Let's pray together before we go into the sermon.
God, we come before you and say, Have mercy on us.
How much we need to hear that you cleanse and renew us.
We have our own set of issues as we come in here this morning, whether it be loneliness or weariness, definitely all of us are not perfect before your law.
And we need to hear the statement of absolution which we receive every week.
May the God of love and power forgive us and free us from our sins, heal and strengthen us by your spirit and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord.
Amen.
So we're making our way through the book of Hebrews.
We're in Hebrews chapter 8 at this point, going through the fall.
I think there's two main ways, at least for me, there's been two main ways.
I tend to live out the Christian faith.
The first one, I would kind of call it a play the part.
It feels like a lot of pretending and a lot of performing.
It feels like adopting a Christian life via a very particular set of Christian behaviors, usually defined like within a subculture of Christianity, within a subculture of subculture of the church you happen to be in when you become a Christian, and there's a set of behaviors that if you pretend and perform up to them, then that's kind of like the Christian life of which you live.
And all of that is behavior-based.
It's not all bad.
But if you live that out and just kind of perform the role, there is the side to it that like if you feel like you're accomplishing it pretty well, you can feel like really deep down that you don't really need the grace of God.
Like the grace of God is like actually just kind of like it's like a little help along the way, but you're kind of carrying out the goodness of your faith.
And sadly, underneath the surface, we all know the reality of it.
And that is, is when you're living out faith by pretending and performing up to a standard, it's like we talked about last week in the covenant of law and covenant of grace, exhaustion will eventually set in.
You'll be exhausted, you'll feel condemned, you'll live out of guilt and shame.
Perhaps hearing that voice of condemnation more than voice of love.
But the good news is, is there is a second way, right?
Like we've done that.
Many of us have done that.
Maybe you're doing that now.
Maybe you're learning the way of grace in this new covenant.
And the second way is like to grow in the Christian faith.
And as you're growing in the Christian faith, you're just coming to a deeper or more profound knowledge that you just don't have your act together.
You're becoming more aware of your emotional volatility, your neediness, your love of idols, your woundedness that you thought was over with, and it's still there and it's doing stuff.
You're painfully aware.
You're painfully aware of your sinfulness.
Maybe you're becoming more godly.
But you're not really aware of it that much, thankfully.
Because it simply feels like just a greater and greater collapse into Jesus' sufficiency for you, and how good this grace of God is.
So one is the exhaustion and the burden of the ideal self that the law is calling you to.
And the law is good and holy.
But if we know nothing of grace, the law just crushes and condemns because we are not perfect before it.
But this new covenant that Hebrews 7 and 8 is laying out for us is telling us about the grace of God known in Jesus.
And it's a different way that the law crushes us as to be found and live in the grace of God.
That's the heart of our church.
That's this one verse we're going to camp out in this morning, Hebrews 8, verse 12.
For I, this is speaking about God, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities.
And I will remember their sins no more.
Point number one is this God holds the authority to forgive and forget your sins all the while he delights in your heart.
On fall break a few weeks ago, uh Christy and I we put the girls in the car, we were headed down to Christy's parents' house in Florida, and the first hour's great.
Girls were watching movies in the back, and we didn't have to turn the radio on or anything.
It was just silent.
We're just driving quiet and talking some.
And it started to drizzle.
We left about noon.
This is about two o'clock in the afternoon.
It started to drizzle a little bit, and then it started to rain a little bit.
If you know, like driving on the interstate on a long trip, you're heading down the expressway, it's two in the afternoon.
It felt like it was like nine in the evening because the clouds came in, and then it was just legitimately raining.
And I was 10 and 2, laser focused, you know, I was tuned in.
I wasn't changing lanes, I was just trying to see the headlights in front of me, and it was just difficult, right?
Just like so hard.
You can't wait for that drive to be over.
It's so tense, so tiring.
You just can't wait.
We've had trips like that.
You've driven in a trip like that, or you've been the passenger, and they're like, hey, you can't go to sleep, you've got to stay awake, because that journey is just so exhausting.
