Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:07] We live on the northeast side, and we were really close to that fire that happened just a couple days ago. And we were fortunate in that we were about one street away from being evacuated. We got to a level two, so the police were in the area making sure that everybody was getting set and ready to go. And a couple years ago, there was another fire in a similar place where we actually did have to be evacuated. And we got to experience that. What is usually just kind of a mental exercise, right, of, if there's a fire, what would you take with you? What would you make sure that you loaded up into your car? And I'm going, you know, yeah. Which dog would we take?
[00:00:46] You know, me and Rocca have been tight for a long time, but Juno, I don't know.
[00:00:52] Little Juno's got a mouth on him.
[00:00:56] No, we take all the dogs. Come on.
[00:00:59] But you do that, right? And so there's a lot of things in my house that have value that I care about or interact with or love. But it's been interesting. Over these last two times this has happened, there's very few things that I even consider putting into my pickup.
[00:01:14] It's a baby blanket, and it's a stuffed animal, and it's passports and birth certificates, and it's the dogs. And I'm like, I guess that's it. I don't really need anything else. It really is an interesting way to distill down. Okay. What is this? Not just what does this house have in it, but what does this house actually hold? What is the meaning and the purpose of us actually experiencing, doing life in this place together? And really, that comes down to a few things. And what we're doing in this series of talks, and this is part two in this series of, really, the story of scripture, the story of goddess, is we're trying to understand that there are a lot of valuable bits into the story of God, a lot of valuable bits in scripture, but what are they really, truly trying to hold and point to that we need to make sure are actually sacred in our lives? And really, how do we view God as a result of what we hold close in scripture? And so what we're talking about today is everyone's favorite subject, and that's the subject of sin. All right, so buckle up for the next 75 minutes, and we're gonna have a good time. We're gonna go through all your sins. Just kidding.
[00:02:24] But if the story of God is leading to a rescue.
[00:02:28] What fundamental problem necessitates this rescue in the first place? Right. If seeking and saving what was lost is the mission of Jesus, then what was lost?
[00:02:38] A lot of times we consider sin as only personal vices. Yes, lying and lust and anger and things like that, and how they manifest themselves in us, how these personal sins, they matter. We need to understand how to work through these things and overcome these things. I mean, after all, there was a reason that Jesus himself was presented with personal sin in the desert. Shortly after he had been baptized, Satan himself came and offered him power and glory. And Jesus had to resist these personal sins in this moment. So personal sin, it matters, and these acts qualify. But the problem of sin goes far deeper than our habits and our behaviors. Instead, sin has to do with this overall cosmic evil that's infected the world, has created suffering and pain and death. And when Jesus goes to the cross, he's not just standing in to help us lie a little bit less and stop cheating in order to avoid punishment. Instead, Jesus is facing down powers of sin, violence and death that hold the world in their clutches. And I would contend today that everyone in the world feels this presence of sin, feels this idea that something is not quite right, whether they're christian or not, whether they attend church or have a prayer life or not. I believe that all of us feel this tension, and we actually live our lives in response to this tension. People get selfish because they're afraid that things will be taken away. They get overtly protective sometimes and mean and again, selfish because they feel like this sin or this presence or this whatever. Something is not quite right in the world. So I need to make sure that I get mine before somebody else takes it. And a lot of our behaviors are reflected in this presence of sin.
[00:04:30] So I want us to be careful as a church and as a faith that we don't just reduce sin in this idea to a series of vices, because we can lose sight of who we are and how God sees us. If that is the case.
[00:04:44] A life of faith isn't about individuals one on one. It's not just you and me trying to showcase our willpower and push against these habits and these things, but instead sin. We have to understand sin through this lens that we are a world of people loved by God, that is trying to push back against that power of sin that gives us grace. Then, for people, it reframes how we understand sin. It's no longer a competition of these people. Sin a lot more. I need to keep myself safe. Instead, it's a huge group of people. It's all people deeply loved by God, trying to push back against this. So in order to understand sin, I think we should start in Genesis chapter three, where we have the introduction of sin into scripture. But I'm gonna pray real quick before we go into that. So, Jesus, we thank you that you're with us, Lord, that you love us so deeply. I pray that that would be extra evident today as we jump into your scripture and we encourage each other in grace and mercy and forgiveness. Lord Jesus, let us be reminded that you love us so deeply. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Genesis chapter three says this.
