SIN AND FORGIVENESS
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
FEBRUARY 12, 2006
1 JOHN 1:5-2:2
This, of course, is Communion Sunday. Communion is celebrated all over the Christian world. It goes by many names. Amongst Catholics, it is oftentimes called the mass; amongst Anglicans, oftentimes called the Eucharist; amongst the Orthodox churches, it is oftentimes called the divine liturgy, or the oblation, or the consecration. Of course, throughout Christian history communion has been referred to as the Lord’s Supper, which is also the title of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. And in the first century in the early church, a communion was generally associated with a special meal called the Love Feast. And it is possible that this label was also applied to communion itself, but whatever we call it and wherever we celebrate it (and whenever), it always has to do with sin. Communion has to do with sin.
This, of course, is not in our time and in our culture, a very popular subject. But you see, Jesus’s body was broken because of our sin. His blood was shed because of our sin. The cross is about sin. And this morning as we come to the table, we’re going to look a little bit at the subject of sin.
I have two teachings, and the first teaching is this: because we are sinners, all of us, we cannot judge the soul of another human being. This is a very important teaching from God’s Word. Because we are all sinners, we can’t judge the souls of other human beings. We cannot judge their eternal destiny. We cannot judge their worth before God. I want to tell you a little story about a man whose name was Willem. Willem was born in the year 1853. He was born in the Netherlands. And if there’s one word to sum up Willem’s life, it would be the word failure. Willem was a failure. His father was an art dealer, and Willem entered that trade, and he failed. He did not succeed in that field. He then for a while became a language instructor, but again, he failed. He became a bookseller, but he failed. He had many careers and many failures.
But what Willem had always longed to do was to be a preacher. Willem wanted to be a minister, wanted to be a clergyman, wanted to be a pastor. And so he went to seminary and he went through his coursework. He went through the years and he took his ordination exams, and he failed his ordination exams. And once again, Willem was a failure. But he didn’t give up. He loved Christ, and he wanted to minister. And so he left the Netherlands and went down to Brussels, Belgium, and there in Brussels, Belgium, he, he contacted a missionary agency and he asked them if they would ordain him as a clergyman to a mission field.
Amazingly, they agreed. So Willem was ordained as a missionary, and he went into southern Belgium to work in the coal mines and to work with people who worked in the coal mines and to be a pastor there. And he had a little church, and he loved the people, and he served the people, and he was there when they were ill and in the midst of their diseases. He tended to them. He cared for them, he loved them, and he was there when they died and in the midst of their grief. He was there in their joy and in the midst of their weddings and their marriages. He cared about them, and he helped with their work, and he helped them with their children, and he prayed for them. And when he preached on Sunday morning in that little church, people came because they knew that Willem loved God and they knew that Willem loved them.
And in the course of time, a representative, a clergyman from the Mission Agency in Brussels, Belgium, came down to visit Willem to see how he was doing. And when he saw Willem, he was stunned. He was stunned because Willem was dressed in shabby clothing. He looked just like the coal miners did. His clothes were ragged; his clothes were dirty. And this clergy man said, Willem, why are you dressed like that? What are you thinking? And Willem said, well, I’m dressed like this because of Jesus. He said, my understanding of Jesus is He wants us to become incarnate. Just as He entered our world, He wants us to enter the world of other people. If I were ministering to the rich, I would probably dress like the rich, but I’m ministering to the poor. I’m ministering to coal miners. And so I dress like them. I do it for Jesus.
The clergyman from the missionary office said, Willem, you have set the church back decades. You’re not respecting and honoring the status of the clergy. And Willem was fired. He failed once again. So Willem thought, well, you know, maybe I’ll be an artist. He loved art and it had been part of the family business. So Willem began to paint, and it was the time of post-impressionism. And of course, the art world had moved from realism to impressionism and to post-impressionism. And Willem’s paintings today would be called expressionistic, a little bit abstract. And Willem wanted to express his love for God in all that he painted. He viewed God as in everything, and he just wanted to portray the wonder of God.
