Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 11:15.
[00:00:08] Good morning. If I have not met you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. So I have the joy to open up God's word. If you have a Bible, open up to the Book of Numbers, the second least interesting book in the entire Bible after Leviticus. No, I'm kidding. I actually think it is.
[00:00:27] And this morning, we have quite a treat in numbers, chapter 15.
[00:00:32] When I was younger, particularly in junior high and high school, I would read the Bible and I would come across different stories or different passages of scripture that would really make me kind of doubt whether or not I could really trust the Bible. Like, I had really great people in my life saying, the Bible is trustworthy. There's no contradictions. It's true. You can rely on it. And. And then I would come across passages like Genesis, chapter six, verse three.
[00:01:03] It says this. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, for his days shall be 120 years. And I thought to myself, surely since this time, people have lived to be longer than 120 years. And then I'd read that Abraham was 175 years. And I thought to myself, like, it's so blatantly contradictory. Like, what is going on on here? And then with a little bit of study, just a little bit of research, what I learned was, actually, this has nothing to do with how old God is gonna let individual people be. It was 120 years from that moment until the time the flood was going to happen. And I was like, oh, my goodness. With a little bit of benefit of the doubt, a little bit of research and study, this apparent contradiction resolved itself.
[00:01:52] I remember being confused by phrases like when Jesus says, in order to follow him, you have to hate your mother and your father. And so as a high school student, junior high student, I read this, and I'm thinking, why would Jesus tell me to hate my mother and father? Like, why can't the guy just say what he means, right? And then a little bit of study, a little bit of context. And I learned that this is a normal Hebrew idiom that Jewish rabbis use. To hate somebody is to be less loyal to them. And they understood it. The problem is, again, again, here's me parachuting in 2,000 years into a different culture, not understanding it. It's like somebody 2000 years from now being, like, he said, what's up? Why didn't they look up at the ceiling? Because we understand that idioms mean something different than the literal Putting together of those words or slavery, you meet somebody and maybe they don't love God and they're just sort of combative. And one of the first places they'll always go to is slavery. And how could you serve a God who condoned slavery? And then you see this word. And then as an American, I'm. All of my notions of chattel slavery, this evil, horrendous practice, and I'm transferring this onto the text and the words of the Old Testament, lo and behold, just a little bit of study, actually a lot of bit of study on that one. And research.
[00:03:14] And you realize that, like, these things are actually very different. In fact, if you were a Hebrew, you would willingly go into quote, unquote, slavery to pay off debts. And I'm like, these are not the same. Why couldn't we have come up with, like, a better word? Because it's not the same as what we Americans think it is. Or there was this one, an eye for an eye.
[00:03:35] And I'm thinking to myself, an old covenant law, that's just barbaric.
[00:03:38] But then I did a little bit of study, and then I realized in these tribal communities, this was the kind of world where like, oh, you disrespected my mother. I'm gonna kill all your siblings or your children.
[00:03:50] And so actually, what eye for eye did, it was for intentional violence. So that if you were gonna react violently and intentionally, it would make you think twice. Because now whatever you do to that person legally is going to be done to you. In fact, what it did is it restrained violence amongst the people of God. I could keep going. We have the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of the Canaanites. And what I did as an American, I just kind of took these notions of tribes, like, maybe they were like a tribe from Papua New guinea or Central or South America. And I kind of imposed this notion of tribes onto the Canaanites and Jebusites and Amorites, only to realize with just a little bit of study, there is, like, no people group on planet Earth that matches their level of evil. And so naive Americans were like, well, if I went back in time, I would just show up and I'd be like, what's up, Canaanites? They chop your head off, murder you in front of people, destroy your children, and then ravage your body dead.
[00:04:49] And you're like, oh, this isn't normal human behavior. And the kids would participate. And so then you start to understand that maybe possibly the Lord knows something that we don't know. Like if you were God and you looked and you saw this person and you knew if they stayed alive, they would be responsible for the death of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and you're God and you have jurisdiction over death and Hades, or life and death in the afterlife, would you take their life? Would you end it early, before they did mass destruction on humanity and people?
[00:05:23] Well, God has this perk and this privilege. A little bit of study and I realized, interesting. I take my notions of being an American and what I know about the 21st century, and I impose it under the biblical text. And then I commonly end up missing actually what is going on. So I learned a long time ago that something can be 100% true, and it's true. What is being said is true.
[00:05:48] But there are other truths that put it into its rightful context that sometimes actually change the entire meaning of the data point so that you understand there's more to the story. So if you've been around a village, something that I've taught on quite a bit, I want to put this on the screen so you can see it. It's a really important principle. Whenever something doesn't make sense, there's always a missing piece of information that if you had it, would make sense of everything.
[00:06:17] I don't know about you, but I am very confused by a lot of things I see in the world, by a lot of things people do.
[00:06:22] And here's what I've come to grips with. I'm missing a whole bunch of information that would help me make sense of why people do what they do.
[00:06:31] But here's the thing. The Lord has all the information. He has all the data points, and he knows the context and the reason why people are doing what they do. And so here's what I know. I may not agree with what you do, but I do know that if something's confusing, I'm probably missing an essential piece of information. And so it is with our text this morning, numbers, chapter 15. Today we're going to jump into a text, and this is one of those texts that if somebody is not a Christian and they're combative and they are trying to discredit the Bible and the character of God. Numbers 15 is actually one of those chapters that they can go to, and they're going to read it to you and they're going to look at you and say something like, this is your God.
[00:07:17] Your God is trite, your God is mean. Your God is reactive. Your God is judgmental. This is not a God of love. Actually, this is a God of hate.
[00:07:26] And if you don't know the context, you might be left to conclude the exact same thing. So let me read through this passage with you. It's very short, starts in verse 32. I'm going to make a couple comments here and there, and then my goal is to try to convince you that what on the surface appears to be mean is actually just and right. And if you were God, you would actually do the same thing.
[00:07:52] Numbers 15:32.
[00:07:55] While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.
[00:08:03] And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. Verse 34.
[00:08:11] They put him in custody because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. So just pause for a moment. This is not a bunch of overreacting adults.
[00:08:23] They are seeing something that is so alarming that they need to stop what they're doing, invoke martial law if we will arrest this man and bring this man to the leaders of the nation of Israel.
[00:08:39] So for you, you might be looking at this and thinking to yourself, he picked up six on the Sabbath. It's like me not going to church on a Sunday. Who cares? Well, they obviously, whatever's going on here, there's some context we're missing because they care enough to arrest this guy. Verse 35. The verdict. The Lord said to Moses, the man shall be put to death.
[00:08:59] All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.
[00:09:04] And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned to death. Stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded. Moses, is God a mean jerk, or is God a just and righteous judge?
[00:09:20] On the surface, what does it look like? Irritable, overreactive.
[00:09:24] Whoa, Lord, reign it in. Is this how you treat all your people?
[00:09:29] Okay, I want to share with you five context facts for numbers 15. Here's the first.
[00:09:36] This Sabbath breaker.
[00:09:39] It's considered case law.
[00:09:42] So in the Book of Numbers, this book is the historical record of the law. And some stories and the stories that are in this book are here very intentionally. And so this is an example of if someone violates Sabbath law, what are you supposed to do? Particularly, they violate Sabbath law in a very specific way and circumstance. And at this point, you should be asking, okay, Pastor Michael, what is this law? It's fact number two.
[00:10:13] Immediately before this, the relevant law was given. So let's read the verses immediately preceding this.
[00:10:23] Numbers 15, verse 30 says, but the person who does anything with a what's the word?
[00:10:31] High hand, remember this, keep that in your brain.
[00:10:34] Whether he is a native or a sojourner, reviles the Lord. And that person shall be cut off from among his people because he has despised the word of the Lord and has broken his commandment.
[00:10:50] That person shall be utterly cut off. His iniquity shall be upon him. So cut off. An Old Covenant law can mean one of two things. It can mean either, number one, banishment, you're out. Or number two, it can mean the death penalty. In this situation, as we've seen, it's the death penalty because previous laws were already given that spoke to this.
[00:11:16] In other words, this man knew what he was doing. And this is going to become important. So this brings us to fact number three.
[00:11:25] This man's sin was the worst kind. What the Bible calls high handed.
[00:11:32] Okay, You've heard it said maybe, possibly, probably. You've said it yourself, all sin is the same.
[00:11:41] Okay, on the one hand, yes it is.