[00:05:55] It says, now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. And he says to the woman, eve, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
[00:06:07] 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. You must not touch it or you will die.
[00:06:17] You will not certainly die. The serpent says to the woman, so what the serpent is doing is he's reframing death. Now, the serpent's super smart. This is not a stupid enemy. This serpent knows the truth. It understands. It comes to Eve and saying, you're not surely going to die. I don't think that's necessarily the truth. Let's go ahead and twist this. And what of course, happens after Eve eats the fruit is that she doesn't drop dead. But instead, we have to reframe death in this situation, understanding that it is the death of many, many, many things. It's the death of the relationship with God being the same. It's the death of some of this trust. It's the death of how they've been doing life so far into the creation of God. And that changes things. So sin doesn't necessarily come in and kill us and stop our heart right in a moment, but instead, it can change and distort how we view ourselves and, of course, how we view God. More on that in a moment. It says in verse five, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw 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. And then the eyes of both of them were open. They realized that they were naked. And so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. And the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden. In the cool of the day, as was his custom, they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
[00:07:54] But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? I love? This is one of my favorite versions of God, who shows up and goes, well, I'll be darned. Huh? Where'd they go?
[00:08:05] You know, Adam and Eve are over behind a bush. He doesn't see us.
[00:08:10] He'll go right past, you know, and God's just like, hmm. All knowing God. Very lost out here in Eden.
[00:08:18] Wonder where my friends went.
[00:08:21] He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was ashamed because I was naked, so I hid. And he said, who told you that you were naked?
[00:08:32] Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? And the man said, the woman you put here with me. Yeah.
[00:08:40] Now we're getting down to it. We're going to ask all the women to leave the room. We're going to confront the men right now. This is the eternal sin of Mandev. The woman, he says, but not only that, that you gave me, by the way, I didn't ask for this.
[00:08:56] It was nice for a little while, but I'm regretting a lot of it.
[00:09:02] She may be beautiful, but she gets me into trouble. Okay.
[00:09:08] The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you've done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. Now, the sin that happens, as far as the original sin, is not just simply that she ate from the fruit.
[00:09:27] It's that she desired, and he desired to be able to write their own rulebook of wisdom.
[00:09:36] It's, I don't want God to create what is light and dark and what is good and what's bad. Instead, I would like to do so myself. And that is the sin that is perpetuated. It's not that you and I eat from the wrong tree. It's that you and I continually, as part of our nature, try to write our own book on what is good and what is evil instead of submitting to the way of Jesus.
[00:10:01] And then it says to close up this piece of the story. In verse 21, it says, the Lord God made garments of sin for Adam, sin of skin for Adam.
[00:10:11] How do you fashion that together? It's fascinating. A skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, the man has now become like one of us. Knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. And so the Lord God banished him from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. And he drove the man out. He placed on the east side of the garden of Eden, Cherubim and flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. The Jesus storybook Bible, which is a kid's Bible that I would highly recommend to adults, puts it this way. The world now has gone wrong. And from that moment on, everything would die. And God's creation would start to unravel and come undone. The darkness would spread, but God would not give up on his dream. He would create a new plan, a better plan, a solution for sin and death. He would send his son, the rescuer.
[00:11:07] And so at this moment, thus begins the distortion through the power of sin, the distortion of who we are as God's people and who God is as our father and creator.
[00:11:22] On page one of the Bible, we learn that everyone is created in the image of Goddesse. Believe it or not, we're all sacred beings that represent the creator. And we are all, every single one of us, worthy of respect.
[00:11:39] There is no exception to the rule that people in a different socioeconomic level than you are created in the image of God. Those that are educated and those who are uneducated, those who in your mind take and those who in your mind give, are all created in the image of goddesse. There's a humility that has to come from that understanding. By the way, again, it can be easy to just take this honor as ourselves. And I am created in the image of God. I am created in the image of God. And that's wonderful and that's beautiful, but it's incomplete, because we are living in a world of people who all believe different things, see things in different ways, that we have incredible disagreements with, and all have been created in the image of goddess. That is a difficult thing to honor, and yet we are called to do so.
