James T. Cleland - "The Advent of Sin" (December 3, 1967)
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | In heaven, hallowed be thy name. | 0:03 |
Thy kingdom come. | 0:07 | |
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 0:09 | |
Give us this day our daily bread | 0:13 | |
and forgive us our trespasses, | 0:15 | |
as we forgive those who trespass against us | 0:18 | |
and lead us not into temptation, | 0:21 | |
but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom | 0:24 | |
and the power and the glory forever, amen. | 0:28 | |
- | The grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, | 0:52 |
be with you all. | 0:55 | |
Dearly beloved, I wish you, each of you and all of you, | 0:59 | |
a happy new year. | 1:05 | |
Now, don't conclude that I am out of my mind, | 1:09 | |
more out of my mind than usual, | 1:14 | |
or that I'm going to disappear from Duke | 1:18 | |
for the next few weeks, | 1:21 | |
though that's a sound idea. | 1:24 | |
It's just that today is the first Sunday in advent | 1:28 | |
and advent marks the beginning of another Christian year. | 1:33 | |
Therefore, what I'm really wishing you is a happy, | 1:39 | |
a blessed new Christian year. | 1:44 | |
Advent is the season in which the church prepares | 1:49 | |
for December 25th, the anniversary of the birth | 1:52 | |
of its Lord, in Bethlehem. | 1:57 | |
The following succession, Christmastide, epiphany, | 2:01 | |
lent, Eastertide, Pentecost, Kingdomtide, | 2:07 | |
and then we arrive at the next new Christian year. | 2:15 | |
These seasons are marked in many churches | 2:22 | |
by the use of five different liturgical colors | 2:24 | |
and the hangings on the holy table, | 2:30 | |
sometimes on the pulpit, on the lectern | 2:35 | |
and in the Bible place markers, | 2:39 | |
and each color has a unique significance. | 2:43 | |
White is the color of perfection, | 2:48 | |
of perfect glory, beauty, holiness, joy. | 2:51 | |
Red is the color of fire, of blood, of fervor. | 3:00 | |
Green signifies life, peace, rest, nourishment, constancy. | 3:08 | |
Violet or purple denotes morning, penitence. | 3:17 | |
Black intimates war, sorrow, after darkness. | 3:24 | |
Now it came as a surprise to me that the color for advent | 3:33 | |
is violet or purple, | 3:39 | |
violet being a kind of bluish purple. | 3:43 | |
For this is the color which denotes morning | 3:47 | |
and is reserved for periods of penitence | 3:52 | |
and preparation for lent | 3:56 | |
and surprise of surprises, for advent, | 4:00 | |
the preparation for the birthday of the Lord of our faith. | 4:07 | |
Now, why should preparation and contrition be so conjoined? | 4:13 | |
Maybe because that advent has taken on a secondary theme, | 4:20 | |
the preparation for the second coming of our Lord. | 4:26 | |
At the end of time, | 4:33 | |
when as the Collect for the first Sunday in advent stresses, | 4:35 | |
He shall come in His glorious majesty | 4:39 | |
to judge both the quick and the dead. | 4:43 | |
Now, many of us with any spiritual sensitivity realize | 4:49 | |
that at such a moment of personal appraisal, | 4:53 | |
we had better be dressed in penitential violet. | 4:58 | |
But may I suggest that even in our preparation | 5:04 | |
for the anniversary of the first coming of Jesus, | 5:07 | |
it may be well for us to appreciate the violet | 5:11 | |
of the table hanging. | 5:15 | |
I have no desire to be a homiletical Scrooge, | 5:18 | |
and I'm not sure that I would preach this sermon | 5:24 | |
on any later Sunday in advent. | 5:27 | |
But I would like to look with you at this Jesus | 5:32 | |
whose birthday we celebrate in 22 days | 5:35 | |
from an unusual perspective. | 5:40 | |
Are you ready? | 5:45 | |
Then listen to part of one verse from our scripture lesson, | 5:47 | |
John 15:21, where Jesus says, | 5:51 | |
"If I had not come and spoken to them, | 5:55 | |
they had not had sin. | 6:01 | |
If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin." | 6:04 | |
One commentator says, | 6:11 | |
that these are the saddest words in scripture. | 6:13 | |
Jesus held himself responsible for a sense of sin. | 6:19 | |
Now what can we do with that in preparation for Christmas? | 6:25 | |
For the sake of clarity, | 6:32 | |
or at least for the sake of less obscurity, | 6:35 | |
we had better have a working definition of sin | 6:38 | |
