The Cross Heals: “The Only Way to Heal Diseases of the Soul”
I’m so excited about our new series and what God is going to do in our lives here in so many areas. I’m convinced where we will experience some new layers and levels of healing in our lives.
Jesus came so that you and I might be made whole, healed, and He does that in the deepest part of who we are- our spirit. He does that in our soul, the area of our mind, our emotions, our will. And He can do that even in our body.
So, in this series, we’re going to explore what all of that means and how to find in Christ, healing for the areas that have been wounded within us.
You can tell today, it’s a unique day, a special day here at Vertical. It’s communion Sunday.
So, the subject of communion, of course, is important for us as believers.
Jesus gave two very important elements to the church that we are commanded to take part in other than just gatherings, which is what He calls us to do is gather together. But we are also called to baptize those who are new into the faith, putting their faith in Him, and we are also committed to taking communion together.
The Bible doesn’t give a specific timeline on how often that is. Jesus just said, “As often as you do”, so we’re doing it today. We’ll be doing it also again on Good Friday, which is coming up.
So, when you come to a moment like this, it’s meant to be a moment of remembrance, it’s meant to be a moment of worship, it’s meant to be a moment of searching. We’re going to explain that today. It’s meant to be a moment in which we remember the sufferings of Jesus, the holiness of God, our sin, and His atonement for our sin.
So, I want to read the passage in the New Testament that gives us some of the clearest teachings. I’m going to refer to this, and then we’re going to be going to another passage today. But I want to start here because the apostle Paul gave some instructions to the New Testament church that apply to us today. The word of God is alive and relevant for us and it speaks to us today in 1 Corinthians 11:23. I’m going to start reading.
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “Take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
Now, you notice this morning, what we have here is when you come up here in a little while. It’s not bread like you and I think of. This is not a loaf of Miss Baird’s bread that’s up here. This is not a big delicious yeast roll like you and I might think, because we are attempting to use bread as they would have used, as Jesus would have used. It would have been unleavened bread, which means bread without yeast.
The yeast in the Old Testament was a symbol of sin. So, as they would approach Passover, and they would have a period when they would remove all the yeast from their house. It was symbolic of the cleansing of their houses and their lives of sins.
When Jesus and his disciples sat down and had what we know of as the “Last Supper”, they used bread like this, but to us, it’s more like a cracker. It has a crunch to it and it is thin. You’ll notice these pieces are pierced with little holes as part of the baking process. It is striped as part of the baking process as well.
Much like they would have used in Jesus’ day. That reminds us that he was pierced for our transgressions, and by his stripes, as we later talk about, we are healed. So, it’s all pictured here in the bread broken for us: Jesus’ body. Verse 25, says in the same manner, he also took the cup after supper saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
Jesus was instituting something brand new. No longer would they have to bring lambs or sacrifices to the altar to atone for their sin, because Jesus had come to be the lamb, which takes away the sin of the world, and he would say, “In this cup is the new covenant, which is my blood.” So, we drink a red juice today that pictures for us the blood of Jesus.
We do not believe that upon you taking up the cup or the bread, it turns into the body of Jesus or the blood of Jesus. It’s not what happens here today. These are done in remembrance of Him. So, Jesus goes on and says, “This cup is the new covenant. My blood. Thus, do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
He is coming again. So, we are doing what Jesus commanded the church to do. But Paul then, adds a layer of practical teaching for us. It’s important to us. He says, “Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” Now, all of a sudden, we all just sat up inside, right? Wait a minute, is there an unworthy way to come from your seat to hear and drink or eat? There is an unworthy way of doing that? Yes, there is. We’re going to discuss that today.
More importantly, what is the worthy way? I’ll tell you upfront. If you think somehow, you have to make yourself perfect before you leave that seat to come here to this, that is part of an unworthy way. You’re not called to become perfect before you partake, you’re called to have faith before you partake. We’ll explain that today.
Verse 28, “But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup, for he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to himself not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged, but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world.”
Woah, there’s a lot there. So, as we come to begin this series, “The Cross Heals”. We begin at the cross, at the body of Jesus broken for us, at the blood of Jesus poured out for us. This new covenant and we approach this with sincerity, worship, and a little bit of seriousness, in fact, a lot of seriousness. So, to do this faithfully, we have to go back to some starting places. Go back to some basics. We start with:
“God is holy.”
He always has been, He’s always existed. He didn’t need anything added to Himself to make Him holy. He is holy, complete, righteous, beautiful, and glorious. He always existed and always will exist. We don’t add a thing to Him by our worship. He is holy. He created man in His image that we might share in the life that He has, that we might know that same glory, that we might also know what it means to be set apart and enjoy His favor and blessing in our life.
He gave Adam and Eve one command, “Do not eat from the tree that is in the midst of the garden. For the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.”
You know the story, Adam took and ate, his wife with him. The minute that they ate, death came upon all creation. Everything changed. The planet changed, the universe changed, and they changed. Instead of walking in fellowship with this God who created them, they now ran and hid from him, and their life began to decay.
They were never intended to die. They were never intended to be separate from God, from one another, but the moment that they sinned, everything changed. Death became part of the experience. They began to age, creation began to be corrupted, death would now come, and death happened and would happen physically, but it will also happen in their behavior, emotions, mind, and deep within their spirit. Ever since then, man has been born with a nature like theirs, that is infected with the disease of sin. You were born with it.
You can’t just blame your parents, you can’t blame Adam and Eve because you didn’t just come born with it in your DNA, you along the way chose to sin as well. You and I sinned. And the Bible’s clear. “For all have sinned”, there’s nobody in this room that has not. You don’t have to worry that you’re sitting next to someone who’s perfect and you’re not. Don’t worry, you’re not perfect either, right?
You have sinned. Every one of us has to find how we’re going to deal with this fact that you and I have sinned because it affects everything about us. It’s just part of who we are now, the sin experience. It affects how we think. It affects how we see life. It fills us with death. It consumes us with ourselves. It makes us angry, bitter, and critical. It’s your defiance of God. It’s your defiance of wanting to walk in his ways. It’s your resistance to all things Godly. It’s you yielding to temptation. Sin, it’s what we’re born with.
Jesus came so there might be a way of escape, that there might be redemption because again, the Bible is clear. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And Ezekiel reminds us that the soul who sins will die. The New Testament would say, “The wages, the payment, the follow-up to sin is death.”
So, what happens is that everybody looks for two different ways that you will attempt to deal with your sin. This is everybody that at least stops to consider the fact that they’ve sinned because a lot of people don’t want to admit that they’ve sinned. A lot of people don’t want to admit that there is sin, a lot of people want to pretend they haven’t. But at the end of the day, when they put their head on the pillow at night, oh, there’s a reminder. “Something’s not right. This is not the way it was supposed to be.”
So let me talk to you first about one of the ways that people attempt to deal with their sin.:
They think, “If I can somehow punish myself, scold myself enough, beat myself up enough, inflict enough punishment upon myself, then I can feel better about my life.” It’s not a new concept, it’s an old concept, and there have been a lot of people over the generations who have attempted to deal with this in many different ways.
Some who have flogged themselves, some who have put themselves in an extremely painful situation physically, in an attempt to beat themselves up physically enough to feel better about themselves, and you think, “That is so bizarre. I’m not looking to hurt myself.” Yeah, but a lot of people still do this, they just might not use boards, nails, whips, ropes, and chains, they do it in other ways. They attempt to punish themselves by just hanging out and wallowing in guilt.
“If I can just replay my sins enough, make myself feel bad enough, replay my failures, keep spinning them over in my head, keep telling myself just how terrible I am if I can focus on my weaknesses enough, maybe that’ll help me pay for it, relieve myself, feel better about myself and my sin.” Sounds kind of morbid, right? It’s the very thing that people do.