[00:12:29] And if we view the world this way, that everyone is made in the image of God, sin is not just a breaking down of a series of problems and habits that we have, but instead it's a failure to love God and others by not treating them with that honor that they deserve.
[00:12:44] This is why the ten Commandments are written in the way that they are. There's ten Commandments, and there are five of them that show you how you can fail to love one another. And there's five of them that can tell you how you can fail to honor and love God.
[00:12:57] So not only is loving God important and loving people important, but both of them are put together because they cannot be separated. In order to truly love and care for and honor people, we must honor God. And in order to honor God, we must truly love and care for people.
[00:13:14] We can't get away from that truth, even though we often want to.
[00:13:19] Failing to honor God is deeply connected to failing to honor people.
[00:13:23] Now, we can do this in a lot of ways, right? It's not just those cut and dry ten commandment things. It's not just committing adultery and murder. But we can. The power of sin is that it will trick us into believing that many of our decisions are good decisions, when in fact, they are not. We just went through a long series through the book of Exodus, and that begins with pharaoh, the ruler in Egypt, making a lot of decisions that he feels will be good for the economy of the nation that he rules over, and it'll be good for the security for the nation that he rules over.
[00:13:53] And because he's presenting himself with that intention, he believes that his decision to enslave a people, the Israelites, to continue to build that economy and to build that security, he believes that these are good and wise decisions. He has allowed himself to be tricked and fooled into believing that this is the right and successful way to live, when, of course, it dishonors and crushes and literally murders a people made in the image of God.
[00:14:23] See, sin is about more than just doing bad things. It describes how we easily deceive ourselves. We can spin illusions in order to redefine our bad decisions as good ones.
[00:14:38] Any of you, which is all of us that have been in a relationship have been next to someone that is making a decision that they feel like, and they are sure this is the right decision, and you know this is the wrong decision.
[00:14:50] Come on. Some of you have had friends that have gotten back with that ex for the third time, and you're going, we've been here before.
[00:14:59] No, it's different this time.
[00:15:01] They bought me a puppy.
[00:15:04] No, take the puppy and run.
[00:15:10] This is not a good decision. But in certain moments, we can deceive ourselves.
[00:15:15] This is often how sin works. It's rooted in our desires and selfish urges that make us want to act on our own benefit, even if it's at the expense of others.
[00:15:27] The apostle Paul says, sin lives in us so that we do the things that we don't want to do.
[00:15:35] In the middle of sin, it gets foggy and difficult.
[00:15:38] But the biggest problem that is inhabited in the middle of sin, in the fog of sin, is that we lose track of how God sees us. And that happens through this word that is used in Genesis, chapter three, and that is the word shame.
[00:15:57] Now, sin is one thing, making a mistake, Adam and Eve eating from the wrong tree, this is a mistake. But it's the shame that creates the longevity for sin.
[00:16:07] It's shame that comes in at every single moment. And some of you are feeling this, maybe even right now, that even when things are good and things are right, the voice of shame will come in and say, I know what you've done.
[00:16:19] And what you've done is who you actually are. And even more than that, what you've done is who you always will be.
[00:16:29] And that voice of shame is strong, it's powerful, and it's constant. And the idea of what shame will do in partnership with sin is it will attempt to keep you right where you're at, believing that you are less than the person that God has created you to be.
[00:16:47] And let me give you some evidence of that right here in this story from Luke, chapter 15.
[00:16:53] I'm going to read this from the message translation that Eugene Peterson wrote. I just love some of the language that he uses in here. It says, in verse one, it says, by this time, a lot of men and women of questionable reputation were hanging around Jesus and listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased. Not at all pleased. I love how the author frames this. He says, there are people around that are undesirable and kind of considered gross by the culture around them, and they want to hear from Jesus. And there are those that are well acquainted with the religious system that are disgusted and frustrated that he's around in teaching.
[00:17:29] Says the religious people growled. He takes in sinners, and he eats meals with them, treating them like old friends. Right. Here's the shame.
[00:17:37] The religious people would look at the others and they would say, would put them in shame. No, they are sinners. Well, are they people that have made some mistakes before? Nope. They are sinners. This is who they are, and this is who they always will be.
[00:17:52] It says, their grumbling triggered this story from jesus, and I'm going to skip down. He tells a couple stories that are in the similar vein, but then he caps it off with this story of the prodigal son in verse eleven, it says. And then he said, there once was a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, father, I want right now what's coming to me. So the father divided the property between them. And it wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. So first of all, a little context. The people listening to jesus tell this story are already infuriated at this fictional son.
[00:18:24] They would want to murder this kid.
[00:18:27] The idea that he would come to the father and he would say, I'd like my inheritance now is essentially the son coming to the father and saying, I wish you were dead and I had your money.
[00:18:38] And in this culture, especially, this kid would have been crushed, literally, maybe murdered, or at least immediately turned into a slave. But that's not what the father in the story does.
[00:18:49] It says, it wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and then left for a distant country. And there, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything that he had. After he had gone through all of his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to feel it. And he signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields and to slop the pigs. He was so hungry, he would have eaten the corn cobs and the pig slop, but no one would give him any.
[00:19:16] This son's life has hit such a low where the closest living being he identifies with or finds closest with is actually the pigs in the field.
[00:19:27] He just wants their food in order to survive.
[00:19:32] So not only now is he a son who is asking for his inheritance too early, but he is closer to a pig than he is to a human being.
[00:19:40] There is nothing lower on the totem pole for the people listening to the story of Jesus than somebody that would eat the food of pigs.
[00:19:48] And then it says in verse 17 that he has an idea, and it says that brought him to his senses. And he said, all those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father and this is my plan. I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against God, I've sinned before you, and I don't deserve to be called your son. So take me on as a hired hand. And he got right up and he went home to his father. So now the plan is, in order to not identify with the pigs, I can try to do one step up and I know that I could become a slave in my father's household. That's all I want.
[00:20:26] You see, shame will bring you down to the very bottom, and then it will make you believe that just one step up is good enough for the rest of your life.
[00:20:38] It will make you believe that. All right, well, maybe, you know, I'm not on the verge of ending my own life, but I'll live in this one way. I'll take what I can get. I'll just kind of get by, and I'll do the due diligence, and I'll just ham and egg my way through life.
[00:20:52] But God, of course, is calling us to something better. And it's evidenced in verse 20, it says, but then, while he was a long way off, his father saw him, his heart pounding. He ran out and embraced him, and he kissed him. And the son started his speech, his pre prepared speech, entitled, I don't want to be a pig. I'd rather be a slave, dad.
[00:21:15] And he says, father, I've sinned against God. I've sinned before. You notice how he identifies himself? I'm just a sinner.
[00:21:23] I'm just a sinner.
[00:21:27] He says, I don't deserve to be called your son ever again.
[00:21:33] But what does Jesus say in the next line? The father wasn't listening.
[00:21:40] He was calling to his servants, quick, bring a clean set of clothes and dress him and put a family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, and then get a prize winning heifer and roast it. We're going to feast. We're going to have a wonderful time. And my son is here, given up for dead and now alive, given up for lost and now found, and they began to have a wonderful time.
[00:22:04] You see, sometimes sin and shame can be so powerful, they will convince us that we're just pigs and slaves.
[00:22:12] They'll convince you that because of what you've done and the mistakes that you've made, you're just a pig and a slave, and you deserve to die. But what a gift it is to receive the corn that's in the pig slop, and you deserve to die. But what a gift it would be to just be a slave back in that father's house again.
[00:22:32] And for some of you in the house today, shame has got you right there. Because of how poor of a parent that you've been, because of some other sins and mistakes that you made in your past, because of neglect, because of sins of the father that have connected themselves to you, because of legitimate mistakes you've made where you've hurt people. And maybe you did it on purpose. The shame would come and tell you, this is who you are. You're someone that hurts people. You're someone that is undeserving. You're someone that'll ruin other lives again, and you'll continue doing it until finally you die. Shame will keep you in those chains. It will keep you there. Its idea is that it can paralyze you to the point of death, or at least never moving in the way that God has called you to function ever again.
