The Deadliness of Sin (2 Kings 17.5-17 and Galatians 5.16-26)

An Ash Wednesday Address

Introduction

So… we all know now what the Pope is giving up for Lent don’t we? (*Benedict XVI had just handed in his resignation as Pope).

According to a survey I saw last week, chocolate is the number one thing people give up during this season. Facebook or other social media is number two. Alcohol is number three.  At number 80 is “caring” apparently.

On 30 August 1991 in the Shinjuku stadium in Tokyo, Japan, an American athlete named Mike Powell pulled off a sporting achievement that no one had managed for 33 years. And, 22 years on, no one has matched it since.

He broke the world record for the long jump. The distance he jumped was 8.95 metres (or, in old money, 29 ft, 4¼ in).

That’s just numbers, so let me illustrate that for you if I may… (takes tape measure and mark out the distance). That’s without the hop and the skip. That’s a different event. This is just the jump!

How achievable would it be for anyone here this evening to match that record? Would anyone like to have a go? Do I have any takers? Of course not.

The gap between the point where Powell set off and the point where he landed is just completely unbridgeable, even for all but the very best elite athletes on Earth – and even then, only once ever in the entire span of human history.

If we were to pick the fittest, most athletic, person here this evening (I know you’re thinking that must be me!) and if we were to give him intense training and put him on a special diet and design a super streamlined kit and engineer some new high tech shoes we know that he could never, ever be airborne that long and jump that distance.

It’s impossible.

Our Problem: Sin

So let me ask you a question as we begin. How far do you think it is between where you are and the intense brightness of God’s infinite moral perfections?

How far do you think it is between your sinfulness and his righteousness? And what could you possibly ever do to close the gap?

This is a question that God is particularly interested in. He mentions it quite a bit in his book. You see, the Bible says in Romans 3.23 that all have sinned. That’s everybody; all have sinned. You, me, and from Mother Teresa to Genghis Kahn - all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God.

Just like in the long jump, we all fall short. No matter how hard you try, how long you train, you know the chasm is too wide.

Now God isn’t unfair. In a way, God made it quite simple for us. He gave us ten simple rules to live by; the Ten Commandments.

Ten simple rules. That shouldn’t be all that difficult should it? With a bit of self-discipline and a bit of hard work most people should be able to manage that shouldn’t they?

So let’s see how we do. The first simple rule is this: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Doesn't sound too complicated does it? Let’s see how we measure up. Who among us here this evening has never, ever put anything in their life in front of God?

Let’s have a show of hands. Raise your hand please if you have never, not once in your life, ever considered something or someone to be more important to you, more valuable to you, than God.

You see, nobody here (and in fact nobody on the entire Earth) can even get past number one of God’s 10 simple rules. The Bible is right. All have sinned and have fallen short of God’s standards.

In our day, hardly anything could be less appealing to most people than listening to a talk about sin. How many of you tonight said, “Quick, get your coat on, let’s get going down to Saint Mary’s on this bitterly cold evening to hear John Lambert talk for 20 minutes about sin! This is going to be the highlight of my week. This should be great. Bring it on! I can’t wait!”? Did you find yourself saying that?

Sin is basically human rebellion against God. We are not inclined to want to hear about that. We are inclined to want to feel good about ourselves.

We have become numbed to words like ‘sin’ and ‘wickedness’. We want to hear about things that cheer us up instead.

In our culture, we have largely lost any real sense of the fear of God (which is the beginning if wisdom) and the seduction of sin and the danger of hell. They have almost become taboo subjects – even in church.

We want to hear about a God of love - and our God is a God of love - but he will also judge the living and the dead whether people want to hear about it or not.

The season of Lent disciplines us to get real about ourselves. We are not virtuous people in need of entertainment. We are sinners in need of grace.

Israel’s Disobedience

Our society in 21st Century Britain is, in some ways, quite similar in attitude to the society in Israel in the 8th Century B.C.

In those days, prophets like Isaiah, Hosea and Amos warned their people that, if the nation continued on the path it was on, rejecting God and flouting his laws, there would be real trouble ahead.

But people just said “Here we go again, another sermon about doom and gloom.” Have you ever heard people say “Cheer up, it might never happen.” Well, that’s what people said then.

But it did happen. Everything the prophets predicted came to pass. The Assyrians laid siege to Samaria which was the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They surrounded the city for three years until it finally fell in 722 BC.

