At school Little Tommy was told by a classmate that most adults are hiding at least one dark secret, and that this makes it very easy to blackmail them by saying, "I know the whole truth." Little Tommy decided to go home and try it out. He went home, and as he was greeted by his mother he said, "I know the whole truth." His mother quickly handed him $20 and said, "Just don’t tell your father." Quite pleased, the boy waited for his father to get home from work, and greeted him with, "I know the whole truth." Tommy’s father promptly handed him $50 and said, "Please don’t say a word to your mother!" Very pleased, the boy was on his way to school the next day when he saw the mailman at his front door. Little Tommy greeted him by saying, "I know the whole truth." The mailman immediately dropped the mail, opened his arms saying, "Then come give your daddy a big hug."
Before we get started I want to tell you that I don’t know the whole truth about your lives. I don’t know every dark secret you keep hidden…I know some but not all. But let’s say for the sake of making a point that I did know every dark secret you have. Let’s say that I had a list of every sin you’ve ever committed, and that list is now posted in the back of the church, would you still be sitting here now, or would you rush either in the back to destroy that list, or would you run out the church doors in shame? Or would you rush to me to get the scoop? There are certain things we don’t want others to know about us: Things in our past that we are not proud of. We often talk about criminals having a rap sheet, a list of every crime they have ever committed, but what if there was a list of your sins, a rap sheet of every bad thought, every sinful behavior, everything. It’s a scary thought, and that’s what makes our text today so sobering. Look at vs. 3 of Psalm 130. “If You O’ Lord, kept a record of sins!”
What a sobering thought. If there was such a record, what would yours look like? There’s a commercial out there for persons wanting a credit report, and the commercial goes, “do you have good credit…or do you only think you have good credit…hmmmm.” Most people think that have a good record when it comes to their sins because in their mind, they are not a murderer or they are not an adulterer, so there record, though not perfect is still fairly clean.
Yet is it? Consider that if you break one of God’s laws than that means that you are a sinner, it goes on your record. And only one sin is needed to condemn you. And the truth is that we have all sinned not once, but many times. One of the words for sin in the Bible simply means “missing the mark.” It pictures an archer shooting an arrow toward a target, and if the arrow hits anything but the bulls eye, he has missed the mark. The Bible commands us to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. Any time we fall short of the ideal of God’s perfection, we sin.
The bible mentions different ways that we sin. Now as I tell you these, I want you to keep a tally in your mind, and think about what that record of yours might look like. The first type of sin is what we call sins of commission. These are deliberate sins. We know not to do something but we do it anyway.
A couple of weeks back, I was leaving the Winchester service to come to teach Sunday School at Clara, and I was already leaving late, and I knew I had a good lesson planned, (The class might have disagreed!), so I wanted to get there as quick as I could. As I pulled off onto the hwy, my truck went from 30 to 40 to 50 to 60 and so on. No sooner had a got to be a bit too quick, I saw a state trooper coming the opposite way, and I immediately slammed on the brakes, but to my chagrin. He popped on those lights and pointed his finger at me as he passed me. Now I know what the law says. Some lawmakers up in Jackson got to together and in their collective wisdom they determined that the speed limit for the old Hwy 45 is 55 mph. I knew that. And the bible tells me to obey those with authority over me, and that includes elected officials. I knew all this but I deliberately sinned by speeding. That’s a sin of commission. It wasn’t an accident…it was an accident that I got caught but it wasn’t an accident. I knew what I was doing.
Then there are sins of stumbling. James 2:10 Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter warmed himself at the enemies’ fire. A servant girl accused him of being a follower of Jesus. Peter, under the pressure of the moment just blurted out, “No, I don’t know the man.” He didn’t mean to do that. He intended to do just the opposite, but he stumbled. We do the same. We get startled and a word comes out of our mouth that we know we should not say. We get angry and we retaliate. We forget to set the alarm and we miss church. We get careless and we gossip. We don’t intend to do those things. It just happens. We stumble and sin.
Then there are sinful thoughts. The people of Noah’s day died in God’s judgment flood because every thought they had was wicked. In Jesus day, He said, “It has been written, ‘Do not murder.’ I tell you, ‘Do not hate.’ It has been written, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ I tell you, ‘Don’t even lust in your mind.’” You see sin is not just bad behavior, but bad thinking as well. You ever heard the phrase you can look but you can’t touch? That’s not true. Jesus said that your thoughts need to be pure as well.
