I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins

I haven't decided whether it's a sick joke that my last sermon and Mother's Day is the forgiveness of sins And I figured it's a good time to get some things off my chest. So my mom is listening online And I need to ask her for forgiveness for all the years of anxiety that I caused her Yes, it was me in fourth grade that blew up my GI Joe's with fireworks In fifth grade, I did actually drive a fork lift through an off-limits construction site All right, I'll leave it at that mom. I'm sure you like me have many things a long list of sins that you can confess to your mother It is appropriate on Mother's Day, but this would be our topic when who has shown us more grace and all likelihood in our life and our moms But that list is far longer of what we have to bring before our God Some of us we're bringing our confessions to him over and over and over again for sins that we just have so much trouble believing that he could possibly forgive Then there's those hurts that we've experienced the ones where people have sinned against us some that have happened from our most intimate friends and family members Some that have happened even from within the church itself and we come this day to this small Deep profound penetrating section of the creed where we say I believe in the forgiveness of sins That really is the question for you Question for all of us do you believe it? We've sung about it. We've heard it read in the scriptures We've prayed it about it and yet the question today is do you believe in the forgiveness of sins? So our main point from the text that we'll look at today the main thing that I believe God would have for us. It's this You cannot give what you have not received and you will never receive what you do not believe So for those of us that might think we are struggling with a forgiveness problem Maybe you're struggling to think you can receive forgiveness from others or from God or give forgiveness What I have to say to you and the scriptures will say to you is that no actually you have a belief problem Because the bottom line with the scriptures are going to reveal about forgiveness is that the degree to which you believe and Understand that you have received forgiveness That will be to the degree to which you are able to offer it to others So I ask you again This morning do you believe In the forgiveness of sins Let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Colossians It's a letter that Paul wrote to this small growing church Romans and Greeks and a few Jews in the city of Colossae And much of what he was trying to teach them was that their sins had been forgiven That's what he would say the scriptures would say to us today We'll read beginning in verse 11 Now may you be strengthened with all power According to his glorious might for all enduring and patience with joy giving thanks to the father Who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light He's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption The forgiveness of sins and again, it's interesting our passage says that if we were to believe in forgiveness we must first believe in sin Might seem like a simple point and one that we often take for granted, but the passage exhorts us to this joyful Delighted gratitude for our forgiveness for the forgiveness of our sins But if we fail to believe that we actually have a sin problem We will fail to be thankful for the forgiveness that has offered us I say this often to our college students I've used this illustration with many of your kids in Catechism or at Seek the City But I want you to imagine yourself at home you're cooking dinner and you happen to drop your spatula insoup's superman here I come to save the day Grab the spatula hands it to you And thank your responses Thanks, I could have gotten that myself But you turned that around and strapped yourself into a 747 plummeting from 15,000 feet with engine failure and Imagine yourself rescued by superman your appreciation your gratitude is going to be radically different as you understand the degree of your problem So you will appreciate the degree of your salvation So today if we're to believe in forgiveness it has to start with our belief in sin Sin defined according to our heritage It's this any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God This is why in the Lord's Supper once a month we recite the Ten Commandments Letting them be a mirror to reflect to us how we failed Weak in a week out day in and day out in thought and word indeed The law it dites us exposing that it's all of our problem sin is all of our problem Why because God is of pure eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wrong that's what the Prophet Habakkuk said Thus according to the scriptures our sin leaves us Under the wrath of God which is revealed against all unrighteousness all wickedness of mankind You'll test him in Isaiah says this your iniquities have separated you from God This is where we stand. This is sin's definition and our passage will help Pull that out to go from just this concept this big theological idea of sin to actually help you grasp Help you believe that you truly are a sinner Claude's 112 Begins by revealing that we are separate from God Separate from the blessings of his fellowship Paul uses this language of qualifications He says the positive you have been qualified but the implication is that in our sin we are unqualified For the life with God that we were made for You probably have moments like this, but one of my most shameful disqualifying moments happened actually with Mike Miller a few years ago We're on our way to visit Stefan Mueller in Germany. I Rive at the airport with Mike. We go to the ticket counter and I pull out my passport which I promise you I had looked at over a dozen times Arrived at the ticket counter prepared to receive my ticket hand in my passport and the agent looks at me and says sir Your passport expired three months ago I just looked at Mike and hung my head in shame and literally walked out the door and got back in my car and drove home Disqualified unable to travel It's a little picture small image you have moments in your own life But the scriptures here would say that's your condition in sin Unqualified for the life with God Sure, you've read this before heard this said to you before maybe haven't but this word sin in the original language It means to miss the mark. That's the exact definition of it So what it's getting at is that our problem the deepest problem of sin is that we have failed to be what we are meant to be What we should have been In our sin we've rejected God we've rejected his ways his laws his purposes for our life And we've decided to devise our own to come up with our own sense of what's good and what happiness is and go chase after it Only to find ourselves disqualified from the life we really were made for This understanding of sin. I hope it will de-theologize bring it down to earth for you because what this is getting at It should make you recognize that all of us have this fundamental problem because think about it Who among us could possibly say I have been everything I was meant to be I Have hit the mark in every category of my life. I've hit the mark as a father I've hit the mark as a mother. I've hit the mark as an employee as a son as a student. I've hit the mark No None of us could say that all of us can recognize within ourselves that internal shame that recognition that I don't measure up That I haven't lived up to what I was destined for We've all been there arriving at the counter of what our life was meant to be and been told you are disqualified At our most basic nature Unable to live up to that standard of glory that God had destined us for So Paul is getting at in Colossians Reminding us that our sin disqualifies us, but the problem of sin is not just internal is not just this internal Discontentment this disqualification. It's much more insidious than this You see Paul in Colossians verse 113 he says that the result of our sin is that we have become a slave To a kingdom of darkness I'm taking captive by an authority of power The domination of the very enemy of God the devil himself It's a dominion of lies a rule of deception and tyrannical control and Paul's language is meant to invoke for us this The picture of Egypt holding Israel and captivity for over 400 years holding them in slavery Requiring them to work ever harder and harder and harder never providing them With the necessary materials to get the work done

Doesn't that sound like sin to you? Isn't that sound like your addictions? What's the addiction to self Or to work or to sex or to television or to dieting or to people pleasing? The approval of others alcohol whatever it is These things tell us to make bricks But they won't give us any straw to do so And so we labor and labor and the compulsive commands never producing the payoffs that we actually thought would come to us and all receive in the end as more stripes from the whip of the Pharaoh King of darkness Sin is a insidious problem. We are enslaved to it The problem it's not just external either though See Paul makes clear that your sin places you under a sentence of death as well He says in verse 14 in whom we have redemption What is implying is that You need to be purchased out of something there is a sentence upon your life you must be delivered from Because you see we all are complicit in these actions. It's not just something that's happening to us It's not just this internal feeling that we have of disconnection, disqualification We are complicit in this so wherever you may be and whatever level of your spiritual understanding you might be the best externally good person But what the scriptures would say is that internally what you find if you will be honest is that you want to do the wicked things That violate God's character You're a criminal yourself deserving death Under the sentence of God's just judgment I remember as a little boy really the first time that I came to really understand this about myself I probably was five or six It's a great day. My mom was going to take me to Palo imports A magical place of import toys. I was in my town We arrive and it's these amazing toys you never see anywhere else and walking around just in this incredible kingdom of toys And I see this little toy soldier and I say to my mom can I have this? She says no honey. We're just looking Well, she turns her back The clerk was distracted and I slide open the glass case and I grabbed that toy soldier and I stick it right in my pocket We drive home by the time we're home that toy soldier which is burning a hole in my heart We get in the house my mom goes in the kitchen. I rush in the dining room and I pull open the silverware drawer It's kind of the Catch all drawer of all things to junk and I pull open the silverware and everything else in there And I stuff that toy shows in the back of that drawer. I put it all back in and close the drawer Wasn't more than probably seven minutes I'm back at my mom's arms just crying confessing my sin acknowledging what I've done She goes back in we dig it out of the drawer. She drives me straight back to Palo imports. I walk up to that clerk Tell him what I did a hand him The clear sign of my crime of my criminality recognizing from that point forward. I I want to violate the commands of God Have you been caught? This is such a critical question for all of us. Have you been caught? Do you believe in sin? For here maybe is the most important part of this whole sermon Really your whole understanding of forgiveness is gonna hinge on this point. It's this sin must be punished Full stop if you know anything about God you must know that he is just Yes, he is merciful. Listen to God himself declares the Lord the Lord compassionate gracious God Slowed a anger a bounding in love and faithfulness Maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness rebellion and sin But he is just and the passage continues yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished Exodus 34 6 and 7 So what this means is that being a sinner places upon you The obligation of punishment if God didn't punish your sin He would cease to be just and in so doing he would cease to be God Please don't play at this silly postmodern pluralistic dream that there can be justice and no absolutes as false God must punish your sin must punish my sin Listen to want theologian talk a little more about this to help you Just think on this reality. It may be affirmed further that there is no sin at all Which is not actually punished either in the sinner himself or in his surety. He uses an old word It's another word for substitute All sin involves an actual obligation to punishment But with this difference that some having no substitute are bound to undergo the punishment themselves Whilst others make Satisfaction not in their own persons But in the person of their substitute. So where does that leave us? Separate slaves Sentenced surely deserving punishment And it is in that moment that we finally can say what is our hope? I Must believe in forgiveness

