We are seeing the unseen guest a little clearer as we enter into the third week of our adventure. We’ve considered how our worship would be changed if Jesus sat with us on Sunday morning. Our attention wouldn’t be wandering while worship went on. Our style would take on what I’d call a reverential freedom, as we expressed to Jesus how much he meant to us. Christ’s presence would also cause us to love others in lavish ways as we are overwhelmed by Jesus’ love for us. As we are loved by Jesus we would discover a need to express our love to others and we’d discover that our loving acts honor our Lord. I would hope we’d find ourselves in friendly competitions to try to out love one another with our actions.
I hope we all realize in our mind and heart that Jesus IS here, right now. The presence we imagine seeing here in our midst is even more real and profound because he lives within everyone who has trusted Jesus as Lord and Savior. At the same time I believe we miss Christ’s presence because it’s too easy to take Jesus for granted. So far we’ve taken some first steps to counteracting this by getting ready for Sunday worship and by carrying out lavish acts of love for others. But this is just the start.
Twenty years of being a pastor and another eight plus as a layperson involved in the church has shown me that often we make Jesus’ love for us the beginning and end of our theology. Sometimes in a church it can sound like John 3:16 is the only verse in the Bible other than Psalm 23. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus’ love for us IS the center of the good news but have you asked why? What makes this love so key, so vital and so important? Some simply want to feel better and so Jesus’ love is like a fuzzy warm blanket that they can wrap themselves in when life is cold. And as nice as that sounds it’s pretty far from what scripture says. For it declares that the reason for Christ’s love is what enables us to become God’s friends. Our adoption as God’s children is only possible because of Christ’ love. It’s only this love that removes the wall that exists between God and us and that wall is sin.
Our sin, both our natural bent toward sin and our individual choices too sin, make Christ’s love an absolute imperative for our lives today. If Jesus were physically present with us we would be brought face-to-face with the seriousness of our sin and the total and complete holiness of God.
Imagine that you’re leaving worship and as you look at Jesus he fixes you eye with his and as he looks into you he sees everything in your life—your thoughts, hopes, dreams, hidden things—everything. He knows about the fight you had this morning before worship even though you look really together. He knows about the substance abuse and the gossip. He knows about the plans you have made to divorce, the lies you’ve told and the ways you have denied Jesus at work and school.
He knows it all
And he doesn’t say anything.
What’s more he knows we know he knows.
And he waits…
Standing there with this going through your mind what do we do? We realize from listening to the Bible that to stay with Jesus, to walk with Him, to be “in the light” something has to happen. What? That quick half-hearted ‘I’m sorry’ that worked when you were caught arguing with a brother or sister won’t work with Jesus. Then you see something else. The scars on his forehead from the thorns and those on his hand and side start to redden and you see blood seep from them. Then we start to get it. Those ugly, horrible things that he had seen in our lives are the very things that caused and cause his bleeding. How serious does God consider our littlest sin? It killed his Son!
So what do we do? Cry? Cover our faces in shame? Run, from him? Turn our head in disgust at the blood? Maybe fall on our face and ask for forgiveness? Maybe we would do these things. Yet today, as we spent time in confession the Spirit of God searched us and brought to mind our various sins and no one ran from the church, fell on their faces or cried out in horror. Why?
Here’s how you and I usually handle it when Jesus confronts us with our sin.
Deny it “What sin?” we ask trying to act casual and innocent. We’re like Cain who killed Able.
Blame others “They made me…Everyone else does… It’s not my fault” Adam and Eve both tried it in the garden in Genesis 3 and it didn’t work then either.
Excuse it “My sin’s not as bad as some sins…” We’re like the Satan assuming we can be like God and judge what is and isn’t allowable.
Accept it “Everyone has their little weaknesses” Believing that allows others to accept our little weaknesses and we believe we are being loving like Jesus was
Embrace it “Isn’t it great how god made us all so different?” You only have to look to Romans 1 or to the picture of judgment to see the problem with this argument.
Sin is a very big deal to God because God’s very nature is one of perfection, holiness, and light. So perfect, holy and bright that anything not equally perfect, holy and bright is destroyed. Exodus 24 Moses is confronted with God and even though he only sees God’s back his face shines with God’s glory and it scares the people. Two weeks ago we read about Isaiah face down before the throne of God knowing he’s going to die because he’s a sinner in the midst of a perfect and holy God. Both live not be pretending to be perfect and good but because God provides, protects and purifies them. And in Jesus this provision, protection and purification is complete, perfect and total.
What God demands from us when we face our sins is simply confession. Confession is admitting to Jesus that those things in our life he shows us by the Spirit and those things we know are wrong from His word are pure and wrong. It’s admitting to God that we know these very sins are what caused Jesus’ death. It’s not making up excuses for them. Confession is telling God he’s right and we’re wrong and that we’re going to change. Steven Curtis Chapman in “The Change” he describes the person who “looks” like the perfect believer with the bible WWJD bracelet etc. then he asks “What about the change what about the difference, what about the grace, what about forgiveness, what about love that’s showing I’m undergoing the change.”
Confession isn’t done until the change—we call that repentance. It’s the action step that forgiveness demands. It’s turning from the sins we are aware of and doing something different. It’s a change in our actions, our attitudes and lifestyle. It’s a reorientation of our very life with Christ setting the new course.
How does one do this? First of all we face up to the excuses we’ve made for not doing it before. Sin doesn’t become entrenched and ingrown in our life from just one time. It happens only when we’ve chosen over and over again to do that which is wrong. I can’t list all the excuses I’ve used and heard but here’s a sampling. I’ve tried to stop. I’m not strong enough. Jesus will forgive me anyway. It’s not that bad. I’ll stop when they stop. Any of these sound familiar? Excuses simply mean that we don’t believe that God is powerful enough to change things in our life. It’s how we protect the fact that we want to continue our sin. We don’t want to give it up even it does cause Jesus hurt, even if they destroy our life, marriage, self respect…
Secondly, we start looking at our life and what leads to our sin. Maybe it’s something we do when we let the pressure get to us. Maybe it’s the outcome of our early life. Whatever the cause, having a handle on this can help us take steps to avoid situations that would allow us to fall into it. If you haven’t done it yet you ought to start the action step about dealing with an entrenched sin. Charting like we’re doing in the journal will help us see a bigger picture of what’s going on.
Next we give ourselves to God and admit our need for his power to deal with the sin. Most of the time we don’t instantaneously get rid of sins. We’ve all read about or heard about those who were totally delivered from drugs or the like but they are cover stories in Guideposts because they are rare. Normally we will struggle a couple of steps forward and fall backwards over and over as we deal with our sins. And then just as we think we’ve got a handle on things something happens and we’re confronted with something else that needs to be changed.
Our forgiveness is not based on our being perfect. Likewise it’s not something that automatically happens just because we said a little prayer last week, last year or decades ago. There must be a heartfelt desire to change. There has to be recognition that what we’ve been doing hurts God. Let me end with a story from Gigi Graham Tchividhian—Billy Graham’s daughter in law—she writes, “I stood in the upstairs hallway waiting for the younger children to come in for their baths. My oldest daughter, taking piano lessons, was in the living room directly below…One of my young sons was trudging slowly up the stairs, his bowed, grubby hands covering his small, dirt-streaked face. When he reached the top, I asked him what was wrong.
“Aw, nothing,” he replied.
“Then why are you holding your face in your hands?” I persisted.
“Oh, I was just prayi8ng.”
Quite curious now, I asked what he was praying about.
“Well,” he said, “you see, every time I pass the living room, I see my piano teacher, and my tongue sticks out.”
Needless to say, it was hard to keep a straight face, but I took his problem seriously and assured him that God could, indeed, help with it.
Later, on my knees beside the bathtub as I bathed the little fellow, I thought how I still struggle with the problem of controlling my mind and tongue. That afternoon as I knelt to scrub…the tub became my altar; the bathroom, my temple. I bowed my heard, covered my face; and acknowledged that I, like my son, had a problem with my mind and tongue. I asked the Lord to forgive me and to give me more and more the mind and heart and attitude of Christ.”
Woman’s Devotional Bible NIV (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990) p. 1307
