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The Rock Family Worship Center
Taking The Church Outside The Walls
The Rock Family Worship Center
THE TRUE PROBLEM WITH SIN
What if the lines we’ve repeated for years—sin separates you from God, sin is a stench, God can’t be near sin—aren’t what Scripture actually teaches? We pull those quotes apart line by line, sit them next to the story the Bible tells, and follow the thread through Isaiah 59, Genesis 1, Psalm 139, Romans 5, and 2 Corinthians 5. The picture that emerges is not a fragile or distant God but a Father who moves toward distortion to restore it, a Christ who eats with sinners and touches lepers, and a Spirit who makes his home in us.
We start by reframing sin as a distorted image rather than a scoreboard of failures. That shift matters, because identity drives behavior and shapes how we read the Bible. From there, we tackle the “separation” narrative. Isaiah names the wall built by Israel’s injustice, not a God who abandons. The New Testament’s witness is relentless: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, and where can we flee from his presence? Nowhere. Next, we address the “stench” idea. Scripture never says sin is a stench in God’s nostrils; instead, it condemns hypocritical worship and celebrates Christ’s fragrant offering of love. Finally, we confront the claim that God cannot be near sin. If that were true, the Incarnation and indwelling would be impossible. Yet God was in Christ reconciling the world, not counting trespasses.
Along the way, we show how language either breeds shame and hiding or builds courage and belonging. The mirror was cracked; in Christ it’s restored. Tell people they are included, seen, and known, and watch the gospel do what it does best: reconcile. If you’ve ever felt pushed away by church words, this conversation offers a deeper, kinder, more biblical way forward.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the phrase that most changed your lens. Your words help more people hear good news.
I did I mentioned Wednesday night and I'll go ahead and mention it again because I know some of you wasn't here. Um something that kind of stayed on my heart. I was watching TV the other day and uh a video come across uh Mr. Franklin uh Phillip I mean not Franklin Graham, I'm sorry. Mr. Franklin Graham's video came across uh and nothing against him, but I was just sitting there watching it was a short clip that was showed, and one of the things that he said just caught my attention. Uh he's you know, obviously he's like his dad. His dad was Billy Graham, he's known as the you know the father of evangelism, basically. I mean, he was a great evangelist. Uh Franklin's kind of picked up that torch years ago and and carried on with it. Uh but one of the things that stood out to me of what he said was he he was mentioning two things. He was talking about that our sin is a is a stench in the nostrils of God, and that our sin separates us from God. And that really got me, it wasn't as much about what he said as it was about how many people was listening. He's got a he's got quite a uh following on Facebook and different platforms. I mean, obviously he he's uh very well known because of who his dad was. So he's got a great, great following. And it just began to kind of stir in me of what mindset is developed in people when they hear, you know, some of the different things that that we call Bible or the things that we call scripture. Uh and I believe the church has really talked about sin for so long that I think we forgot what scripture actually says about it. Um sin is is not a scoreboard of failures, and that's kind of what we've turned it into. It's you know, it's a power that's already been broken through Christ. And that's something we've got to realize. Uh, you know, it says that through Christ's resurrection and through his death in Romans 6, it says that we've already, it's already been taken care of. But we've turned it into some type of label instead of seeing it as a lie about our identity. I mean, we look at people and we call them a sinner. We put a label on them because of what we see them do or because we know they participate in certain things. And if you look at Colossians 2, it tells us we've been raised, we've been hidden, we've been made complete in Christ. And the reality is that many people, I think, believes that many believers in Christ, I'm just kind of laying a platform, you know, laying a foundation right here just to think about. I think many believers are still fighting battles every single day. I don't care how long you've been saved, I don't care how long you've been going to church. There's not a person in this room who is not fighting a battle, whether it's physically, mentally, you know, whatever, emotionally, we're fighting battles each and every day. But here's the thing: Jesus has already won that battle. So, what I'm trying to get you to see there is we're fighting battles and we're struggling every day with something that Jesus has already said has been won, and it's been complete. And many people are still believing even misquoted theology instead of walking in the finished work of Christ. And that's what I want to focus on this morning. I picked out three, two of them that uh Mr. Graham spoke on, and then one other one, but three of the most common, I believe, misquoted statements that we some kind of sometimes attribute to the Bible, but it's actually not there. So think about what we've been told about sin. And I don't, I don't, I don't know why I'm going back into this uh as as deep as I will this morning, because I don't like talking about sin. I don't like even putting that out there, but I feel like we're in