|
“Our
Confession”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Hebrews 4:12-16
“Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness...”
I hope we can see
and hear from the Biblical passage that we were just blessed to read
together—this is a gift from God—that even with God, truth is not to
be about our feeling guilt and shame over mistakes we have made at times
in our lives. Our truth is
about the presence, the love, and the faith of God in our lives.
We just read two paragraphs. In
the first paragraph we heard words to the effect that there is no sword
sharper than the Word of God. The
Word of God penetrates into us in such a way that it divides our souls
from our spirit. It is that
sharp and that deep. And to
add to this, we are all standing in the presence of God, in such a way
that we can hide nothing. And
we must give an account of things in our hearts and in our lives.
If we are really trying to listen; the first thing this does to every
one of us is, it makes us feel guilty over things that have haunted us
in our lives, and it makes us feel afraid that God, whom we think of as
our judge, is judging every aspect of the wrong we feel in our hearts.
This is not what the Word of God is trying to do to us.
This way of feeling and thinking is what religion and
self-righteousness are doing to us.
Sin is not first and foremost an act in which we have broken a
commandment of God. Sin is not first and foremost an immoral action on our
account. Sin is a spiritual
power force in this world, where we are led to believe that we are
separated from God.
Paul Tillich spoke of sin as a state of being in which our perception is
such that we are not in touch with God, with one another, or even with
ourselves. One of the very
greatest gifts is that the Word of God can reach into our very being at
such a level that it separates our souls from our spirits.
If we are in a spirit of sin, in the sense that for whatever
reasons, we are not in touch with our connection with God, with our
loved ones, or even with ourselves, then wouldn’t it be a great thing
for God, as His Word, to move our souls away from some spirit that is
misguiding us, and show us in our souls the real truth of who we are in
Jesus Christ?
I am going to try and make this as clear and simple as I can.
Most religion is the spirit of thinking that we have to do
something to get ourselves back into a right relationship with God. It tells us that we have sinned and therefore God is angry at
us. God is Holy.
We are sinful. We are not in God. We
have been separated from God because of all the wrong we have done,
thought, believed, and felt.
There are many different kinds of religions that have various rules,
systems of beliefs, mindsets, and attitudes that are promoted and
presented in such a way that tell us if we will think in this way, act
in this way, believe in this way, then we will get ourselves back in a
right relationship with God.
There is much of this that goes on in the Christian church too.
One of the reasons there are so many different factions within
the church is because various assemblies believe that they have come up
with the most accurate and correct way for us to get ourselves back into
a right relationship with God.
That is religion. Human’s
thinking they must get themselves right with God by behaving, thinking,
and trusting in this certain manner because they made themselves wrong
with God by behaving, thinking, and trusting in a sinful manner.
Christianity is not about this kind of religion.
Christianity is about faith (or maybe, true religion).
Christianity is about the faith of Jesus Christ.
The reason we can stand before God, knowing that God, who is God’s
Word in Jesus Christ, can pierce us in such a way that God can move our
souls out of a certain spirit, and knowing that “… before him no
creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the
one to whom we must render an account” and standing before him in this
way with boldness, with courage, with faith is because we are not made
right with God by anything we do, think, or believe. We are not made right with God by our religion.
We are made right with God by God.
We have already been made right with God in the person of Jesus
Christ. We have never been
out of God’s presence. We
have never been separated from God.
There has never been a minute when you, and I, and every one of
us did not have Jesus Christ deeper within ourselves than even in our
hearts.
That is the truth of who you are to God, who you have always been to
God, and who you will always be with and to God.
Yes, there are times when we have not known this, have not been in a
spirit of accepting this, living in this way.
There will be times this next week when we might loose this
awareness, but that does not change the truth of who we are in Jesus
Christ because of what Jesus Christ has already done for us and to us.
We have a great high priest in Jesus Christ.
And he is not the kind of priest who is telling us that we can
only get right with God if we act, think, and believe in a certain way.
He is a high priest sent through the heavens to come to us and to
take hold of us and to take us back to where he came from.
We were never separated from God. But
because of the power of sin in this world, we think we are; we believe
we are. So God the Father sent His Son to become one of us as a means
to lift us up out of the spirit of thinking and believing we are
separated from God because what we have done.
We have a high priest who can sympathize with us.
We do not have a high priest who is so self-righteous by getting
himself right with God that he cannot understand what it is like to be
one of us.
Remember, this is not about religion.
This is not about the Son of
God coming to be a human who was the only one able to make
himself right with God, and now he is telling us what we need to do to
get ourselves right with God. This
is not even about Jesus always being and staying right with God and so
now if we will just believe in Jesus, this is finally all we have to do
to make ourselves right with God.
This is about God the Father loving us in such a way that He and His Son
and The Holy Spirit chose to come into this world, become a human
being—He who knew no sin became
sin for us—and live in this world, in all that sinful human beings
go through, so that God can know us in such a way, that he knows our
souls and spirit by experiencing them, and will then know how to get it
through to us that we are already and always loved by him and included
in his life.
Our Lord Jesus Christ knows how to sympathize and empathize with us in
every way. He knows all our feelings.
He knows what it is to feel the things we feel, even guilt and
shame, because he became sin for us.
He came into what it is to live in this world thinking we are not
right with God. And he also
knows how to act, think, and believe in the true situation, even as he
has the lies of sin acting in his heart.
He knows every aspect of what it is to be human.
He knows you. He
hears you. And he knows how to love and experience the love of God the
Father with your heart and soul.
And his priesthood, his ministry in our lives is to speak to us and
share his faith with us in such a way that we move out of human religion
and self-righteousness, and into sharing in how he knows God the Father
in the Holy Spirit as a human being.
Our confession is about approaching the Trinity in prayer and asking to
receive the faith, the understanding, the mindset, and the heart of
Jesus Christ.
Let us pray…
Amen
|