Finally there is what is known as sins of omission. James 4:17 says “Anyone then who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” Many of you have been following the case in Texas of the young woman who hit a homeless man with her car, and he got lodged in her windshield and instead of getting help she simply drove home and parked her car in her garage. Now hitting the man was bad, but it was an accident, and what has gotten everybody so upset is not what she did, but what she didn’t do. And many of you know that there are things you should do…you should be more patient with others, you should be more generous, you should be more concerned about others. You know you should pray more, study more, worship more faithfully. And if you know you ought to do something and you don’t do it then that is a sin.
A man was awoken in bed late one night by a knock at his front door. Angered, he opened the door to see a drunk man who said, “Can you give me a push?” The man said, “It is 12:30 at night, no I can’t give you a push. I was sleeping!” When he got back to bed his wife asked who it was and he said it was some guy who wanted a push. “Well, did you give him one.” “No, it’s late and he smelled like he was drunk.”
“Honey, the bible says to do on to others as you would have them do unto you. Now if your car broke down and you needed help pushing it, wouldn’t you want somebody to help push the car with you? You know what you ought to do.” ‘You’re right.” So the man went outside and yelled, “Hey do you still need a push?” “Yeah!” “Where are you at?” The drunk replied, “I’m on your swingset.”
Now with all his in mind, what kind of record do you think you have? How long is your rap sheet of sins? If it was put on paper and stacked, how many miles up would it go? And the thing is just one of those sins makes us guilty before God. Only one, and we’ve broken God’s law. And that is the debt we owe. If we break man’s law, we pay our debt to society, so if we break God’s law, we must pay our debt to Him. So with this huge record of sins piled against us, the psalmist asks the question… “if You O’Lord kept a record of sins, who could stand?”
Now that’s a rhetorical question, it’s not meant to be answered …like when your Dad would ask you, “Do you think I’m stupid!” It’s obvious. No one could stand before a Holy and just God if He kept a record of every sin we have ever committed. No one could stand before Him with such a debt. But the good news is that Instead of making us pay the debt of our sin, God paid the debt for us. He came to the earth as a human being, allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured, and crucified as a payment for our sin. II Cor. 5:21 says, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Jesus died on the cross the Bible says that God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He gathered together all 76,000 sins of yours and the 300,000 sins of mine, and the billions of the worlds’ and heaped them all on the shoulders of Jesus Christ. And now because of what Christ has done for us we can be forgiven.
Vs. 4 says, “But with You there is forgiveness.” Not because we deserve it but because of what Jesus has done for us. Now there are three words we need to know if we are going to understand this forgiveness. They are justice, mercy, and grace. Justice is deserved punishment. Mercy is exemption from punishment. Grace is favor when punishment is deserved.
Remember that State trooper who pulled me over, after he flashed his lights at me I pulled over and I was scared to death. I just knew I was going to get a ticket. I was going to fast, and it didn’t help that I had a Bobby Labonte NASCAR racing sticker in my back window. Now, when he pulled me over I was dressed in my Sunday best, and I had my bible right next to me that said, “Pastor’s bible.” And when he came up to the window, he asked me why I was in such a hurry, and I told him, “Sir, I’m a pastor and I pastor two churches, and I just got finished with one and I’m late for the other.” And I made it sound pitiful.
Now that officer had every right to give me a ticket. The law says that if you speed you get a ticket. So since I was speeding, I broke the law and I deserved to be punished. That’s justice.
But this state trooper was a nice man. He took pity on me, and he said, “Reverend, I’m not going to give you a ticket but if you could just slow it down a bit for me.” I thanked him and left, now that was mercy. I deserved punishment but he didn’t give it to me. That was mercy, but it wasn’t justice. Now that sounds great and it was for me…but was it fair to the next person who that state trooper pulled over, or to the person he pulled over before me. Now, I was treated differently, and justice wasn’t served.
Now imagine if the state trooper said, “Okay Barry, I like you. I don’t want to give you a ticket, but the law says I should and it wouldn’t be fair to others that I have already gave a ticket to. So here’s your ticket and here is also the $95 to cover the cost of it.” Now that’s grace, it’s also unbelievable! But that is what God did for us.
We owed a debt we could not pay, and God in His holiness could not simply overlook that debt. The debt had to be paid. So God did the unthinkable. He paid the debt Himself. Dorothy Sayers is quoted as saying, “Whatever the answer to the problem of evil, this much is true: God took His own medicine.” God took His own medicine. Not because He had to, but because He wanted to. That’s the love that God has for us. So when we come to the Lord’s table this morning, and you hear those words, “this is My body broken for you, this is My blood spilled for you.” Remember why He did it. It was for that record of sins you compiled, and that you keep compiling.