in front of us. | 6:42 | |
There are three types of model evil, | 6:43 | |
which should be distinguished one from another. | 6:46 | |
There is first, vice, | 6:51 | |
that is conduct, which is definitely harmful | 6:54 | |
to the person engaging in it. | 6:58 | |
Vice is not measured by any norm laid down by God or man. | 7:02 | |
It just does damage to a person physically, | 7:09 | |
maybe psychosomatically morally. | 7:15 | |
For example, overindulgence of any kind, gluttony | 7:19 | |
drunkenness, all work and no play, | 7:26 | |
all play and no work. | 7:33 | |
This is a flat fact vice hearts. | 7:36 | |
There is second, crime. | 7:43 | |
Crime is a breach of the law ratified by society | 7:46 | |
and is punishable by the state | 7:51 | |
or by a branch of any government, | 7:54 | |
which is the guardian of such law. | 7:56 | |
For example, driving along campus drive | 8:00 | |
at 60 miles an hour | 8:06 | |
with the horn resonantly serenading | 8:09 | |
the few faculty homes, which have not deteriorated | 8:13 | |
into university offices. | 8:17 | |
Crime is not to be equated with vice. | 8:24 | |
There is third, sin. | 8:30 | |
Sin is a theological word. | 8:33 | |
It has when correctly used, a divine reference. | 8:37 | |
Therefore, no God, no sin. | 8:42 | |
Its essential character is disobedience of the divine will. | 8:48 | |
When the disobedience is intentional, | 8:54 | |
the sin becomes transgression. | 8:58 | |
but Robert Burns, the Scottish poet called a kenan rong | 9:02 | |
that is annoying wrong. | 9:08 | |
For example, when a Jew breaks the 10 commandments, | 9:11 | |
when a Christian breaks the new commandment | 9:16 | |
that he love God and his neighbor as himself. | 9:20 | |
Sin is not necessarily crime | 9:25 | |
and crime is not necessarily sin. | 9:30 | |
One may insult the law without insulting God, | 9:35 | |
but sin maybe, may be conscious vice. | 9:42 | |
Now Jesus concentrated on sin, that was His job. | 9:49 | |
He wanted to get men into right relations with God, | 9:55 | |
and He knew that sin separates a man from God. | 9:58 | |
His mission was to remove sin. | 10:02 | |
We've heard that often enough. | 10:06 | |
And yet the passage we're looking at says, | 10:09 | |
that He was responsible for sin and for the guilt of sin, | 10:12 | |
the culpability for rejecting God. | 10:19 | |
Are we still looking forward to celebrating His birth? | 10:24 | |
Sin then, is a broken relationship with God, | 10:31 | |
which results in a state of out of touchiness with God. | 10:35 | |
Is Jesus inferring, even asserting in His dictum | 10:43 | |
that no one was a conscious sinner | 10:50 | |
before He came and spoke? | 10:52 | |
Is He proclaiming that out of touchiness with God, | 10:57 | |
is His new doctrine? | 11:00 | |
If so, then He was wrong. | 11:04 | |
People knew about sin long before Jesus was born. | 11:08 | |
His own people, the Jews knew about it. | 11:13 | |
The old Testament is steeped in sin, immersed in it. | 11:16 | |
That's one reason why the old Testament is so interesting. | 11:21 | |
Sin is almost the burden of the old Testament | 11:26 | |
and more sensitive than wound. | 11:31 | |
Listen to the Psalmist who recognized the divergence | 11:34 | |
between his thoughts and God's thoughts. | 11:37 | |
I acknowledged my sin to thee, | 11:40 | |
and I did not hide my iniquity. | 11:44 | |
I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. | 11:47 | |
then thou deeds to forgive, the guilt of my sin. | 11:53 | |
Listen to the one of the prophets | 12:01 | |
who would have been out of a job, | 12:04 | |
if it hadn't been for national sin. | 12:07 | |
"Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, | 12:10 | |
offspring of evil doers, sons who deal corruptly, | 12:15 | |
they have forsaken the Lord, | 12:20 | |
they have despised the holy one of Israel, | 12:22 | |
they are utterly estranged." | 12:25 | |
Listen to the law, which almost majors in sin, | 12:30 | |
as early as the story of Cain and Abel, | 12:35 | |
God is speaking to Cain. | 12:37 | |
Why are you angry? | 12:40 | |
And why has your countenance fallen? | 12:42 | |
If you do well, will you not be accepted? | 12:44 | |
And if you do not well, sin is coaching at the door. | 12:49 | |
Its desire is for you, but you must master it. | 12:56 | |