a place right now, even as our our church, how do we begin to talk to people about this? Because those are the questions that's going to come up. So, you know, think about what we've been taught and what we've been told through the years about sin. Uh, we often hear phrases that it they they sound deeply spiritual. They sound like they come right out of the church building, straight from the pulpit, and most of them probably did, but that don't mean they come from the Bible. Uh, we hear things like sin separates us from God. God can't be in the presence of sin. Sin is a stench in the nostrils of God. That's just three simple ones right there that we hear so often. And they sound really serious. I mean, when you're, especially if you're not a Christian yet, but you're going to church and you're seeking God and you want to get involved, and somebody's telling you that the things that you're involved in and your sin that you're still living in is separating you from God, and that God just cannot be in the presence of the things that you're participating in? Think about what kind of mindset that that puts in them. It sounds really serious and it sounds biblical. But my question is, are they? Is this biblical? Are these quotes biblical? What if these well-meaning phrases have done more harm than good in the church? What if instead of helping people understand sin and God's holiness, these ideas have misrepresented God's nature? They've shamed people into hiding from him instead of trying to come closer to him. Rather than come to church and rather than get involved in church, they pushed people away from church. What if they've undermined the gospel itself? And I know a lot of times I've done it myself and I've heard other people do it. We'll make these type of statements and we'll we'll swear up and down their gospel. They're coming straight from the Bible. And people believe that. Why? Because if I'm saying it from a pulpit, most people ain't going back studying and checking behind me. They're just believing it because I said it. They're believing it because Franklin Graham said it. They're believing it because another pastor said it. And I believe it's time that we go beyond, I say this all the time, get beyond your surface level, and that you can go and dig behind me and say, let me look at what the Bible actually says. Let me see if I get the same understanding when I read that verse. Because I believe we're doing more of a disservice to the church, to the people, than what we are being helpful. Let's begin this morning by talking. This is going to be brief because we've talked about this so much, but I can't go into this without making sure that we understand the foundation and have a foundation to build on and to kind of launch from. Anytime we talk about sin, we have to be sure that we're defining sin in the right definition, in the right context. It really does make a difference. If we have two different definitions of sin and we read a scripture about sin, then we're going to have a totally different understanding of what that scripture is saying to us. So we have to start, we have to begin from a correct biblical understanding. We teach here that sin is not just a behavioral thing that we do, but it's a distorted image. Again, it's not just behavior, but it's a distorted image, seeing ourselves outside of the way that God sees us. Being able to looking at myself in a way that God never intended on me to look at myself. Look at this one verse right here. All of you are going to know it, but I want you to see these verses, a couple of them. Genesis 1 and 27. Because this is going back to the very beginning. And if we're going to try to define something, then we need to go back to the very beginning. In Genesis 1 and 27, it says, So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. The key part of this I want you to see is we are created in the image of God. I know we say that so much. And sometimes even when I make that statement to other people outside of church, they kind of look at you like you're a little bit crazy, like you're trying to say you're like a mini God or something, you know. And I don't even get into that with them, but uh, you know, it's scripture. I don't know no other way to say it. It's scripture. It's not my opinion. It's not me just trying to put myself up on a pedestal. It's actually what the word says, it's what God Himself says about us. So from the very beginning, we were created to reflect the image of God, his love, his goodness, his truth. That's what we're talking about today, his truth. We can't say something, but just because it sounds good and then call it God's truth or God's word if it's not in there. We can't do that. It may be good information, it may sound really good, it may even help somebody. But we cannot call it scripture, we cannot call it gospel if it's not in there. We got to go back to what's in the word. So we have to understand sin is not simply bad behavior. At its root, sin is a distorted image. I hope everybody in here, you've heard that enough. I hope you understand that by now. And where we're you may not agree with it fully yet, and that's okay. But I hope you understand where we're coming from and where we're getting that definition from. If you don't, please ask us. Ask somebody because it's so important that you understand where we're coming from with that. So a distortion of the image that we create, when you think about a distorted image, think about what that is. A distortion of the image that we were created in, according to this verse right here in Genesis 1 and 27. It says, We were created in the image and the likeness of God Himself. So anything that's outside of that image is