This was written for a small group lesson during summer break. I wrote it up and expanded on some of the main points because not everyone could make it.
This lesson contains the real hope and power of the Gospel. Ironically, this lesson is on everyone’s favorite topic – sin. Actually, we as a church need to talk about it more because of how prevalent it is in the New Testament. The early church leaders beg the people constantly to turn from their sins. Strangely enough, the true message of sin is not a message of condemnation but hope – “There’s a way out of the junk in your life!” It is completely possible to get rid of the addictions, anger, frustration, and hurt that seems to follow everyone around! But as the church, we need to eat some humble pie, stop pretending we’re perfect, and get our own sin out into the light so God can deal with it:
Genesis 3:6-13 – This is the first time in human history that sin was introduced. There are several very immediate consequences – brokenness in our relation to God, our relations to others, and our relation to our self. The first two are pretty obvious – the brokenness with ourself is seen because they felt shame at who they were. The moral of the story? If you have brokenness, it’s the result of sin – yours or someone else’s!
Jeremiah 2:13 – cisterns were large brick holes in the ground used to collect rain water and hold water hauled from a stream. If a cistern gets broken, it leeks out all its water and is quite useless. It is also important to understand the Hebrew concept of living water vs. cistern water – living water was fresh and clean (and moving), and cistern water could be easily contaminated and was often breeding grounds for mosquitoes. This is an incredibly important passage – God is looking at all of Israel’s sins (which were a lot) and sticking them in two important categories. Broken cisterns are our sins of choice – they are counterfeit means of trying to find what only God can give (peace, hope, purpose, identity, value, acceptance, worth etc). They will never provide and we’ll always be thirsty no matter how many we dig or how deep we make them.
This verse also explains why secular counseling or any help not having to do with God doesn’t work. You can’t just decide you can live without water – you can either find it in God or find something that won’t work! As Christians in our own lives and helping others as well, we are really good at just dealing with the surface problems instead of the sin, because sin is a difficult topic. This is the true hope of the gospel – real change!!!
We as Christians have to be careful not to help others build better empty wells. For example, consider a man who is always at work and never spends any time at home with his family. We would usually give suggestions of a reasonable work schedule rather than addressing his attempt to find his identity from his work. But even after he adopts a normal work schedule, he still hasn’t found his identity – the problem is still there. We are called to practice the presence of God but because of the fall we practice the presence of the created instead of the presence of the creator.
Galatians 6:7-9 – Reaping and sowing – sin will always produce bad fruit. This means someone else’s sin can produce bad fruit in your life! However, what goes on between God and the person who committed the sin is out of your hands - He wants to deal with you. For most of our lives, we have been blaming bad things that happen to us on sin or someone else, then sweep the emotions under the rug and pretend they’re not there. If we let God, he’ll pull up a part of the carpet at a time. When talking to others and helping them through, we need to only be doing what God is doing – ripping up too much of the carpet can be very painful. How do you know when there is more to a certain situation than you thought? When your response (or someone else’s) to a situation is out of proportion to the situation, you know there’s a sin or a hurt from a sin there. For instance, if your boss walks in and asks you to type something up for him and you fling a pencil jar in his face and start yelling at him, there is definitely something else there.
Colossians 2:6 – Just as we received Christ, walk with Him. How did we receive Christ? By working really hard? By getting in an accountability group? NO! We received Him by faith! (Eph 2:8) This is another place we usually mess up – we all accept that God did someone supernatural in our lives at conversion, but think that it’s up to our hard work and dedication after that. Nope! It’s still God – He’s the only one that can bring about real change! What do all the other things help with? They’re like doctor’s instructions before surgery – they don’t actually heal anything, they just make it easier for the surgeon (Jesus, in this case).
1 Thess. 1:5 – Woot! We’re not alone – we have help! Just as the Holy Spirit is there to take over and transform you at conversion when you give your life to Him, He’s there to seal wounds and heal hearts when you give your unforgiveness or sin to Him!
1 John 1:9 –
Matthew 18:18, 35 – We do things that have heavenly consequences. One of the most important aspects of this is forgiveness. Forgiveness is more between you and God than it is between you and the other person. It is natural to hold a grudge when we are wronged. Out of a sense of fairness, we judge their action and say they deserve a punishment. Forgiveness is completely unnatural – it’s a choice to release that person or that act to God, no matter how He chooses to deal with it. Unforgiveness is our way of usurping God’s job as judge. When you choose to forgive, you also end up breaking the bind of sin over your life. If you are still holding a grudge or bitterness towards someone for a certain action, it still has power over you! Forgiveness is our ticket to freedom from the things that haunt our past. It’s pretty powerful stuff!
1 John 1:9 – If we confess, God will put us in right standing with Him again! We give God our sin through confession and repentance, and He gives us forgiveness and supernaturally cleanses us from unrighteousness from the inside out – it’s quite a deal! This isn’t just about feeling better, it’s God’s invitation for us to restore intimacy. We need to repent not only of sin, but sinful responses to someone’s sin. Also, it doesn’t matter whether it is acceptable to society – if God says it’s wrong, we need to step into agreement with Him and repent. Again, this isn’t so much about clearing our record as it is restoring our intimacy with God.
Put together, this message isn’t a meticulous step by step way through hurts in your life or others, but it does shed light on what’s actually going on in every situation and the general steps we need to take to be free. So say I’m dealing with absolutely hating someone else. How would you help me as a Christian help me through that? What if I have every right to hate that person? What can secular counseling do in this situation? These are tough questions, but they really need to be asked. While some people are walking around looking for the way to heaven (the way we usually phrase the gospel), most of those are already in church. The people that approached and followed Jesus were the ones who were broken and knew they needed help, and those are the same people we as the church are called to reach out to today! We can’t really reach out to them in the way Jesus did unless we can understand the power of the gospel to transform and apply it to our own lives.
So what do you do with this lesson? Be silent for a bit and let God tell you what He wants to do. If you’re honest, you know something that God’s been tugging at you to give up or get rid of – a bit habit, a vice, unforgiveness, bitterness, etc. Just as a last point, God wants us to be well and whole far more than we want to be! That’s why in our Christian walk, we almost always begin to feel His working and leading in the area of purity and getting rid of sin first. After all, he’s not called the Holy Spirit for nothing! One last thing - if you're struggling with sin or there's a part of your past still haunting you, there is definitely freedom - God tells us there is no matter how messed up our life has been! While this model often works to get sin out of your own life, it is more intended to help others through their problems. Find a godly person you trust, let them know the situation, and let the healing process begin!
