The Consequences of Sin and the Path to Redemption

I forgot to announce in your bulletin is a prayer guide for this week and Rusty Severs is who we ask you to pray for this week. Rusty is a single fellow who is trying to get his life together so I hope you'll remember to pray for him and Debbie asked us to pray for Barb Schumacher, Rick's mother for God's direction for she has lung cancer, Kathy Riebel wanted us to join in thanksgiving for Garrett and Rebecca, healthy baby born Friday, Jackson Carter Riebel. So these we add to your list for prayer. We hope that you'll take those day by day and be praying for the people whose names are there as well as the concerns that you have in your own life. I want to read a passage of scripture from Matthew chapter 27 if you'd like to find that. I want to begin reading in verse 3 and read through verse 5. Matthew chapter 27 verses 3 through 5. This story is really about a tragedy, the tragedy of a young man, a man that started out right but his life ended up in disaster. When Judas who had betrayed him saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the 30 silver coins to the chief priest and the elders. I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood. What's that to us, they replied, that's your responsibility. So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. It's a tragic story. When Paul talks about human nature he says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no, not one. What we see here is the terrible impact that sin had on the life of this one man. It didn't start out that way for Judas. He was chosen by Jesus to be one of the twelve followers. He was faithful in listening to what Jesus had to say. He saw all the things that Jesus did but his life ended in utter disaster. Paul writing said, the wages of sin is death and that's what this story tells. The consequence or the payoff for sin was death. Now whenever he talks about sin, Paul does, our mind kind of goes to things like telling a lie or maybe stealing something we shouldn't, but he's talking about something really far bigger than this. The wages of sin. The story goes all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God created this perfect place for people to live, all kinds of food, everything that they would need, everything in the world that they would want to have. And he said to them, this is the place I've made for you. I want you to live here. You can do anything you want to do except there's one tree that I do not want you to eat fruit from. Everything else they had, all that they needed, perfect place for them. Then in the middle of all this, we have no idea how long they lived in the garden, one day they were tempted. Here says a serpent, a wily creature, came to them and said, hmm, why has God placed these limitations on you? Didn't he tell you that you couldn't eat all the things in the garden? They said, no, no, he said we could eat everything but one. Then they started thinking, why does God make this off limits to us? They thought that maybe it was something wonderful that they ought to have and God was keeping it just for himself. They were thinking of God, in other words, as being a God who was selfish, like all human beings tend to be, and he wanted the good things for himself and they didn't get it. It was the knowledge of good and evil and they thought, well, maybe God knows both the things we know and the other things that we don't know and we'd like to know everything that God knows. They wanted to be equal with God. That was their temptation. They kept thinking about this and looking at the fruit saying, it looks really good to us. I'm sure in their mind they thought, I can't see any reason in the world why we shouldn't eat what's right there in front of us. It looks good and would seem to taste good. And so they did. When God came back to confront them with their circumstances, they told him what had taken place. In the story, it was not the eating of the fruit that God objected to. What he objected to was their failure to recognize his position of authority. I made this garden. I set the rules by which you should live. You have ignored me and challenged my authority. When he talked to the woman, why have you done this? She said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. The deception, you see, comes before the act of eating. In her mind, the serpent said to her, this is something God is keeping from you. He deceived her into thinking it would be a good thing for her to do. He tricked her into thinking it would actually advance her life, make things better for her. And so, as a result of that deception, she ate it. See, what she did was to say, I know what God told me, but I don't understand why that's true. I know what God said, but I don't see any reason for it. I know what God said, but it looks good and I can't imagine why I shouldn't do what seems right to me. That was her reasoning. Suddenly she was deceived into thinking her reasoning was a better guide for her than the instructions of God. Then when God turned to the man, he said to Adam, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it. Again, you see, it was because he listened to his wife who said this would be a good thing. And he believed her over and above the instructions of God. What happened in this event was the sin that has changed the world. People who look at God and listen to him and say, I don't believe that what he says is really true. I don't believe that the consequences will really come. Then we're surrounded by people who act differently than what God says. This is the influence that sin brings to us. The curse of Adam is not that we are going to hell because of the sin of Adam. I don't think that's true at all. The curse of Adam is that we're surrounded by all these people around us who just like Adam think that they're smarter than God, who think that their own wisdom can make the plan for their lives, who even though they know the things that the scripture says that are right and wrong, they look at those and they have in their mind for some reason it looks good. I don't understand why it's a problem. If I want to do it, why can't I? All these reasons why they should say the instructions of God I can ignore. In fact, if I ignore them and I do the things that other people around me say are wonderful, my life will be better. Adam and Eve anticipated that they would have everything in the garden that they had then except they would have one additional thing, a wonderful tasty