a distorted image. Pretty simple. Anything that we are saying that is a false identity. If I call myself something that God never called me, I'm living and I'm walking with a false identity. That is a distorted image. A lie about who we are and who God is, that the Bible does not back up. That's a distorted image. And we all have been through that. Maybe all of some of us are going through that now, where we're living in a place where we're seeing ourselves as something that God never said. And we're focusing in on our image and our identity, and it don't line up with what the Bible says. Sin is forgetting who we are and acting out of a broken image. And we do that all the time. You see people do that all the time. When identity is distorted, behaviors are going to follow always. Again, we've skipped the identity part of it in the church most of the time, and we skip straight to the behavior side of it. What are we seeing people do? Somebody's out here messing around, they're doing something they shouldn't do, we automatically say they're sinning. But that's just something that flows out of that distorted image. The sin itself is not understanding who I am. So here's a question. Does the language we use when talking about sin really matter? Because I know, again, I can look at some of your faces sometimes, and I know when I say some things you may not totally agree with me, and that's okay. And I can tell some of the questions that's probably coming up in your mind. You know, does it really matter how we say it? I mean, does it really make a difference in whether I look at sin as behavior or whether I look at sin as distorted image? If we're sinning, we're sinning. What a lot of people's gonna say. I mean, let's be honest. If we're sinning, we're sinning. I believe it makes a difference. So therefore, that's what I'm gonna teach. That I believe that it makes a difference. I'm not just gonna say that, throw it out there and leave it. I'm gonna tell you why I believe it makes a difference. So my answer is yes, it makes a difference. So I want to look at a few of these misquotes that I believe are dangerous. And then I'm gonna show you why I think they're dangerous. This is why it makes a difference. A misquote number one, we already talked about sin separates us from God. We've heard that taught so many times in the church. I've heard people say it, especially if you've ever been to an evangelistic uh outpouring or revival or tent uh meeting or anything like that. That's very, very evangelistic in nature. You've heard this being said. Sin separates you from God. Why? Because we've got to get them thinking in a mindset that they are separated from God. Their sin is so bad that they are separated, and the only way they're gonna get back is to come to this altar. That's the mindset we're creating. Make them look so bad, make them look, feel so horrible about their position that they have to get to the altar. Why? To get saved. Opposed to distance back. Come back together with God. Sounds good. Sounds, I mean, you know, nothing wrong with that message in an evangelistic message and what you're trying to do. What are you you're trying to get people to the altar? That's the goal. You're trying to invoke a response from the people. And guess what? It works. Don't believe me, turn on Billy Graham and watch how many people attended his crusades. Other people, even today, look at how many people attend their conferences and their crusades and their, you know, a lot of people have bought into that message. So I'm not saying that that message itself is wrong. I'm not trying to sit up here and be one that says Billy Graham was wrong or Franklin Graham is wrong. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying in today's society with that type of teaching, and it was it was meant for a certain time and it worked. But if you take that and you put it in today's society the way people think today, what kind of mindset are we putting in them? That's the only thing I'm looking at. I would never be bold enough to sit up here and say the father of evangelism was wrong. I'm not that crazy. Okay? What he did was very successful. But I don't always see it being successful for people today. I don't believe it is. You don't see those types of crusades that much anymore. You know, not like that. So again, let's look at some of them. Sin separates us from God. Where does this come from? Okay, that's the first thing we gotta ask ourselves. Why don't you turn with me to Isaiah 59, verse 1? I think it's verse 1, Ronnie. I don't know if I read it on the verse 2. Verse 2, I'm sorry. I didn't put it in my notes, yeah. I just put it Isaiah 59. Look at this right here. Now remember what we're talking about before you start reading this. Remember what we're saying. Sin separates you from God. And then we go to Isaiah 59, verse 2. And it says, But your iniquities have separated you from God. Now I we can stop right there just a minute, and we can end it right here with this verse. And then it goes on and says, And your sins have hidden his face from you. Man, we we can take this thing and break it down. First of all, you got to understand context. You gotta understand who was speaking here, who was he speaking to, what time frame was he speaking in, because he wasn't speaking to you. Now, there may be some stuff we can take out of here. There is. I'm gonna show you. But this is where this misquote comes from. People take it and they said, your sin separates you, and they pull it right here from Isaiah 59 and 2. But Isaiah is describing the effort. If you go back and read this whole chapter here, or just a few verses in this chapter, you'll see that Isaiah is describing the effect