This is what it feels like to carry around your own sin.
To not be able to have it cast upon God Himself to take the sacrifice.
That's the guilt trip, right?
The guilt trip that never ends, the exhaustion of it, the condemnation of it, even if it's just like a passive under the surface.
But we're free.
The guilt trip is over.
I'm 41 years old now.
I've been in ministry for 20 years.
I have some gray hair.
I have a lot less hair.
Apparently, my ears are growing.
That's what one of my daughters told me last night when I tucked her in.
She said, Your ears are big.
And I said, Thank you.
My other daughter told me my breath smelt like the spirit of dance studio.
Um, I've never been in there, but I don't think it was a compliment.
It's just, if you need humbling, you just tuck your children in a bed, you know, really close to them, and they inspect you.
So I've been around, that's the point.
The point is, I've been around 20 years of ministry.
I have heard every confession imaginable at this point.
I've heard confessions of every addiction you could imagine, and even the ones you haven't imagined.
I've heard confessions of adultery.
I've heard confessions from abusers.
I've heard confessions about just sins of uh impatience and anger and lust that are destroying and eroding the foundation of relationships.
Confessions of just like wanting somebody else's life, right?
You ever done that?
You just want somebody else's life, or you just want to run away, just like get out of your life for a little bit.
Self-righteousness where there should be humility, judgment, where there should be compassion, right?
I'm just trying to get you to think about your sin, perhaps.
The overall reality that I'm not perfect and you're not perfect.
And what we need to hear over and over again, because we so much want to revert to the law as to assert our justification and earn some forgiveness so we can feel good about ourselves.
What we need to hear over and over again is no, the forgiveness is free, earned outside of yourself and given to you.
Not only that, what Hebrews 8, 12, the gift of it is, is he not only forgives us, he forgets about it.
He has chosen to forget.
We're the ones who keep bringing it back up.
The writer lays it out for us in Hebrews 8, 8 and 9.
For he, for God, finds fault with them, with us.
For he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand and bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
So in the law, God finds rightful fault with us and with me.
His beautifully created children that just don't live up to the standard.
We don't even live up to our own standards, much less God's.
Verses 10 and 11 go on to say that the law is actually in our hearts now.
We know how we should be, and yet before the law, you read it, whether it be Old Testament law, whether it be moral law, whether it just be like how you should live, pray continuously, and that will crush you because you don't pray continuously, neither do I.
But verse 12 comes along right after it, right after we're crushed, right after we could feel so condemned and so guilty, it says, God forgives.
He forgives your iniquities.
He does, you know, he forgets.
He chooses to forget.
Point number two is this God's chosen forgetfulness, like of our sin, God's chosen forgetfulness, is our heart's resting place and our move toward godliness.
It's both those things.
For life application, listen to this quote, uphold it from Scotty Smith's prayer on this verse.
On this verse, he wrote this, this prayer.
Now that I'm no longer guilty or condemned, let me fearlessly see my sins, ruthlessly hate my sins, and relentlessly turn from my sins.
Increase my love for gospel holiness and decrease my shame and self-contempt.
Only the gospel can bring such freedom.
Only by seeing more of you will I delight in this journey.
See, the freedom of the forgiveness and God's chosen forgetfulness of our sin is the way, is the way of our healing and move toward godliness.
Our confession does not fill God in on, well, he doesn't know.
Like, oh, you know, like, oh, I didn't know about that.
I didn't know that you did that, you know.
It's like, oh, I didn't know you had an affair.
Like, it's not what that's not happening in a confession.
You're not filling him in.
He's already forgiven it in Jesus, and he's chosen to already forget it.
Our confession is our collapse back into that great grace, into Jesus and into that path of healing and godliness.
Our confession is our act of casting that shame and guilt on him, that we might know that welcoming love that he has for us, and in that we're healed and empowered by his Holy Spirit in this journey of what it means to walk with God.
Point number three is this In the gospel, the performance act is over.
So we are perpetually forgiven, fully righteous, and empowered toward godliness.