When you get into this mode of punishing yourself, you get into this mode where you feel like you should never have peace, forgiveness, or joy. Boy, the enemy loves that moment because he’s also standing by to point out your sin. He didn’t want you to look at Jesus. He didn’t want you to see that there’s forgiveness. He wants you to keep replaying that tape, just keep rewinding it, and replay that failure. I don’t care if that was 15 years ago, just keep replaying it one more time. One more time. Replay it again.
Keep telling yourself how terrible you are. Keep punishing yourself, keep beating yourself up, deny yourself any good. What happens is, when you get into this mode, you even get to the place where you think, “You know what? I don’t even deserve to pray. I don’t deserve to read my Bible. I shouldn’t even be singing worship songs. I shouldn’t even go to church.” When you start going down that path, do you see who gets the victory? It’s not you, it’s the enemy.
When he leads you to that place where you think, “I shouldn’t even be reading my Bible. I shouldn’t even be accepting this forgiveness that Jesus has. I shouldn’t be coming to this place where I can believe that Jesus loves me. I shouldn’t accept any of those blessings. I shouldn’t accept any of those. I’ve got to keep telling myself how terrible I am.”
So, you pass off on all things that are related to spiritual truth. You get uncomfortable around them because you’d rather beat yourself up than accept the fact that God loves you and couldn’t forgive you and show you mercy in your life. Amen?
I’m just trying to get very real this morning because this is where a lot of people live. They think, “If I can just make myself pay for my sin, then I’ll feel better. I’ll punish myself. I won’t let myself enjoy the good things even of God.” The second thing that happens is people begin to punish others. When you get to the place where you are loaded down with your guilt, weaknesses, sin, and how terrible you are and all your failures, then you get into this next mode.
Because that’s all you look at in yourself, you can’t help but see that in other people. Boy, you get real quick to remind everybody else of all their failures. You can’t see the blessings on other people’s lives. All you can see is, “Well, they messed up doing that. Did you see what they do? I’m going to remind them what they did.”
“Hey, do you remember you did this to me the other day? Do you remember you did this a long time ago, 5 years ago? You said this. You did this. Oh man, they’re terrible, they did this to me.” With all of those, you become obsessed with everybody else’s failures because you’ve got to inflict punishment on yourself. Well now, you got to start inflicting punishment on others.
You know what, because all of a sudden when someone does something to you that you didn’t think you deserve, man, you fly off the handle with anger and rage. If you got to punish yourself, you got to punish someone else as well. “I’m going to make them pay. You’re not going to mistreat me. I’ll make you pay. I think I have to pay, so I’m going to make you pay.”
So, you start punishing others and you keep others at a distance in your life because you can’t have anybody else get too close-up in your life. Because they might see what’s going on. It’s a lot easier to punch somebody when you’ve got them out a little bit of distance, right? You can do some damage because it’s just better. It’s so sad but so true.
The more you can punish other people and point out how bad they are, sadly some people feel better about themselves. So, you punish others, you become insulting, a list keeper of not all of the good things that people have done but all the bad things. You begin to look for ways to punish them for it. “I’ll make them pay.” You become angry, bitter, you’re vindictive, you get revenge and you got a list. You had a long list and you got a long line of people, and begin to blame others.
What that often leads to is if you’re punishing yourself and pretty soon, get to this place where you’re so focused on yourself, in your own weaknesses that you become consumed with your insecurities. You don’t want anybody to see what’s going on and you cover them all. You hide them from other people. You don’t want them to see where you are. You become timid, you lack any kind of courage or confidence, and you think that actually, it’s more spiritual if you walk around and even conduct yourself kind of like this.
I’ve seen people and talked to people and I’ve been this guy who thought I was more spiritual the more weighed down, always thinking about how terrible I am in my sin and I can’t do enough. God’s out to get me. Boy, my life is just a wreck. Oh, I’m so… What you will start thinking is this, “I’m just so spiritual when I do this.” Wrong. That’s the enemy who’s put you in that posture. You’re never called to punish yourself for your sin. Jesus took your punishment for your sin.
