We live in a God-fearing community in a God-fearing state in a God-fearing nation. And yet we are surrounded by sin. Sin is a part of life and it is a part of being human. But, you might protest, we go to church, or we tithe, or we try to do good. Those are all wonderful things that show our commitment to a better world. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have sin.
As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (3:23)
All of us have been blessed by God. We’ve been blessed in so many ways. And yet, despite the abundant signs of God’s love for us, we have sin. It makes you think, doesn’t it? God loves us and shows us through his many blessings. We love God and we turn around and do things that erect barriers between us and God. So what’s up with us? And what’s up with the world?
I’m sure if any of you have your Bible in front of you. If you do great and if not that’s okay too. But you know, my friends, it’s not enough to hold the word of God in our hands. It’s far more important that we hold the word of God in our hearts, our minds, our souls.
OK. Those of you with Bibles, go ahead and open up to Mark 7:20-23. Here we find our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ speaking directly to us. “And he said, 20…“It is what comes from inside that defiles you. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. 23 All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”

What’s up with us? What’s up with the world? We look around us and we can’t help but be stunned by the utter mess we’ve made of God’s blessings. Today, even after all the great strides we’ve made since the 1960s, we still live in a nation torn by racial tensions. Those tensions are evident in presidential politics, as some hateful people, striving to discredit a black candidate, stop at nothing to make him look bad. Those tensions are evident in state, local and national politics, where people threatened by immigrants seeking nothing more than a better life do everything they can to erect barriers and impose punishments on them. Now granted, if you come into the country without proper documentation and the correct paperwork, if you sneak across the border, you’ve broken the law. And we are a nation of laws. But stop for a moment. Think. Reflect. What would Jesus do? That’s not some idle greeting card sentiment or something we wear on a wristband. It’s not something we tell our children when they’re fighting over the X-box 360 controls. It’s a serious question. Think about it.
It’s easy to sit back and say our times are the worst ever. The sad reality is that we’re simply no better than previous generations. We’ve had racial tensions since the beginning of time. Why? Why are we unable to learn from the experiences of those who’ve gone before us?
I speak to you at a time when we’re enmeshed in war in the Middle East. We have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re tip-toeing around Iran while simultaneously flexing our muscles. We’ve got a truly unstable leader in North Korea who may in fact have multiple nuclear warheads. We’ve got an ascendant China, whose might extends both militarily and economically. Indeed, China is gobbling up world resources at a pace that could precipitate global war if the nations of the world are not careful. And let us not delude ourselves. War in our time could truly be Armageddon. Nations who fear being cut off from world energy and food supplies may not be as reluctant to use nuclear weapons as the United States and Soviet Union were during the height of the Cold War. Albert Einstein probably said it best when he observed that, if mankind resorts to nuclear weapons, “Mankind is doomed.” But that looms as a very real possibility. So I ask again, what’s up with us? What’s up with humans? What’s up with our world?
Our jails are filled to overflowing. We’ve lost generations of young men and women to drugs and violence. Many of our young people have dropped out of school. Why do we have these problems in a land so blessed by the hand of God? Why can’t we fix things?
America has long been the envy of the world. Our standard of living is off the charts. Though we’re in the midst of economic turmoil, we remain a prosperous nation. Though our system has many flaws, we enjoy many educational advantages here. If you have any doubts, look at the numbers of people from around the world who want to come here to study. And yet despite all these blessings, all of these advantages, we are an unhappy people. We suffer from collective boredom. Maybe this is a function of our material wealth. We’re satisfied with our cell phone until Apple comes out with the i-Phone, and suddenly we’ve got to have that. And we’re not happy until we do. We’re satisfied with what we have until what we have becomes obsolete. And I’m not just talking about consumer products. I’m talking about relationships, too. Just take a look at divorce statistics and you’ll know what I’m talking about.
We say we want happiness. We say we want peace of mind. We say we want joy. We strive for these things. But we’re not finding it. We may think we’ve found it in money, until we realize that money is empty. We may think we’ve found it in material goods, until we realize that those things, too, are empty. We may think we’ve found it in casual sex or recreational drug use, until we wake up scared to death we’ve caught an incurable disease and realize we have no real human connection with anyone. We find we’re alone with our money, our things, our sex lives. So what’s up with us? What’s up with the world? What’s wrong with us, and what’s wrong with the world?
