Great Mistakes

Great Mistakes!

Thesis: To err is human, to forgive is divine!

Text: Mark 14:27-31

"You will all fall away,’ Jesus told them, ’for it is written:

‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.

Peter declared, ‘ Even if all fall away, I will not.’

‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘today-yes, tonight-before

the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.’

But Peter insisted emphatically, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I

will never disown you.’ And all the others said the same."

Introduction: To err is human wrote Alexander Pope in the 18th Century. In 1982 the humorist Russell Baker expressed the same idea in more specific terms:

I make the average number of mistakes. Maybe 150 or so on a busy day. Most of them aren’t terribly serious. Putting too much sugar in the coffee cup. Picking up the telephone and dialing the number of the telephone I’ve just picked up. Spelling harass with two R’s. Yes, humans make mistakes. We goof up, and create mess. They miss-hear, misinterpret, miss-judge, misread, misspeak, misspell, misunderstand, and yes make the mistake of sinning.

Everyone will blow it! Even the great apostle Paul wrote about this in Romans 7:14-25

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.

20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;

23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

The act of making mistakes is common even the great men of faith speak about this human short comings. Everyone makes mistakes! In fact, making mistakes is so ordinary, so basically human, some eventually start to just overlook mistakes without batting an eye. We even get to point sometimes were we just accept our mistakes as being right not wrong.

I. Making mistakes is just part of being human.

A. We even state we will not make mistakes but you now what we do any way.

* see Mark 14:27-31

1. The truth of the matter is man has been making mistakes since creation.

a. Great mistakes of the past:

1). The ancient Babylonians believed that the earth was flat in 8th Century B.C.. The sad fact is there are still people today who believe that the earth is flat. Their claims are based on their literal interpretation of the Bible, which, for example refers to "the four, corners of the Earth." They call themselves the "Flat Earth Society." There base is in Utah.

2). The disease malaria which comes from mosquitoes was originally named by the Italians because they believed that malaria came from bad night air around swamps. Mala- bad, and aria- air. And this sickness is still today called by the same name.

3). Diogenes researched out the belief that over moist bodies makes on less-intelligent. His theory is called "Dry Wit" he concluded that the reason people are smarter than others is because some have much more moisture in their bodies than others. He believed that the more moisture you have in your body the less intelligent you are. He even performed tests that he said confirmed his theory.

4). Pliny a Roman administrator who lived in 1st Century A.D. wrote an encyclopedia called "Natural History". It was published in the middle-ages which at that point became a reference book for 1,500 years. Here are some of his facts published in this work: