Sinners At The Table of Grace
TCF Maundy Thursday Sermon
April 1, 2010
It’s easy for us, looking around and seeing all the horrendous sin in our culture and in our world, to think we’re OK. It’s easy for us to look at the rampant sexual sin, the adultery, the moral free-fall our culture seems to be in, the awful crimes like rape, murder, sex-trafficking, even genocide, and think how much worse all these sinners are than we are.
It’s easy to look at the world, and note that according to some research, there are 27 million people in the world in slavery today, a very grievous sin to us and certainly to God…and though this reality grieves us, we think, I’d never do that.
After all, we’re Christians. We’re saved. We’re not like that.
And in many ways, of course, that’s true. But on this night when we remember Jesus initial institution of the what we call the Lord’s Supper, we remember perhaps most of all His grace and mercy, clearly illustrated by His sacrifice.
We remember, too, why His grace and mercy are so needed, so absolutely necessary, to each of us.
1 John 1:8-10 (NASB95) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
Since I don’t want to lie to you tonight, I have to tell you this: I sin daily. Oh, only a handful of people closest to me ever see the sins I commit, because they’re sins of attitude, sins of the heart. But these sins are every bit as much an offense to a holy God, and are reason enough to condemn me to eternity in hell
apart from God’s saving grace in Christ…..every bit as much as those sins that I read about in the paper, or see on television, and shake my head and think “what a world we live in.”
Of course, there are some here who have committed adultery. Some of us have committed some grievous sins, or even visible sins. You know, it seems to me that those who have experienced God’s mercy in sins such as these, sometimes have a greater understanding of God’s mercy than those of us who haven’t.
I think that’s because, if we’ve never committed one of the “big” sins, one of those sins listed in one of Paul’s many lists in several different epistles, we have the tendency to think that somehow we’re more worthy, somehow we’re better than those who have committed those sins.
Many of us here have an amazing testimony of how we came to Christ. Some of us were drug abusers, some committed crimes. Some of us here can talk of God’s amazing grace from the standpoint of the awful sins He has delivered us from.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NIV) Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
When we read a passage like this, some of us can say God saved us from these kinds of things. Others of us read this and think, not so much.
But even in a list like this, almost all of us can find ourselves. For example, if we’re honest, we’ve all been idolaters in one way, shape or form. We may not be adulterers, prostitutes, thieves or drunkards. But are we slanderers? Are we idolaters? My testimony of my pre-Christian days doesn’t include things like many of you can claim.
I never got into any trouble. Never got drunk. Never used drugs. Never even had a cigarette in my mouth. I’ve never been in trouble with the law.
But my testimony is just as amazing. Because despite the absence of some of these kinds of sins in my life, my sinfulness still falls well short of the glory of God.
Outwardly, I might appear, and frankly almost always have appeared, more righteous than some of you. By the world’s standards, I’m a pretty good guy.
I love my wife and have never cheated on her. I pay my bills. I’ve gotten only two speeding tickets in almost 40 years of driving, and I have a good excuse for each one. Pretty good by most people’s standards of good.
Yet, our standing before God is not measured by the world’s standards. Inwardly, my righteousness is, as the Word tells us, like filthy rags. My righteousness is absolutely worthless before God. Only Jesus’ righteousness is sufficient to bring me true righteousness, the kind that God accepts, the kind measured by His holy standard.
That’s part of the message in Jesus’ parable of the repentant publican, or tax-collector.
Luke 18:9-14 (NIV) To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Just because I’ve never committed some really terrible, very visible sin, and some of you here, have amazing testimonies of the sins God has delivered you from, that doesn’t mean we need to go out and commit some of these sins that this Pharisee was thanking God he didn’t ever commit. Because the truth is, in a very real way, sin is sin.
Yes there are certainly greater consequences to some sins. Yet, God’s standard of holiness is so much greater than any good things I can claim in my life. We must recognize the sinfulness of sin. Any kind of sin. Sin is so horrible, so heinous, that it took the blood of Jesus to pay for these sins, and then His death, and then His resurrection, to overcome sin’s power of death, and give us eternal life.
It’s possible to be externally, visibly, moral and good, yet still to be sinful and unrighteous before God. It’s also true that after we are justified before God, after we have received the gift of grace in Christ, after we’re saved, we live a lifetime process of being sanctified, or changed and transformed into His image. During that lifetime process, even as the transformation progresses, we still sin, and we still need God’s forgiving grace and mercy.
Many of you have heard the story of John Newton. He’s best known as the composer of the great hymn Amazing Grace. The lyrics of that song, which we’ll sing tomorrow night, include the first verse, which says “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
Wretch isn’t a word you hear much these days. But you know what: I’m a wretch. You’re a wretch. A wretch is by definition: “a person of despicable or base character.”
