the first movement in the history of the world where it didn't matter what nationality you were, didn't matter if you were a man or a woman, didn't matter what socioeconomic status you had, didn't matter what your past was.

Our faith is the first movement in the history of the world where the only thing that mattered was what you believed.

You could be poor, you could be from a uh a nationality that was viewed negatively in a culture, you could be all kinds of things.

But the only thing that mattered was that you were a believer.

And it's very important for us as believers to know what we believe, know why we believe it, and be able to hold strong to those beliefs, even in the midst of opposition, but to do so with love and grace.

Because there are people that are really good at not agreeing and endorsing, but they also don't love and accept.

And there are people that love and accept, but they go along with this, and we've got to live that line, and that takes the Holy Spirit, that takes some dedication, some discernment.

But if you know Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit and you can do that.

And I'm telling you, you can do that.

So that's kind of how we walk that out.

Now, are we good?

All right, cool.

This is by the way, normally if you're new to his hands, I don't use a whiteboard at all.

So this is like the teacher version of me, which there's a reason I'm not going on the Guatemala trip.

Okay, so we left off last week here.

How serious is sin?

Real serious, and we're gonna pick back up there.

What is God's response to sin?

What about my sin, and how do I respond to all of this?

And that's where we're going to uh to get.

So, all right, God's response to sin.

Well, we see in uh in Sodom and Gomorrah, he responds pretty strong.

Scripture gives us some insight.

Romans chapter 3, verse 23 says, Everyone has sinned.

Romans 3:23

Anyone want to disagree with that?

It's okay if you do anyone to be like, not me.

Good.

Good.

We all fall short of God's glorious standard.

Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.

He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

Romans 6 23 on the seriousness of sin says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ.

Jesus, our Lord.

Sin is really serious.

And God's response to sin is always serious.

I want us to recognize that.

God's response to sin is always serious.

Even listen to the seriousness in Jesus' voice in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

If you've never read John chapter 3, I think it's the most important conversation that has ever happened between two people in the history of the world.

John 3 · chapter mention

Jesus and a man named Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee.

He was a Jewish religious authority.

And yet he meets with Jesus.

They have this conversation, and Jesus kind of unpacks the gospel to him.

There's a reason that so many iconic statements of Jesus come from John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

It's an incredible thing.

If you've never read it, you've got to read it.

But Jesus says this, you're going to be familiar with this.

John 3.16.

Okay?

Every football game, it's by law, there must be a poster with John 3.16 at a football game.

So you guys have you've seen this.

For this is how God loved the world.

God sent his son into the world not to judge the world.

Now Jesus will return and judge.

That's the second coming.

We can get into that at another time.

But God sent his son into the world, not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Jesus' purpose in coming to this earth was different than the purpose of the angels going to Sodom and Gomorrah.

The purpose of the angels going to Sodom and Gomorrah was to judge it.

Jesus did not come to judge us, he came to rescue us.

Different mission.

But then listen to this.

This is in the same breath, by the way.

This is the same moment Jesus is talking, right?

God so loved the world, he sent his son.

Just a lot of people stop there.

There's no judgment against anyone who believes in him.

But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only Son.

And the judgment is based on this fact.

God's light came into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.

Okay.

Not as many people put John 3.19 on posters of football games.

Not as fun.

This is where we've got to get to, and this is where we've kind of been for the last few weeks, is that for us, love and judgment are opposites, and we've talked about this.

And that's because for us, very often, we're not capable of doing both at the same time.

There's a reason why we're told by Jesus not to judge.

Doesn't mean we don't have good judgment, we don't make judgment calls.

Doesn't mean we can't look at something and go, that's not right.

But we do not set ourselves up as the judges of other people because we will get it wrong.

But God doesn't get it wrong.

He just doesn't get it wrong.

For God, love and judgment are not opposites, they go together.

God is able, because he is righteous and good and holy and right, he is able to judge and love simultaneously.

