Calvary Lutheran Church

Sin 202: An Advanced Course

This is the day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it. Hallelujah!

2 Samuel 11,12

Dear Christian friends:

            Last Sunday I started a two-part sermon series on sin. I called it “Sin 101—An Introductory Course.” I based the sermon on the account of David and Bathsheba found in this text. At that time, I said that sin is a reality of life which follows certain principles or axioms that always hold true, and I listed four of them.

            Principle #1: Sin comes to everyone and attacks at our weakest point.

            Principle #2: Sin feeds on itself with the goal of total ruin.

            Principle #3: The mystery of sin is its ability to totally blind

            Principle #4: Even the worst sin has its end in Christ.

            These are four of the basic principles of sin. But this morning I have three more to identify, finer points which are also taught in this narrative, and which we need to know if we are to successfully wage the battle against sin. So this morning, I offer you a second course on this whole topic. We might call it

SIN 202—AN ADVANCED COURSE

            Let’s try for a moment to enter the mind of David, and imagine what he was thinking during those 12 months after he took Bathsheba to be his wife and before Nathan came pointing his accusing finger. For 12 months David lived with the knowledge that he had committed the terrible sins of adultery and murder. As we mentioned last time, he had come up with excuses as to why it happened and why he really was not at fault. But as time went on it no doubt bothered him. He wished it wouldn’t have happened. He felt guilty. The guilt wasn’t there all the time. Sometimes he would go for days without thinking about it. But then when he least expected it, it would pop back into his head with even greater severity.

            I’ll let David himself describe those feelings to you in his own words of Psalm 32, “When I kept silent (that is, when he refused to admit the wrongs), my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3,4). He was drained, he was beside himself, crushed under the heavy weight of guilt. And where did this guilt come from? David correctly pinpoints the source, it was the “hand of God.”

            Which brings us to principle #5: The chief God-implanted enemy of sin is conscience. Too often we ignore or underestimate the power of that little voice deep inside each one of us.  But that is spiritual suicide! God put that conscience there. And it is meant for our good, yes, it may very well save us from disaster.

            In the New Testament the word “conscience” occurs thirty times, with various shades of meaning. But it’s most common meaning is an accusing conscience. This is what David had. An accusing conscience tells us that we did a wrong, we owe a debt, and there is no way we can ever pay it back.

            There are only two ways to rid oneself of an accusing conscience. The first is to commit the sin so often that the voice is no longer heard—that is called a “weak” or “dead” conscience. But that situation is most destructive, because if one continues to live in that habitual, willful sin, eventually God may very well hand him over to that sin. God will say, “You refuse to turn from your sinful ways, so I will let you go. I won’t be bothering you again. But you won’t be hearing from me again either.” He hardens their hearts like he did with Pharaoh and later the Children of Israel in the desert.

Remember when the Children of Israel refused to enter the land God had promised to them? They were afraid of the people who lived there because they had walled cities, and the Children of Israel looked like grasshoppers to them because of their huge size. And the people said, “Let’s pick new leaders and go back to Egypt.”  In other words, they rejected Moses and in turn rejected God. This is sometimes called the “sin against the Holy Spirit” because it is the Holy Spirit who brings us and keeps us in the faith. Isaiah writes, “They rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them” (Isaiah 63:10).

You don’t want God as your enemy. There is no way that could ever turn out good. For the Children of Israel every one of them died in the desert never seeing the promised land. There are some people walking around here on earth today who are dead corpses already marked for the punishment of hell. God has turned them over to their sin, their hearts are hardened, they have committed the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit.

            The only other way to rid oneself from a guilty conscience is to flee to Christ Jesus in repentance and faith, seek his forgiveness, and believe that the debt I couldn’t pay was paid by God himself. When we know and believe that, then the result will be what the Bible calls a “good” or “clear” conscience. No other religion on earth offers this good or clear conscience. All other religions of the world are guilt-based. Christianity is forgiveness-based. And it is so tragic because so many people go through an entire lifetime with an accusing conscience when they don’t need to.

A man was walking along the side of the road with a heavy load of something in a sack on his back. Another man in a pick-up truck was driving by and he stopped and said, “Jump in the back and I’ll give you a lift.” So the man gladly did. After a few miles the driver looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the man was sitting in the back, but he was still carrying the load on his back. So the driver yelled out the window, “Put your load down.” Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary burdened (with sin) and I will give you rest” (Mathew 11:28).  In other words, Jesus says, “Put your load down.”

            Fortunately, David knew the God of free and faithful forgiveness. After the prophet Nathan’s visit, David goes on in his psalm, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgive the guilt of my sin’” (Psalm 32:5). Oh, what a wonderful day that is when a sinner repents. At that moment a transition from sinner to saint takes place immediately in God’s eyes, and there is rejoicing in heaven among the angels, the Bible says, when one sinner repents.

            So the forgiveness is immediate, but the transition from an accusing conscience to a good conscience in our own eyes is not always immediate. We sometimes still feel guilty. And oftentimes a contributing factor to that guilt feeling is that even after repenting, even after forgiveness, bad things happen to us as a direct result of the sin. And that is because of Principle #6: God’s forgiveness frees us from sin’s punishment, but not necessarily from its consequences.