[00:11:44] Because it doesn't matter what the sin is. Sin separates us from a relationship with God. Sin needs to be paid for by the blood of Christ. And that is the only way sin will ever be forgiven. Whether it's a little sin or a big sin, it doesn't matter what the sin is. All sin separates us from our relationship with God. And the remedy to this separation is always believing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. So yes, in that sense, all sin separates us from God. And the blood of Christ is potent enough to cover any and all sin, no matter how small or heinous it actually is.
[00:12:16] But would you rather somebody steal from you or murder you?
[00:12:23] Can we just go with steal? Can we all agree on that one? All right, good, good.
[00:12:27] So the Bible actually communicates that there are different kinds of sin. And I want to bring you into this.
[00:12:32] The first category of sin are sins of omission versus commission. A sin of commission is a sin you commit. A sin of omission is when you didn't do the thing you were supposed to do. And generally speaking, a sin of commission in the Bible is worse than a sin of omission.
[00:12:52] But then there's also degrees of sin. So we just established that stealing isn't as bad as murder. So if you did steal, under Old Covenant law, the punishment would be that you have to pay back times four, four fold. But if you murder somebody, it's the death penalty. And so what you find here is that the Old Covenant, the Old Testament actually has various words for sin. And generally speaking, what you find is that there are Words that describe an increasing degree of seriousness for sin. So we have, number one, the word sin, which means missing the mark.
[00:13:28] Then you get the word iniquity, which means twistedness or guilt.
[00:13:33] And then you get the word transgression, which means rebellion.
[00:13:37] Then we have this category of detestable thing, which is filth.
[00:13:43] And then last but not least, you have abomination, which is the worst. So even the Old Covenant has categories like not all sins are an abomination, but all sins, sins do need to be paid for. We're not done yet. We also have another category. We have intentional sin and unintentional sin. Intentional sin, Obviously you know this, you know what you're doing, you know it's wrong and you go do it. Unintentional sin is when maybe you find yourself doing something and nobody ever told you that it was wrong.
[00:14:12] They're both wrong, but one you're aware of and one you're not. Well, here's another category of sin. We have hidden sins versus public sins.
[00:14:22] So at least with a hidden sin, there's this notion in your heart that you're like, I don't want other people to see this. I'm ashamed of it, I'm gonna try to hide it. But then you have public sin, which is, I am unashamed. I know it's wrong and I'm proud of it and I want all of you to see it.
[00:14:39] Let me bring all this together.
[00:14:42] When you sin in action, commission in a big way, high degree.
[00:14:49] Intentionally, on purpose and publicly, proudly. This is called high handed.
[00:14:58] So what's going on with this stick picker upper? We've been trying to name him in the last two services. And one guy came up with a great name, Woody. So what? Woody, I thought it was genius, but what he was doing was on purpose, intentional, loud and proud public. It was the worst kind, which is high handed. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, he broke the Sabbath. I skipped church sometimes. I was tired, I slept in, I had a late night, you know, like, what's the big deal?
[00:15:30] Well, let me just say that this is another one of those moments where our notion, as Americans of the Sabbath, we transfer it onto the Old Covenant text and we massively miss the point. So I wanna share with you this fourth piece of context. And I do think that for most people, what I'm about to share with you will probably surprise you a little bit. Number four, for the Jews under the Old Covenant, Sabbath was more sacred than almost anything else because it was the sign of the old. Also called the Mosaic covenant. Okay, so a covenant is a formal, sacred agreement between two people. So marriage is a covenant between a husband and. And a wife. God enters into covenants with his people.
[00:16:15] And when God enters into a covenant, covenants come with signs or symbols. So, for example, God made a covenant with Noah called the Noah covenant. And the sign or symbol of that covenant was what it was a rainbow. And signs and symbols are sacred to God. We have the Abrahamic covenant, and the sign or symbol of that was circumcision. But now we get to the old, or Mosaic covenant, the agreement that God has with the nation of Israel. And the sign or the symbol of this covenant is the Sabbath. Now we intuitively know the power of symbols. Many years ago, I was teaching. I was a youth pastor, and I was teaching a bunch of students. And I had an illustration, and I used an American flag.
[00:17:04] So I get done with the illustration, and I take the flag and I put it onto the ground.
