Do the Work

 Read John 8:1-11

Deuteronomy 22:22

 

Now, go and sin no more.

What an ending. Jesus was confronted with an impossible situation once again but for God, nothing is impossible. He sent this woman away. No stone had touched her. No one was left to condemn her.

It was just this woman and Jesus, and of course the crowd of people who followed him or arrived at the place he was headed or somehow just showed up where Jesus was teaching.

The One who came to save and not condemn saved her.

Now, go and sin no more.

It’s such a cool ending. Your life has been given to you by the Lord. Now, stop your life of sin and live for him. Amen. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah!

Did she do it? Did she live without sin for the rest of her days?

Let me know if you find out. Never mind, I think I know.

Let’s stand in her shoes.  I can’t do that. I’m not shacking up with other guys or gals. I don’t do that.

How can I stand in her shoes?

We do, every one of us. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It’s a pick-your-poison sort of deal.  We all have sinned. Period.

Some of our sins come with the death penalty.

So, does that mean that mean that running a red light and shacking up with my neighbor’s wife are the same?

They are obviously different acts but both defy authority. God said. Man said. The bot on the phone said: Don’t do that, but we did it anyway.

Jesus told the woman to stop defying God and his ways. He said, the ways of my Father are better than the ways of the world. He said, you don’t have to carry your guilt and shame and embarrassment around with you, but you do need to go forward living for me.

Do you remember God’s way and everything else? Jesus was saying, live my way. You tried it your way. Now try things my way.

Was she able to do this?  Probably for a time and then something would happen or nothing would happen or just out of the blue, she disobeyed God or one of his commands. Just my guess, but based on our common human experience.

We were lost in sin.

We repented of our sin.

We professed Jesus is Lord.

We are saved by the grace of God in the blood of Jesus.

We too are to sin no more. But it’s just too hard. It’s too difficult. We can’t do this.

In the realization that we are saved from our sin and from death, our commitment to living without sin should be unimaginably high. We should be pumped up to live without sin.

We are fighting Satan, evil in every place it gathers, our own nature and understanding but we are committed to living from this day forward without sin.

How is that working? Who is batting 100%?  How about 95%?

Commitment is a tough sell in this time.  If I put a sign-up sheet in the back of the sanctuary, I might get 2 signatures.  One is probably from one of my grandkids who doesn’t know what he is getting into.

It doesn’t matter what the sign-up is for. It could be for helping in the nursery or making cakes for a cakewalk or sitting in the foyer waiting on a delivery of a million dollars worth of gold and silver.  People don’t sign up. People don’t make the commitment.

Now, I will get 35 cakes for the cakewalk, but nobody wants to commit to making a cake.

I can think of another commitment that some of us made.  I do solemly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States...

Now that is a commitment; yet, each service sends many young men and women packing who made the commitment but did not live up to the standards.

Commitment is just a tough sell these days.  Now, instead of committing to bake a cake or two, we commit to sin no more. That might just be tougher than writing a blank check to your country.

We just can’t do it. We have the best motivation in the world and in history and that anyone could come up with to live without sin. Jesus saved us. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe.

On top of that, there is one more reason why you should give up a life of sin.  It might be the most powerful reason of them all. It is…

You have heard me preach.

Surely that would have done it. Or not. Occasionally, I get a little tongue-in-cheek. 

Something in our nature makes us wrestle with the God’s way part of God’s way and everything else.

It could be that Satan and evil and the dark forces in whatever form they come have really good advertising. They have convinced so many that doing things God’s way cheats us out of something else.

And many bought that hook, line, and sinker.

Academically, we know that God’s way is better. Intellectually, we know that God knows best. Our own understanding tries to tell us that sometimes that is not the case. We have to wrestle with this over and over again.

And so, we come to the term efficacy. Efficacy is the power to effect the desired change or the desired results. Efficacy in a single person is called self-efficacy.

So, the question is: Do we have the power to change?

God says with him, all things are possible, so with God do we have the power to make the desired changes?

Yes!

Then why do Christians deal with sin so much? Some of you might want to go ahead and scratch me off your Christmas card list right now.

We are double-minded. We think that God’s way is best but that God doesn’t fully know my circumstances. Like Job, if we could just explain ourselves to God, he would get it. He would grant us an exemption or a waiver, if he only knew our circumstances.