of believing lies about sin and about iniquity, not about God's absence. He's not, he nowhere in here is he talking about God removing himself from your life. Jesus' death and resurrection breaks the power of sin and iniquity. As finished work believers, we know that what Jesus did on the cross, it took care of sin, it took care of iniquity. So the perceived separation is removed. Here it wasn't. And he is teaching them about what they are doing and about how it is harming them during this particular time. We are fully included in God, even if our perception hasn't caught up with it. The work is done, our experience is gradually being aligned with the truth. There's a lot of people living out there right now who don't see themselves as born again. They don't see themselves as a child of God. They don't see themselves as being created in the image of God. They might know, hey, there is a God, and I hope I go to heaven one day, but to see themselves in that image, they can't do it. They're living with a false identity. See, that's what Isaiah 59 here is addressing. The people of Israel were persistently distorting the truth. The justice, the worship, everything that was going on, they were persistently distorting it. Their iniquities were blocking their intimacy with God. Now, I don't have time to get into it today. I made me a side note. We're going to talk later on about and really go into detail about the difference because I want you to see, and this verse shows you right here, there's other verses in the Bible that also show you there is a difference in iniquities and sins. You got iniquities, you got sins, you got transgressions. This right here shows you there is a difference in iniquities and sins because your iniquities have separated you from God, but your sins have hidden his face from you. Two separate things. We can't keep saying iniquity and sin is one thing. We can, but we're going to keep misinterpreting it. And we're going to keep misinterpreting certain scriptures by doing that. So Isaiah isn't describing God, a God who backs away every time we make a mistake. He isn't describing a God who leaves us every time we mess up. He's describing a covenant God whose people have consistently twisted the relationship with him and have consistently lived with a distortion, and that distorted thinking has built a wall up between them and God. That happens with us. See, I can be a person who believes in finished work, a person who believes in inclusion, and I am, but I still believe that I can get to a place in my thinking where I don't see God clearly. I don't see God for who he really is. Did he back away from me? No, I'm seeing with a distorted image. He never left me. Why? Because he's not a liar and he says, I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you. But yet we turn around and say sin will cause him to leave you. Number, not even biblical. Listen, I can't say it's scripture if I can take it and read it or say it, and then another scripture contradicts it. I can't call that scripture. Scripture will never contradict scripture. It will not happen. Now, scripture may contradict my understanding of it, my interpretation of it, but if it's true, contextual scripture, it will not contradict each other. So what Isaiah was describing here was not God backing away from us, not God separating from us, but us, in a sense, that's the only way I know how to describe it, being so distorted in our image and in our vision that a wall is put up and we can't see clearly. It's almost like looking through that glass that's broken or that mirror that's broken. You're looking into it, you see a distorted image. Why? Because it's broken. And there's something messed up there. You get a good new one, you're going to see the image exactly the way it is. That's sort of what he's saying right here. It's about being out of alignment, uh, not and being unresponsive and being disconnected. That's what it's talking about. Not because God left us, but I can disconnect from him. I can get out here and live whatever kind of life I want to live. Go every weekend to the bar, do all these things I want to do. And I'm being dis I'm disconnecting from what? My true identity of who I am. God didn't leave me. I chose to participate in a nature that is no longer me anymore. So I'm separating. Look what it says. And your sins have hidden his face from you. He didn't leave you. You've put something up where you can't see him clearly. Man, if we could just get people to see this right here, it would make understanding sin so much easier. But notice it does not say that God left. Nowhere in this verse does it say God left. We turn away from God. We we create an image that does not line up with the image of God. We hide just like Adam and Eve hid. We stop hearing, just like Israel stopped hearing. We do those things as well. But God doesn't move away from us. Scripture shows us this very clearly. In Romans, we got to go there, but Romans chapter 5, verse 8 says, While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still sinners. He didn't leave us. If he wanted to leave us, man, that would have been the best opportunity. While we were still sinners. He could have said, I get down of here. This dude ain't gonna never change. But he didn't. He drew closer to us. In Psalm 139 and 7, it says, Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? What is that saying? Wherever I go, whether it's the church house or the bar, come on. He's still with me. Where can I go? That verse even says, If I go into hell, you're with me.
SPEAKER_02:Want to mess up somebody's theology? Come on. He's going to hell. God's going with me. I just tore up your hell theology with one scripture.
SPEAKER_01:We can get into that another time. He's always there. He's not backing away from me because I mess up and I do something crazy. He said he would always be there. See the danger in this. Here's the problem. The danger in teaching that God separates himself from me or from people is really saying that sin it implies his love and his presence are conditional. But yet we call him an unconditional, a God of unconditional love. But then we put conditions on it. He will love you. Unconditional. My God is an unconditional love. If. Now you just messed up the whole verse. You just changed the whole scripture with one little word. If. Because you just took something that said he's unconditional and you put a condition on it. He's unconditional. Without condition. It's dangerous to tell people that God is separating himself from them. His love and his presence is not conditional. Anytime we send this message, anytime we preach that message, it contradicts the gospel. That's why it's dangerous. Because it contradicts what the word actually says. This is one man I went down a rabbit hole on this. Even this morning, I was still digging in this thing. That's why I was late for church this morning. I looked up and it was 10 o'clock and I was still sitting on the couch. You can go to a lot of places with these verses. Well, you gotta study them out. Sin is a stench in the nostrils of God. Let me say this first of all. This phrase doesn't even exist in the Bible. You can Google it, you can chat GPT it, do whatever you want. It does not exist in the Bible. This phrase is not a Bible verse. We gotta quit calling it that. I've heard people say, well, the verse in the Bible says that your sin is a stench in the nostrils of God. No, it don't. It's not a Bible verse. And it's dangerous to keep telling people that. It may seem like just a minor thing, but it creates a horrible mindset. In the Old Testament. If we want to look at where this actually comes from, we've got to go back to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, sacrifices were called a pleasing aroma. Get that out of Leviticus chapter 1. There's several other places, but the main place is Leviticus. It says that the sacrifices that the people were making into God was a pleasing aroma. We talk about stench, we talk about smell, we talk about aroma. That's where we're getting this from. Okay? In the New Testament, uh the self-giving love of God of Christ is described as a fragrant offering. Smell. Again. That's in Ephesians 5, verse 2. Now, some people automatically assume by contrast that sin must smell bad to God. Therefore, it's a stench in the nostrils of God. But the Bible never says that. We can't take verses and just put an assumption on it because that's what we think is being said. We gotta dig down. And there's other verses. I just poured these two out. There's a pile of verses we can go into. Isaiah chapter 1, verse 13. I don't have time to go into them, but you can look them up. Amos chapter 5, verse 21 through 24. All these verses show God rejecting worship, never rejecting people. Rejecting worship. But not because of sin in general. God calls their offerings a stench, their worship a stench. Because the people were being hypocritical. They were practicing injustice while pretending to be holy. The real issue, God is not disgusted by sinners. I mean, some people don't want to hear that. Because our message is that He is so disgusted by you that you need to get saved. I'm not arguing the point of them getting saved. Salvation of coming to know Christ, the best thing any of us has ever done in our life. But we're not arguing that. He doesn't turn away from us because of our brokenness. He's never done that. He draws near to do what? To heal the brokenhearted, to restore those who are lost. To break the chains of those who are bound. You can't do that from a distance. You got to draw near to somebody to do that. And Jesus, who is the exact image of God Himself, look what he did. Because I believe this, you know, the Bible says this too, but I'm just going to put it in my own words and say it like this. I believe that God, that Jesus could do nothing that was opposite of the Father when he was on earth. I just believe. I believe that whatever Jesus done, it had to be the exact thing the Father would have done. He actually said, I only do what I heard. Here's the thing the Father do, I only say what I heard the Father say. Okay, so that's scriptural too, but I'm just putting them on words. He wouldn't do anything opposite of God. So if we base it on what we're teaching on these misquotes, Jesus should have got away from the leper.
SPEAKER_02:But he touched them.
SPEAKER_01:He should have, he should have never ate with sinners, but he invited them in. He said, sit down with me. He should have said, Y'all go over there somewhere, man. Don't, don't, don't, don't come in and mess up my table. But he didn't. He sat down with them. He wept with the prostitutes and the tax collectors. I mean, he should have been wagging that finger in their face, telling them how sorry they was and how he's got to get away from them based on what we're saying here. But he didn't. He prayed with them. He laid hands on them. Should have never touched somebody that dirty.
SPEAKER_02:But he did. Tax collector was worse than the prostitute. And that day, he made one a disciple.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, here's the danger. This misquote leads people to think they are inherently repulsive to God. That God is just cannot stand to be around their sinful self. I've heard people actually kind of make that comment. God, God, I'm not good enough for God. I've messed up too bad. My life is not where it needs to be yet. Where did that come from? These kind of teachings? It didn't come from the Bible. It came from the pulpit. It came from the church. We can't wrap our mind around saying that it comes from the church and it comes from the pastor, but it didn't come from the Bible.
SPEAKER_02:Because we're supposed to be teaching the Bible. But sometimes we're teaching misquotes and misunderstandings. Last one.
SPEAKER_01:God can't be in the presence of sin. We know where the majority of this comes from right here. Father, oh Father, why have you forsaken me? And it's been taught so much that when Jesus hung on the cross and he took on the identity of sin, that it was so horrible that God had to turn away because he couldn't even look upon it.
SPEAKER_02:I want somebody to teach me lying for lying. I had the Bible that one day.
SPEAKER_01:But he's going to live in me. He says, I'm going to come to choose to make my dwelling inside of you. There's a sermon right there. Because now I've got to decide. Is he lying to me? That he's coming to live in me? Or is sin not as bad as I've made it out to be? Is it not what I've made it out to be? I shouldn't say it's bad, but it's not quite what I've what I've church has turned it into. Because if I'm still just an old sinner saved by grace, but then I turn around and say, Well, Jesus lives in me, and then I turn around and say, Well, he can't be in the presence of sin. You see how that don't fit? I mean, that just doesn't make sense. So I've got to just lay it all out on the table and say, okay, this goes here, this goes here, this is Bible, this is bull crap.
SPEAKER_02:It's just not Bible.
SPEAKER_01:Now, it got its start from the Bible somewhere. We know that. But we can't pull scriptures and put them together and say, here's Brian's new verse. Can't do that. And then I say it for so long. See, that's kind of what happens because we do that preaching too. I'll hear somebody say something, and I say, Yeah, I heard uh Pastor Ron Carpenter say one time, and I'll do that two or three times. And then after a while, I'll say, you know what, I've always said I take it on as my own. I don't give Ron Carpenter credit for it anymore, Tommy credit for it. We we take it on as our own. And that's sort of what we do with scripture. We pull and we create a scripture and we take it on after a while as scripture. And it's not. So God can't be in the presence of sin. This is perhaps the most damaging of all. I picked out three. I can tell you there's a lot more. I just picked out three. But this uh misquote, first of all, it's not true. I just showed you that. If he lives on the inside of me, and you know, I still see myself, I don't see myself as a sinner. I don't I don't take on that identity, but I'm saying the people who do, the people who believe that, you know, it says that we've all we've all sinned and we've all fallen short of the glory, and they take that on as an identity, and they see themselves as a sinner, and they don't see that the cross took care of it, they still see themselves that way, but yet they see God living in them. Well, you got both happening at once. So you got to gotta make it make sense to me.
SPEAKER_02:So, number one, that's not true, because it can't, it's not possible. God walked in the garden with Adam after he sinned. He went looking for him.
SPEAKER_01:Adam's the one. I didn't even mean for this to happen. This ties right back into the very first verse. Adam hid. God didn't. God never walked in the garden and said, Adam, if you can find me, I've got to hide from you because you've sinned. He walked in the garden and said, Adam, where are you? Adam hid. Just like we hide sometimes. And people hide because of what we're teaching them. God called out to Cain after he murdered his brother. Just a few examples here. Jesus, that is scripture. Jesus walked among sinners daily. He was God with us. And he walked and sat and hung around sinners every single day. But yet we can't be in the presence of them. If God couldn't be near sin, then God becoming flesh would have been impossible.
SPEAKER_02:Jesus wouldn't have been able to come.
SPEAKER_01:Because he was coming into a sinful world. And if he couldn't be around sin, then the that would be impossible for it to happen. Here's the danger. This idea falsely presents God as fragile or disgusted by humanity rather than holy and healing. He's not disgusted by us. He's not disgusted by sin. And see, what some of these misquotes do to people is these ideas may be popular in sermons. They may sound good, they may, as we say, when they may preach good. So we'll take something that preaches good and we'll preach it. They may preach good, but they have serious consequences. They distort God's character. God is painted as a temperamental, distant, and disgusted God who's angry with us. And every time we slip up, we're just creating a bigger void between us. Holiness becomes relational. God withdraws from us rather than it becomes relational, put like a relational withdrawal. We're still in a relationship with him, but we're distanced from. Rather than a healing presence. Rather than him coming into me and drawing closer to me so that he can heal me, he withdraws from me. That's what it's saying. It drives people into hiding, just like it did with Adam and Eve. Instead of running to God when they sin, people run away from God. You don't see sinners beating down the door to get in here. We have to invite them. We have to beg them. And even that don't work. But we have to keep doing that over and over because they're not just coming just because. Shame replaces repentance. People say, I'll come back to God once I clean myself up. Y'all ever heard that before? Y'all ever said that before? I'll come back once I get everything right. Man, if I I wish those who have left here that believe this could get things right, this place would be packed out. Because there's people that's left here because of their identity and because of the way they feel about themselves, and they just feel like they're not worthy. They don't belong here. I wish they could just get back and hear what we're saying. You belong here. We want you here. Every one of these seats will be full. Just from the people who's left here because of that.
SPEAKER_02:So it drives people into hiding. Most of all, it undermines the gospel. If God pulls away from sinners, then what did Jesus come for? I mean, that is the gospel message.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus coming is the gospel. The fact that he came while we were yet sinners is the gospel. The cross isn't about getting away from sin, it's about moving toward it to heal it.
SPEAKER_02:We got to quit trying to get away from sinners and surround ourselves with people who are not like us.
SPEAKER_01:So here's the truth God moves toward distortion to restore it. He moves toward it, he don't run away from it. In Luke 15, the prodigal son believed this lie. I'm just gonna give you an example in the Bible. He said, I've sinned too much. I'll never be a son again. Why don't I just go back and see if daddy will let me be a servant? That was the mindset he had. He believed the lie. But while he was still a long way off, the father, number one, was waiting on him, and number two, ran to him. That's the truth of the gospel. That's the gospel message. Not that he's running from us or pushing us away. God sees our distortion and moves toward it. He sees our false images and comes to restore it. He sees our shame and covers it with love, not distance. He's never distanced himself. One more verse I want you to see here. You know it, but I want you to see it anyway. 2 Corinthians 5 and 19. This verse has probably been up a hundred times this year. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
SPEAKER_02:Now sometimes we just stop right there.
SPEAKER_01:And it sounds good. And we can preach on reconciliation right there. But I always like for people to see the next part. Not imputing their trespasses to them. Some translations say not holding their sins against them. Again, when you start looking at the difference between iniquity, sins, and transgressions, this verse comes into play. You start pulling this verse down saying, let me break this apart. Let me see why one place say transgressions and another place say sins. There's a reason for that. You've got to study it out. It has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So we're always going to teach reconciliation. I will always, I don't care how many people disagree with it, I don't care how many people think it's unbiblical, I will always teach universal reconciliation. He is reconciling the world.
SPEAKER_02:That's everybody.
SPEAKER_01:What about those guys that sitting in prison right now because they did something, them too? I mean, this can challenge you now when your mind gets to going about what ifs. It can be challenging to you. What if? What about that guy?
SPEAKER_02:Surely, surely not him. Oh, the world.
SPEAKER_01:And then this is, you've got to understand this word, world right here, too. This is not just talking about the people. This is talking about everything, every system, everything God put in place. This is not talking about planet Earth. That we think of world. This is not what it's talking about, the globe. This is bigger than that. So Jesus didn't come to condemn, he came to reconcile. He didn't come to punish sinners, he came to restore image bearers. We are supposed to be bearing the image of Christ. He came to restore us so that we didn't have to believe the lie like Adam and Eve did. He restored us so that we can no longer believe the lie and live the lie, but we can bear the image of who He is. He restored that. So we end right here. What do we do with this? Let's be careful with our language. I know, and I say this all the time, but I'm saying it for a purpose. I want you to understand, I know a lot of people, especially from other denominations, don't agree with what I'm teaching. I'm okay with that because I believe that language matters. I believe words matter. So I'm always going to hold to what I'm teaching because I believe it matters. So let's stop, let's be careful with our language. Let's stop preaching a God who leaves when we get dirty. Every time we mess up, every time we fall. Let's start preaching a God who came so close and wants to be so close to us that he can cleanse us. That he can just, everything's gone. Everything that's bad was gone. And we're clean now. It's not doing away with sin. It's not diminishing sin. Sin is serious. So it's not saying go out and just be free willy and live like you want to. It's not saying that at all. Sin is serious. Not because it makes us bad, though, but because it convinces us that we're not a child of God, that we're not who God called us to be. It's the thought process behind it that's serious, not the behavior. We can fix the behavior. So instead of telling people their sin separates them from God and their sin is a stench in the nostrils of God, why not inform them of the truth? That in Christ the mirror has been restored. The mirror that was broken is no longer broken anymore. They are not separated, they've always been held in his love. They are not repulsive. God is not trying to get away from them, but they are seen, they are known, and they are included. They don't need to strive to become what they already are. They are already everything that God's created them to be. They are already an image bearer, they are already made whole in Christ. Again, this is amazing to me how people would rather hear how bad they are than hear how good they are. It is amazing. Our goal is to help. And I'm saying our goal, our goal as child, children of God, as a child of God, as a minister of the gospel, as a kingdom ambassador. I'm not just saying a church person because you attend services. I'm saying as a child of God who's created in his image after his likeness, as somebody that he chose to be a kingdom ambassador. Your goal should be to help awaken people to what's already theirs. To help awaken them to what's already theirs. Lay down the shame that was never theirs to carry. Quit putting shame and guilt on them. Let the truth that's always been true arise in them. And the only way we're going to do that is to stop preaching guilt, fear, and separation. You're not going to call somebody to see their true nature if you're preaching something to them that they're not. What if we just told them instead of you're a your sins, a stench in the nostrils of God, you're God has separated Himself from you because of your sin. And all these other things. Why not just say, you know, you're home? You belong.