27,000 Israelites were forcibly deported, and carried off into exile, never to see their homes again. It was the end of their existence as a nation; ten of the twelve tribes of Israel were erased from the face of the Earth.

Lest anyone was in any doubt, 2 Kings 17.7 comments on why this happened. “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt.” Sin is deadly.

When you look through the list of all the things they did to stir up God’s wrath, and it doesn’t make for light reading, it boils down to worshipping idols, following superstitions and rejecting God’s clear commandments.

But what started for them as just offering a little pinch of incense to a pagan god spiralled down to offering their sons and daughters in the fire.

Of course, we would never sink to such a level would we? Except that the most dangerous place for a child to be in 2012 Britain was in its mother’s womb, where over 200,000 lives were ended before being sent to the hospital incinerator. Let's not pass judgement on a society that sacrificed its children in the fire. Ours does that even more than they did.

I don’t say that in any spirit of condemnation by the way. Only those who are without sin are in any position to throw the first stone. 

But our nation is defying God and I’m afraid we are on the same trajectory as rebellious Israel in our first reading.

There is a way back from sin though. Jacob was a cheat, Peter had a temper, David was an adulterer, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran away from God, Paul was a murderer, so was Moses, Miriam was a gossip, Martha was a worrier, Mary Magdalene was promiscuous, Thomas was a doubter, Sara was impatient, Elijah was self-piteous and Zaccheus was a thief.

The Bible is full of flawed heroes; people who got it wrong - sometimes badly wrong but who found their way back to God.

That should give us all some hope. Because, the Bible says, “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” (Romans 5.20).

Deadly Sins

In the 4^th Century AD, a humble monk with the instantly forgettable name of Evagrius Ponticus drew up a list of vices with the aim of educating Christians about fallen humanity’s tendency to make destructive moral choices. So he came up with these: anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust pride and sloth.

We’re going to be thinking about these seven deadly sins through Lent this year. What was the name of the monk again? You see, I told you his name was instantly forgettable! In Evagrius Ponticus’ day the seven deadly sins were a big hit.

People found it very helpful to have an understanding of how they might offend a holy God and so do all they could to avoid doing so. And they really took seriously the adjective “deadly”.

In our second reading in Galatians 5.18-21, there is a right rotten old list of bad stuff: "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like."

Why do we call sin deadly? Because Paul goes on to say In v21 “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this (that is to say who go on living like this, unrepentant and unashamed) will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Sin is deadly. If I told you there was one thing that had the power to rob you of your joy, to disturb your peace in Christ, to break up your relationships, to lose you your job, to fritter away your pension, to make you dangerously ill and keep you out of heaven you’d want to know what it is and how to steer clear of it. Sin can do all those things.

Did you ever play with magnets when you were a child? If you did, you'll remember that the closer they got to each other, the harder it was to pull them apart.

Sin is something like that. The closer we flirt with it, the stronger its attraction will be on us. In fact, if we’re not careful, the time may come when it will be almost impossible to pull away from it. Hebrews 12 says that sin “so easily entangles.” It’s like a spider’s web that traps its prey.

But this isn't the end of the story! In spite of our rebellion, in spite of our complete inability to keep all the rules, in spite of our failure to even get past rule number one, God loves us so much he sent His Son into the world to forgive us and cleanse us and give us new hearts. However far we’ve gone down sin’s path we can be right with God again through faith.

The power of Christ’s death and resurrection is greater than the power of sin. Has Christ forgiven your sins? Make sure by turning to Him in faith tonight and trusting Him alone for your salvation. Jesus’ promise is for you: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

Conclusion

Tonight, we’re going to mark a sign of the cross with ash on each forehead.

The ash - dirty and lifeless - reminds us of our utter powerlessness to live a perfectly good life.

The cross reminds us that by putting our trust in Jesus’ utterly good life we are saved from the deadly consequences of sin.

As I close, let me leave you with an illustration that Martin Lloyd-Jones used to use about two fields to describe our relationship to sin as Christian believers.

I used to live in a field, he said, where Satan and sin controlled my life. But now I have been lifted out of that field and placed in a field where Christ and righteousness controls my life. I can still hear Satan’s seductive voice over the wall, [provoking anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride and sloth]. But my goal now is to move further and further away from the wall where I can no longer hear him.

May we all move further and further away from his field during this time of Lent.

Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 13th February 2013