Well, he didn't master it. | 13:04 | |
And as early as its fourth chapter, | 13:08 | |
the Bible has its first murder. | 13:12 | |
Long before the birth of Jesus, the Jews knew sin. | 13:16 | |
They knew that it was a theological word linked with God. | 13:20 | |
They knew it was a fact in their national life, | 13:24 | |
in their personal lives. | 13:28 | |
The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, | 13:30 | |
the holiest day in the Jewish year | 13:34 | |
was not invented by Jesus. | 13:38 | |
And yet He held himself responsible | 13:42 | |
for creating a sense of sin, why? How? | 13:45 | |
For the author of the fourth gospel, | 13:53 | |
Jesus was the revealer of God, by His actions, | 13:56 | |
by His teaching in His person. | 14:02 | |
He was the light of the world, | 14:06 | |
the one who made luminous, what God requires of man. | 14:10 | |
He who saw Jesus saw God, the image of God. | 14:16 | |
The fourth gospel says so in so many words, | 14:22 | |
"he who has seen me, has seen the Father." | 14:25 | |
There may have been some excuse before | 14:30 | |
for being unaware of the character and will of God, | 14:33 | |
but no longer, God and sin are now clearly defined | 14:36 | |
because they have been illuminatingly revealed | 14:44 | |
in the person of Jesus. | 14:47 | |
For the fourth gospel, sin consists in rejecting Jesus | 14:50 | |
as the revelation of God. | 14:57 | |
Some saw the light and believed, | 15:02 | |
others refused to believe that it was the light, | 15:05 | |
and for the fourth gospel, they are guilty of sin. | 15:09 | |
Now, personally, I understand what the author of John | 15:15 | |
is trying to say about Jesus and sin, | 15:19 | |
but personally I am not completely satisfied. | 15:23 | |
And yet I am convinced that Jesus did something | 15:28 | |
to the definition of sin, which altered its emphasis, | 15:31 | |
maybe even it's essence. | 15:35 | |
Law and laws, were the norm for the Jew. | 15:41 | |
For example, the 10 commandments, | 15:47 | |
the breaking of the law with a capital L, | 15:51 | |
or any of the specific commandments | 15:55 | |
subsumed under law, was sin. | 15:58 | |
But Jesus went behind the factual, observable transgression | 16:05 | |
to the attitude which caused the sinful act. | 16:14 | |
That was the theme of the first part of the morning lesson. | 16:21 | |
For the Jew and for Jesus, they agreed on this, | 16:27 | |
for the Jew and for Jesus murder was a sin, | 16:31 | |
the illegal slaying of a person | 16:37 | |
with some degree of malice of forethought. | 16:40 | |
Jesus, however, points out that on the judgment day, | 16:44 | |
it will be not only the murderer | 16:49 | |
who is hailed before the great council, | 16:51 | |
but everyone who is angry with his brother, | 16:55 | |
who speaks contemptuously to him. | 17:00 | |
He asserts that anyone who uses as mild a word as fool | 17:04 | |
of his brother, shall be liable to the hail of fire. | 17:11 | |
For the Jew and for Jesus, adultery was a sin, | 17:19 | |
sexual unfaithfulness on the part of a married person. | 17:26 | |
But Jesus points out that the sin of adultery | 17:32 | |
does not begin with the act, | 17:35 | |
but with the lust for thought | 17:39 | |
and that hell awaits the one, | 17:43 | |
who enjoys adultery in his heart, | 17:45 | |
Do we grasp what Jesus has done? | 17:52 | |
He has declared that certain areas of life, | 17:55 | |
which had not been generally thought of as sinful before | 18:00 | |
are sinful. | 18:05 | |
He has moved the lookers of judgment, | 18:07 | |
He has gone behind the act to the motivation. | 18:11 | |
If we want to stop the sin of murder, | 18:16 | |
concentrate on the eradication of anger. | 18:20 | |
If we want to prevent the sin of adultery, | 18:24 | |
pay attention to its roots in desire. | 18:27 | |
Jesus has substituted an inner test, | 18:32 | |
as more ultimate than a low code. | 18:37 | |
In doing so He has altered the location of sin. | 18:42 | |
He has pushed it back and deep. | 18:47 | |
He has moved from the output act to the inner posture. | 18:52 | |
That's how I understand His amazing statement. | 18:58 | |
"If I had not come and spoken to them, | 19:02 | |
they would not have sinned." | 19:06 | |
Now what did this mean for those who first heard Him? | 19:09 | |
What does it mean for us? | 19:14 | |