But nobody liked Willem’s paintings. In fact, in the course of his life, he painted 500 oil paintings and nobody bought any of them except one, and for that one painting Willem only received a paltry amount. And as the years passed, Willem developed epilepsy, and that was a time when people didn’t really understand epilepsy. And some people thought Willem was demon possessed. Willem began to move into bad health, both physically and emotionally, and he had depression and he struggled with depression. He had times of lethargy and where he could just barely do anything, then he had times of high productivity. But there was a downward spiral. And finally, in the year,1890, when Willem was only 37 years old, in a time of depression he committed suicide, taking his own life.
Today, Willem is famous and his paintings are treasures and they’re worth millions and millions of dollars, because of course he is Vincent Willem Van Gogh. And of course, who can judge his life? Could any of us judge his life? I mean, was he a frustrated Christian saint or was he a deeply troubled psychotic human being? Or was he a little bit of both? Well, only God knows. We can’t judge the soul of another human being.
Of course, we’re all messed up. We got our own problems, and we’re all sinners in need of grace. you know, there’s a passage in the Bible that is very unusual. You see, the Bible that you have today, that Bible has been examined. The passages have been examined in light of the earliest manuscripts. Any passage of scripture that was not in the earliest manuscripts, any passage of scripture that did not have strong early manuscript evidence, any passage that was not strong in the early manuscripts, was removed from the Bible. So your Bible today is extremely accurate. And of course the amazing thing is that today with all of our archeology and science, we found older manuscripts than the church had found in centuries before. So the Bible is getting more and more accurate that way. So generally speaking, there’s no passage in the Bible that doesn’t have strong early manuscript evidence. But there’s this one exception. It’s a passage in the gospel of John, John 7:53 extending to John 8:11. That’s a passage of scripture for which there is not strong early manuscript evidence, and yet it’s in the Bible. It’s one of my favorite passages. It’s probably one of your favorite passages.
In some early manuscripts, the passage is found in John seven and eight and in other early manuscripts it’s found in another section of John. In other early manuscripts, that passage is found in the Gospel of Luke. But in most early manuscripts, the passage isn’t found at all. And yet it’s in the Bible. Most scholars today believe it should be in the Bible. They believe it is authentic. They believe that early Christians and Jewish Christians took the passage out because the passage is almost excessive in its mercy and grace. The passage is not strict in its adherence to the law. And so it was probably taken out, but it’s been put back in. And of course, it’s the passage that describes the woman caught in the act of adultery. We’re told there how the scribes and the Pharisees brought this woman somehow caught in the very act of adultery to Jesus. And the crowds gathered, and the scribes and the Pharisees said, what do we do with her? The law commands us to stone her to death, for she has been caught in the very act of adultery.
And of course, it was a test meant to ensnare the Son of God. And if Jesus said, “Stone her,” He would have complied with the law. But He wouldn’t have shown compassion. If Jesus said, “Do not stone her,” He would’ve been compassionate, but He would’ve failed to comply with the law. It was a trap. And you know how Jesus responded? He didn’t say anything at first. He knelt down. The Bible tells us He scribbled something in the sand. We don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the sins of all the people. In any event, when Jesus spoke, He said, “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone at her.” And the Bible says they all went away, beginning with the eldest. I mean, the old people knew they were sinners, and eventually the young people knew it too. They all just went away. Jesus said to her, where are your accusers? Is there no one to condemn you? She said, no one, Lord. Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.
It’s an amazing passage of scripture and powerful. But you understand, we’re all sinners and we’re not to throw stones. So I mean, do you know you’re a sinner? I mean, do you sense it? Do you feel it? Does it bother you? Does it mean anything to you? Do you know you’re a sinner, and do you ever throw stones? You see, this first teaching is pretty clear: because we’re sinners, we don’t judge the souls of another person. We call sin sin, but we don’t judge the destiny of people.