[00:17:15] Let me be clear. I wasn't a Boy Scout, a Cub Scout, an Eagle Scout. I wasn't a flag person. I didn't, like, go to school and put it up and down. I've never done that before in my entire life. I don't think before this moment I've actually ever touched an American flag. And in 20 some years of living, not one single human being ever said to me, michael, don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let the American flag touch the ground. Well, what happens? It touches the ground. You have to burn it. What are we talking about? Like, I had never, ever heard this in my entire life. So I set the flag down, okay? And literally every student goes like. Like, all of them lost their. And I look at them and I'm like, did something just happen? This is junior high, kid. He's like, yeah, you idiot. You can't let the American flag touch the ground. I'm like, why? And he's like, you just can't. It's sacred. And I'm like, I don't. I don't. What do we do now? Burn it? I'm like, what is happening right now? I have no idea. And so, like. Like, we know intuitively the power of symbols. The flag. It's a flag. It's what it represents. And I'm like, it starts and strips. And 2,000 years down the road, somebody looks at this event. They have no idea how sacred this moment is. Or husband and wife they get into.
[00:18:26] And maybe they just have, like, a pretty bad pattern of fighting. And so one of them is like, used to just storming out and whenever they get into a fight. And so one day the wife looks at her husband and takes off her wedding ring, throws it at him and says, I'm out.
[00:18:40] Well, that's fundamentally different than every other time she ran out because now she is actually challenging the validity of the covenant. This thing, it's just a ring.
[00:18:51] It's what it represents that is so deep, deeply emotional.
[00:18:56] So for the Jews, the Sabbath was their wedding ring. The Sabbath was the sacred sign of their covenant. I want to show you this. In the book of Exodus, chapter 31, verse 12, it says this. The Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, watch these words.
[00:19:20] Above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths.
[00:19:25] For this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. Verse 14.
[00:19:34] You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you, it's set apart. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
[00:19:48] Six days shall work be done. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. In case you didn't hear it the first time, he's saying it again now in verse 16. I don't know if you're confused, but therefore the people of Israel, guess what they're going to do? They're going to keep the Sabbath, Observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever.
[00:20:14] It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed.
[00:20:26] The Sabbath wasn't just a rest day.
[00:20:29] The Sabbath was a covenant marker. It was their wedding ring. It was their flag. It was the thing that symbolized the depth and love and commitment between God and and his people.
[00:20:43] There's something striking about this concept of a week and Sabbath that I want to draw your attention to.
[00:20:49] So very obvious question. How do we know what a day is? Well, we know what a day is because we look at the sun and we look at the moon, and there's evening and there's dark and there's light and God. We look to the sky. The sky tells us what a day is.
[00:21:03] Well, how did humanity discover the month? Well, they looked at the moon and they figured out, wow, this is like a monthly cycle. It goes in 30 days. Interesting. How do we discover the seasons. You look to the sky, you looked outside. And then you realize when you live in one place long enough that there are seasons and they come and they go and they're on a rotation. How did we learn about years? Well, somebody observed long enough that, you know, like every 300 and some days the sun does something really interesting and it comes full circle. And so we look at all of the cosmos and they tell us about days and months and years.
[00:21:37] How did we learn about the week?
[00:21:40] Because there's nothing in the cosmos that tells us anything about the rhythm of the week.
[00:21:45] The way that we know the week exists is because God himself revealed it to us. So when God made humanity and the land and animals and all of this, he made it to function and flourish optimally on this rhythm, this rhythm of a week. You work six days, you rest one day.
[00:22:04] And so there were almost no civilizations or tribes at the time this law was given that had the notion of a seven day week. There were a couple, which was probably residue from their ancestors hearing about creation and how God made the world. But even the ones who did have this notion of a week and a day of Sabbath, they didn't really practice it diligently. But you come to Israel and every seventh day everything stopped. And you could imagine that foreigners would come in and they would say, these people are so foolish.
[00:22:38] They're leaving so much money on the table.
[00:22:42] You know, the greatest chicken in ever, like all human history. Chick fil A right. So they did something crazy.
[00:22:49] They closed on Sundays.
[00:22:52] Do you know how much money they leave on the table on average per week? Not just in revenue, but in profits.
[00:22:59] It's between three and six million dollars every Sunday. They're not making in profits. Times that by 52 weeks out of a year, and then times that by 10, 20 or 30 years.