You become frustrated, withdrawn from other people, and anything related to the church, whether it’s worship, praying, Bible reading, Christian music, whatever it is. All of that becomes an obligation, an empty duty I have to do so that I can kind of make myself feel worse about who I am.
Then finally, this leads to a place of ultimate defeat because nobody got any strength from looking at how sinful they are or by punishing themselves for their sin.
There’s no power here over sin. There’s no power here over temptation. You always feel less, think less, and choose less. You make choices that are not helpful and godly or good for you. You give in to every appetite you have and what this produces right here is a disease in your soul. This produces disease in your mind and of your emotions, and this produces behavioral disease as well. These are conditions where psychologists have long lists and titles and abbreviations for them, but it all comes from an inaccurate view of Jesus and what he’s done for you.
I tend to believe that there’s not a soul condition that can’t be healed by what Jesus has done for you.
We’re going to find the freedom in that and I’m going to say it again, I believe we’re going to see some healing happen here over the next two months that are going to astound us.
So, this is one of the ways that people attempt to deal with their sin, it is by punishing.
(This part is truly bothering me right here. I’m just going to beat myself up a little bit for that right now. If you know me.) It’s not the only way. Because you might think, “I won’t do any of that, I’m pretty good.” Cool.Let me tell you about another way that people attempt to deal with their sins.
Some attempt to punish themselves, but some other people attempt to perfect themselves. “I admit I have sinned, but you know what? I can do better. I’m strong, powerful. I can do this. I can do better.” As a result, you set off on the course.
“I’m going to go to church every day, every Sunday this next year. I’m going to read my Bible. I’m going to pray. I’m going to do this. I’m going to become a better Christian. I’m going to show God that I’m worthy of being loved. I’m going to prove I can do this. I’m going to show him I’m worthy of His blessings. I’m going to prove to God I can do this. I’m going to get myself right and when I get myself right, then I’ll serve the Lord. Then, I’ll know he can love me. Then, I’ll know I finally arrived after I cleaned myself up and I perfected myself.”
It sounds kind of right. Right? But it’s so, so misguided and so wrong according to Scripture because if you live attempting to perfect yourself, you end up doing some pretty weird stuff. You end up becoming obsessive about some things. When you think you’ve got to do everything right, then all of a sudden you think everything has to be right, and you get obsessive. It’s almost obsessive and compulsive, and it’s a disorder almost.
There’s a spiritual root to all those things, I’m telling you.
You might not want to recognize it, admit it. Oh, we’re going to get there. Obsessive. You get obsessed with things that have to be a certain way. I’ve told this story before, it’s been a while. When I was in Oak Cliff, I walked home from high school. It was a long way to walk home. It’s like three miles to me to walk home to school. I was a freshman, little, and terrified of dogs. I wasn’t a believer at the time, I knew a little about God, but I didn’t know. I thought if I could pray from Sunset High School to my home, which was near Westmoreland Jefferson, and if I could not stop praying, if I could just say it continues the whole time and never say it wrong like I’ve got to say this little prayer I made up a certain way all the way there and not stop. Sounds weird, right? I thought if I could do that enough, then a dog wouldn’t bother me, and you know what? It worked on so many days. Which only confirmed, again, it’s the right thing.
I became obsessive-compulsive like I had a disorder of something about it and it happens for people. Things have to be set a certain way. Things have to be done a certain way. “I’ve got to do it my way. Hold up, you’re messing my way. Stop, stop, stop. You’re going to mess it up. If you do that, it’s going to mess up my life. Everything’s going to go terrible from this point forward.” Really? Do you have that much control over eternity by the little bitty choice that you make in your life? Is someone else can be thrown off eternity because they didn’t let you get up at 6:55 that morning?
