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Sin
What is sin?
A sticky stain, like crude oil?
Well, maybe.
Or maybe not.
Imagine a DVD that had a warning label on it – “Contains Scenes Of Sex, Drugs & Violence” Uh-oh. Now imagine it’s a training video produced by Churches and the Home Office! You see what counts is motive and context. Motive is internal – it’s the “why", and context is external – it’s the “where” Is sex or drugs or violence always wrong?
Sex – it’s how we got here. (It may also be the reason some people aren’t here this morning!). Violence – and yet we fought against Hitler. Drugs – ever taken any? Ever? Any? People dying slowly and painfully are given diamorphine, which is the medical name for heroin. Is that wrong?
Let’s have a story.
It’s the story that led to one of the characters involved writing a song, and that song is Psalm 51, which we’ve had as one of readings today. It’s a story about Sex, Drugs and Violence. The sex is adultery; the violence is unprovoked pre-mediated murder and the drug in question is good old booze. It’s in the Bible 2 Samuel 11 and it’s on p.314. Look out for God in the reading on the right – see where he is, what He’s up to, what he thinks and feels and how often he’s mentioned.
We asked earlier “What is sin?” Is it a sticky stain, like crude oil?
Well I think it’s a gap. Not just “a” gap but “the” gap – the gap between us and God.
The Greek word for sin is “hamartia” and it is taken from archery. It means “to fall short of the target.” There’s a gap – a shortfall. St. Paul says that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
So sin is the gap between us and God’s perfection, God’s love, God’s glory, God’s righteousness, God’s holiness. Jesus, though, knew no such gap. He said that he and the father were one – seamlessly united. If two become one then there is no gap between them. But Jesus doesn’t just keep this cosy state of affairs to himself. He offers it to the world as the solution for sin.
The Bible says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Reconciling – removing the gap, making us one with God. The church sometimes speaks of “atonement” – spell it “at – one – ment”.
To atone is to be made one with. Jesus is one with God and offer us his one-ness with his father; there is no other way to be reconciled or atoned to God except by Christ. Christ stands in the gap and closes the it, bringing us to God and God to us.
Sin is the between us and God; let Christ close it and by drawing you close to God and God close to you. LEADING TO . . . . Confession
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2 Samuel 11 : 1-27 |
1 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, "I am pregnant."
6 So David sent this word to Joab: "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master's servants and did not go down to his house.
10 When David was told, "Uriah did not go home," he asked him, "Haven't you just come from a distance? Why didn't you go home?"
11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!"
12 Then David said to him, "Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. 13 At David's invitation, he ate and drank with him, and David made him drunk. But in the evening Uriah went out to sleep on his mat among his master's servants; he did not go home.
14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. 15 In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die."
16 So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. 17 When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David's army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died.
18 Joab sent David a full account of the battle. 19 He instructed the messenger: "When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, 20 the king's anger may flare up, and he may ask you, 'Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn't you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn't a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?' If he asks you this, then say to him, 'Also, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.' "
22 The messenger set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say. 23 The messenger said to David, "The men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance to the city gate. 24 Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the king's men died. Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead."
25 David told the messenger, "Say this to Joab: 'Don't let this upset you; the sword devours one as well as another. Press the attack against the city and destroy it.' Say this to encourage Joab."
26 When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. 27 After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the LORD. |
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