SPEAKER_02:You're his. You're a child of God. I believe that's the way to fix the problem.
SPEAKER_01:And uh the title of this message today is The True Problem with Sin. What is the problem? I didn't say the problem of sin. The true problem, I mean, you know, our sin as the problem, but the true problem with sin. The problem with having a distorted image. It hurts folks. It puts folks in a place to where they don't even want to come to church because of the shame. We beg them and beg them and beg them to come to church. And I believe in their heart they really want to. But then when they get up to get ready or whatever, they start their mind automatically goes back to everything that they were. And they think, there's no way. There's no way a God could love me after all I've done. There's no way that I belong up there with those folks. I think our goal is just to show them different. But with that, is we have to change the language. Because the language is what's causing the divide to begin with. How can we bring them closer if our language is pushing them away? Your heart may be there for them, but your lane if your language is pushing them and driving them away, don't tell me about your heart.
SPEAKER_02:Check your language first. Because they don't see your heart all the time, but they hear your mouth. And I'm telling you, we're saying things from from the Christian standpoint. I got a guy that I've uh I'll say Facebook friends with.
SPEAKER_01:We have conversations all the time. We have uh discussions all the time. And I put a simple post on it. I thought things was going good. I even showed it to Ron Jose. I said, you know, I think I've had an impact on this guy. You know, I I really I I felt that. And then I put a post on it the other day just talking about who we are in Christ and you know this and that, and then he came back on and how do you know?
SPEAKER_02:And I was like, Really?
SPEAKER_01:But I mean, don't make me mad anymore because I he don't know. He truly don't. And I just simply put on that one verse. I sit there last night and I debated, do I do I do I go with what I want to say or do I just put a verse? I'll put a verse. Because there's a lot of things I wanted to say. Cindy taught me into it. She said, just put the verse. So I put the verse and I said, can I add to it? If you need help understanding this, let me know. Because I, you know, it's the nature in us to want to. That's just human nature. But why not just put the verse? He's probably not gonna understand what it says, and that's fine. Maybe he'll come back at some point and say, hey, what do you mean by this? But we got to give the truth to them. Even if they don't understand it, even if they, you know, don't get it yet. Everybody's not, everybody's not going to. Some people, you are not gonna talk them out of their hell. You're not gonna talk them out of burning one day. You're not gonna talk them into believing that everything's finished, because that takes away from well, what am I doing? What am I here for? What's my purpose? If everything's finished on the cross, what am I living for? You're living to be an example of what's finished. I mean, really, we make it too hard. If we could just simplify it, throw all some of these other messages out and just simplify it. And say, you are because he said you were. And he died to bring you back to the place where you could be, even when you don't see yourself that way.
SPEAKER_02:He created the ability for you to.
SPEAKER_01:So we gotta be willing to talk to say some of this to other people. Because if they don't hear it, they're just gonna keep believing everything they've always believed, even the missed quotes. And it's gonna create a mindset in them that keeps them from the truth. Because every time I believe a certain way, that's that's the lens. When I say what lens are you looking through, that's the lens, and that's the posture that they're gonna take toward the scripture. And then the next verse they read is gonna be out of context. Why? Because the way I'm looking at it. So it is it is simple things. It's one thing to say, just read the Bible. But if you're reading it through a wrong lens, then you're misinterpreting a lot of stuff. And that's not to say we got it right and everybody else has got it wrong. I still read stuff every day and don't understand it. There's there's one thing I took out of here because when I kept reading it, I kept saying that that I don't know enough to really say it like I want to say it shit. I I can't make it make sense yet. So I pulled it out. I'm gonna study on it and I'm gonna bring it back up another time. Uh because it was just, it was it was deep and it was just too much to go into in the middle of a sermon. Because people were left here saying, Did he really say that? What did he say? So it was just too much. Um we'll pull it out and we'll we'll make its uh own sermon out of it.