GETTING FREE
Sermon Two: The Weight Around Your Neck
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
February 24, 2008
Last week I made the case to you that it’s a normal part of the Christian life to continue to struggle with sin. If I didn’t make that case to you well enough last week, I think today ought to close the deal because what I want to do today is get into the Biblical stuff – the scriptural evidence that sin will continue to be an ongoing issue in the life of every believer for a period of time.
Dallas Willard says the problem with the majority of Christians in the West today is that they haven’t yet decided to follow Christ. (Donut) This simply means that most Christians, having given their lives to Christ, are still hanging on to chunks of their pre-Christ lives. They are still constantly drawn to sinful things and because they are still attracted to sinful things, they are still constantly vulnerable to sin.
You’ve no doubt noticed I’ve enjoyed a few refreshments this morning, and I assume most of you have found it a bit distracting. It was distracting even though I showed up to do my job, right? I could keep eating all the way through the message today, and still maybe do a decent job, but there’s no way it could ever be as good as it would be if I focused completely on communicating, right?
Many Christians show up to “do their jobs” every day. We get up in the morning, maybe pray or read the Bible, begin consciously intending to follow Christ, and try hard through the day to do right things and avoid wrong things. The problem, though, is that we keep going back after the donuts. Our old life keeps calling to us, and we keep listening. We’re living our Christian lives with sin still in front of us, and we’re trying hard to look past it, but sometimes it just gets too hard and we just dig in. And this keeps us from maximum effectiveness in the Christian life. For many of us the Christian life has brought not freedom from sin, but the need for sin management. Before you were a Christian, you didn’t need to manage your sin. Now that you’re a Christian (if you are), you are aware of sin and believe Christ died to bring you forgiveness for it. You moved from not being aware of your sin to being aware of it and knowing you should stop doing it, but many have not yet gotten to where you have actually quit! Sin is still “before your eyes,” and the reason it’s in that place is because that’s where you have chosen to keep it. And so you live your life not to avoid sin completely, but simply to manage it. You put it in a spot where it won’t always bother you anymore and you can say you’re avoiding it – but it’s still close enough to grab a bite when it gets tempting. Sin management.
That, my friends, is the weight around your neck. Sin is a weight around your neck that keeps calling you back to the table again and again. My goal this morning is to show you, Biblically, how it is that Christians continue struggling with sin. Last week I had you look inside your heart and life to see areas where you may be struggling with sin. Today I want to give you the Biblical background behind the sin struggle and help you understand it. And yes, probably at the end of this message I’ll see if you’re ready to step out of it and leave it behind. Some of you may be.
But let me ask you, what’s your pet sin? What’s the thing in your life you keep going back to? At a certain place in our Christian lives, we’ve all got ‘em. What’s yours?
Proverbs 26:11 (NIV)
11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
Sick, huh? I know! The Bible doesn’t mince words when it talks about sin and stupidity. We keep doing the same stupid and sinful things over and over and over and over like a dog vomits and then eats it right back up again. I know! It’s sick! Do you think that’s the point? Do you think we’re supposed to read this and think, “How nice. What a lovely picture!” Or are we supposed to read it and experience just a little bit of what God experiences when we keep doing those pet sins over and over and over again?
Revelation 3:15-16 (NIV)
15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
16 So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
God seems to use a variety of kind of grotesque pictures when dealing with our tendency to keep sinning and finding sin appealing and attractive.
Let’s turn more to scripture and learn more about this weight of sin that at some point is around all of our necks. Non-Christians or seekers here today, my hope is that you will come a little closer to realizing that there is in fact this weight of sin. Christian today, my hope is that you will realize that often the only difference between Christ followers and non Christ-followers with regard to sin is that Christ followers usually feel guiltier for their sins. And that’s how we get into sin management – just trying to keep it below the surface, keep it from bubbling up and overwhelming us.
GOD
Romans 7:15-24 (NIV)
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?
