Drop The Weight
I have a backpack on…and it is really heavy!
It’s heavy because it’s filled with rocks, stones!
“Why on earth would you fill backpack w/rocks?” Good ?
The rocks in my backpack symbolize the various sins in our life.
(have someone take out rock: “sin”)
This stone today represents sin in general.
You all look good today. You all look respectable. But I know something about each and every one of you…you all have sin. In fact we all have it.
Some here today may be carrying huge sins w/you. Like stones in my backpack. Others may be carrying much smaller sins, easier to hide, less easy to detect. But still sin.
Regardless of its size it is still a weight on us.
A weight you and I were not designed to carry.
Did you know that 61% of people in America are overweight. Problems…
•Not just middle-aged spread. 13% of children aged 6 to 11 years and 14% of youth aged 12 to 19 overweight.
•nearly tripled for adolescents in the past 20 yrs.
•300,000 deaths each year in the United States are associated with being overweight.
•Being overweight is associated with heart disease, certain types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, asthma, and psychological disorders, such as depression.
We were not designed to live w/ all this excess weight!
And the weight of our sin affects us even more.
In many cases sin causes us to become depressed, discouraged, it keeps us separated from God, from becoming the people He created us to be.
It weighs us down and wears us down.
So, today we begin a series which will last several weeks, called “Drop The Weight”. Throughout this series you will be asked to release the sins you have been carrying, in some cases, maybe these are things that have been a part of your life for a long time.
Imagine walking around with a huge weight on in your arms. (slide) It would really take the joy and excitement out of life wouldn’t it?
This morning, some of you may be at the point of exhaustion. You are eager to drop the weight!
Others may feel like it’s not that big of a deal.
“The weight of sin? I can handle it.”
If that is your attitude then you misunderstand the power and the effects of sin.
•Sin will always cost you more than you really want to pay.
•always take you further than you really want to go.
•always stay longer than you want it to stay.
•always change you in ways you can never imagine.
There are three things that are very important about the sin we have carried with us today. (slide)
1.How we got it? How it got into our life.
2.How it affects us?
3.What we’re gona to do with it now that it’s in our life.
I want to go on the record as saying that I love God.
I love Him with all my heart. That’s why I’m here today. You might be thinking, “No, you’re here because it’s your job to be here.”
Sure, it’s my job. But even if wasn’t, I’d still be here. If not here I would be in church someplace.
I’m seeking after God. I Want to grow. I want to Know Him more, better. I want to please Him with my life!
You’re here today. And it is not your job. I am hoping your reasons same, similar. You are here to grow. Because you love God. And you want to please Him.
So, if we all want to please God w/our lives, how does sin get into our life?
We all know sin isn’t pleasing to God. In fact, He hates sin. How did it get there?
Because we all have sin. Bible says, “For all have sinned.”
Look at Genesis 3 Story of Adam and Eve. 2:16-17
“And the Lord commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you shall surely die.’
Pretty clear don’t you think? Pretty simple.
I don’t think Adam could use as an excuse, “I didn’t understand your directions God. They were a little confusing, or too vague.” No God’s directions were pretty straightforward.
Illus. The other night I put the boys into bed. “Good night, go to bed, no talking. See you in the morning” Pretty clear right?
I was 5 feet from the door and I heard them talking.
So I went back in. Reminded them, no talking. Go to bed!
10 minutes later I hear giggling. I walk in just as a pillow soars past my head. Joshua is faking sleep. But, Jordan can’t fake sleeping because he now has no pillow. But even in his guilt Jordan reminds me that I really didn’t say anything about throwing pillows, I just said, “no talking”.
I thanked Jordan for that observation…no, not really.
For the last time I reminded them that they had school in the morning and that they were going to be tired, so go to sleep.
As I walked away I realized. “I do this to God all the time!”
God gives me simple directions. I know what He’s saying to me…and yet sometimes I still choose to do the wrong thing!
Genesis 3:1-6 (read)
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
I want you to see the progression here.
Illus. It’s kind of like someone who has a slow leak in their tire. Each day it loses a little bit of air. And they might even notice it looks a little low. But they don’t take care of it.
One morning they go outside and their tire is completely flat! And they think to themselves, “Man, my tire just went flat!” No it didn’t. It has been slowly leaking for days. It went flat over a period of time.
Often sin works the same way in our life.
Usually we don’t just give into this huge sin that suddenly appears in our life. It is a process of a downward spiral that often begins with something so little, a tiny little sin. Something so small in fact that we convince ourselves it won’t even matter.
A slow leak. Adam and Eves sin begin when Satan (slide) Questioned God’s word. He Created doubt.
Did God really say? Is that what He really meant?
God said, “Do not steal”. But Satan whispers, “You work for a multi-million dollar company. There not going to miss a few pens!” So we steal.
God said, “Do not lie”. But we listen to the Devil, “What if the lie actually keeps someone from being hurt? Then a lie can actually be a good thing.” Sop we lie and deceive someone.
He questioned God’s Word. He created in Eve’s mind a gray area.
A recent study shows that most Americans no longer believe in absolutes. We don’t believe in right and wrong. That something is always right, or that something is always wrong.
Black and white have been replaced by shades of gray.
Here’s the truth folks, it really doesn’t matter if we call something right or wrong…it’s what God calls it that really matters. We need to know God’s Word. And then we need to obey it. And the Bible is pretty clear that some things are right and some things are wrong.