meal that no one else ever had and that they'd never had. Their life would be better. Paul said the payoff for this kind of sin is death. It doesn't make any difference who you are or where you live or what your environment is to rebel against the authority of God and live according to your own understanding or to the culture around you is absolutely deadly. That's what happened to Judas. It didn't start out that way for him. He was called by Jesus to be one of the twelve. He heard all the stories that Jesus had to tell. He saw the miracles that Jesus did. He saw the very power of God so that Jesus could literally walk on water. He saw dead people raised to life. All these powerful things. But inside of him there was something else churning. What did he want out of his life? What would satisfy him? Jesus was satisfied to live simply doing the will of the Father. He didn't have a house, he said, he didn't have a place even to sleep that was his own. He didn't have any business. He just lived on the contribution of people. Judas thought that there was a better life than this. If I had money, if I had position, if I had power, if I could be a leader among the people, how much more complete and full my life would be. Now we know this, not because Judas told us, but because John says in his gospel that Judas from the very beginning was really not one of them. He was not one of them that said we give our lives completely to follow Jesus. He had his own agenda at stake. In the beginning, he said, he carried the money bag, he was the treasurer. When people put money in it, it was his responsibility to pay the bills, but every once in a while he would slip his hand in and get some money for himself. Here's our clue. Being honest is not a great reward, Judas thought. But if I'm doing this work, keeping care of the money, and I've left my home and my family, I deserve better. And if I had some money along to be able to do things I want to do, my life would be so much better. He ignored, thou shalt not steal. He knew that commandment. He knew it was in the scriptures, but he justified in his own mind his behavior. My life will be better if I have more money. Judas came to the end of his ministry with Jesus, the last supper. Jesus made it clear that this whole adventure he'd called these disciples to was going to end, for he that night would die. Judas listened to that, and he decided that wasn't what he wanted to invest his life in. He was interested in something bigger and more lasting. So he made a deal to get Jesus arrested. I'll help you arrest him. Paid him 30 pieces of silver coin, and Judas did his deed. Now he wanted the money, I'm sure, to be able to start himself in a business. He had enough money from that bribe to be able to establish a very good business for himself, maybe a year's worth of normal pay. But then what happened was the consequence of his actions struck him. Here is a man who is innocent, who is now going to die because of what I did. The wages of sin came home to him. Paul tells us that all of us are sinners. Everyone in the world except Jesus has come to the place sometime in your life when you say, I know what God wants me to do, but I would rather do something else. I know what God says I should, how God says I should act, but everyone around me is doing differently than what God is, and I don't want to look strange or odd. Everyone around us sometime or other in our lives become aware of the standards of God, and then we become aware of the standards of the world around us. That's the influence of Adam's sin on us. And then we become aware of ourselves, what we would want, what is satisfying to us, what is rewarding to us, what is fulfillment, what seems to be fulfilling for us, and it's different than what God asks. So we're faced with this tremendous decision. What should I do? Is God right? The things he wrote in this book thousands of years ago, do they still apply to me? Do the things that are written in this ancient day, are they still true for me, or do I live in an age where we sort of have to change or morph things so that they fit our culture? After all, people dress differently, and they talk differently, and they have different jobs. Shouldn't the standards of the world be changed to fit the age in which we live? Every person in the world from Eve and Adam to us have faced the same issue. The sin for Adam and Eve was they listened to the words of God and said, our thinking is better than that. We have a different idea about what we ought to do. It's the first commandment. You're to have no other God before me. Now the word God simply translates into the idea you're to have no authority that controls your behavior more than me, your choices, your actions, the lifestyle that you live. Nothing is to control you more than me. And when you look back at the Old Testament, beginning with Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, God told the people exactly what they ought to do. He told them what they should wear. He told them what they should eat. He told them how they should live, what days they should work and when they shouldn't. He told them every single thing about their life. He said if you do these things, you will live completely content and satisfied. Now every person comes along and says, hmm, I can see some of these, but maybe here's one or two that I think I have a better idea about what to do. All have sinned. And Paul says that. He doesn't mean all have done little things like stealing or lying or whatever, but he means every person in the world at some time in their life has said to God, I know what you want, but I think there's a better choice. And in that instance we become separated and alienated from God. We live in a world surrounded by people who made choices to live contrary to what God says is right. Paul did, Judas did, everyone who's lived lives that way. There is no culture ever anywhere in the world where that's not true. That's why Paul said all have sinned and fallen short of living the way God tells us to live. The consequences in the beginning don't seem to be too bad. They didn't for Judas, but all of a sudden the fruit, the payoff came. Here he was in the middle of a situation where he'd made some choices, and now he looked around him and said, what I've decided to do is going to cause a man who did nothing wrong, has nothing wrong in his life, and he will be killed. And all of a sudden he saw his action and the consequence of it in an entirely different way. Now Paul in writing about the story of the Jewish nation in Romans where he talks about the Jews from the very beginning and Adam and the impact he had on them, he goes back to say there's another way by which people caught in this bind can react. He points back to the man Abraham in the Old Testament. Abraham was a man God called out of a foreign land to travel a great distance. He said, now I want you to follow me and I'll tell you where to go when you get there. That's an open-ended deal. But Abraham trusted God. He trusted God. He believed that if God says I'm going to take you to a place that will be good for you, it would work that way. He said to Abraham, I will make of you a great nation. I will guide you to all the things that you need to do. I will provide all of your needs. Your enemies will be my enemies, your friends my friends, and I will make you so powerful that the whole world will know who you are. Your descendants will impact the world as the sands of the sea without number. And Abraham believed God. Abraham believed God so much that God said you're going to have a child. He didn't have any children at all. He believed that God would give him that child. They waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally some angels, messengers of God came to him and said you're going to have a child within a year. His wife was already past the age when anybody could have children. It was hard for them to accept and even believe that God did it. When that child came, God said to Abraham, I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to take this child and take him up on the mountain. I want you to kill him. Abraham his only child he'd waited for for a hundred years, really a hundred years. He took him, put him on the altar, drew the knife back in obedience and faith in God to do exactly what God told him. God stopped him, but Abraham proved beyond any shadow of a doubt his trust in God. So Paul looks back at Abraham and he says here's a man who trusted God. Not only do we have examples in the scriptures that have influenced our lives like Adam and Eve, but we have before us an example of Abraham, a man of great faith and trust in God. So he trusted God even in circumstances that seemed impossible and even wrong. Paul said the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. By grace you are saved through faith. Now faith and trust are really the same Greek word in the Bible. It means to have such confidence in a person that whatever they tell you, you believe is true. Whatever they ask you to do, you can trust it. Adam and Eve did not trust God. They trusted Him about everything in their life but one thing, which proved that they didn't trust Him completely. The story of the scripture comes true in Judas' life. He was a religious man. That's why he wanted to join up with Jesus. He participated in all the things that Jesus asked His disciples to do, even going door to door and witnessing. But inside of him there was a reservation about God. I'm not sure I can trust what Jesus is telling us to be the message of God, for I think there is more to life than living in obedience to God and dying. In that moment of rebellion, he found himself isolated from God and on his own. The reality of all this came to him. Here is a man who is going to die because of me. You know what he did? He was remorseful. He was sorry that he did it. He was looking at his act and it was bad to him. Now what God does whenever you violate His instructions is He convicts you of your sin. He tells you what you've done is wrong. There is a better way than this. And every one of us look back on our lives and look at times we've done things and we're ashamed of it. We feel bad about it. We wish no one had known it. We wish you'd had a chance to do it over again. Every single one of us has that. You can either be remorseful for it or you can repent. Now the word repent means to change your attitude or your mind. To say to God, I did this and I shouldn't have done it. I ask for your forgiveness and I want to ask you to empower me to not live this way any longer. I trust you to take care of my life and to guide me and I promise you in obedience I'll follow you. Many believers, people who profess their faith in Christ find themselves in the same situation Judas is in. They've done something that they know they shouldn't do. They want to trust Christ but their own human nature pulls them back. I say this may be the most evident thing of this is when you see people and like our kids go to summer camp and they go to camp and there's no music or no distractions and Bible study in the morning, Bible study at night and their minds are focused on God. And they say in that atmosphere, I want to follow God with all of my life and all of my heart and then they come back and school starts right away and all the people around them are talking as they shouldn't talk, cussing, telling dirty stories. All their friends around them are talking about going out and getting drunk or having sex with somebody. All of a sudden the pressure of all these people around them who seem to be having so much fun doing things that they promised God they wouldn't do at camp suddenly begins to draw them back into the group. Over the years as we've sent kids to camp, you see them over and over again rededicate their lives to God. They find themselves going in and out of their faithfulness toward Him. That's the situation Judas was in. He knew he'd done the wrong thing. He just didn't renew his devotion to God. What he did was he said, I'm going to fix this up. What can I do? I'll take this money back to the people that gave it to me and I said, here's your money back. I want nothing to do with what you've done. And then I'll feel better about it. He did. And the people there said, we're not taking your money. It's blood money. We can't have it in the temple. That's your problem. You go out and solve your own problem. It didn't work quite like he wanted. So he decided in anger, he threw the money on the temple floor and stalked out. I think he thought that if I do this, I'll feel a lot better, but he didn't. He kept thinking about this and he kept thinking about it until he felt so upset about himself that the only thing he could think of was to take his own life. That was his solution to the problem of sin. You see, he thought I can redirect my behavior and erase this sin in my life, but it didn't work. Then he found it was so deeply embedded in him that he couldn't escape it and he thought the only way is to kill myself. That's what happens when we try to follow our own wisdom and judgment. What did God want? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Confess your sins to God. Tell Him how you failed and then say to Him, I want to give my life completely and totally to You. I'm going to abandon this idea of fame and fortune for myself. That's what Judas needed to do. And I'm going to say, I will live from this moment on in my life doing exactly what You want no matter how foolish it might seem to me. I will obey You regardless. That's what faith is. I trust Your words more than I trust my thoughts. I trust Your rules better than I trust my judgment. I trust You more than I trust all the people around me. So from this moment on, I will trust You. And whenever a person does that, they repent and place their complete faith in Christ. He forgives them and brings them into His family. To as many, John said, as believed or trusted Him, to them He gave the ability to be the children of God. You have a great picture here of the consequence of a person who lives outside of the trust of God, trusting their own judgment, trusting their own wisdom, trusting their own answers for their life. What Paul pointed us to was the other side of that. Here is Abraham, the man who said to God, I will trust You no matter what. I'll go where You want. I'll do what You want. I will live the way You tell me to live. And he has become the father of many people. He is even our spiritual father as followers of Christ. The whole world has been changed because of what Abraham did. There are thousands of people every single day coming to know Christ because of this great movement started by Abraham and his trust in God. Judas is dead and gone and forgotten. What the Bible shows us is the disaster that sin brings into the life of a person. And the sin that I'm talking about is the failure to acknowledge the authority of God over our lifestyle, our choices, and our behavior. God says, if you will trust me, I will give you life. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? I want to ask you to reflect on your own life of obedience to God. If you were able to sit in front of God, look Him in the eye, and say to Him, I trust You completely, would He believe you? That doesn't make any difference how many Bible studies you've been to, how long you've been in church. Judas did all those things. The deep inside of him was a desire to do something else. And when he had the opportunity, he did. All of us have secrets. We can live in ways that our spouse doesn't know, children don't know, or parents don't know, but God knows. Your life doesn't have to end up like Judas' life, but one thing must be certain to guarantee that it doesn't, and that is that you said to God, You will direct and control my choices, my lifestyle, and my character. Have you ever said that to God? If you have, do you find yourself waffling about it, straying away? Do you need to come back and say to God, this is a promise I've made to you in the past, I have not kept it. I feel ashamed. I ask for forgiveness, and I ask you to give me strength that I need. Many of our children, young people, will be going back to school, faced with a lot of people who live like Adam, Eve, and like Judas. And sometimes you'll feel all alone, and overwhelming pressure, but the promise you make to God must be one that bides even in that moment. And if you've made that promise to God, the best strength you have to keep it is being a part of the family of a church, where the Bible is taught, and preached, and lived. I ask you this morning to simply say to God, What do you want from me? In a moment, we'll have an invitation music, I want you just to remain in your seats. If you feel a need today, like Judas, that you're ashamed of something in your life, or disturbed of something in your life, or even facing a decision, like Adam and Eve, and you want to make a pledge to God, or renew your pledge, you can come and I'll pray with you, and someone else will be here to pray with you, maybe Rusty. You can just kneel at the front and pray if that's what you need to do. If there's a commitment you want to make, and you want to share it with someone, our church can be praying for you. The great sin in the world is to know what God wants you to do, and to do something else. It was the sin of Adam and Eve, it was the sin of Judas. The consequences of that are deadly, believe me. Father, we ask you to talk to us. You know each of our hearts better than we know ourselves. If there's something in our lives we need to turn away from, make that really clear to us. If there's a challenge that you want us to accept, make that clear to us. In these moments, not a one of us, Father, be without your voice in our ear. If you find our life pleasing, help us to feel your affirmation, well done, my good and faithful servant. We're listening to you. Tell us what you want us to hear. And if in the process of your talking to God now, he said to you, you need to go and share a commitment with the preacher, people that are receiving you. You need to go and pray. We ask you to do what God tells you. Don't resist him. However difficult it might seem, it's the only way of life. Would you stand, please, for a moment of prayer together? Let me encourage you, if God has directed you or spoken to you, that you share that with someone you trust. Whatever promise you've made, whatever question you have, that you share it with someone you think would be spiritually able to receive and listen to what you have to say. For God has made us not to live our lives alone, but in a community of believers. And we strengthen each other by our trust in one another. So Father, I ask that whatever you've said to us, we would not keep to ourselves, but we'd be willing to say to others, this is a promise I've made to God. This is what I think God wants me to do. And I've said yes to him. Help us to live in this world as examples of people who live under your authority, that they might know what you're like and that they might know how they should live. We ask when the difficulties come and it looks like it's not working, that we would never lose our trust in you, that we would keep on being faithful, that we might find the fullness of life you've promised. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray, amen. With shield of faith and belt of truth, we'll stand against the devil's line. An army bold, whose battle cry is love, will reach out to those in darkness.