Let’s give world leaders the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure they’re doing the best they can based on the information they have. But in a lot of ways, I think these sincere people — many of whom are informed and inspired by a deep faith in God — end up putting Band-Aides on cuts that require surgery, or infecting a relatively innocuous cut and making our problems worse. People all over the world say they want peace. But peace remains elusive. We drive the Taliban from Afghanistan, and North Korea tests a nuclear weapon. We stand up to North Korea and then stand stunned at the genocide in Darfur. We route Sadaam Hussein in Iraq, but stir up and embolden others who hate the United States more deeply than Hussein. It’s like a little boy with his finger in the dike, holding back a leak. Other leaks spring, and the little boy doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to block them all.
We want to solve the world’s problems, but we end up treating symptoms. Racial tensions are a symptom. War is a symptom. Crime is a symptom. Unhappiness is a symptom. These are all symptoms of a far greater, and deeper, problem. Symptoms are warning signals. That headache the man has is a symptom. It could be a symptom of the flu, or it could be a symptom of a tumor. The man can take an aspirin, and maybe the headache will go away. But the flu or the tumor will remain unless the tumor is treated, not the headache.
So. Something is wrong with us. Something is wrong with the world. But what is it? What is up with us?
Well, I’ll tell you what. That Bible we were all proudly waving earlier has an answer. More accurately, Jesus has an answer. Jesus said that all these bad things we’ve been talking about come from within us. These bad things devour us, they devour our communities, they devour our states, our nation, our world. Jesus is telling us that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. And it all stems from Adam and Eve’s Great Fall in the Garden. Humans were perfect in the beginning. We were made in the image of God. But then we fell prey to sin. Yes, that’s right. All of us here today are just as guilty of sin as the man or woman who has never gone to church or given a thought to God. We have all fallen prey to sin. And sin, my friends, is a disease. It’s a disease that can’t be treated with aspirin. But it’s a disease that must be treated.
This disease, deep within us, produces all the evil we see in the world today. Jesus told us that this disease causes us to have evil thoughts. Jesus told us that this disease causes us to commit adultery, murders and theft. All of the bad things we see in the world today, the genocide, the inequality, the mistreatment of others — all of these evils come from within. All the murders come from the disease of sin within us. All of the greed and ugly materialism — these evils things come from the disease of sin deep within us. Go ahead. Name an evil. Wickedness? Deceit? Blasphemy? Fornication? Lies? All of these evils come from the disease of sin. And when you add all of them into the pot, stir them up with human interaction, you get war and social tension.
And Jesus — sweet Jesus, our Lord and our Savior — said that all of this ugliness comes from within us.
Mankind has turned to many possible solutions. We’ve tried authoritarian states in which rulers control every aspect of an individual’s life. We’ve tried communism, in which all of the people theoretically own the means of production. We’ve tried mixed systems in which some aspects of life are highly regulated while others are unfettered. We’ve tried democracy. All of these different political systems have looked at the world and said, “What’s up with that? What’s up with the world?” All have claimed to be the path to universal happiness. All have claimed to be the first step in building heaven on earth.
And yet. And yet. Here we are living in a troubled world.
Why is that? Well, Jesus has an answer. All of these different political systems have tried to cure the world’s ills by changing facets of society. But Jesus taught us that the problems of this world are not social. No, these social problems we have are symptoms of something larger. Illiteracy is a symptom. Hunger is a symptom. Injustice is a symptom. Poverty is a symptom. All of these are terrible symptoms and we must not turn our backs on them and those who suffer from them. But if we really want to cure these problems and not just treat them as the symptoms they are, we have to face the fact that the root of all these ills is sin. And sin, Jesus told us, comes from within us.
All of the bad things we say we’re concerned about, all of the things we want to fix in the world, stem from one thing and one thing only — sin! When we ask what’s up with the world, the only true answer is “sin.”
Fair enough, you say. But while we’re talking about it, what is it that we’re talking about when we say we’re talking about sin? Go ahead and study it. I encourage you to do so. And when you do, you’ll find many definitions. It’s been called an “infirmity.” It’s been called “the shadow cast by man’s immaturity.” It’s been called “a constitutional weakness.” A lot of people have given a lot of thought to what exactly we’re talking about when we talk about sin. And that’s probably a good thing. But why not go right to the source? Why not go to that book you were so proudly waving earlier. And there we’ll find sin referred to as the free act of a person with free will, the free act of a person endowed with intelligence, a moral compass, a person who is a responsible being who deliberately and with forethought asserts his own will against the will of God. Sin is nothing more than rebelling against God.