It's all of that.
It's wonderfully all of that.
A couple of years ago, Christian and I went on a four-day trip with some friends of ours, a mentor couple older than us, and we got to the cabin.
There's this really nice cabin on a river, and we got there, I was like, well, this cabin's not the kind of cabin listed on VRBO that I'm used to.
This is a really nice cabin.
I got there and saw this and was like, oh, you know, like what's our portion?
Or what's our portion of this?
Like, what's that gonna look like at the end of the four days when we kind of like settle up and we go out to dinner that first night, they treat, and it's like, oh, that was nice, you know.
And I'm thinking, well, the tab, the tab's growing, right?
We go fishing the next day, and that was with guides, and I had never done that before, and I don't know what that looks like.
And so I'm going, okay, like this is gonna be a six-month kind of recover financial recovery coming out of these four days.
And at the end of it, you know, just at the end of the four days, I'm like, hey, what's like what what do I owe you?
What do I need to send you?
And they say, no, no, no, no, no, like this is this is our delight.
Yeah, you're you're there's no there's no debt to us.
Right?
Like this feeling.
I mean, we drove home.
I thought the drive home was gonna be like this painful Venmo sending of money to them, and instead, like the drive home was like, that was incredible.
Like all that, I mean, we have a clean slate, we got all that with them, we're not in, we're no debt.
Like we were at zero clean slate with them.
Now the gospel gets even better, right?
So let's just pretend.
Let's just pretend on the drive home, they texted and they said, Hey, by the way, not only that, but like we're gonna mail you a debit card connected to our checking account.
And just whatever you need to just put on, put it on in it, you know, just whatever.
It doesn't matter, put it on there, and there will always be enough in there.
We're gonna make sure it's always fully funded.
I mean, I could put my mortgage on there, my girl's braces on there.
I would buy a 1973 Ford Bronco in Britney Blue with a convertible top.
I already have the restoration company picked out in California if that day could ever happen.
I know what I'm gonna buy, and I would buy it on that debit card.
Like I would have a source of wealth, source of wealth that I could never perform into, but only receive.
That's the fullness of the gospel.
Not only, that's the fullness of this new covenant of grace, not only are we fully forgiven, we're also fully righteous.
That's the sufficiency of Jesus for us.
You're not just a servant and right standing, you're a son and a daughter and heir.
Priest and author Robert Farrer Capin, he wrote this about the outrage of grace.
And so many of us need to hear this because we have stuff we're still bringing up from 10 years ago, that thing you did, that thing that night, that thing, and you bring it back up and you're relieving that shame and that guilt over and over and over again.
Here's what Capin says the whole slop closet full of mildewed performances, which is all you have to offer, is simply your death.
It is Jesus who is your life.
If he refused to condemn you because your works were rotten, he certainly isn't going to flunk you because your faith isn't so hot.
You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace.
You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe.
Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead.
And for him who is the resurrection and the life, that just makes you his cup of tea.
Grace is scandalous when you state it as good as it is, as free as it is.
And it is free.
That's not to say that it doesn't have effect, right?
Like what we love to say is like, is earning is over in the grace of God, but effort continues in the grace of God, but the grace of God, the sufficiency of this forgiveness and the forgetfulness of God for you, and you're righteous to him, is fully free.
You are free in that.
It's the end of the law condemning us.
It's the death of the old Adam for a new self to rise in Christ, who is free in the grace of God, perpetually forgiven, always fully righteous, and guided by the Holy Spirit.
My brothers and sisters, you are God's cup of tea, not because of your goodness toward him, but because of his goodness toward you.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for your goodness to us.
We hold on to guilt and shame as if they will justify us.
Would you free us this morning by your perfect grace?
By your inexhaustible love that pursues us in our shame and guilt.
Would we hand it over?
Would we keep handing it over?
Would we keep hearing that you have chosen forgetfulness of our sins.
You remember that no more.
We are free.
Thank you for this great gift of Jesus, in which we know our forgiveness and we know our righteousness.
In his powerful name we pray.
Amen.