forgiveness can be defined like this The personal pardon of an offense the taking back into friendship those who went against you It's all what we were singing about all through the service. God himself welcoming you back into friendship I love this forgiveness is the recognition that healing of the relationship Takes precedent over the personal injury This is the God we serve in worship a God for whom the personal relationship took precedent over the injury against himself That's why the psalmist can declare with such joy if you oh Lord should mark oniquities Oh Lord who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness That you may be feared Paul understood this we all understand this forgiveness is best understood though Not just in theological concepts, but when we see it in action and So Paul here in Colossians he really tries to flesh it out and layer upon layer to help you see What it is that God has forgiven you So he begins there in verse 12 and he says God this father has qualified you for his and Herodids with the saints in the light You want an equivalent metaphor from my attempt to travel to Germany without a passport? I want you to imagine an immigrant trying to arrive into the United States She pulls out her passport at the Mexican border and is immediately rejected for mentoring She didn't have the right papers. You don't belong go home and then suddenly In walks Bill Gates He waves off the guard Supplies the woman not only with an American passport, but he actually supplies her with a new birth certificate And on that certificate isn't her old name But rather this new one is not Luisa Gomez. It's Luisa Gates She's been qualified for entrance a full citizenship into yes this earthly kingdom Invited into a new inheritance this beyond anything she could ever imagine and this is the language that Paul uses Remember here. He's writing to these Greeks and Romans. They have no rights to anything of what the Jews had rights to Have a right to the land. They don't have a right to the covenants And yet Paul is saying you have been qualified not only for all of the rights that are offered you in the scriptures But qualified for heaven itself

Secondly in verse 13 Paul says that God the Father has delivered us from the evil domain of darkness and Transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son Here we switch from Mexico to the silent kingdom of North Korea It's a nation that literally exists in almost total darkness a satellites fly over at night It's just almost a black hole in the map because they have to turn their lights off because the resources are so Limited that can't even keep the power on during the day And here we are in this kingdom of darkness Under the bondage of this tyrannical power holding us there

Blinded by deception and lies slave to a tyrant And here comes our deliver This word deliver means to draw to oneself So this isn't just some detached military campaign of people disconnected This is the efforts of a father Who knows his child lost in the midst of darkness and deception who swoops in at just the right moment to deliver you back again to himself To draw you close His father who initiates to you Of all others He remembers you He forgives you he comes for you

It's an active triumphant daring intentional initiative redeemer swooping into the enemy domain Moving us out of the power of darkness and even more beautiful this Deliverance it's not just from darkness, but it's too Something being transferred into the kingdom of the beloved son Do you hear it? Can you imagine what a kingdom like that is like It's a kingdom Of delights of light of joy of devoted affection A kingdom of forgiveness The kingdom of the son of his love and this now is your citizenship and your inheritance

If finally Paul says in Colossians 114 you have been redeemed qualified delivered redeemed This is taken from the slave market It's a word that meant you were purchased back from slavery Released back into your liberty To where it also taken to refer to the ransom of a prisoner of war Immediately should conjure up in your minds and the minds of the readers of the scriptures the Exodus story or Israel sat and dwelt in bondage for over four hundred years and God Delivered them and he said this I in the Lord I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians I will deliver you from slavery to them I will redeem you with an outstretched arm with great acts of judgment and Paul says God has done this for you

Should conjure up in your minds the promise of deliverance from the captivity to Babylon See Israel in their sin they faced a judgment Brought them swept them away from their promise land into another season of slavery But once again God promises saying this Thus says the Lord he who created you oh Jacob he who formed you oh Israel fear not I have redeemed you I have called you by name You are mine

Your mind's eye the quiet Moments your prayer life. How do you think? God the Father views you Do you hear him say I have redeemed you I have loved you you are mine I'll do anything to bring you back

Here in the scriptures. We have a picture of a sentenced criminal The deaths of his offenses so great they cannot be numbered His judgment is certain his execution imminent his chains fixed his prison doors secured And in walks the judge The king the one against him the offenses were committed And he takes off those chains and he opens the doors and he stamps upon the judgment sentence paid in full And as you walk out you see this same king the same judge the same creator this God Place into your chains place into yourself Place your sentence upon his very son the son of his love

Your substitute The punishment of God the punishment that God has obligated to bring against sin has been performed Only if you are in Christ it has not been executed upon you it has been executed upon the son of his love This is what it means to be forgiven This is what we believe

This is why the essence the fundamental message of the early church It was this your sins are forgiven There's nothing better they could possibly declare to the world You can be pardoned the legal obligation for your punishment can be hurled away if you will place your whole life in Christ And so I say to you Those doing the room horse still outside of Christ you are still in your sin you can be forgiven Place your life into Christ and those of you believer Still struggling to trust to surrender to know that God loves you You are forgiven in Christ Peter proclaiming the servant of Pentecost repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins Paul preached ever he went saying let it be known to you therefore brothers That through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you John wrote it saying if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness This was this is the essence of the New Testament To him To Jesus all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him Receives forgiveness of sins through his name and so I ask you again Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins?

Because ultimately what we said in the beginning is where we're going to conclude You cannot give what you have not received And you will never receive what you do not believe So here as we come to the end of the sermon I have to ask not just do you believe in the concept of forgiveness But do you believe that you have been forgiven

There's three fundamental applications that I want to leave you with Do you walk away from this part of the creed First it's this This passage with the creed clearly declares all through the scriptures pronounces to you is that anyone can be forgiven If everyone's condition is that we're separate Slaves under a sentence of punishment for their rebellion against God And yet God forgives them in Christ then who could possibly not be forgiven The furthest the darkest the most heinous criminal can be forgiven in Christ Because think about it What sin could possibly be greater than the life and death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ And secondly what that means is if anyone can be forgiven That means you can be forgiven

Doesn't matter what you've done How vile and act God can and will forgive you in Christ And you can be certain of this Because as passage in Colossians It makes it clear that God doesn't give forgiveness based on the depth of your sincerity Or the authenticity of your repentance He forgives you because of the sufficiency of Christ as your substitute

So for you to think that there is something that you could do that couldn't possibly be forgiven by God Honestly, it really is ridiculous

