Last week we listened to a story, a parable, that Jesus told about a Pharisee and a tax collector. Here is what he said:
“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
This next verse is the shocker–the whole point of this parable. Everything makes sense up to this point in the story, and then Jesus adds:
14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 18:9-14.
Jesus is teaching that it is easy to overestimate our self-righteousness and underestimate our sin. Pride keeps us from God, humility opens the door for God’s grace and mercy to forgive us and make us new. Jesus told that story late in his ministry. I wonder if he thought about this account when he decided to tell his parable.
This isn’t a parable, a story: this is an event from Jesus’ life:
Luke 7:36-50 “Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37 When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38 and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. [Imagine being there with Jesus–this is awkward! Small town, woman with sinful reputation, violating social etiquette and ruining a nice dinner. How do you respond?]
39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is — that she is a sinner."
40 Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you."
"Tell me, teacher," he said.
41 "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
43 Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled."
"You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven — for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
48 Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
49 The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" [That is THE question of the Gospels!]
50 Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."
There is a passage that says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” James 2:10. You are either a law keeper (totally) or a law breaker. The consequences are worse for some sins, but a sin is a sin. So before we get too far in this . . .
Let me ask you a question: was Simon the Pharisee a sinner? Was he a better sinner or worse sinner than the sinner who invaded his nice dinner with Jesus? Is pride, arrogance, and hypocrisy a worse sin than adultery? At least she was an honest sinner.
What would you think if you go to the doctor with a head ache and he prescribes aspirin, tells you to take it easy and you will be fine. Maybe meditate once a day to relieve stress. Have a glass of red wine. And then you discover a year later that you have a brain tumor, he knew, and now you waited too late.
Having an accurate assessment of the problem helps figure out the cure.
The problem with so much “faith” and “religion” is that it under-diagnoses the problem and therefore does not come up with an accurate cure.
I am afraid that often times WE under diagnose the problem of sin and therefore we don’t get the cure.
We are going to talk about sin today, dwell on the nastiness of life, the rotten core of what is wrong with this world and what is ultimately wrong with us.
I could sweeten it and use some other name, but
I. Sin: By Any Other Name is still sin.
A. We all know that there is something wrong with the world. Call it sin.
1. And in the late seventies, when there was a black out in New York City which resulted in mass looting, President Carter said: "Obviously the number one contributing factor to crime,,, is high unemployment among young people, particularly those who are black or Spanish speaking." Number 1???
2. So what did he say when it turned out 45% of those arrested for looting had jobs, and only 10% were on welfare, and the people stole things they did not need?
3. The 19th century philosopher Hegel said that ignorance is the root of evil, so that education evolves us to a higher moral level...
4. We have bought into this myth, that we can evolve out of sin, can fix it with education or social engineering.
5. In America we are among the highest educated people in the world, with the highest crime rate of a "civilized" nation
6. You can blame society, parents, racism, or whatever you can come up with, but it is a hideous disease that the Bible simply labels: SIN. Let’s try to define the problem, diagnose the disease.
The Bible has several ways of defining sin. One is . . .
B. Sin is missing the mark
1. It is an archery term. You shoot for the bulls eye, and anything outside the bulls eye is a miss. It might be pretty good, but it isn’t perfect.
2. Jesus laid out the standard when he said, “Be perfect as my Father is perfect.”
3. Hitting the mark is doing what God created us to do, being who God created us to be. It is living life to the absolute full. All the time. It isn’t just the absence of evil, but the complete presence of good.
4. So you are at a party, and you might think you are doing good because you don’t abuse alcohol, you aren’t being sexually immoral, you don’t lie or gossip.
5. But hitting the mark would be 1) avoiding the evil but also 2) doing the good that God calls you to do. So there is a lonely person at the party that no one likes, and you don’t make the effort to talk with that person and encourage them. Someone you are talking with is searching and you don’t share Christ with them. You’ve missed the mark. We call these sins of omission–things we SHOULD have done but didn’t. If you see someone who needs your help and ignore that, you sin.
C. Sin is trespassing–stepping over a line that we shouldn’t step over.
1. There are lines, boundaries, that define our world. This is my wife, this is your husband. Good people, beautiful and smart, but stepping over those lines becomes sin.
2. When God said to Adam and Eve, “Eat fruit from all the trees, but not this one tree.” That was a line. Crossing that line, eating the fruit, was a trespass, a sin.
3. When the ten commands forbids coveting, wanting what belongs to another, it is about respect the lines of reality.
That doesn’t explain the heart of sin, because sin simply is . . .
D. Sin is childish rebellion
1. Just plain defiance to the authority of God. Like a two year old child who hears mommy say, “No,” but does it anyway, we are rebellious creatures. We defy God, his authority, his definition of right and wrong, when we sin.
2. Thumbing our noses at goodness.
3. I’m going to do it MY way!
4. So sin is this combination of missing the mark, crossing the line, and rebelling against God.
If that’s what sin is, we’ve defined the disease, the next question is:
II. Just how bad is it? What is our prognosis!
The Bible teaches some pretty specific truths about sin. First,
A. We inherited a legacy of sin. We were born into sin. Original sin. Which is a way of saying, “There is nothing original about your sin, it’s all been done before. Teenagers who think they’ve invented lust would be shocked to meet their own parents as teens!”
1. "Surely I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." Psalm 51:5.
2. However you define that, it’s pretty clear that we are doomed from the beginning to be sinful people.
3. Romans especially in the New Testament makes it clear that Adam represented us, all of humanity, in the Garden of Eden, and he sinned for us all. 1 Corinthians 15:22 says, “For as in Adam all die,”
4. See that world ALL.
B. It affects every single human being.
1. Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Not just “bad people.” Not just the woman with a bad reputation, but the Pharisee with the good reputation as well.
2. All have sinned–this levels the playing field. “If Jesus was a prophet,” Simon the Pharisee thinks, “he would know that this woman groveling at his feet is a sinner.” Jesus is the kind of prophet who knows that she is a sinner, AND that Simon is in the same sinking boat of sin. Whatever Jesus says about sin to the woman he also says to teach Simon. And us.
3. What do I have in common with people outside the church? Sin.
C. Sin affects every single aspect of our lives. Sometimes we use the word “Pollution” for the effects of sin.
1. The command to love the Lord with all our soul, mind and strength is one we consistently fail to keep on all counts. We miss the mark, because our soul, mind, and strength are all polluted
2. We often think of sin as affecting our moral choices. But it clouds our memory, it muddies our relationships, it messes up our psyches. You don’t need a degree in psychology to know that you are all nuts. Seriously. All of us are mentally ill with the disease of sin.
3. Sin ruins our relationship with God; it pollutes our relationship with the environment; it wrecks our relationship with other people; it even makes us sometimes hate ourselves and hurt ourselves.
The Bible teaches that sin is a radical disease, that
D. We are totally sold out to sin, completely lost in sin. Total Depravity
1. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
2. Jeremiah isn’t exaggerating. Humans are rotten to the core. That explains so much of the data of the world, starvation due to greed, genocide, crime, broken marriages and failed economies. Ultimately, the thing that is wrong with the world and the thing that is wrong with me is SIN.
3. It’s so bad that . . .
4. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” Ephesians. 2:1
E. We are left for dead in our sin. This isn’t a mild case of rebellion, this isn’t an occasional crossing a line that we weren’t suppose to cross, this isn’t missing the mark once or twice a month. This is severe. It is terminal. This is a whole you cannot dig yourself out of.
1. If you and I don’t get the seriousness of the disease we will not accept the radical cure.
Knowing the disease is the first step in discovering . . .
III. The cure
A. There are hundreds of bandaids solutions.
1. Every religion in the world has this in common: it comes up short because it is based on what you DO or DON’T Do. You cannot cure yourself of this one. You can’t just change your attitude and believe in yourself, or do yoga, or take a pill, or go to counseling. All of that is band-aid stuff, you take care of the symptom, but not the sin.
2. You are spiritually bleeding out, dying in your sin, dead already without radical intervention. You don’t need a band-aid, you need radical heart replacement surgery!
I love the story we read about Jesus. Simon the Pharisee, like all of these religious men, were very skeptical of Jesus being the Messiah, or even a prophet.
B. We need more than a prophet, we need the forgiver of sins.
1. That is the dillemma that Jesus brings to the forefront in this encounter. He doesn’t just know sin when he sees it, he knows the sinner.
2. And he has, or rather, he IS
C. There is only one real solution to the genuine problem of sin.
1. You can’t pay the debt. Cause if you do good perfectly, that’s what God expects. That is his standard of holiness. You can’t make up for the negative by doing the positive.
2. No one else can. It would be like robbing a bank, getting caught, and bringing in your dog. “Alright, you caught me, take the dog, lock him up for 20 years. That will teach me a lesson.”
3. The one you owe the debt to has to offer you forgiveness.
a. That is why the people at Simon’s house were freaking out–they knew (correctly) that only God can forgive sin.
b. Jesus knew that this woman was a sinner, and he offered her what he ALONE could offer: forgiveness. Because Jesus is God in the flesh he can offer total and complete forgiveness.
4. Because God is perfectly just he can’t just lower his standards.
a. The only solution to sin’s total destruction and to God’s total holiness is the person of Jesus.
b. And the sacrifice that he made for us. We are going to talk about sacrifice more this winter and hopefully learn more about this precious gift of salvation.
Challenge: Why focus on sin?
Because if you don’t get the force of sin, if you underestimate the disease, you don’t get the cure, you slap on a band-aid and it makes you feel good for a little while until guilt gets into your soul again. If you don’t understand SIN you will never understand or accept SALVATION.
And, because as Jesus said, Luke 7:47 “But he who has been forgiven little loves little." And those who have been forgiven much love much. If you are a Christian, you are forgiven MUCH. Every sin, sins of omission, sins you’ve committed, sins that rage in the secret places of your heart, rebellion that defies any rational explanation, sins of your childhood, your teen years, even sins in your future, sins on the day you die, ALL is forgiven in Jesus. Sin is radical. Salvation is even more so. And when we start to get that, we become less like self-righteous Simon the Snob and more like the weeping woman with the perfume, wanting nothing more than to stand by Jesus, expecting nothing more than to be able to serve him, even with our tears and our hair.