[00:23:10] Consider the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of profit they're leaving on the table. But what they understood when they set this into motion was that everything in this life was made for this rhythm. And so they stuck this down and said, this is the rhythm of flourishing. And what foreigners would find is they would come to the nation of Israel, they would be so confused at this rhythm of rest and lack of productivity. But then they would find that the Jewish people would create just as much, if not more, and they didn't hate their life in the process.
[00:23:44] And so this Woody guy, this stick picker upper, he willingly chooses not just the most important day of the week, he chooses the most sacred thing in their culture to push against the text, calls this high handed because it's on purpose, because it's intentional, because it is public, because it is unashamed. Like in this context and culture, there are few worse things than you can do than what this guy did. Fact number five, this man did this publicly despite God, rebel and influence others to do the same.
[00:24:33] I want you to listen to this law. It's from Exodus 35, verse three. And this guy knew this law, okay, says this. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.
[00:24:48] Why was he going to get sticks?
[00:24:51] Well, the answer is simple. He was getting sticks to start a fire.
[00:24:55] So not only was the gathering of sticks illegal on the Sabbath day, but also so was starting a fire.
[00:25:02] And so here's what's striking everybody watching. This guy knew what he was about to do. They knew what he was doing was wrong and they knew what he was about to do. He was not going to build a tree house.
[00:25:14] Now do you know when this guy goes out on the Sabbath day what everybody else was doing?
[00:25:21] Nothing whatsoever. Why? Because it's the Sabbath. And do you know what they all did the day before?
[00:25:28] They all gathered, double what they needed so they didn't have to go do this on Sunday.
[00:25:33] And you might say Pastor Michael, he probably had a busy day. It was probably really hard. Probably got behind on his work. False. I'm gonna tell you why. Because do you know what? Almost everybody in the wilderness is bored.
[00:25:48] I'm gonna tell you why they're bored.
[00:25:50] Because they don't have land to grow food. Okay, where do they have to get their food supernaturally from God? Via manna. They don't yet have tons of cattle, maybe a little bit. But they're gonna get all that when they go into the promised land.
[00:26:04] So here's like your daily responsibility. Make sure your kids are taken care of.
[00:26:08] Go get your manna and do that. Okay, good.
[00:26:13] So it's not like he's sitting there the day before overwhelmed.
[00:26:18] So this guy knows what he's doing. This guy absolutely could have done what he had done every single Friday before this. Remember, Jewish Sabbath is on Saturday. Every, every single Friday before this. They went and they double gathered. Like he could have done this. He didn't do any of it.
[00:26:36] This was public.
[00:26:38] This was a high handed declaration. This was throwing a wedding ring at your spouse, saying I want out of the covenant, I want out of this relationship.
[00:26:48] I reject you.
[00:26:50] Now just one chapter prior numbers, chapter 14, one of our favorite like descriptions of God and attributes of God. The Lord is slow to anger. Amen.
[00:27:04] Abounding in steadfast love. We're like, hallelujah. Forgiving iniquity and transgression. Welcome to our testimony. But the next part, it's actually really important also.
[00:27:13] But he will by no means clear the guilty.
[00:27:17] Visiting the iniquity of the fathers, on the children, to the third and to the fourth generation.
[00:27:25] And so there's a warning not just for the people of Israel, but there's a warning for anybody who follows Christ.
[00:27:30] If you know what the word of God says and you are going to intentionally, publicly, proudly do the opposite, should you expect that God's gonna be like, yeah, no big deal.
[00:27:48] You actually should expect consequences from the Lord. That's what you should expect.
[00:27:54] And it's easy to have, I think, a lot of compassion for this guy because you might be thinking to yourself, all right, you know, the guy just saw a whole bunch of his friends, maybe even his family go out to battle when the Lord said, don't go. And they said, we're going to disobey whatever you tell us to do. So they went out to battle. And Lord's like, if you go, you're going to die. Like, ah, forget you. We do what we want. So they go out and they die. Maybe he's like, God, you just allowed a whole bunch of my friends and family and countrymen to go into battle and die. And God's like, well, I warned you not to do that, right?
[00:28:24] And then he could say, you know, God, I'm pretty upset with you because a whole bunch of people died and they were grumbling and complaining and rebelling. And yes, they rejected you as their God. And so they didn't want Moses as a leader, but, like, that was really over the top for you to kill them. And, you know, the text actually says that God gave them 10 chances before he started executing judgment. 10 separate instances of rebellion, grumbling, complaining, rejecting him.