Now, of course, Valentine’s Day comes up Tuesday, February 14th, and historians tell us that St. Valentine died that day, February 14th, in the year was 269 AD. He died in the city of Rome by the decree of Claudius II, the Roman Emperor. And of course, many legends are kind of applied to Saint Valentine and most of them, perhaps all of them, are bogus. But according to one legend, he was executed by Claudius II because Claudius had issued a decree that Roman men for a certain period of years could not marry. He did this because, we’re told, he wanted more men to be willing to serve in the military and he wanted men willing to fight to the death. And married men, Claudius felt, were less willing to serve and less willing to die. And so we’re told that St. Valentine went and did stealth weddings, stealth marriages, in defiance of the Roman law. He was therefore arrested and ultimately executed.
But today, most historians believe it’s not true. I mean, they believe Claudius never even issued an edict denying the right of the people to marry. And they don’t believe that stealth weddings were performed by St. Valentine.
There’s other legends that he fell in love with a woman while he was in prison, and that he used to send letters and gifts to little children, cards of sorts. That’s probably not true. What historians today believe is that just coincidentally St. Valentine happened to be executed, martyred, on February 14th, 269. That day, February 14th, was also the day of the Roman love feasts, Lupercalia. And it was also in tradition the day that birds mate. Of course birds don’t know this, but because of these associations St. Valentine was kind of associated with romance and with love. But who was he really? He was just a guy trying to find sanctification from sin. He was a guy who wanted to please Christ, a guy who wanted to serve men and women. He wanted to serve people, and as he approached his martyrdom, he was a guy who knew that no one could judge his soul but God alone. No one could judge his soul.
This really leads us to our second teaching this morning on this communion Sunday, and that is because we’re sinners judgment is coming. Because we’re sinners, we should never judge the soul of another person. But because we’re sinners, judgment is coming. God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—will judge the world. We’re all going to have to give an account.
Now, a couple of months ago Barb and I had my two brothers over to the house for dinner. And my brother Greg came with his wife Barb, and my brother Gary came with his wife Anne. And we had a great time; we always do when we get together. The TV was on in the background for some reason. And it was an old movie that was called The Naked Gun :Files from the Police Squad, starring Leslie Nielsen. My brothers and I had seen the movie before and we’d laughed before, but we started watching it again because it was on, and we’re just watching it and pretty soon we were laughing again. I mean, somehow Leslie Nielsen with his straight face and his kind of calm, kind of mature sounding voice, saying dumb things… somehow it worked on us. And I don’t know why (it probably tells you more about me and my brothers than anything else), but Leslie Nielsen today really only does comedy. And that’s the only movies you’ll see him in these days, just comedy. But it wasn’t always so. I mean, there was a time Leslie Nielsen did straight drama and he sought roles that were kind of romantic leads.
Leslie Nielsen actually starred in a movie that is now a classic in the science fiction genre. I mean, when you look at the science fiction genre and you look at classics, you think of the Day the Earth Stood Still with Michael Reney. You think of the War of the Worlds with Gene Berry, which Tom Cruise just remade. And you also think of the Forbidden Planet starring Leslie Nielsen. And in that movie, Leslie Nielsen plays the part of a captain of a United Planet Starship going to a planet called Altair 4. And I know this is hard to believe, but this is actually going somewhere. He plays the part of a captain of this starship, and they’re going to Altair 4to see a space colony. And when they get there, they’re stunned because everybody has died. Everybody in the space colony has died. They’ve all been killed by a mysterious monster of shifting molecular structure and great power. And there’s only two people in the colony that remain alive. Two somehow are still alive. And one is a scientist named Orpheus, played by Walter Pigeon, and the other is his daughter, played by Anne Francis.
And why are they still alive? Well, because Orpheus, the guy played by Walter Pigeon, is the monster. He’s used ancient but extinct Krell technology to augment the powers of his mental faculties. And in doing so, in enhancing the power of his brain, he somehow released monsters from the id, from the dark side of his nature. And somehow the dark side of his nature was able to take on molecular structure and do hideous things. And of course, the movie was loosely based on Freudian psychology and a little bit of William Shakespeare’s the Tempest. And it’s a classic, and it’s also kind of biblical. I mean, it’s kind of biblical because the Bible tells us we all have a dark side. There is, in a sense, monsters in the id. I mean, there is darkness in me, and there is darkness in you.