Well, you parents out there. What do you do when your teenage sons and daughters rebel against your parental authority? You punish them, of course. And like a loving parent, God, too, holds us responsible for our sin. No, God doesn’t take away our car keys, or ground us or send us to time-out. God’s punishments are more creative, you might say.
What is society but a collection of individuals? Each of us sinning individuals make up society, make up the world. Our individual sin of greed creates shortage and want in other parts of the world. For that matter, it creates shortage and want in our own neighborhoods. Our individual sin of lust creates tensions in multiple households, perhaps spawning retaliation and certainly sowing sorrow and pain. Our individual sins cause the tensions and the problems and the wars and the troubles of our times. Famine, genocide, war — these are all symptoms of our individual sins.
John said sin is a transgression. In 1 John 3:4, John wrote that sin “is [a] transgression of the law.” What John was talking about here is the law of conscience. We’re all born with it, though many of us lose it over time. But when it’s working, our conscience speaks up and let’s us know when we’ve done wrong. When it does speak up, we can be sure we’ve sinned against God. But you know, we get jaded. We drive 70 in a 60 mph zone and figure it’s no big deal. From there it’s not hard to rationalize an inflated deduction on our income tax form. And then maybe it’s easy to fluff off lustful thoughts, or to have an affair. God knew that conscience alone wasn’t going to work with such a hard-headed group as us humans. So he gave us the 10 Commandments. And so, right there in black and white, so to speak, was the law. And when we break a commandment, we transgress against God, break moral law and become sinners.
And now for the hard part. Friends, every person here has broken the 10 Commandments. You’ve broken them. I’ve broken them. We’ve all broken them. All of us is guilty not only of original sin but of active and willful rebellion against God. God didn’t start the sin business. We did. And God is holding us responsible.
I know. Some of you are saying: “Whoa, hold on, partner. When did I ever break the 10 Commandments?” Well, how about when you walked into this chapel and saw the pretty blonde and for a fleeting moment wondered what it would be like to be in her arms? Well, how about when you parked next to the Jaguar and wished it was yours? How ’bout when you made a joke at a co-worker’s expense, and ended up killing that person’s spirit? This isn’t just me speaking here. Remember, Jesus raised the bar with the 10 Commandments. Jesus taught men that, if they look at a woman with lust in their hearts, they’ve committed adultery. So we have the letter of the 10 Commandments and we have the spirit of the 10 Commandments. And God is concerned with both.
And look. There’s a completely different facet of sin that we often fail to consider. And that’s the sins of omission. These are the sins we commit when we fall short of what we’re supposed to do, when we don’t do what we should do. Maybe you’ve never looked at another human being with lust. Maybe you’ve never even thought about taking something that doesn’t belong to you. But perhaps you’re guilty of a sin of omission.
Jesus had a parable about the end times when he’d line everyone up and categorize them as sheep or goats. And guess what. He was rather harsh. He said that if we fail to feed those who are hungry, fail to clothe those who are naked, fail to tend to the needs of others, we’re guilty of the sin of omission and we’re in for some seriously rough sledding. Because when we ignore the needs of others, we ignore Christ. And again, that’s not me talking. That’s Jesus.
All of us are very comfortable and soothed by the fact that ours is a loving, forgiving God. Jesus died for our sins, after all, and then rose from the dead, conquering sin and death. But that makes it all the more confusing as to where sin originated and why God allows it.
But here’s the thing. God didn’t tempt humans to sin. He did not cause humans to sin. God’s intention was for humans to be free from sin and all its attendant anxieties and problems. God did not want us to sin. But God also did not want to control us completely. He did not make us so he could Lord it over us, so to speak. He gave us free will. And we used it. And we sinned.
Still, however, God wants us to come back to him. As Peter, the rock, wrote in 2 Peter 3:9, God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
We’ve begged many questions here. Just because God gave us free will doesn’t mean we had to sin. And if God made us in His image, why did we turn to sin? Unfortunately, for now, these questions lie in the realm of mystery. God has not yet seen fit to reveal the origin of sin to us. What He has told us through Holy Scripture is that sin is, as Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, “the mystery of iniquity.” So the origin of sin is mostly a mystery. But this we do know. Sin is of the devil, John wrote in 1 John 3:8.