[00:28:54] Would you call that slow to anger moms and dads? Are you quicker to anger than God if God is that patient?
[00:29:03] Right? Whenever God executes judgment or consequence, here's what you can likely.
[00:29:09] This wasn't the first thing.
[00:29:11] You can likely know that there is something going on quietly, behind the scenes and warning after warning after warning. And so we have Woody the stick picker doing this with a high hand publicly. And he has been warned over and over and over again. He knew the law, he knew the consequences, he knew God's word. And whatever was going on in this guy's brain, he said, you know, What? Forget it. I'm done. I'm out of this thing. Some people speculate, and I would absolutely agree with him that when this guy got up on this Sabbath day to do this, he understood it was a suicide mission. He understood that he was going to die because of this. And he probably understood how he was going to die. Probably. Possibly the prospect of looking at the promised land and then realizing that you're going to have to spend the next 40 years of your life, or until you're dead, wandering in a desert probably put him over the edge. Either way, this was high handed. And now my goal is to help you understand this isn't a random Sunday and some dude who decided to skip church. And then all of a sudden God's like, I'm irritable and angry today. I'm done with you. This was a belligerent dude who violated the most sacred, sacrosanct aspect of this culture and the relationship with God.
[00:30:27] Bummer message.
[00:30:29] So what? All right, number one, when you mess up, take responsibility and the consequences you deserve. This will be like the least popular. So what I've ever given the consequences that this man deserved was wander the wilderness for 40 years or until you're dead.
[00:30:57] Why did this man deserve those consequences? Because he was a grumbler and he was a complainer and he participated in the rebellion of the Israelites. And he had 10 opportunities of warning, grace and mercy and he squandered all of them.
[00:31:11] So this man was disciplined by God to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and he deserved it.
[00:31:20] And so you can look at this guy and you can learn, I think a really important principle.
[00:31:25] You and I are most vulnerable to more stupidity when we are in trouble.
[00:31:33] It takes real spiritual maturity to do something wrong and then to handle the consequences. Well, at home, at work, it doesn't matter. The funny thing about consequences and justice is that we demand mercy from God for ourselves and then demand justice for our enemies.
[00:31:55] When you're in trouble, you have three options. One, repent and take full responsibility.
[00:32:03] I think this is the best way.
[00:32:05] There are other options though. Option two, be defiant and rebel. That's what this guy chose.
[00:32:12] And number three, you could play the victim. Now, I can hear some Christians at this point. And of course this person doesn't go to village church. This would be somebody at a different church. And I can hear him saying this, but Pastor Michael, he was just rejected.
[00:32:29] He was despondent.
[00:32:32] He was hopeless.
[00:32:34] You can't hold someone responsible for what they do when they feel sad.
[00:32:41] What is that going to fly in your home?
[00:32:46] Why should it fly in God's home?
[00:32:50] As followers of Jesus, we do not make excuses because of our feelings.
[00:32:58] I would ask you to raise your hand if you've ever sinned because you allowed your feelings to get the best of you. But I already know it's going to be 100% of us in this room.
[00:33:07] My feelings are not a justification for sinning ever.
[00:33:12] And so here's what we do. We take full responsibility for our own behavior. This is one of the hallmarks of a mature Christ follower. Mature Christ followers aren't perfect, but we do own when we mess up.
[00:33:30] Some of you right now are living currently in the consequences of your past sin.
[00:33:38] And you're living it and you pray to God and you're like, lord, can you take these consequences away?
[00:33:45] And for many, he has not.
[00:33:48] And there's a temptation in this moment. The temptation is to get really angry at him, why are you letting me suffer? And if God was being frank with you, he would look at you and say, you did it.
[00:34:00] This is the consequence that you have to bear for your decisions. And that is really hard to. I don't like hearing it. Nobody likes hearing it. But as a mom and dad, this is what we have to say to our kids sometimes. You did the crime, okay, you got to pay the, you got to do the time. This is part of extreme ownership and teaching our children to take responsibility for what they do.
[00:34:23] You cannot change the past. But there are two ingredients I think are so important. Number one, take full responsibility without excuse for your sin. Full responsibility without excuses.
[00:34:32] What they did to you is not an excuse for what you did to them who started it is not an excuse. I'm just actually going through like the one liners in my home.
[00:34:41] And number two, reconcile with those who harmed, always starting with God.
