John 1:29, “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world'”! I noticed that, according to John the Baptist, Jesus did not come to look at your list of sins to consider each, mark them against you, and enter a discourse on how rotten you are. Jesus came to take away an attitude of rebellion which has infected His perfect plan in His (used to be) perfect world. Sin is singular and I’m looking for my Greek New Testament – oh well. When sin entered the world by the first bad decision in the garden, so much shifted. We laugh at little white lies, we gossip, we kill another’s reputation, we ignore the needs around us, we are happy if our tax refund is bigger than it should be, we worship our bodies or abuse and deform them, and slay God’s bigger and better plan for our life. All of this is dishonoring God. It is a power struggle and He will win. I would rather have God on my side (really, me on His), and have Him wash me as ‘white as snow’. Doesn’t that seem impossible? We know we are dirty, rotten scoundrels but God does not care about those details since He is forgiving sin not sins. He will romance us to follow Him in a better way so our position of rebellion is no more a feature. Setting our minds on self-gratification doesn’t please God. Following Jesus does. Then we are clay in the potter’s hand and we can be formed into a better version than we could ever have imagined.
We sang a song in church tonight with the phrase, “I will not boast in anything, gifts, power, or wisdom”. We must bring enough to the table after we are saved because God expects our participation. I am less likely, at 73 years of age, to save myself as I accept the brokenness in and around me. During communion one of our elders, Mr. Peter, said three important words – confess, repent, return. That is how we currently approach our fallen yet saved position in relation to our Holy God. I’ll close with Pastor Koby’s scripture source for tonights message from I Timothy 4:12-16, in summary. Paul is advising Timothy to “Live out your faith because eternity hangs in the balance”.