Of course, we could now be here for weeks on end discussing where the devil came from. But for our purposes now, that’s not important. What is important is that Satan originated sin. Humans, possessing the gift of free will from our Lord and Creator, decided to follow Satan instead of God. Back in the Garden of Eden, Adam had the choice to either obey and follow God or to obey and follow Satan. He chose Satan, and humans have suffered ever since. And let us not get smug. Oh, I’d have never followed Satan. As for me and mine, we’d always follow the Lord. And if that’s the case, my friends, then why are you sinners today. Because as we already discussed, all of us are sinners.
At some point after we reached the age of accountability, the age at which we could discern right from wrong, we all broke God’s laws. Maybe we looked at a classmate’s answers because we didn’t study for a test. Maybe we saw someone fall and honestly wished that he got severely hurt. It could have been something as simple as illegally downloading an mp3. We all did something, and it was sin in God’s eyes just as surely as when Adam ate of the fruit that was forbidden. We are all Adam. We are all sinners.
And when I saw “we,” I mean everyone. Yes, each individual is unique and different. Just like snowflakes, people are individuals. But regardless of our personalities or our nationalities or anything else, we are all sinners. We are all sinners who have come short of the glory of God.
When God looks down on this group, he sees only two classes of people, not five, six, seven or what-have-you. We’ve gotten into the habit of breaking ourselves down into vast numbers of groups — whites, blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, Asians, rich, poor, middle-class, white trash, educated or uneducated. But as I say, God doesn’t see us that way. God just sees two classes — the saved and the lost. We’re either on the narrow path leading to heaven or the broad highway to hell. He sees us as serving either Him or the devil. So think this through. Are you on the narrow path to heaven? Who are you serving? And remember this: Whether we’re in the prosperous United States or the poverty-ridden jungles of Central America, whether we’re in the strife-torn Middle East or the up-and-coming Asia, all of us — I mean everyone — are sinners in God’s eyes.
All of us and all of our sin. Where does it all go? Where does it all lead? Well, we can see the results of sin everywhere. Look at the front page of any newspaper in the world and you’ll see the results of sin. Turn on CNN and you’ll see the results of sin. Murder. Robbery. War. Lust. Broken homes, fractured families. These are the results of sin.
You know it. I didn’t need to tell you. You know in the depths of your being the results of sin. You know the results of sin because you’re a sinner. You have habits and inner demons you can’t control. They’re caused by sin, and sin is weighting you down. You want to be good; I’ll grant you that. I want to be good. But sin, well, sin is bringing us down. By ourselves we don’t have the strength to be good, to walk with God.
I don’t want to be a broken record — maybe I should say scratched CD for this generation — but look, the disease of sin is something we all have. We’re all carriers. Jesus told us straight up that we all have the disease and he told is it is burrowed deep inside of us. And Jesus knows. He bore the weight of our sin on the cross at Calvary. We weighed him down with all of our ugly, selfish sin. And here’s something else Jesus told us. He told us that this disease of sin darkens our understanding. So look. Here we live in an age when we can store vast amounts of information on a chip the size of the head of a pin, but we’re unable to make any headway against crime, or homelessness or economic inequality. We can create missiles that hug the contours of the earth and can smash through a window hundreds of miles away, but we can’t solve the problems of cancer or AIDS or drug abuse.
Why is this? Well, in 1st Corinthians, Paul wrote that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. In 1 Corinthians 1:21, Paul writes, “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
I’m sure there are some of you who are starting to squirm in your seats. You think it’s foolish of me to stand here in the 21st century and talk to you about sin, God and the Bible. We live in a sophisticated age, and these things I’m talking about seem to some of us to be quaint and irrelevant. But it’s not. It’s relevant. It’s very real. And it’s very important. God said He has chosen His foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Remember, “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Think about the way we go about solving the world’s problems. Heads of state get together and talk, horse trade and negotiate. But do they begin their sessions with prayer? Not that I’ve heard of. And they’ve not been able to solve anything. When Paul talks about “the weakness of God,” he’s talking about the things we have rejected. We’ve rejected prayer, which is stronger than men.
Paul was really on a roll in 1st Corinthians, there’s no question about that. But in his letter to the Corinthians, he provided a roadmap for solving the problems of the world. Centuries and centuries later, we’ve still not opened our eyes to the one true solution to all the world’s problems. “25This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.”
[1 Corinthians 1:25-29].
Friends, I don’t care how smart you are. I don’t care whether you’re in Mensa or have a doctorate from MIT. No matter how smart you are or how wise, you can’t bring peace to the world by yourself. You need God’s help. We need God’s help. There’s just no other way. It’s time we woke up to that fact and stopped stubbornly trying to go solo.