Oh, yes, we’re all created in the image of God, the imago Dei. And there’s beauty and there’s goodness in every human being. But you see, we’re fallen and we’re sinners. And there’s this dark side of us that Carl Jung called the Shadow. And in Jungian psychology, Carl Jung spoke of the shadow, the dark side. The Bible calls it sin, and it’s there in you and it’s there in me. And that part of you that would be willing to commit murder is kind of repressed, hopefully. And it’s maybe expressed sometimes in hatred. It maybe sometimes leaks in slander. That’s the shadow; that’s a monster from the id; that’s sin. And it’s that side of you that would be willing to murder and the side of you that’s willing to commit adultery and is hopefully repressed or sublimated.
But it’s that side of you that’s willing to commit adultery kind of expresses itself in thoughts and dreams (and maybe in our culture some acceptable lust). And it’s that side of you that’s willing to steal, willing to commit theft. That side of you expresses itself in envy and jealousy, maybe in greed. It’s there. And do you care? I mean, maybe you just think, well, I’m pretty good and God is surely pleased. But what if God cares more than you think about sin? What if God cared enough to send His Son? What if God cares enough that He sent His Son to die? What if God takes sin seriously? And what if God wants us to?
I was sharing on Thursday with some of our department heads, some of our staff, a story at our pastors’ lunch. I was telling them about what happened some time ago in the Dallas school system and how the Dallas school system approved two new history books that were published by Prentic Hall. And these two new history books were to be used in the public school classrooms. Some parents got together and thought, well, you know, let’s check them out before we let our kids use them. And they found over 200 errors in these two history books. And so there was a deeper investigation and they found 5,221 errors. And most of them were kind of small, you know—a little misspelling, maybe they got a location wrong, a date wrong. But some were pretty substantial. I mean, they had Napoleon winning the Battle of Waterloo. That’s pretty bad. They had President Truman dropping the atomic bomb on Korea. They said the guy that led the anti-communist movement in the 1950s in America was General MacArthur instead of Senator McCarthy. That’s a pretty big mistake.
What was funny (or maybe tragic) was the statement that Princess Hall, the publisher then issued a statement. And that statement was, “Other than the errors, these are the greatest history textbooks ever offered to public education in America.” I mean, isn’t that amazing? I mean, other than the 5,221 errors, these are the greatest. And isn’t that kinda like us? I mean, isn’t that like all of us? I mean, don’t we think we’re doing pretty well? Don’t you feel pretty good about yourself? I mean, other than the 5,200 sins, don’t you feel pretty good?
So you see, as we come to communion, as we come to this table, God wants you to take sin seriously. He loves you, but He hates sin. And so when you put those two together, He died for you. He died for your sin. So you know, if you’ve never come to Christ and embraced Him as your Savior, if you’ve never accepted His atoning sacrifice, then your sin is not forgiven you and judgment is coming, and you need to do that today. But remember this: if you’re going to ask Jesus Christ to be your Savior, if you’re going to embrace His atoning sacrifice, if you’re going to kneel at the foot of the cross, then you’re going to have to also take Him as Rabbi and Lord.
See, the Bible’s clear about that. You can’t have Him as your savior unless you take Him as your Rabbi and Lord. And you have to come to Him and not only say, “Forgive me.” You have to come to Him and say, “I want to be your disciple. I invite You to be my rabbi, my Lord. Teach me, change me. Transform me.” That’s the commitment; that’s salvific; that brings eternal life. And so, as we come to the table, you can make that commitment today.
If you come to the table and you’re already a follower of Christ, it’s a time to reaffirm that you are His disciple and you’ve taken Him as Rabbi and Lord. It’s a time to thank Him for His atonement and His grace, but it’s also a time to recommit. He’s your Rabbi and Lord, and you’re called to be His disciple. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.