This is the quintessential Biblical passage on the struggle with sin. If you have struggled with sin, if you’re struggling with it now, this is probably a passage you really relate to. In this passage, Paul describes the struggle with sin in great detail. He starts with the fact that part of struggling with sin as a Christian is finding that you are at odds with yourself. When you are lost in sin before coming to Christ, you are whole. Wholly sinful! You sin without giving it much thought. Sin comes naturally to you. You feel in sinful ways, and then your feelings recruit your mind, your intellect, to find reasons to justify whatever it is they are telling you to do. As soon as you believe you’ve found “reasons” for doing what you want to do, you do it, and of course you feel justified in having done it, so you don’t feel guilty at all. Your emotions, intellect, and behaviors all work together in the service of sin. This is how it is that we can be godless for years and years and never sense that anything is missing. When we are wholly devoted to sin, we are whole! All of our faculties work together to serve sin.
Then at some point you become aware of your sin and need for God and surrender to him. But after that moment of surrender, you find yourself still struggling with sin. Only now something real has happened inside you. You are aware of sin. You are aware that it grieves God and debases you and hurts those around you and ultimately damages society. When you didn’t know that you were fine, but now your spirit has come alive and sin, for the first time, has become a stranger to you. You still do it – maybe even fairly regularly – but you suddenly have some perspective on it. It’s like you realize there’s this force inside of you – something that still drives you to sin, even though you don’t want to.
Romans 7:16-18 (NIV)
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.
This is what Paul describes here. He talks about being in a place where you realize the existence of this thing in you that he calls the “sinful nature.” Even though you are a Christian and find yourself desiring to do what God would have you do, you find that deep down in you is still a desire to sin. The fact is that sin continues to seem fun. You are drawn to it.
In Genesis we see that God created a perfect world and he placed two perfect creatures in that world. At a certain point, those creatures chose to disobey God. This disobedience was the first sin, and when Adam and Eve sinned, it brought sin into the whole world and passed it on to every person who would ever live.
Romans 5:12-14 (MSG)
12 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death.
13 That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses.
14 Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Some people say, “Why?” Why am I held responsible and considered a sinner because Adam and Eve sinned tens of thousands of years ago? The answer is actually very simple. The Apostle Paul writes that when Adam and Eve sinned, the entire human raced died in them. Think about that. What if your mom’s mother had died before giving birth to your mother? If that had happened, you would not be here today. You could say that in a sense, you would have died in her – all the potential for your life, the seed that would become your mother - -would have been extinguished. What Paul tells us is basically that this is what happened with sin. When our first parents – Adam and Eve – disobeyed God – something in the human spirit died – something essential that God had placed there. It died, and it died in them – so everyone born from them (which is everyone!) has been afflicted with this condition called sin. And this condition called sin is a condition that separates us from God and will eventually lead to spiritual death. It is a condition of the human spirit that drives us away from God and toward our own self-interest. It is the natural condition of our hearts and souls. It’s how we are born – how we come “from the factory.” So then some say, “Well, if there’s nothing I can do about it, why does God hold me responsible? It’s not my fault.” If you knew a person who had a mental health condition that caused them to beat up on you when they were around you, you would stand far enough away from them so they couldn’t hit you anymore. It’s not their fault they have this condition, but it causes them to do violence to you. Sin is violence to God and the first thing we must come to understand is how deeply sin wounds and offends him. It is a violent assault on his holy character and to his pure love and God simply cannot look upon it. He hates it. He can’t stand it. As I read earlier, it makes him want to puke! God finds it absolutely revolting and cannot, because of his holiness, involve himself with it. Consequently, sin in our lives will separate us from God. Sinful people cannot be close to a holy God. What is hell? Hell is the place where, after being patient with sin, and forgiving it, and dying for it, and sending his Spirit to root it out, and warning his people against it for thousands of years, God will finally say, “I’m done with this. I will not look on sin anymore. I’m finished.” At that time, all who lived their lives on earth wanting nothing to do with God will get their wish. Hell is simply a place where there is no trace of God. None.
Romans 7:18 (NIV)
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.