We live in a nation blessed by God. We are rich. We are prosperous. We are technologically advanced. We are the preeminent world superpower. But we don’t have the power or ability to solve the world’s social problems. Friends, we don’t even have the power or ability to solve our own social problems. We have turned our backs on God and his simple program. We think it’s foolish. At bottom, we have rejected the idea of living for Christ. And so we continue to stumble from crisis to crisis. And if we’re not careful, we’re going to be responsible for bringing about global catastrophe.
That’s the big picture, the macro world. But what about the micro world, the world inside your own soul? You feeling confused and frustrated? Are you filled with tension? Are you truly happy? Oh, you’ve got the money, the fancy car, the nice home with a pool and a big 52” flat-screen HD TV. You’ve got a great family and the job of your dreams. But you’ve also got this big, yawning empty space at the pit of your being. You don’t feel whole. You don’t feel secure. You don’t feel at peace.
Think about it. When you wake up in the morning, is Christ there? Does His presence fill your room? Is he with you on your daily commute? Is he there through the stresses, frustrations and successes of the day?
Brothers and sisters, that should be the goal. The goal should not be to see how many zeroes we can tack on to the end of our salary. The goal should be to consciously live in the presence of God. When we live for God, we have peace. We have peace even though strife and war go on all around us.
I wish I could just go and shake your hands and miraculously you’d decide to turn to Christ. But it’s not that easy. Sin darkens understanding and defiles the heart. As Jeremiah wrote in 17:9, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

Who here really knows how bad it is? Take an honest inventory of yourself. Yes, I know. You didn’t mean to cut off that driver. You didn’t mean to just walk away when the teenage cashier gave you too much change. You didn’t mean to tell that woman you’re not married. The fact of the matter is that you didn’t mean to do those things because you don’t understand yourself. As Jeremiah said, your heart is deceitful. And it deceives you. Not only that, but even when you want to do good, your deceitful heart paralyzes you and instead of doing good, you end up doing evil.
You know what? Sin is hard work. Think about how much time and effort a thief will go to in order to rob a bank. Think about all that Judas had to do to earn his 30 pieces of silver. It’s hard work to sin.
Judas didn’t take any pleasure in that work, and in fact was tormented by it. But he couldn’t do anything about it. He was not in control. He was being led by something bigger than him. He was being led by a deceitful heart ruled by sin.
The fact that you’re here tells me that you don’t want to rebel against God. The fact that you’re here tells me you don’t want to be sinners. But for most of you, I’m betting you don’t have the strength to do what you want. You’re paralyzed by sin. You’re ruled by sin.
And that’s a place we don’t want or need to be. Because as Paul tells us in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” Or as Moses relates in a story about Adam and Eve in Genesis, “In the day that you eat from the tree, you will die.”
Here’s the deal. Every person who sin is going to pay for that sin. Every person sins. So all of us are going to pay for our sins. Hey, that’s not me talking. That’s what God tells us in His Holy Word. So, if we want to delude ourselves into thinking that God didn’t mean what he said, then we’re saying the Bible is not true. And if we say the Bible is not true, then, hey, let’s set it afire and be done with it.
But if we do that, let’s understand the consequences of rejecting Christ. Matthew tells us that those who reject Jesus are “lost.” Have you ever been lost in a big city? Do you remember how it made you feel? The despair, hopelessness and fear of it all. Now imagine feeling that way for all of eternity. (subway story)
If we are believers, we know that at the end of time we’ll have to stand before Jesus and give an accounting of our lives. But Jesus told us that we’re “condemened already” and “punished.” He spoke of “everlasting fire” and a place in which we would have “no rest.” It’s hard for us to fathom what this all means in a specific way. But rest assured, in the end it means that we’re going to be held accountable for our sins.
If you run a red light in Fort Worth and the police catch you, you’re going to get a ticket and have to pay a fine. You may or may not get caught. But in God’s kingdom, you’re already busted. You’ve been caught already and you’re going to have to pay for it. Friends, you’re already paying for it with that empty spot in your soul. And you’re going to keep on paying for it — unless you turn to God.
You are a sinner. And you and you and you and you and you. We’re all sinners. And sin is what is wrong with the world. That’s why we have all these problems. So if we want to solve the world’s problems, we need to get rid of sin.
How can we get rid of sin when we have a human nature that is prone to sin? How do we solve this problem?
Our first step should be to reach for the Good Book. And if we really study the Bible, we’ll find that it is a book of redemption.