Satan questioned God’s Word. And because he did that Eve responds by (adding to God’s word. Look at what she said, in verse 3, “God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”
God never told Eve she couldn’t touch the tree. Eve added that part herself. She made it harder than really was.
Now the devil knew he had her right where he wanted her. She was looking at God’s directions for living as a heavy burden. Instead of a way to live life free from the weight of sin and guilt.
Look at what happened next… Satan denied God’s word.
“You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“You won’t die! God is wrong. He’s trying to pull a fast one on you.” And then he suggests to Eve that God is withholding something that is really good from her.
I meet people all the time who think being a Christian means the end of everything they want to do that’s fun. That God just wants to keep people from having fun. They see God’s word like Eve was, don’t eat this, don’t touch that, don’t go there, don’t laugh, don’t have a good time…or you will die!”
And we perpetuate that myth when we walk around like our face would crack if we smiled. Of all people of the world, we are the ones who are free! We are the ones who are forgiven, and cleansed, and made new. We are the ones who are headed for heaven. We ought to be the happiest people on the planet!
This led to the last part of Eve’s progression into sin…
Eve considered the fruit apart from God.
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Notice the absence of God in her thinking. How did Eve disobey God when He gave such simple directions? She took God out of the equation.
She thought “logically” about it. She reasoned. Rationalized.
The fruit is food. And God knows we need food to eat.
And the tree doesn’t look evil. Kind of a cute tree.
Pretty flowers.
It will make me smarter. When you think about it, the fruit is really health food. And how can health food be bad for you?
Sounds like sill reasoning doesn’t it?
But we do it all the time.
I know I’m told, even commanded to love others as I love myself, but God doesn’t know what they said about me, or what they did to me.
He doesn’t really expect me to love them.
Or this is one I hear all the time…”He says I have to love them, but I don’t have to like them.” I challenge anyone to show me that one in the Bible. It’s not there.
God’s Word commands me to forgive others, in fact it even says that in the same way I forgive others I will be forgiven.
But God doesn’t know what they are like. It would be wrong for me to forgive them. That would be like saying what they did was ok. God wouldn’t want me to do that!
But then we expect God to forgive us.
It is so easy to rationalize. To reason. To excuse ourselves from living by God’s Word.
Isn’t it odd how we can come up with reasons to excuse our own behavior, but we hold everyone else to God’s highest standard. Like God understands when we mess up, but God get them, when they mess up.
Here’s what we have to realize church, You and I are being solicited all the time.
Don’t you hate it when you are relaxing at home and the phone rings and it is a telemarketer? A solicitor. Trying to get you to buy something.
Well, Satan is doing that to you all the time. He is trying to get us to doubt God and His Word, he is trying to convince us that obeying God is too difficult, He wants us to think that life would be better lived our way, he wants us to take God out of equation.
That is how sin enters our life.
He suggests His way better. (Our way is better).
Let me ask you: “Does this (heavy backpack) look better?”
Does his way/our way lead to freedom?
Three things very important about our sin…
1. How got there.
2. How it affects our life.
3. What are we going to do with it now that it is in our lives?
Sin is a weight that steals your joy.
It makes you live at a much lower level than you could, than what God has planned for you.
It grinds at you.
It binds you. Living in captivity. Begins to rule over you.
It blinds you to a better life.
Sin destroys your life here, and will destroy you for eternity. It is the sin in our life that makes us reject Jesus.
It is the sin in our life that will send us to hell.
So, what do we do with it now that it is in our life?
Hebrews 12:1
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”
Bible suggests we “throw it off”.
-Give it to God. Take it. I don’t want it anymore.
-Talk w/someone about it. Someone who will help.
-Confess it someone. Ask forgiveness.
-1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Let go of this thing you have carried.
Drop the weight! And be free.
Illus. There once was a man who had nothing for his family to eat. He had an old rifle and three bullets. So, he decided that he would go out hunting and kill some wild game for dinner.
As he went down the road, he saw a rabbit. He shot at the rabbit and missed it. The rabbit ran away.
Then he saw a squirrel and fired a shot at the squirrel and missed it. The squirrel disappeared into a hole in a cottonwood tree.
As he went further, he saw a large wild "Tom" turkey in the tree, but he had only one bullet remaining.
A voice spoke to him and said, "Pray first, aim high and stay focused. However, at the same time, he saw a deer which was a better kill.
He brought the gun down and aimed at the deer. But, then he saw a rattlesnake between his legs about to bite him, so he naturally brought the gun down further to shoot the rattlesnake.
Still, the voice said again to him, "I said ’Pray, Aim high and Stay focused." So, the man decided to listen to God’s voice.
He prayed , then aimed the gun high up in the tree and shot the wild turkey. The bullet bounced off the turkey and killed the deer. The handle fell off the gun and hit the snake in the head and killed it. And, when the gun had gone off, it knocked him into a pond When he stood up to look around, he had fish in all his pockets, a dead deer and a turkey to eat for his family.
And snake was dead, because the man listened to God.
Pray first before you do anything, more than anything this can keep sin from entering your life,
aim and shoot high in your life. Don’t settle with low living.
Stay focused on God.
You will slay the serpent in your life because you listened to God and His Word.
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