He is able to love people, but also do what we often can't, which is determine when something needs dealt with, how it needs to be dealt with.

He knows when it's mercy and when it's a consequence.

He just knows.

And what we have to understand is that the seriousness of sin is always judged by God seriously.

And if we look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and we say to ourselves, man, that's overkill.

God, you went a little far with that.

Then we have to look at the cross and say, God, that was overkill.

We have to look at Jesus on the cross and say, God, you were a little out of hand there.

That was too much.

Or do we recognize that our sin, my sin, is so serious that all of our sin is so serious because it's so foreign to what we were created to be.

We were made in the image of God, to reflect God, to be like God.

We were made to live, and we were actually created, if you read the story of Genesis chapter 1, we were made for this purpose: to be like him and to reign over the earth.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And we often live in a world where we are not resembling him as a whole, and we definitely aren't reigning, because it feels like life is reigning over us.

It is a serious thing to abandon your purpose.

It's a serious thing to disobey God.

And God always judges sin seriously.

That's why the death of Jesus was serious.

We talked about this last week.

If you weren't here, that if we minimize the seriousness of sin, what we actually minimize is the seriousness of Jesus on the cross.

If we minimize our sin, we'd be like, I mean, come on, like, like let's be honest.

Like, we're all sinners, but how bad are you?

Can you think of someone worse?

I can.

Right?

If we are, if we're being honest, like in our own estimation, I mean, I'm bad, but I'm not that bad, you know?

Like, like have you ever met someone and they tell you their story and you do that, like, oh, okay, and then you walk away, you're like, wow.

Oh.

You know, there's a story that Jesus told where there's a Pharisee, a religious leader, and he's in the temple, and there's this tax collector, and tax collectors were really bad people, typically.

I mean, they were criminals essentially, thieves.

And the Pharisees, like, God, thank you, I'm not that guy.

I mean, thank you, Lord, that I am so much better than him.

I do this right, I do that right.

And the tax collectors in the corner going, God, I'm so sorry for everything.

I'm sorry for my failures, I'm sorry for my struggles.

And Jesus goes, Which one do you think God was pleased with as they left the temple?

And everyone was silent because they knew the answer and they didn't like it.

Like we have a tendency, if we're honest, to look at our sin and minimize it.

Because we can always find someone who has a greater amount of sin in our eyes.

In fact, one of my favorite quotes ever, and I wish I could remember the author, but I was reading a book and it talked about how we have this tendency, we look at someone and they're struggling and they're failing at life, and we go, man, if I were in their shoes, I would do it so different.

You don't know what it's like to be in their shoes.

Maybe you've never experienced half the temptation that they've experienced.

Maybe if you grew up the way that they grew up and you experienced the trauma that they experienced, maybe you would be far worse off than they are.

We just don't know those things.

So we have this tendency as people to minimize our own sin.

But when we minimize our sin, what we're actually minimizing is the seriousness of Jesus on the cross and what he accomplished and what he did for us.

What I'm trying to say is that if we look at Sodom and Gomorrah and we go, like, God, you were way out of control, that was way too much, then we also have to look at Jesus on the cross and say, hey, come on down, you don't need to do that.

That's too much.

Because for us, and just if you want to go, we gotta go theological here and really get our minds around it, the cross was at the same time an incredible act of love on our behalf, but also an intense moment of judgment.

Because God was judging the sin of the world.

Jesus took our place, it was on our and in our behalf.

There's a whole bunch of the language gets iffy tricky here because there's a lot of different uh, if you want to do a deep dive later, listen to uh articles, read articles, whatever, listen to messages about atonement theory, and there's all kinds of language, whether it was on our behalf or in our place or whatever.

Point is, however you want to describe it, sin was judged brutally that day.

And Jesus took that.

It was an incredible act of love, but it was also an act of judgment.

It was just an act of judgment that spared us.

It would have been as if the angels went into Sodom and Gomorrah and said, Yes, this place deserves to burn, this place is terrible, it is beyond repair.

Everybody leave, we're gonna take the punishment.

But sin is serious, and God's response to sin is always serious.

That is why it's so important for us not to minimize it.

And guys, in the kind of modern church world that we live in, the sort of American church that is there's so many good things.

It's like, look, if you study the history of the church and theology, it's kind of like a pendulum, and sometimes we're like way too judgmental, and so the pendulum swings, and sometimes it's like, whoa, we're way too flippant with sin, and so the pendulum tends to swing and it goes to extremes and it rarely ever hits the right spot.

Jesus nailed that though.

He was always in the right spot.

He never excused sin, he always loved people, but he understood that sin had to be dealt with.

The story of Jesus is not the story of God just going, you know what?

Don't worry about it.

All the sin, all the evil, all the all the horrible things that people do.

Um, you know, I know I've been hard on you guys in the past, Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, all that stuff, but I'm it's cool.

You know, like how many of you have multiple children?

You've raised kids, like multiple?

Raise your hands, proudly.

Come on, this isn't a shame thing.

Be honest, how many of you that by the time you got to your third kid, you were like, it's fine.

You know what I mean?

Like, I mean, let's be honest.

My oldest is in the room right now, and he knows.

He's like, you were so much harder on me than you are on them.

And it's like, it's true.

We're tired.

Uh, I'm so sorry.

We'll make it up to you.

We'll make it up to you, I promise.

But it's true.

Like, to some degree, we get to the point where we sort of just relent.

That's not what the story of the gospel is.

It wasn't God deciding, you know what, guys, sin isn't a big deal.

I'm sorry for all the times that I blew up about it in the past.

You know what?

It just whatever makes you happy.

It's not what the story of the gospel is.

God dealt just as seriously with sin on the cross as he dealt with it in Sodom and Gomorrah.

It's just that Jesus took that in our place.

And we've been forgiven through the cross.

But the sin is just as serious and it has to be dealt with.

That's why it's so vital that we give our lives to Jesus, because as Jesus Himself said, whoever believes, whoever puts their trust in him is freed, is forgiven.

But if you reject him, right, if you reject Jesus, yeah, we can clap for that.

It's fun to be free.

But if we reject him, we're gonna have to answer for sin.

It's tough.

God's response to sin is always serious.

Now, what about my sin?

This is where we're gonna wrap up, and I'm looking at the clock.

We got 10 minutes on this.

We're good.

We're good.

What about my sin?

Because this is the challenge we find ourselves in as believers is our sin has been dealt with.

That's why two people clapped a minute ago and the rest of us followed.

Our sin, I mean, if you actually believe that, your sin, like seriously, think about it.

Your sin has been dealt with.

That's awesome.

It's it's it's been dealt with, but wow, okay.

But you still gotta deal with it.

That's what's tough.

Is our sin has been dealt with, but here we are, and we still wrestle.

How does this work?

Right?

Because I understand what sin is.

It's it's me going against God, it's me elevating myself, deciding I'll decide what's right and wrong.

How serious is it?

Very.

Sodom and Gomorrah was not an overreaction.

In fact, an entire culture, as we saw it happen in Sodom and Gomorrah, and we've seen it happen in other points in history, an entire culture can get to the point where it is a culture of sin and it has to go.

It cannot be, it just can't be legislated out of.

All right?

How does God respond to sin?

Seriously.

What about mine?

What about what about the sin I struggle with right now?

Because yes, God has dealt with our sin.

If you believe in Jesus, your sin has been dealt with.

You will not, you don't have to fear death, you don't have to fear hell, you don't have to because Jesus, not because you're so good, because Jesus took your place.

But at the same time, we still have sin in our lives.

And how do we wrestle with it, work on it, without freaking out all the time that judgment's about to come?

I don't want you guys living life, looking up at the sky, is like, is there a meteor coming toward me?

I've had a pretty bad day, right?

But we also don't want to be flippant with sin.

It's where we underestimate its effects.

In fact, listen to what James uh says, James chapter four.

He's talking to, this is New Testament.

James is talking to believers who have developed a pretty flippant attitude towards sin.

Yes, they love Jesus, but they also love all the other stuff that the world loves.

And they're kind of mixing their lives and trying to create this sort of thing, I can have it both ways.

I can love God, follow God, and also do all the things that the world celebrates, and it'll be fine.

Here's what James says to that.

You adulterers, whoo! James is not pull punches.

Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?

I'll say it again.

If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

Do you think the scriptures have no meaning?

They say that God is passionate, that the Spirit He's placed within us should be faithful to Him.

And he gives grace generously.

As the scriptures say, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

So humble yourselves before God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Come close to God, and God will come close to you.

Wash your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.

Let there be tears for what you've done.

Let there be sorrow and deep grief, let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

Now, James is not being a downer here.

He's talking to people who have decided, you know what, I yeah, I love God, but I'm gonna do what everybody else in the world is doing, and I can do all of it because of grace.

And he basically says, don't cheapen God's grace.

Don't forget the price that was paid for you to be free from the consequences of sin and instead humble yourselves and live a life.

You've been freed from the power of sin.

Live a life that reflects that.

This is how Romans chapter 8 puts it.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read verses 1 through 7, and we're gonna dissect this.

Now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

In other words, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The wages of sin is death.

That's Romans 3 and Romans 6.

Romans 8, now that we know that, there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

The wages of sin is still death, but he died.

And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature.

So God did what the law could not do.

He sent his own son in a body like the bodies we sinners have.

And in that body, God declared an end to sin's control over us by giving his son as a sacrifice for our sins.

He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature, but instead follow the spirit.

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death.

But letting the Spirit control you, that leads to life and peace.

So here's what I want to do as we close.

I want to show you guys a little chart.

Boom.

That went smoother than I thought.

All right.

I was really I was actually really nervous about that moment.

Okay, here we go.

It's just kind of if you struggle with a whiteboard, just not very manly.

So I'm glad that that didn't happen.

All right.

I'm left-handed, let me move over here and explain this.

I've drawn this out before.

This is something that it's got a useful tool that God's kind of helped me craft over the years because it sort of sums up everything that Romans just said.

So here we are.

Sin is really serious, God deals with sin seriously, Jesus took our punishment, there's no condemnation, but now here we are.

We're living life, we're trying to follow God, please God, but we still struggle with sin.

How does this work?

And this sort of sums up everything we just read.

Okay, so everybody here was born.

We good?

Good.

Okay.

When you were born, you were born with a nature, and we just read that nature be described as a sinful nature.

Some people find that offensive, and I've talked about this before, so if you've you've heard this before, bear with me for a second.

Um, some people, if you say you have a sin nature, that that would offend a lot of people, kind of with modern sensitivities, but actually everyone in the world agrees with this.

They really do.

Because how many times have you heard someone say, I couldn't help myself?

Like I just, it's who I am.

I can't change the way I feel.

I can't change, I can't change who I'm attracted to.

I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to.

Yeah, that's that.

You were born with a nature, that nature has desires, not all of them are bad, but many of them are, and we are sort of slaves to our nature, and very often we do things because we're compelled to, naturally.

That's why you don't have to teach your children how to lie.

You don't.

Right?

That's natural.

The nature is often called flesh.

We see that in scripture, especially in the New Testament.

Flesh is a synonym very often for who we are apart from the work of God in our lives.

And what does flesh lead to?

Death.

Flesh dies.

All flesh dies, just the way it is.

So we're born, we have a nature, that nature is often called flesh, and if we live out of that nature, our actions, the flesh stuff, it leads to death.

It leads to the death of our trust and relationships.

You know, if you live out of this nature and you satisfy every selfish desire you have, the relationships in your life, trust will die, relationships will die, self-respect will die, sin leads to death.

But here we go.

This is where it gets cool.

John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Jesus says, anyone who wants to know God must be what?

Born again.

Let's make it a math problem.

You're born a second time.

You're born again.

I mean, Jesus makes that really clear.

And when you're born again, you receive a new nature.

And that new nature no longer simply desires what the flesh desires.

That new nature desires to do things that please God.

And that new nature is often referred to as the spirit, or it's in line with the spirit, and that leads to life.

That's essentially what we just read in Romans chapter 1, and this is sort of a blueprint for life.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

But here's the challenge: this is all neat and tidy.

But in actuality, this is what it feels like to be a Jesus follower.

It feels like this.

Every day.

I mean, the scriptures attest to this.

I mean, gosh, Paul wrote uh in Galatians, he writes, I believe it's chapter five, where he says that the flesh and the spirit are at war with one another, that the things that the flesh desires are at war with what the spirit desires, and this is happening inside of us.

In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes that he does what he doesn't want to do, and then he doesn't do the things that he does want to do, and then he even says some really interesting things like, but if I do what I don't want to do, it isn't me doing it, it's it's the sin in me that's doing it.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

It's like there's two of him.

Can you relate?

What we have to understand is that this is the reality.

Because your sin was dealt with on the cross, if you've put your faith in Jesus, if you've submitted to him, you have been freed from the power of sin.

It may not feel like that, but sin no longer reigns over you.

That doesn't mean that the sin desires go away, but you are no longer compelled.

You can say no.

It's hard, it's difficult, it takes help sometimes, it takes boundaries and accountability and counseling and all kinds of things.

Mostly it takes the spirit's work in our lives and a commitment to do what pleases God, even if it's hard.

But you can live out of this.

And what we have to understand is once we have this new nature, once you're born again, every decision you make in life, you're gonna appeal to one of these.

When you make decisions, you're appealing to one of these.

In fact, I was having a conversation with someone about a difficult topic, and they use this phrase, and they said, Well, I just I can't help it.

I was born this way.

And I was like, What birth are you talking about?

Which birth?

In fact, I find that this is sometimes more helpful in a lot of conversations than even just is it sin or not sin?

Is it right or wrong?

Well, which is it spirit or is it flesh?

Because usually when we say I was born this way, we're almost always referring to the first birth.

But but understand that that this you, this you will die.

That you will not.

This you will go away.

This you will live forever with the Lord in his glory.

And so on this side of heaven, which you should be in control?

It's clear that the answer is that one.

It's hard.

And what I think the response that we have to have to a story like Sodom and Gomorrah is it's multi-tiered.

And worship team, you guys can come up, and um, I guess we can.

Well, I don't know, is the worship team even coming?

I'm not sure if the worship team's coming back.

They don't have to, they can do what they want.

Um, they either will or they won't.

And it's fine.

Um I'm not sure if we have a baptism this morning or not, so we'll see.

We have been freed from the power of sin.

We see The story of Sodom Gomorrah that sin is serious and that God deals with sin seriously.

He always has, and he always will.

When Jesus died on the cross, that was Jesus dealing with our sin in a very serious manner.

And when he returns, when he returns, if you read the book of Revelation, like he's gonna deal with evil once and for all, and it's serious.

And we should not be shocked by the seriousness of God.

We should be grateful for that.

I'm grateful that we have a God that doesn't look at evil and sin and just go, ah, whatever.

I'm grateful that he deals with it.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of corruption in a government or in an earthly kingdom is when those who have authority and power turn a blind eye to evil.

Our God is not corrupt.

He deals with sin seriously.

We should be great, we should thank him for it.

And we should thank him that he dealt with our sins seriously because it had to be dealt with, and he dealt with that through Jesus.

Now, now we've been freed.

Now we have the opportunity to live a different life, and it is chaotic and it is a mess, and it feels like that.

At least if you're me, it is like, whoo! Thought I was further along, thought that was better, but then there's also moments where you're like, whoa, I'm I'm actually progressing a little bit.