The sinful nature is that part of us that wants things that are contrary to God’s desires for us. God wants healthy and whole things – our sinful natures crave sick and broken things. God wants life. Our sinful natures crave things that bring death. God wants peace. Our sinful natures crave things that lead to drama and blood and chaos. God wants us to serve one another. Our sinful natures desire to serve only ourselves. God wants us to be generous. Our sinful natures desire to hoard wealth. God wants us to be compassionate. Our sinful natures delight in seeing bad things happen to people we don’t like and hate seeing good things happen to them. Paul got it right. NOTHING good is in the sinful nature.
And what Paul describes in our passage in Romans 7 is something many of you understand very well. Becoming a Christian does not completely free us from sin. Coming to Christ brings us forgiveness for our sin, but it does not deliver us completely from sin’s grip on us. Now your reaction to that may be shock or confusion, but all you have to do is look at your own life. I believe the vast majority of people in this room are struggling with sin on a regular basis. I believe many in this room find it exhausting to be a Christian and often don’t even want to do what God would have them do. The vast majority of people have lived for years like I did – setting spiritual goals for themselves, failing, feeling guilty, quitting for a while, then redoubling their efforts, only to fail again. Many in this room say they are Christ-followers, yet when Christ calls them to do something even mildly scary, risky, or adventurous, they come up with a million reasons to disobey. Many live day after day with willful sin in their lives. You see yourself in these words of Paul’s.
Romans 7:19-21 (NIV)
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.
Then Paul goes on to explain how in our minds we can love and want to obey God, but we can find that our bodies don’t get on board. They continue to do whatever they want to do. They kind of rebel against our desire to be sin-free and say, “I’ll show you,” and then they just do their thing. We feel like pawns sometimes because part of us wants to love and serve God, but honestly, a big part of us really doesn’t.
Romans 7:24 (NIV)
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
I want to close looking at this verse. What Paul observes here is not the state of a person who is completely without God, or a person who hates God, or a person who is seeking God. Paul is talking here about the Christian – the so-called Christ-follower – who finds that they are still a slave to sin. And he asks the question “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Next week we’re going to look at his answer to that question, but let’s think about the body of death for a moment.
Vivid, huh? Ever feel that way to you? Do you want to love and obey and serve God but find that sin feels like a weight around your neck, choking the joy and the spiritual vitality out of you, keeping you from worshipping with a full heart, and blocking your prayers and the connection between you and God that you wish were there? Do you find yourself constantly riddled with doubt? Do you find that every time something tragic happens around you, you doubt whether there’s a God? Do you get bogged down in the little details of religion and find yourself asking questions that have nothing to do with how you live out this life before God? Do you keep deciding every day or two that you’re going to really serve God wholeheartedly from now on, try it for a while, then kind of lose the plot? Does serving God seem like a big head-thing because you don’t experience much of anything in your heart? Do you want to serve God in your mind, but often find your body (tongue, hands, lips, heart, feet) not getting on board? Do you experience the Christian life as apathetic, ho-hum, “I know I should care but I really don’t.” (I just did that jumping into first person thing!) All of these things are what logically occur in the life of a Christian who continues to serve sin. I repeat, these are the logical fruits of a life lived in service to sin. And I want to tell you something. You will NEVER get past this using the methods you’re already using. Prayer harder, reading more scripture, listening to more audio books, joining a different small group, finding a new church – none of this will ever release you from the body of death. You can live as a Christian this way all your life and, in the end, still die in your sin. Everyone – both Christian and non – has two choices in this life. Live according to the sinful nature (the flesh), or live according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh will die. Those who live according to the Spirit will live.
Romans 8:12-13 (NIV)
12 Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation--but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
Remember, Paul’s writing to the church, telling Christians that if they do not stop sinning, they will face the same penalty as everybody else – spiritual death. The struggle with sin is a normal part of the Christian life – FOR A WHILE. But it is NOT – I repeat – it it NOT – meant to be your final destination. Sin management is not the life Jesus has called you to.
