Walk of Shame 8/8/2021
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 30:41
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Bad decisions can haunt you. A bad decision hang around, lingering in the air of life never letting go. A bad decision has a way of multiplying itself. One bad decision leads to another bad decision, made naively or blindly trying to correct the first bad decision. Worse yet, bad decisions made in times of temptation become sins.
David, Bathsheba, Uriah - one small bad decision, the King staying home when he should have been leading at war. One bad decision becomes a series of sins, having an affair with Bathsheba, plotting to have Uriah cover his sin, having Uriah murdered.
Life’s bad decisions can become a series of sins.
The worst thing about us is self justification. We will and can, justify to ourselves every bad decision and sin we commit.
You get cutoff in traffic, you honk the horn, yell even when they can’t hear you, if they look your way you might even give them the middle finger of disfellowship. Even when you feel bad about losing control of your own actions, you say “well if they hadn’t cut me off like that...”
Justify your action with their action. It starts at a young age… “mom but he. Dad but she.”
You ought to stop justifying yourself and start repenting. Repentance is the only way out of sin.
Sin Reality
Sin Reality
Sin will take you farther than you really want to go.
Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay.
Sin will cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.
You must come to the same conclusion that James arrived at… Your sin is only because of you.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
Prodigal
Prodigal
Jesus gave the parable of the prodigal in response to the accusation that He was receiving sinners and eating with them.
To me this story is rich with the realities of sin and just how far Jesus will go to save us.
A man with two sons and the younger asks for his father to give him the inheritance that one day will come his way.
12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood.
We see this as a very selfish request… we should.
Our sins are always selfish.
The father graciously gives his son the inheritance that would have been given to him in the future. The request and the response are more than tension between a son who is eager to strike out early as an adult and a father who is willing.
In the culture, the request would have been a great shame. This son asking his father, who is in good health, for an inheritance was in essence saying I wish you were dead.
Dividing the inheritance was no easy task… Dividing land, live stock, servants, and any other personal property.
All of this happened in full view of everyone around them. A great shameful event, which brought shame on the son, shame on the family. A request that never should have been made and would never have been fulfilled by any father in that culture.
The request for an early inheritance severs the relationship between the son and his father, then only deepens when the son sells the family property so he can leave.
The entire story hangs on this severed relationship of a father and his son.
13 And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.
Sin will take you farther than you really want to go.
He sinned asking for an inheritance. He sinned selling that inheritance and leaving for a gentile land. He sinned wasting it on wild living.
Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay.
He joins himself to a gentile pig farmer. A shame to be associated with a gentile. A shame to be servant to the pigs.
Sin will cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.
Lost security, and a family inheritance. Willing to eat the pigs food. Luke 15:17 shows just how much sin had cost him. The hired servants made enough to have bread and some savings.
17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
Walk of shame
Walk of shame
Kezazah Ceremony - clay pots thrown at his feet as he entered the village.
20 “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.
21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.
23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry;
24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.
The father had already made preparation for his son’s return and restoration.
God made preparation for you… sin, shame, brokenness, but God made a way thru Jesus Christ.
38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.