We might just be a little bit lazy.  What! The preacher is calling me lazy!

I didn’t see him out on the tractor until midnight. I didn’t see him out at the rig pushing pipe for three days straight. I didn’t see him in the warehouse making double quota.

How can he call us lazy? He has seen us work!

We make offerings of money. We donate food. We give rides. We do a whole bunch of things to be known as a follower of Jesus by our love. Good on us.

Good on ya!

Where we miss the boat is with our minds. We are to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. We are to win the battle in our minds and then in our lives.

Sometimes we take the thought captive and adopt its mantra instead of being faithful to God and making everything else that we must address obedient to Christ.

We are to seek God first—before all things. That’s in everything we do and that takes some effort.

We are to be strong and courageous. Courage begins in our hearts and minds.

We must win the battle against sin in our lives in our minds first. Every thought must to held captive until it can be examined and found in line with God’s way or in need of reform.

Our first thought must always be of God’s way.

We must have the courage and readiness and willingness to do things God’s way. When we sing, I have decided to follow Jesus, have we really decided?

Have we committed?

Are we ready and willing to put his words into practice? If we are doing what God has told us to do, then we are not sinning.

If we are always focused on what God has told us to do, our chances of sinning go way down.

If our thinking is always, I want to do what pleases God, then sin is fighting an uphill battle.

But, if we are thinking we want to do things God’s way but we are not willing to seek God first, we are likely to strike out with this sin no more stuff.

If we feel like we want to do more things in God’s way but we are not willing to fight the battles that occur in our minds before they manifest themselves in our lives, we have already conceded the fight to sin.

If we want to live sin-free but still wrestle with who has the best way to do things, us or God. Then we are wrapped up fighting a battle that should never have to be fought. It is always God’s way. That is always the answer and not addressing the rebellious thoughts that we should be taking captive is the easy way out.

Sometimes, it is not convenient to follow God and do things his way. In our time, convenience rules.

What am I talking about? Amazon One-Click. That’s convenient. Man, is it easy to order something on Amazon. I occasionally go around with them about their return policy, but ordering is easy.

Some of you may not know this, but you cannot return an AV-8 VSTOL Harrier on Amazon. And you can’t get JP-5 or ammo for it anyways. But ordering is so convenient.

I guess my grandkids can forget about that college fund, but they can come over and play on my airplane. 

You can order your pizza on the app.

Set a reminder on your phone.

Tell my device what music to play. I love going into my son’s house and telling Alexa on the refrigerator to play Stairway to Heaven at 2:30 am at max volume.

Let my refrigerator make its own grocery list.

Do you know what the cutting edge of convenience was when I was young?  Clap on. Clap off for turning the lights on and off. Those were Clappers not Clackers. Clackers could mortally wound you if they got out of control.

Do you remember Jesus telling his followers how hard it was for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven? Consider the many conveniences that we have in this nation and in this age and even out here where there are more cattle than churchgoers. We are rich in convenience.

Do we really need God? Do we really want him as Lord? It’s kind of nice to do things your own way and it’s so convenient. This sin stuff just seems overrated.

Jesus said that with God all things are possible. So, the real question is: Do we want to stop sinning?

The question is not limited to the sexual sin in this pericope or that people seem to get worked up about the most. It’s all sin.

Are we willing to seek God and his way before addressing the thoughts in our minds? Are we willing to do everything with God so we can tackle sin before it leaves our minds and takes hold of our lives?

It’s work.

It’s mental work.

It’s focus-type work.

It takes effort.

Who’s up for it?

We all want to execute his command to go and sin no more. Let’s put in the effort that is our part. Let’s do the work.

If a kid wants to play professional ball, he needs to do the work.

If you want to be a rocket scientist, you need to put in the work.

If you want to be wealthy money-wise, you need to put in the work on earning and investing and buying and selling.

You have to do the work.

We are saved from sin and death and didn’t have to do anything to earn it. We simply received it by faith. It was and is a gift.

If you want to go and sin no more, that’s going to take some work and it begins in our thought life.

I pray and believe that we can get much closer to God when we seek him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Go and sin no more. With God, we have more than a fighting chance. He has his part. We just need to do the work.

In your own way and in your own time, commit to do the work. The work on the cross is finished.

Now, it's our turn to respond in love, obedience, and commitment to sin no more.

Amen.