Come on. I got to do it my way. It’s got to be the same way. People like this become legalistic about their faith. “You have to believe as I do, say what I do, do what I do and I make the list and I tell you what it is and you follow it. If you don’t follow it, I’m going to condemn you for it.” All of a sudden, faith becomes about my actions instead of about my capacity.
I think I have to be perfect. I can’t make any mistakes. It has to be my way. At least to another thing, if you become perfect-minded or you try to perfect yourself, you also begin to develop another problem. You become narcissistic. All of a sudden, life is all about you. You walk into a room, it’s about you. People are talking, they must be talking about you. When you don’t know if they’re talking about you, “I hope they’re talking about me”, that’s what you start thinking.
“I got to get over there and make sure they’re talking about me. I got to get over there and impress them. I got to get over there and tell them a story. I got to make sure everyone’s talking about me and how great I am. I got to make sure I tell everybody how great I am, what I’m doing, see what I’m doing. I’ll post it on social media so you can see how good I am. I can’t ever admit anything. What I do instead is blame people for everything.
I’m upset with what they’ve done to me because it’s all about me and I got to keep my way and I got to do just everything my way. I got to have it my way. I got everybody looking at me because I measure myself by how everybody sees me. I’m in this process of trying to perfect myself and if you aren’t praising me, then I must not be perfect.” Narcissism takes over. Do you ever know anyone like that? No? Too close to home. Maybe recognized something in yourself even. Yeah, I’m getting way too close to home this morning. Aren’t we?
It’s such a disease that you begin to even use guilt to get everybody else to do what you want them to do. You start manipulating other people. You start pointing out, “Well, you never did that for me. Never did those things for me in my life. How come you never did that for me? How come you don’t say this about me? How come you say that about them? You should say those things about me.” It just gets dark and twisted.
That’s what happens when you start trying to deal with your sin by trying to be perfect in perfecting yourself. This is the Pharisees of the New Testament. This is many people today. They also become very critical of others. Because if you’re in this parade of self and parade of trying to be perfect, then you spot out people along the way and you begin to critique how they’re not perfect. What they have done to hurt you maybe keep you from being perfect.
They made you lose your temper. “They made me fall into this sin, this is their fault.” So, you blame, you’re critical, and you point out peoples’ flaws. You even tell people their weaknesses and it leads you to this place where you become very bitter. I mean, there’s this seething anger underneath that you just almost can’t deal with. You hold grudges and you find it’s better to even run away from people than to be around people because you can’t even control how you are around people.
When you let these two ways become how you deal with your sin, you only increase this disease in the soul. What this brings is a host of all kinds of mental, emotional, behavioral, psychological, and spiritual diseases. It destroys relationships, your peace, everything about your life. The Bible was already clear about it, the soul that sins will die. The wages of sin is death. And you’re trying to fix it all, won’t make it any better. But the Bible is a book of hope. Amen?
It doesn’t leave us here. Can you imagine if you came to church today and I said, “All right, here you go, let’s pray, see you all next week?” It would be terrible. We all walk out of here and just be miserable. You’d come up here to take this. Guess what? If you take this, like this, you’d be taking it in an unworthy manner. If you think taking this is designed to make you feel worse about yourself, or if you think taking this is supposed to make you more perfect, that is an unworthy manner.
Turn in Isaiah 53. This is where we are today, this is where we find hope, this is where we find life. Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5. We start here in verse 4. Here’s what the Bible says, “Surely, he has borne or carried our griefs and carried our sorrows”.
A little bit of background definition of the word griefs here, you and I use it to think about what happens after someone dies that we have had grief, sorrow, and sadness. In Hebrew, this word right here is a word that means physical, emotional, mental, or behavioral sickness.
Sickness. Jesus bore in his body. Watch this. He carried punishment on the cross and he was the perfect one. He went to the cross to deal with our sin and he bore all of that. The horror of the cross was not the nails, crown, and spear in the side but Jesus bearing the punishment for sin, bearing in himself the realization that you and I would one day experience all of this. And that He would have that experience in Himself. He would carry that grief, that sorrow, all of the soul pain, and He would carry it to the cross.