Some folk turned away from Him, in anger, | 19:18 | |
in sorrow, in despair, | 19:25 | |
it was too much too, too too much. | 19:30 | |
It meant that the best folk were sinners. | 19:36 | |
Folk like the Pharisees, to whom Jesus Himself was beholden | 19:42 | |
for His religious upbringing. | 19:49 | |
He said so, | 19:53 | |
"for I tell you, unless your righteousness | 19:54 | |
exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, | 20:00 | |
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. | 20:04 | |
And the Pharisees were rightfully exhibit A, | 20:09 | |
for righteousness. | 20:13 | |
And so were some of us, we will turn away too, | 20:17 | |
this is too much. | 20:20 | |
Others followed Him. | 20:24 | |
He so disturbed their peace, | 20:27 | |
that they could not be contented | 20:31 | |
with what they had before believed to be right and good | 20:34 | |
and wrong and evil. | 20:40 | |
And the first step in the change was to admit | 20:43 | |
that He was correct, | 20:47 | |
that they were sinners, miserable sinners, | 20:49 | |
but do understand that word miserable. | 20:54 | |
It doesn't mean hangdog, cringing, low spirited. | 20:58 | |
Remember a man being asked if sins troubled him, | 21:10 | |
and he said, "no, love and enjoy them," sure! | 21:12 | |
But that's not what miserable reference to, | 21:17 | |
miserable means in need of pity, in need of mercy. | 21:18 | |
It takes spiritual sensitivity to know and acknowledge | 21:27 | |
that one is a sinner, | 21:32 | |
and to want something to be done about it. | 21:35 | |
Forgiveness and assurance, | 21:39 | |
assurance of acceptance, which leads to renewal. | 21:43 | |
But, the first step is conviction of sin. | 21:49 | |
And what Jesus does, | 21:57 | |
is to sensitize our awareness of sin, | 22:00 | |
so that it is noticed in a new way | 22:06 | |
and understood in greater depth as John Macquarrie puts it, | 22:11 | |
"it is noticed in a new way | 22:15 | |
and understood in greater depth." | 22:18 | |
Brethren, that is why Christianity is the sinners religion, | 22:23 | |
the religion of all poor devil. | 22:32 | |
For in it, and because of Jesus, | 22:38 | |
the holiness of God is judging sin, | 22:42 | |
and the love of God is saving the sinner. | 22:48 | |
So like a man and a woman examine himself, herself | 22:54 | |
the remedy for sin begins there, in the conviction of sin. | 23:01 | |
Now, as I said in the introduction, | 23:10 | |
I probably would not preach the sermon later in advent. | 23:13 | |
However, what Jesus said about sin | 23:18 | |
should be remembered as we prepare | 23:21 | |
to celebrate His birthday, | 23:24 | |
it was the beginning of His gospel. | 23:27 | |
Listen, now, after John, the Baptist was arrested, | 23:31 | |
Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel, | 23:36 | |
the good news of God, | 23:41 | |
and saying the time is fulfilled, | 23:44 | |
the kingdom of God is at hand, repent | 23:47 | |
and believe in the gospel. | 23:54 | |
But conviction of sin is assumed before repentance. | 23:59 | |
Jesus is the Redeemer of man. | 24:06 | |
Yet before that He is the judge of our actions | 24:10 | |
and more important, of our hearts. | 24:15 | |
Judgment was not the final purpose of His coming, | 24:18 | |
but it was the inevitable result for good or for ill. | 24:23 | |
He is for the Christian faith, | 24:31 | |
the light that exposes as well as the light that illumines. | 24:34 | |
I wish the alter hanging were white, | 24:43 | |
the color of perfection and joy, | 24:48 | |
or red, the color of fire, of fervor, of enthusiasm, | 24:52 | |
but the church in its wisdom has decreed a violet purple, | 25:00 | |
a color of preparation and penitence. | 25:06 | |
Brethren, it was a good choice. | 25:12 | |
It was well done | 25:18 | |
at this advent season, let us pray. | 25:23 | |
Almighty God who disturbs and redeems thy children, | 25:29 | |
grant us an awareness of sin of the heart, | 25:34 | |
forgiving of our transgression, | 25:40 | |
time for repentance, amendment of life, | 25:44 | |
and the grace of thy companionship, | 25:50 | |
through thy son whose birthday we prepare to celebrate, | 25:54 | |
even Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. | 26:00 | |
(slow music) | 26:22 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund