Pastor Sam Chess 

Sin: hamartia: a falling short of the mark

Last week I was brutally honest with you about my own struggles and what God was teaching me through them. I received a tremendous amount of response. Some were deeply convicted by God toward transformation, some were uncomfortable with the whole subject matter. One person suggested that I, as a pastor should not be exposing my own sin in front of you all.

Since the sin I confessed to you was the sin of overeating, I suggested to them that every time I stood up in front of you I was exposing my sin of overeating to you whether I said anything about it or not…. They agreed.

I’ve discovered in thirty years of preaching that when God is deeply impressing something into my own life and I share it with you… those sermons seem to have the greatest life changing impact on others in the long haul.

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I. Exposing the Truth

Most of us have some area/s in our lives that we realized are not what they should be. In our more honest moments we might even call them sins. Attitudes, actions, thought patterns, habits…. Well… Pastor shortcomings maybe.. weaknesses.. But let’s not call them sins…… Yes let’s do:

Sin: hamartia: a falling short of the mark

Not measuring up to the mark of God’s holiness…anybody here fit into that category

The point I was working toward last week is that when we exhibit behavior on the outside that seems out of sync with God’s perfect mark for our lives.. it often is an indicator that the real problem is deep inside.

We, particularly in Western culture, have this habit of setting up new goals to fix our exterior behavior… we make resolutions by the millions at the beginning of each year which are promptly dropped by the second week of January. Why???? Why can’t we simply make a list of behaviors that need changed and one by one check them off the list?

Because, so often, our behavior on the outside is just a symptom of a much larger problem on the inside. The outside behavior is like the branches and the roots of the tree are deep inside.

Repeated patterns of wrong behavior on the outside are symptoms of an undernourished soul, on the inside.

This was a constant theme in Jesus preaching:

(Mark 7 21-23) Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. "All of you listen," he said, "and try to understand. You are not defiled by what you eat; you are defiled by what you say and do!^]"

17Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowds, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the statement he had made. "Don't you understand either?" he asked. "Can't you see that what you eat won't defile you? Food doesn't come in contact with your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then comes out again." (By saying this, he showed that every kind of food is acceptable.)

20And then he added, "It is the thought-life that defiles you. For from within, out of a person's heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you and make you unacceptable to God."

Maybe you are one of those people I talked about last week who wake up the morning after giving in to temptation the day before, and purpose that this is the last time you will ever allow yourself to give in that sin. We set ourselves up on a system of new responses that will eliminate the sinful behavior once and for all…. Can I share with you a little secret:

At the very root of human sin is a fundamental problem of dealing with restrictions. The first sinners, Eve and Adam had every tree in the garden available to eat from… which tree drew them like a magnet?? Think about it!

Their behavior defines human sin. If we are told we can’t do something… now we really want to do it… the flesh inside pulls us toward the forbidden.

What we can’t have…we want even more!

If you are truly serious about God changing some sinful behavior, you exhibit on the outside, your going to have to allow him to dig below the surface and start transforming the root. I finished last week with this comment:

Wouldn’t is be a good idea to allow God to peal back what is deep in our soul, cleanse it out one layer at a time, and heal us from the inside out…. Then he’s free to transform the behavior patterns, on the outside, that we’ve been asking him to take away…

II. Explaining the Root

So much of Jesus public ministry was devoted to getting beyond what was visible on the outside, down to the root of one’s soul.

To the Pharisees He said:

(Matt. 23:25-28) "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

To a good guy Jesus said this:

Matthew 19:16-22 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments." Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, " 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself." "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus was/is far less interested in what is showing up on the outside, good or bad, than he is in what is going on deep on the inside.

A change in behavior on the outside requires a change of heart on the inside.

1) A “sinful” heart must be changed. (obvious)

2) A “divided” heart must be changed. (less obvious)

The rich young ruler was a righteous living man. He had so disciplined himself that on the outside he was morally faultless. Unfortunately on the inside his heart-focus was divided. The final portrait of his heart was no different than that of the Pharisees. And these were people who had it all together in their outward actions. If Jesus scolded the people who had it all together in their outward actions,… what is he be going to say to me who openly admits that I don‘t have it all together.

…Same thing he would offer to both of the first examples:

(1 John 2:1-2) My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

(1 John 1:9) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Forgiveness is readily available for all our sin. At no point do any of us have hang our head and walk away from Jesus sad, like the rich young ruler, thinking that there is no solution to our life.

But at the same time Jesus offers you forgiveness he offers you so much more. He offers you grace so you won’t have to repeat the same sin over and over. He offers to heal every morsel of sin lurking in our hearts if we are willing to truly submit our lives and lifestyles to him.

That brings me to the third point and what for many of us may be a brand new, and life changing thought…

II. Expunging the Root (expunge- to erase, delete, cancel, remove completely)

I don’t happen to subscribe to the theology that we can come to God with our sin and he will so cleanse of all past and future sins that we will live sinless the rest of our lives. That’s not what I read in Scripture. Salvation is a progression of us bringing ourselves to God in submission and allowing him to progressively transform the characteristics in us that are falling below the mark of righteous living. In order to move from point A to point B to increasing maturity in the Christian life…there has to be a continued coming to Jesus in submission to his Lordship, allowing his grace to increasing work the transformation process He has promised in our hearts.

And here’s where I think there may be a disconnect…..

When I talked to you last week about how we try to fix the outward symptoms of what could very well be a deeper heart issue, I suggested that many of us sense there is something not right on the inside and we try to fix it by putting a square peg into a round hole.

In my own admission of sin, I said that eating was not something one always did because they were physically hungry, one may go to the refrigerator repeatedly to satisfy something other than physical hunger. ( Some told me they didn’t know what I was talking about…others said I nailed them between the eyes) I further meddled in your lives by suggesting that fir some the square peg in the round hole may be television, or computers, or sports, or shopping, or work, or even sinful behaviors, addictions, filling illicit sexual desires, feeding on errant thinking.

I gave you a chart which many of you took home… now I want to add another column:

October 30^th - November 30^th

Date/Time? Where? What? Amount? Hungry? Phys? Emotion? Spiritual?

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__________________________________________________________________Notes:

For the rest of us, I want to get on to this last column…..Spiritual Hunger

If I were to ask each of you to describe physical hunger, it wouldn’t be exactly the same for each of us, but we would have no trouble defining it.. We know when we are experiencing it. That’s not true of everybody, I’ve heard children complaining of a hurting belly, or a feeling of weakness and finally an adult will ask them… when did you eat last. Turns out the pain in their belly was easily satisfied. It wouldn’t have helped at all to put a warm compress on their stomach or massage their muscles. They were hungry… they needed to eat! You understand???

Now if I were to ask you to define spiritual hunger what would you say?

How do you know when you are experiencing spiritual hunger???. “I fulfill my required Bible reading each morning so I don’t get spiritually hungry.”.. You eat a bowl of cereal each morning too…..

The first Beatitude says:

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Hunger - “famished or starving“..

Isaiah 55: 1 "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
What if…

What if the emptiness that we sometimes feel inside is a God-hunger crying out to be satisfied.

What if us overeaters are systematically stuffing food into a void that was designed to be filled with God? What if the over-workers, or those with a thirst for entertainment, or for sports or buying new things, even those with chemical addictions are simply, desperately trying to fill an emptiness that is a crying out for God?

What if, like the children with the hurting bellies, we are crying from our hunger and trying to find other ways to alleviate our pain when if only some knowing person would say… I think you are just hungry.