[00:34:46] Our sin, no matter who it's against, it's always first against our Creator.
[00:34:51] And so here's where we start. We start with extreme ownership. We take responsibility for what we've done. And then we go first to our Creator and we say, before you, have I sinned before anyone else?
[00:35:03] And then we go make right the things that we need to, if at all possible. What's really striking about these two things is this is also how you come to become a follower of Jesus. Every single person who's a Christian, we became Christians in the same way. We took full responsibility for our sin. We stopped making excuses and we went to God and we said, I have sinned against you.
[00:35:26] And for most of Us, we could probably list out a million of them. And like, I did this, I was wrong.
[00:35:31] I can't justify this or make excuses any longer. I did this. And number two, like, I wanna be reconciled with you, God, will you forgive me? And I love this. God is so clear. Anybody who believes genuinely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and asks him for forgiveness, his answer is always yes, once and for all and forever. There's nothing that God wants more than to be reconciled to with you, but it requires ownership of your sin. In order for you to be reconciled with someone who has sinned against you, they need to be able to own that first, don't they? And it's the same, it's the same with God.
[00:36:07] So what? Number two, where is God calling you to repent in your personal life, in your family and or in your church?
[00:36:20] So we shared with you going into this narratives and numbers. The stories get darker and darker and harder and heavier. There's a few little breathers here and there, but by and large it's all going in the same direction.
[00:36:33] And so one of the reasons we told you that we wanted to teach through this series was so that we could spend the back half of this year in a season of repentance, of confession, of sin, and of making some of the hard decisions maybe that we've postponed.
[00:36:48] And so we warned you in advance, there's a million encouragements and positive things that we could come out of this text with. But what we want to close these messages with this year is reflection of confession and repentance. I want to ask you before we close, I want to ask you a question to consider.
[00:37:05] Is the Holy Spirit prompting you right now to take responsibility for something you have not owned yet?
[00:37:16] Let me read this again.
[00:37:18] Is the Holy Spirit prompting you right now to take responsibility for something you have not owned yet?
[00:37:28] And I'm going to just trust that the Holy Spirit in you will bring a level of conviction to that.
[00:37:35] And also, you've heard me pray. This probably like most weeks over the last couple months, the courage to take that next step.
[00:37:46] I mean, the first step is take responsibility. The second step is tell God you're sorry. And then third step is talk to the people that you need to take responsibility for.
[00:37:57] This is a part of being a follower of Jesus.
[00:38:02] Some people, when they came to Christ, they had this expectation. Some of them a demand that if they came to Christ, that somehow life would be great and easy.
[00:38:15] I love my life in Christ.
[00:38:17] I have not always found it easy because everywhere I go There I am. And I am still a sinner.
[00:38:22] And so one of the patterns and rhythms of the Christian life is owning and confessing my own sin and then confessing it to God. And then when my sin affects other people, taking full responsibility and seeking reconciliation there. This is just the Christian life.
[00:38:37] And sometimes we do things. We do things and the consequences last far longer than we ever hoped or expected.
[00:38:44] But that's also part of the Christian life. You can't always control the consequences, but you can glorify God in every single one of them. Amen. Amen. So this time we're gonna. I'm gonna pray for us and we're gonna celebrate communion together and ground ourselves in what Christ has done for us. Father, thank you for really hard to understand stories, but also thank you that we have so many resources to help us understand what is really going on. Lord, every time I see a hard text and I study it, you end up being proven true, right, good and holy.
[00:39:21] But Lord, we also need to be reminded that in our own lives, when things don't make sense, Lord, there is a piece of information that you have and we don't.
[00:39:29] And if we knew what you would do, we would be able to make sense of all of this and we would do what you do every time. But Lord, we're limited. We don't know what you know. And so, Lord, we live and we walk by faith.
[00:39:40] Lord, for those of us who maybe you have prompted us and there's aspects or maybe one or two things in our life that we have not yet taken responsibility for, God, I do pray that you would give us not just conviction, but the courage to take a next step.
[00:39:54] And Lord, if there's anybody just here who has yet to trust in Christ, maybe they're wrestling through who you are. Would you reveal who you are? Holy and righteous, always deserving of the benefit of the doubt and also who they are, which is a sinner who needs to take full responsibility of their sin and believe in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Lord, would you make yourself so abundantly clear? We love you and we thank you for all of this and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