            Every high schooler knows Newton’s Laws of Motion, one of which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, you shot a rifle, the bullet goes in that direction, but you get a kickback in the opposite direction. That same principle holds true for sin. For every initial fun-filled, self-gratifying action of sin, there follows an equally miserable and self-degrading reaction of consequences.

            And this is where confusion may come in. We ask ourselves, “If God has forgiven my sin, washed it away in the blood of Jesus, dropped it into the depths of the sea, separated it from me as far as the east is from the west, then why am I still experiencing these bad effects of it? Why is it that when I tell a lie, no one trust me anymore, even after I have repented of that lie? Why is it when I live-in with a partner before marriage, it seems to have an adverse effect on my relationship after marriage, even after I have repented of it? Why is it that when I run off my mouth in gossip about others, no one wants to speak to me anymore, even after I have repented of it? Why is it when I am speeding down the road and I lose control and crash head-on into a mother of three and she dies, I’m still charged with vehicular homicide and go to jail, even after I have repented of it. God must still be punishing me for the sin.”

            No. Why would God punish you for a sin he punished his Son? Is God so unjust that he requires double payment for one sin? Absolutely not! The sin was paid in total at Calvary. We can be absolutely certain of that. But Principles #6 is that some sins carry with them natural consequences, and sometimes even God-initiated consequences. 

            It happened to David. David was forgiven. Nathan was speaking for God when he said, “The Lord has taken away our sins. You are not going to die.” But in the very next breath Nathan tells David, “The son born to you will die.” And then he tells him the reason, “Because by doing this you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt” (2 Samuel 12:14). The fact that David’s son had to die had nothing to do with David’s forgiveness or lack of forgiveness, he was definitely forgiven. It certainly had nothing to do with his infant son’s forgiveness or lack of forgiveness. The reason David’s son had to die was that David’s particular sin had both natural and God-initiated consequences.

            The natural consequence was that the heathen enemies of David would use this incident to bring contempt upon the name of the Lord. You know how people are, they naturally are going to talk. And what they were going to say about David’s God was not going to be very complementary, “Look at this God of the Israelites, he says he hates adultery, but when his own representative King David does it, nothing happens. At best this God shows favoritism, at worst he is a liar.” God had to show his enemies that he does not tolerate sin. And as proof, the healthy son of David would die by divine intervention. Yes, sometimes God intervenes in this world and allows evil to come upon us not to punish us, but as a consequence of the sin. Someone once said, “Those who stray from paths of righteousness find God’s forgiveness, but only eternity heals the scars.”

            But don’t be overly discouraged about the scars, because sometimes even scars can be good for us. I have a scar right here in my upper thigh from falling on a cinder track in high school. I have a scar here in my hand falling on some sharp rocks in the Caribbean Sea. I have a scar here in my lower arm when I fell down a hill in Georgia. You might conclude that I am a rather clumsy person, and you might be right, but it had taught me to be more careful.

            Principle #7: For the Christian, God can turn even the consequences of repentant sin for our good. David had to watch his son die, knowing full well it was because of him. So as he was dying David refused to eat and spent the nights lying on the ground pleading with God to spare the child. But God’s answer was “no,” And the child died.

David was not with the child when he died, so his servants had to come and tell him. They were afraid how David would react. Would he become angry, depressed, maybe even harm himself? But when they told him, David’s reaction shocked them. He got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotion, and changed his clothes. He then went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house and requested that his servants serve him food, and he ate it. And they asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!” Just the opposite of what they expected. David answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:22-23).

            David had matured in his faith. He learned from his mistake. He learned the wickedness of sin, its terrible consequences; the holiness of God, and that God cannot be mocked. But at the same time, he learned God’s great mercy and forgiveness that would allow both he and his son to be with the Lord in heaven.

            God can turn even the consequences of our repentant sin for our good. He can help us see more clearly the need to avoid it. But most importantly he can demonstrate to us first hand his amazing love and mercy.

            Congratulations! You have now completed the two-course topic on sin. You have learned the seven principles of sins. If you have difficulty remembering them, just turn to James 4:7, where those seven principles are all summarized with these words, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:7). In other words, the whole topic of sin can be summed up in three words: repentance, repentance, repentance.

May we pray:

Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank and praise you for teaching us today through your Word the principles of sin. Help us to always listen to our conscience when it is telling us we are doing wrong. May we never reach a point where our conscience becomes dead by habitual, willful, and deliberate sin. But give us a clear conscience that always turns to you in confession and repentance. May we always lay our load of sin down at the foot of the cross where it is washed completely by the blood of your Son Jesus. And when the consequences of past sins what to rob us of the assurance of our forgiveness, give us a mature faith which realizes that even then, you can turn those consequences for our ultimate good. But most of all, thank you for encouraging us to avoid sin altogether and to dedicate our lives wholly to obeying the new creation, the new man in us that delights to live in your will. Fill us with your Holy Spirit to work his power of joy and peace and obedience in us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.