[00:23:13] But here's the thing. If we can bring ourselves back to the place of Jesus, even in our misguided pleas of I'm just a pig, and I just want to be a slave from now on. Here's the thing. We can believe that if our vision of God is that he sees us in this way, but he never has.
[00:23:32] We're created in his image, and we sin, and we cause problems and create chaos in this world. And the weight of that sin is extremely heavy. But you know what is greater and heavier and wider and more powerful? That is our identity as sons and daughters of Jesus Christ.
[00:23:51] I was thinking through this and imagining for a moment, my son is nine, and he's good at some stuff already, right? He's a great baseball player. He's way better than I ever was already.
[00:24:05] He's a good athlete. He's a good friend. He's terrible at cleaning his room.
[00:24:11] Terrible.
[00:24:14] He doesn't read particularly well.
[00:24:18] He's got tutoring. He's got this stuff. He's got some real high highs, and he's got some real low lows. He complains every night when I ask him to brush his teeth.
[00:24:29] He's like, dad, I hit dingers, okay? That's what I do. I'm a ball player. I'm like, yeah, brush your teeth.
[00:24:36] And I imagine my son coming to himself and presenting himself to me and going, hi, dad, it's me, the great ballplayer.
[00:24:46] Hi, dad. It's me, the one who's terrible at cleaning his room.
[00:24:51] Hi, dad. Remember me? I'm the one who doesn't read very well.
[00:24:55] And I imagine him connecting himself to these different things, different things that he's done right or wrong, excelling or not so much. Then the idea that my son would identify himself as one of these things when he's 30 and 40 and 50 years old. Dad, it's me. Hi. Remember, I'm the one who can't read. This is insane, because first and foremost, he could quit playing ball tomorrow. He could begin to clean up his room really well. Tomorrow, the first thing and foremost is that he is my son.
[00:25:27] I was there when he was born. I've read him to sleep almost every single night of his life. And I want to be in his life until I myself die. And I will love him unconditionally. There is nothing that he could do. He could do tons of things to ruin your life in the future.
[00:25:43] He could make huge mistakes, and I can understand that. And I am going to embrace him as my son, no matter what happens, come what may. He is my Boyenne.
[00:25:54] And if he were to present me as dad. I'm just a sinner. We've made a huge mistake in Christianity, by the way. We've actually marketed this false humility, this idea that we would present each other. I'm just a sinner saved by grace. That's all. I'm just a sinner saved by grace. And we are sinners, and we are saved by grace. But how God sees us is his son and daughter.
[00:26:14] You're his boy and his girl, and nothing can separate us from that identity. And so when we walk into a room, we've got the robe and the ring on, and we enter into a feast that God has made for us. Well, I don't deserve it. Well, God wants it that way.
[00:26:30] He wants you to celebrate and party and have a wonderful time understanding who you are and who you belong to.
[00:26:40] We have to stop with a false humility because we are sons and daughters of the promise.
[00:26:47] So we cannot allow this massive force of sin to distort how we view other people, image bearers of Christ.
[00:26:55] And it cannot allow us to distort our idea of how God sees us, because he sees us as a son and daughter. And we can't allow that shame to distort our idea of who we are, not a people that are simply just the addition and the summation of all the problems that we have created. Instead, we are a people loved by God, and nothing can separate you from that.
[00:27:18] The prodigal is assuming that his sin outweighs his sonship, but it's the love of God through Christ that offers him sonship again.
[00:27:26] Evan told me this, this last week. It's really good, said. Shame will attempt to take something that's true and turn it into the only truth.
[00:27:35] You have made mistakes, you have hurt and wronged people. And that is not the only and forever truth. Instead, there's forgiveness and grace and mercy on the other side.
[00:27:45] And finally, the Jesus storybook Bible says this one more time, sin would be swept away by God's never stopping, never giving up unbreaking always and forever love.