John Newton called himself a wretch because he was a sinner like us, but worse still, he was a slave ship captain. I’ve heard the story of John Newton before, and when you hear his story, you think, wow – God saved this man, delivered him from his sin, and changed him. And God did in fact do this.
But did you know this? Newton served as a slave ship captain for about 10 years – 10 years of hauling human cargo to a life of slavery. But most of those years of delivering slaves to their fate, about 7 years, as nearly as I can figure in my research on this, most of those years were after he was saved!
Newton traces his own conversion to a night when he survived a severe storm at sea, and cried out for God’s mercy.
Let me continue with the story, as told by Mark McMinn in Christianity Today:
His blind eyes may have been opened on that dismal night, but not wide enough. Upon his return to Liverpool, Newton promptly signed on as mate of another ship and sailed to Africa, where the (new) Christian traveled from village to village buying human beings and returning them as cargo. He then sailed across the Atlantic, studying a Latin Bible in his quarters as 200 slaves lay in the hull, shackled two by two, squeezed into shelves like secondhand books. As many as a third died during the long voyage across the ocean, and many more suffered serious illnesses. When the ship arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, Newton delivered these men, women, and children into a life of toil and oppression while he sat in church services and took leisurely strolls through fields and woods outside Charleston.
This article reports that in his journal, after he’d been converted, as he still continued this dirty business of buying and selling slaves, Newton wrote that being a slave ship captain was optimal for “promoting the life of God in the soul.”
How can this be? How can a person who’s saved continue do be involved in such a horrible sin – taking captive his fellow human beings and facilitating their sale into a lifetime of slavery?
But, again if we’re honest with ourselves, we must see ourselves in his story.
John Newton fell short of God’s desire for his life. Not forever. He went on to become a minister of the gospel. He went on to write Amazing Grace.
But the reality is that, for most of us, change comes slowly. Yes, we may be delivered from some sins almost immediately.
Before I was a believer, I had quite the potty mouth. I could swear like a sailor. Almost immediately after I came to Christ, that was gone.
But our experience is that, while God may illustrate His grace to us by immediately delivering us from some sins, it takes our entire lifetime to transform us into the image and likeness of Christ.
Many years later, after he had quit the slavery business, Newton wrote these words in his great hymn.
“was blind, but now I see.”
One of his friends recalled that he never spent a half hour with Newton without hearing his remorse for trading slaves. It was always on his mind, always reminding him of his need for God’s grace. At the end of his life Newton said to his friends,
"My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior."
It’s not that hard to see the sin in other people’s lives. It’s often more difficult to see our own. If a man like John Newton can go for years, as a follower of Christ no less, and not see this awful sin in his life, don’t we have to wonder what sin-blindness we have in ourselves?
Quoting again from this article:
A robust finding from social science research is that most people think they are better than others—more ethical, considerate, industrious, cooperative, fair, and loyal. People think they obey the Ten Commandments more consistently than others. One polling expert noted, "It's the great contradiction: the average person believes he is a better person than the average person." Sixteen centuries earlier Augustine bemoaned: "[My] sin was all the more incurable because I did not judge myself to be a sinner."
Theologians discuss the noetic effects of sin, meaning that our intellect is dulled—our eyes closed—as a result of living in a fallen state. In the narrow sense, it means we cannot reason well enough to see our need for salvation unless God, in grace, first reaches out to us. In a broader sense, it means our awareness of sin is dulled in various ways by pride. Mark McMinn
So, where does this reality leave us? Tonight, we have a couple of options. We can be like the Pharisee, in the parable we just read, and thank God that we’re not like all those people in the world who are doing things so much worse than we’ll ever do.
Or we can come tonight to the table of grace, where God is holding out to us His forgiveness, His mercy, and admit we need it.
I need it.
We can come and say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Tonight, as we come to the table of God’s grace, as we remember what Jesus said to do in memory of Him, let’s remember what He did, what was accomplished on the cross.
But let’s remember why it was necessary.
You don’t need grace or mercy if you’re perfect. You don’t need forgiveness if you never sin. Jesus sacrificial gift of His precious blood was necessary because we are sinners.
It’s necessary for us to remember His body given for us. It’s necessary for us to remember His blood, shed for us. Because that’s what it took to remove the stain of sin from us – the sins we committed before we were saved…the sins we’ve committed since then…and the sins we’ll commit tomorrow.
As we sinners come to the table of God’s grace, let’s come with honesty, and humility and repentance. That’s how God would have us come to Him.
Isaiah 57:15 (NLT) The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts.
Isaiah 66:2 (NIV) This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.
And as Jesus told us in the passage we read from Luke moments ago:
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
Let’s approach this table tonight with humility, and repentance, realizing we bring nothing of worth to God.
Jesus didn’t die for us because we are valuable; we are valuable because Christ died for us.
Pray