Then you've got to be careful not to get prideful because then you'll have a really bad moment right after that.

It's tough, it's a giant mess.

Sometimes something can be both simple and difficult.

It's pretty simple.

There's a new you that's been created through the Holy Spirit if you've given your life to Jesus.

And every decision you make, you're gonna appeal to one of these natures.

Am I living out of my flesh, my first birth?

Am I gonna live out of my spirit, my second birth?

And Lord help me do that.

It takes the Holy Spirit to do this.

This is not of our own making.

I'm not gonna make a list of rules and people have tried and always goes poorly.

This is a Holy Spirit-driven life.

But if you submit to the Spirit, and if you're willing to deal with the flesh and call it what it is, A.

W.

Tozer is a theologian who lived about a century ago.

And he wrote it this way doesn't sound very fun, but when you read it in the context of this, this is powerful stuff.

Deal thoroughly with sin.

Don't excuse it, don't deny it, don't defend it.

Every known sin is to be named, identified, and repudiated, and we must trust God for deliverance from it so that there is no conscious, deliberate sin anywhere in our lives.

How awesome would that be if you're like, there is no conscious or deliberate sin in my life?

Is that even possible?

I'd love to find out.

What would it be like if the church, if us as the church, dedicated to loving and accepting people, even when we don't agree and endorse what they they do, the decisions they make, the values they have?

What if we love passionately and accept people the same way that Jesus did?

While at the same time we we hold true to our values and we say, no, I'm not going to tolerate sin in my life.

I'm gonna deal with it because it's already been dealt with by Jesus.

I'm gonna deal with it.

In fact, let's take Lord's Supper and wrap this up.

We said this last week, and by the way, if you're new, um, you're like, where'd all these cups come from?

That's what at the as you walked in, there are tables, cups with bread and juice.

We also have them at the back four columns if you want to go do this.

Jesus followers have done this for forever, since Jesus.

And this is a little meal that we take that represents the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.

The bread is his body, the juice is his blood.

It's a reminder of what he's done for us.

This is serious.

This is love and judgment right here.

This is love and judgment pre-packaged.

This is an example of the love that God has for us and the grace that he's shown us and the forgiveness and the mercy he has, but it's also a reminder that that was not free.

It might be free for us, it was not free for Jesus.

This was paid for, and it was paid for in a serious manner because sin is always dealt with by God seriously.

The challenge we have as people is now that our sin has been dealt with seriously, will I get serious about dealing with my sin?

And if I get serious about dealing with my sin and I start living out of the spirit and I stop excusing it, and I stop, I'm not talking about hating yourself, I'm not talking about becoming some rigid, self-righteous person, but I go, you know what?

No, I'm not, I'm gonna have grace for myself, but I'm not gonna excuse this behavior.

I'm gonna deal with this through the power of the spirit.

We're gonna move on from this, we're gonna get past this.

I'm not gonna keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

I'm going to do what is right in the eyes of God because he has paid the price and he has freed me from the power of sin, and now I can live righteously.

Like, let's do it.

Let's be dedicated to that, let's see what happens.

Because just like a culture can become completely consumed by sin, as we saw with Sodom and Gomorrah, you know what?

Culture can be consumed by the love of God too.

But that starts with the people who follow God and believe in God and love God taking this seriously.

Make sense?

So let's do this.

Let's pray together.

Father God, thank you so much.

Thank you for what this is and what this means.

This is the body of your son broken on our behalf.

As we take this bread, Lord, we recognize that our sin has been dealt with in a serious manner.

We're grateful for it.

But help us to never look over this, gloss over this, help us never minimize this, help us never forget the intensity that this represents.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

You held nothing back from us.

Help us remember the lengths that you went to to deal thoroughly with our sin.

And as we take this, Lord, we humble ourselves, we submit ourselves to you, saying, Now that we've been freed, now that judgment has passed over us because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, help us now live out of our new nature, desiring to please you more than we desire to please ourselves.

We pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.