In the Bible we are given a blueprint for getting rid of sin. The Bible is a hopeful and hope-filled book, telling us how we can be cured of our disease of sin and how we can be redeemed in God’s sight. The Bible tells us we can be victorious and shows us how to do it.
John writes, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” [John 3:16]. Paul said, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” [2 Corinthians 5:19].
This is how we can cure our disease of sin. We must believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the price for our sins. And if we accept His sacrifice, we are redeemed.
Make no mistake about it. We nailed Christ to the cross. Oh, I know. We read that Roman soldiers nailed Jesus to the Christ. But it was us as much as anyone. We nailed Him to the cross with our sins.
Jesus is the only cure for our disease. We can’t cure our disease with money. We can’t cure our disease with a great job. We can’t cure our disease with a plasma TV or a hot tub. We can’t cure our disease with sex or drugs. We can only cure our disease with Jesus.
As John wrote in 1 John 1:7, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleans us from all sin.” Modern medicine is a marvel, no question about it. But there is no medicine that can cure the deceitful human heart.
No question. We can go to psychiatrists and maybe get some help. We can undergo all kinds of therapies and maybe get some help. But the only way we’re going to cure our spiritual disease and fill that empty void in the pit of our soul is through the blood of Jesus Christ.
If you haven’t accepted Jesus’ sacrifice and cleansed yourself in His blood, you haven’t been forgiven your sins. And if you haven’t been forgiven your sins, your relationship with God is flawed. And if your relationship with God is flawed, your relationships with everyone around you will be flawed. God is the answer to our problems.
Jesus was perfect. He came to us in human form and lived a pure and just life. He was not guilty of sin. But he took on our sin so that we could spend eternity with God. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. The Worthy One, to use a sports analogy, took one for the team so that all of us could win.
The beauty of all this is that, once we’ve been forgiven for our sins, we’re forgiven. We don’t have to keep paying for them over and over and over again. When we accept Christ’s death on the cross for our sins, and we participate in His resurrection, our sins are gone. The slate is wiped clean. Yes, friends, the sins that could condemn us to eternal damnation can be swept away.
Growing up in Fort Worth, I committed many sins. I remember them vividly. They stand in my mind as a constant reminder of how far I distanced myself from God. But I also know that God does not remember them. God does not remember them because Jesus wore my sins on His cross. I freely admit that I do not understand all the mysteries of the cross. I do not understand all the mechanics of my redemption. But that’s not important. What is important is that, by simple faith, I came to Him.
The things I don’t know about God could by their very weight sink a fleet of battleships. But the very little I know has changed my life and my future and my eternity.
One day there were a number of children who wanted to be with Jesus. His followers wanted to get rid of the children because they felt the kids were interfering with Jesus’ important business. But what did Jesus do? He said, “Let the children come to me.” Jesus understood that it was only with a child’s faith that we could come to accept Him.
That’s the way I came to Jesus. I didn’t know a thing about the ins and outs of theology. I still don’t know that much. I’m not even sure I knew what was going on, to be honest. I just went, like a child, and gave my life to Jesus. And it has changed my life.
You can come to Christ, too. You can do it right now. Look, you don’t have to understand redemption on a deep, intellectual level. The fact is you can study it the rest of your days and not understand it fully. Redemption is a gift from God, pure and simple, and it’s a mystery. All you have to do to accept this gift is have faith and receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And when you do this, Micah writes that your sins will be cast into the sea.
God has given us an open invitation. He tells us that we can take all of these sins that have been making a hash of our lives and of our world and through an act of faith, make them disappear. God says He’ll dump them in the sea and we will become pure.
I now invite you to give your life to Jesus Christ. I want you to come and receive Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for your sins. All you have to do is tell God you want to be forgiven for your sins, that you want the emptiness inside you to be filled. All you have to do is say you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. All you have to do is tell God that you want to give your life to Jesus Christ. God will do the rest.
You know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Forgiveness is ours for the asking. But we have to ask for it. We have to repent of our sins and we have to say yes to Christ Jesus. We have to acknowledge that we’re sinners. We have to acknowledge that we’ve done wrong. And we have to tell God that we’re willing to start a new life, in Jesus.

It may not be easy. Our wills have been damaged by the disease of sin. But God will help you. God will lead you. God will embrace you with open arms, if only you’ll let him. So give yourselves to God right now. Tell Him you want forgiveness and eternal life with Him. Accept His Son, and begin living a life free from the shackles of sin.