Sin Is Serious, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. He said, if we confess our sins, okay, if we confess our sins, this word confession is the word homo legao. Homo means one, you see. Legao means to speak, to speak as one. It means together to agree with.

I have to agree with. You see, do I agree if I confess my sins, do I agree with who? With God. Do I agree with God?

He said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's word meets our world. Pity parties are pretty obvious to almost all God's people.

I don't know about you, but when I catch myself in one, I just, I know I know better and I still do it anyway. Woe is me. This is terrible. If you only knew the people, Lord, that I pastor, it's so hard. Watch how the Lord responds here. It says, And the Lord said to Joshua, come.

That's it. One Hebrew word, come. Stand up, get up, rise up, whatever way you put it. Come, get up. What are you doing laying in the dirt?

You're the leader. What kind of faith are you evidencing here? He said, why is it you've fallen on your face?

What are you mourning about? See, didn't I tell you I was going to give you the land? See, what you're really saying here is you don't trust me.

And worse, you don't believe me. Because 36 men died. He said, let me explain this to you. Israel has sinned. No, he didn't say one guy.

It's representative. They're going into the land as a nation. He said, Israel has sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant, which I commanded them, and they have even taken some of the things under the ban and a boat stolen and deceived.

Moreover, they also put them among their own things. He says, Therefore, the sons of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. He says they turn their backs before their enemies, for they have become accursed. And I, he said, will not be with you anymore unless you destroy the things under the ban from your midst. You want to know what happened? It had nothing to do with A.I. It had everything to do with you. Sin. I told you specifically nothing under the ban and you took it.

They took it anyway. He said that puts them under the accursed thing. And also, he says, I won't be with you. You realize if you want to talk about how you walk with God. And you sin and you don't deal with it, you're not walking with God. You're just walking by yourself and you can delude yourself into thinking I'm walking right with God, but you're not.

He said, I won't walk with you. Not in sin. We'll see it later in the sermon how clear this is. So then he goes on and he says this. He said, In the morning, then you shall come near by your tribes. And it shall be that the tribe which the Lord takes. Now, notice there's two words in English numeric and standard by lot.

By lots, not in the Bible. There's no words by lot there. Translators put in thought it would help.

I don't think it helps at all. I'll explain in a minute. He said that the tribe which the Lord takes shall come near by families. And the family which the Lord takes shall come nearby households and the household which the Lord takes shall come through man by man. That's why they said by lots.

How do they decide? God says, let's find them. Remember, there's two million people.

There's a lot of tents. There's a lot of places to hide things. So how are we going to find it?

God says we'll find it easy. We're not sure exactly how, but there's a very good chance because Aaron's been a high priest that the on the breastplate of the high priest of Israel, beside the 12 stones for the 12 tribes, there's a Urim and a Thummim. The Urim and Thummim are very, very important stones to the high priest of Israel. The Urim and Thummim, when you take a look at it from that point of view, are a little bit different than a lot of things. The Urim, the word means light and Thummim means perfection or knowledge. It means perfect light.

How do you get perfect light? The Urim, by the way, the Urim is the starts with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The Thummim starts with the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And apparently what the high priest could do in certain circumstances is he could tell by the two stones one was black, one was white. He could tell by the two stones to discern what is the perfect knowledge or will of God in certain situations. And you'll see it throughout the Old Testament used sporadically.

It's likely that it was used right here. And so what they do is that they bring a tribe in and say, is this the tribe? And the high priest say, no. Next tribe, no. Third tribe, yes, this tribe. Now we go from the tribe. Then we go to the families in the tribe.

And there's a big group of people. Is this the family? No. Is this the family? No. Is this the family?

Yes. It's this family. Then you go to the households and then the households you go through each one the same process and you get a household.

Once you have the right household, they bring them in one by one through. And that's how they pick them. Dr. John Hannah from Dallas Seminary said that he believes that the urine would probably mean yes in the thumb and would mean no. And a high priest discerned it whatever way it worked.

They were able to discern this. And so as it goes on, it says this. It says in verse 15, it shall be that the one who was taken with these things under the band shall be burned with fire. And he and all that belongs to him because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel. So Joshua rose early in the morning and brought Israel near by tribes. The tribe of Judah was taken. He brought the families of Judah near. And he took the family of the Zaraites. And he brought the family of the Zaraites near man by man. And Zabni was taken.

And he brought his household near man by man. And Achan, the son of Kamri, the son of Zabni, the son of Zara of the tribe of Judah, was taken. It's Achan.

OK, we know now it's one guy. You may never have heard Achan. Let me say this. He's not a very few Jewish families throughout history after this event ever named their little boys Achan. OK, be like you and I name it our little boy Judas. You see, I'd like I'd be a nice name. Let's call him Judas. You see, it's just that this is the guy that so Achan became sort of a bad word to the to the Hebrew people.

And he gets taken. And Joshua said to Achan, My son, I implore you, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and give praise to him. And tell me now what you've done. Do not hide it from me. You better come clean here. And Achan answered Joshua and said, Truly, I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel.

This is what I did. When I saw. What's that?

Lust of the eyes. When I saw, he said, the spoil, a beautiful mantle from Shinar. Now, a mantle is like a wrap. Please understand their clothes never wore out for 40 years, but I don't think their clothing line would be like Calvin Klein or in Vogue magazine. I don't think it's like that.

I think they're probably pretty bland stuff. Babylon, that's where Shinar is. Babylon was already world famous for their fabrics.

The amount of tapestry, work, stitching. And he saw a mantle, a wrap from Babylon. Never saw something like that in Israel. And he said what you and I would often say when you see something like that. I kind of like to have that. And what would God do with a mantle anyway?

He can't need a mantle. You see, so he said, I saw it. I took it. Then he shows more. He said, he said, and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold, 50 shekels in weight.

And then I covered them. Lust of the flesh. I want that.

I really, really want that. And it says, and I took them. Sin. I took them. I stole them. And behold. Now, by the way, he knew he took them and he knew he shouldn't. Don't miss this. Did he have an opportunity to come clean with God right then?

Yes, but he doesn't. He said, behold, they are concealed in the earth inside my tent and the silver is underneath. So Joshua sent messengers.

They ran to the tent and behold, it was concealed in the tent with the silver underneath it. They took them from the inside of the tent and brought them to Joshua and all the sons of Israel. And they poured them out before the Lord. And then Joshua and all the Israel with him took Achan, the son of zero, the silver, the mantle, the gold, the sons, daughters, oxen, donkeys, sheep, tent and all that belong to him. And they brought them up to the valley of Acre. And Joshua said, why have you troubled us? He said, the Lord will trouble you this day. And all Israel stoned them with stones and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them. That's rough. I mean, that is really, really rough.

The judgment was swift and the punishment was really stiff. But please understand something here. They're representative for the whole nation. And I'll show you a New Testament parallel to this. But don't miss this part.

How serious is sin? They've been promised the land. They've had enormous success. God has miraculously preserved them. He's given them Jericho. And because of sin.

They end up in all this disarray. Now, I want you to see a New Testament equivalent to this. Go with me to the book of Acts, chapter five, the book of Acts, chapter five.

Now, there's a situation happening in Acts five, a whole bunch of the people who were in there for the festivals in Jerusalem for the festivals converted to Christ. Now, they all thought, look, now that we're here and he's coming back, the best place for us to be is right here. I'm not going back to North Africa. I'm not going back to Turkey. I'm not going back to Greece. I'm going to stay right here till the Lord comes back.

The only problem was economically. How do you support all these people? You see, so the early church decided we have to find a way to support them. One of the ideas that they came up with to support the family was people who own land said, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll sell our land. We'll take the proceeds from what we sell and we'll give it to the apostles so they can give, be able to feed these people who are in the land.

It's a pretty good idea. And notice again at the end of Chapter four, verse 36, it says, Now Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles, which means son of encouragement, who owned a track of land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet. That's a happy that's a happy verse. What's the first word of Chapter five?

But see, it's the same thing, but. A man named Ananias, with his wife, Sophia, sold a piece of property and he kept back some of the price to himself and his wife's full knowledge and bringing a portion of it, he laid at the apostles feet. Now, please understand what happened.

Barnabas or Joseph, he brings the money that he had, say it's one hundred thousand dollars, and he lays it at the apostles feet and what all you do. We all. Yeah, way to go, way to go. It's great.

And Ananias and Sophia say, you know, I kind of like that. So how about this? How about if we sell it for one hundred and fifty and we'll bring one hundred here and we'll pocket fifty? You see, they'll still applaud us.

They don't know what it's all for. We got it. We're just we'll keep a portion for ourselves and everyone applauds and say, aren't you spiritual?

Aren't you wonderful? So we'll get all that and we'll be able to keep some of the money for ourselves. Sounds like a plan. So he laid it at the apostles feet, but Peter said to Ananias, why is Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? Oh. Now, here's the point. No matter what you do in your sin life, you can fool all of us. You can even fool people who are closest to you, but you never fool God.

Not ever. There's not a thing you ever do that he isn't aware of. And in this case, they weren't counting on God telling Peter. Hey, Peter. He's lying. You see, so Peter confronts him.

Then Peter says this. While remained unsold, did it not remain your own? You could have done anything you wanted with it.

And after you sold it, was it not under your control? Why is it that you can see this deed in your heart? You've not lied to God, but you've not not lied to men. You've lied to God. Those two verses, by the way, say something wonderful about the Holy Spirit. In the verse before you lied to the Holy Spirit, you see. And then next verse, you lied to God equivalency. God and the Holy Spirit are one in the same.

There's a great versus for that. And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down, breathed this last and a great fear came over everyone who heard of it. I'll bet. And he says the young men got up, covered him up, carried him out and they buried him. It says now there elapsed an interval of about three hours and his wife came in not knowing what had happened. And Peter responded to her and said, Tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price. What's it given her? An opportunity to come clean. OK, she said, yes, that was the price.

Now she doesn't come clean. Peter said to her, Why is it that you have agreed together to put the spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out as well. And immediately she fell at his feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in and found her dead. And they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And a great fear came over the whole church. I'll bet.

And overall, who heard of these things? Notice this is representative of the new church. They died of sin unto death, just like Aiken for this. Now, you and I are glad that every time we sin, that's not what we're facing. That's not what I'm trying to say here at all.

But I am saying this. That's how serious sin is. It's extremely serious to God. You see, this matters a lot to God. The seriousness of sin.

So the question comes down to how do we deal with sin in our own lives then? So go back with me now to 1 John chapter one, where we started this morning. 1 John chapter one. And John is talking about what we call the word fellowship, which is our first name as a church.

OK, fellowship. Koinonia is the Greek word. It means partnership. It means togetherness. It doesn't, as I say all the time, it doesn't mean lunch. It doesn't mean coffee. It doesn't mean words like that. That's not what fellowship is.

Fellowship means partnership. And so John wants to address that. And he says in verse five, for this is the message we have heard from him and announced to you. God is light. And in him, there's no darkness at all.

That's how he starts. He said, God is light. How much darkness does God have? None. In other words, God is holy. How much sin is part of God?

None. He's a consuming fire. He's light. He said, I want you to start out that way. God is light.

Then he says this. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet we walk in darkness, we lie. We don't practice the truth. You can't say you have fellowship with God and you live in sin.

You can't. No, God will never believe that. It's not true. You can't live in sin and say, I have fellowship with God. That makes sense. Then he says, if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. We can walk in the light as he is in the light.

The question is, how? Because we're sinful people. He'll explain. He said, if we say that we have no sin, and some of us have said that, we're deceiving ourselves. The truth's not in us. And then he says this great verse in verse nine. He said, if we confess our sins. Okay, if we confess our sins. Now, for many of you, this is really confusing. Many of you come from a religious background and you think of confession as something completely different than what this text is saying.

Just completely different. You think confession is doing penance, you see, and I have to make it right and I have to do something in order to get this made right. That's not at all what this word is. This word confession is the word homo legao. Homo means one. You see, legao means to speak.

To speak is one. It means together to agree with. I have to agree with. You see, do I agree if I confess my sins? Do I agree with who? With God? Do I agree with God?

He said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, please understand something here. There's no magic in this verse.

Okay, when you say, oh, I got it. Some Christians have used this over the years as a credit card verse. You see, you just do a sin. Then you put First John one nine in, do the credit card and say, I'm fine. Yeah, God, that was a sin.

Now let's move on. That's not exactly the way this works. Remember the Apostle Paul in Romans seven, describes sin in his own life. Remember what he says? When I find myself doing the very things I do not want to do. You see, I find myself doing the very things that I do not want to do.

There's an emotional content to this. How does God feel about the sin in your life? Well, he hates it. How do you feel about it? You see, how do you feel about sin in your life? Paul would say, I hate it.

It's there, but I hate it. You see, it's more than that. When I first came here, just a few years after I got here, I had a meeting, a counseling meeting with a guy and we were meeting on Monday or Tuesday. And he told me in the meeting, I don't know why, I guess I wasn't a very threatening pastor, but he told me in the meeting that he was going to have an affair on Friday night with another woman. He's a merry man. And he said, don't worry about it. He said, I'm going to First John one nine it. I'll have an affair and then I'll First John one nine it. We'll just move on.

I don't think you can do that. I don't think you could plan to First John one nine a sin, because if you believe First John one nine, you wouldn't do it. You see, if you agreed with God, you wouldn't do it. But his view was it's mechanical. I'll just say it and then I move right on.

It doesn't work like that. That's not what he's saying at all. He's saying, look, if I agree with God about the sin in my life, he said, he's faithful and righteous to forgive me of sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. You see, that's his point. He said, if we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar.

The word's not in us. Now, we'll notice what he says next. My little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. I don't want you to sin. He said, and if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with a father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Now I know how this works. It's because of Jesus Christ. It's because of what he's done. We sang it in the song we introduced to him. He said, wash the blood of your sacrifice. Your blood flowed red and made me white. My dirty rags are purified and clean because of what Christ did.

You see, because of what Jesus Christ did. So he says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Again, from that song, there's nothing too dirty that you can't make worthy. You wash me in mercy.

I'm clean. You see, that's the point. We're going to sin. But he's given us a vehicle by which we can deal with sin in our life. I beg you, keep short accounts with sin in your life.

If you don't, you're going to run into all kinds of trouble. Sin has a way of compounding itself and it becomes worse and worse and worse. And then you find yourself living in a state of sin and you can't get out of it. You try to justify it. Look, we're not talking about your salvation here. Christ paid for all the sins on the cross.

I get that. But if you're going to have a relationship with God, a fellowship with God, you have to take sin seriously in your life. You have to do it.

That's what Aiken teaches us. Unconfessed sin leads to wilderness living. You live in the wilderness. You're never going into the promised land. It leads to a defeated life. You're going to live a life, but you're not going to have joy. You're not going to have peace. You're not going to have hope because you've allowed sin to have its way with you.

I guess in summary, I just simply say this. You and I need to take sin as seriously as God does. Let's pray. Father, this is an issue that's common to all of us. We all face this battle. We all deal with sin in our lives. I confess, Father, though, that sometimes because we understand your grace and mercy in the complete work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we minimalize sin in our lives.

We make it as though, well, it's already been covered by Jesus and it doesn't really mean much, but it does. It separates us from our fellowship with you. Just as an unbeliever is separated for an eternity from you because he would not put his faith in the finished work of Christ.

As a believer, we end up being separated in our fellowship with you because we leave sin in our lives and then it does its terrible, terrible work to separate us from you. Father, I pray that we take sin seriously, that we keep short accounts with you and we constantly thank you and are grateful for the finished work of Jesus Christ which continues to apply your grace and mercy and draw us closer and closer to you. This we pray for our good and your glory in Christ's name.

Amen. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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