What you were doing in that thought Is you are limiting the power the capacity of God's deliverance That he has given to you in his son Jesus What you were saying is that there is a sin that possibly is bigger than the Savior Jesus Christ And that is not possible You can be forgiven This is a kingdom of the beloved son a kingdom of forgiveness. So if you are in it You can't exist in it and not be forgiven It's just the nature of the sun and the nature of his kingdom

So I just hope that you can hear from his word you can hear from the songs we sing you can hear from the prayers of your preachers and your elders You can hear from the Lord's table that we take once a month you can hear Jesus say to you Forgive you I've done everything come to me Be reconciled to me. I've done everything for our relationship to be restored And finally you can forgive others This is probably the application you all have been waiting for It's probably the one we all need most as a church As a family The sons daughters His mothers and children But I couldn't bring it to you until the scripture spoke to you first That until you believed in the forgiveness that is available to you you wouldn't be able to give it to others

Because this is what the scripture show over and over that the degree to which you've been forgiven The degree that you've experienced that forgiveness that will be the degree to which you're able to offer it to others So once you recognize and believe that all of the ways that you've been forgiven Recognize and believe the extravagant redeeming love of God to qualify you to deliver you to redeem you Once you believe that then you will be able to overlook the offenses of others Because you will begin to have the father's eyes. You'll see the way he sees And you'll become more concerned for the relationship Then you are with the offense I know there's marriages in this room. We've been praying for specific families and It's just such brokenness Because you have been unable and I would say to you unwilling to forgive You don't have a forgiveness problem. You have a belief problem And you don't believe How much Jesus Christ has forgiven you And when you will when you look to him when you see him and when you discover all that he has forgiven you for That will be the watershed that releases you to finally offer forgiveness To all those others in your life

Let me offer one final help Tevi but important Help to you and your belief and forgiveness particularly in your belief in the forgiveness of the sins of others Remember how I told you that the most critical thing you must you need to understand About sin if you are going to grasp the power of forgiveness is that it must be punished Here's that theologian again. There's no sin at all Which is not actually punished either in the sinner himself or in his substitute So we've seen through this whole sermon that if you are in Christ Your sin has already been punished in Christ But this is also true of those who have sinned against you listen If they are in Christ then their sin has already been punished in Christ And so who are you to punish them again? I know this is hard I know you feel I feel such a strong urge to want to punish them for their crimes against you But you must believe in the forgiveness of sins For them Their sin has been punished and it was done so in their substitute God already exacted their penalty upon his son and so you have no rights to demand from God another payment

And here's the corollary truth if the one who has offended you is not in Christ If he dies in that state Then that person will receive the just punishment for their crimes for all eternity in hell

sin must receive its punishment Either it receives it in Christ or it will receive it in the body and soul of the sinner for all eternity And so what this means is that justice will be served

I find that believing this releases me from anger It releases me from a gleeful vindictive spirit To one of true pity I find that there no matter how heinously someone has offended me hurt my family violated my innocence so the innocence of someone I love I can surrender Justice into the hands of God and I can acknowledge I don't want them to suffer for their crimes for all eternity when forgiveness is available even for them in Christ I may feel deep deep wounds because of them But I now can forgive them Because I know that justice will be served And so I pray that their eyes will be open so that the justice can be served on the cross Instead of them being served on them in their crimes

It's only seven words I believe in the forgiveness of sins But it is a deep ocean of life changing truth I pray you can leave I pray we can leave today and say once and for all that you do believe in this forgiveness And that you like me like all of us will be changed forever Let us go to this forgiving God now in prayer

Oh God, we need your holy spirit to Come upon us now To impress upon us the weightiness of our sin And to release us to the joy to the liberating power to the glorious delight Of being transferred into a new kingdom The kingdom of the Son of your love So where there's brokenness and deep bitterness There's an anger and unresolved tension and hurts Holy spirit would you bring that forgiveness Would you help all of us help this church to believe That we have been forgiven that you have forgiven all those who are in you And is so doing we might be delivered delivered from anger and revenge Released into the freedom of love and we might be in the family business The business of forgiveness In Jesus name amen