It goes on the second part of verse 4 and it says, “Yet, we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” In other words, we looked at Him, we saw what was going on in his life, and we thought, “Dude, what do you do to deserve that?” That’s what people thought when they saw Jesus. “Wow. That dude messed up. God apparently, is against him.” It’s funny what judgmental eyes will do. You look at other people and you’ll judge him according to what you think. That’s what they did and that’s what we do. They miss the reality of what Jesus was accomplishing.
It goes on in verse 5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. He took in himself our judgment.” He took this, like this, so that you would no longer have to bear this or strive to be this before you could be loved by him. That’s what he bore on the cross. He took your sin.
It’s almost insulting when you think about it, that we would think I, somehow, have to punish myself for my sin and say, “Hey Jesus, that whole death on the cross. Awesome. Cool. It’s just a lot. I’m going to try to punish myself some more for my sin, and when I get there, I’ll come to you.” What? He did that so you wouldn’t have to.
He’s the son of God who’s the holy son of God and who lives sinless. He was perfect. Then, we standoff at a distance and say, “Wow, he’s such a good man. If I could only first live up to that and be perfect, then maybe God would love me, accept me, forgive me.” You’re missing the point.
You’re only inflicting more disease in your diseased soul already by thinking you have to punish yourself enough or perfect yourself enough to come to Christ.
He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. He dealt with our sin on the cross.
I can’t drive home enough the importance of this by becoming personal at this point. I’m not talking about the concept, I’m not talking about philosophy. I am talking about theology, but I’m going to make it intensely personal.
At that time, it was just the idea that there is sin. I’m talking about your sin. Stop thinking about the sin of the person next to you for just a moment, think about yourself. All have sinned. Jesus took every one of your sins from the past, to the present, and into the future.
On the cross that day, He bore them in himself.
He took the punishment as the perfect sinless Lamb of God.
So that whoever would believe in him, would not perish, would not have to keep punishing themselves, would not have to try to stop or try to keep perfecting themselves, but would have eternal life.
Jesus came to remove the sin. He came to free it from us. He came to set the captives free. He came to remove all of the shame, guilt, fear, paranoia, striving, and diseases that inflict the soul. All of the mental, emotional, and behavioral things that come as a result of you trying to either pay for your sin or punished yourself enough for your sin, and instead, Jesus becomes the one who pays the highest price.
He becomes the one. He takes our sin upon himself. He takes the punishment. He is the perfect one. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him.
In other words, the punishment, payment, and discipline, it was on Him. By his stripes, we are healed. For those who will come and say, “I’ve done this. It’s miserable. depression, darkness, isolation, and miserable”. And for those who would say, “I tried this. I tried being righteous enough first, it only made me angry. It only made me more bitter. It only made me more consumed with myself and it only led to death.”
For those who would say, “It didn’t work, but when I saw what Jesus did for me when I saw the wonder that he took my punishment and my sin, then something different happened”, by His stripes and His suffering, you and I can find healing. Peace can come into the troubled areas of your soul.
The Bible describes it this way in the New Testament, “That for by grace are you saved through faith.” The word saved means to rescue or heal. So here it is, Jesus was given to us as grace. You didn’t deserve Him, earn Him, and it wasn’t because you beat yourself up enough. One day, God said, “All right, I think you’re finally low enough to the ground, you finally beat yourself up enough.” No. Grace is given to who? The humble.
To those who would say, “Jesus, my sins are many. I can’t pay for myself. I humble myself before you. You are the one who paid for sin. You died an agonizing death.” The Bible says the way that you receive that is by faith. Faith receives, believes, and says “I don’t deserve this, but I receive it as a gift from you God.” So now we know the difference between coming here this morning in an unworthy manner and a worthy manner.
Unworthy is thinking, “I’ve got to beat myself up enough first before I can take this.” Unworthy is, “I’ve got to somehow perfect myself first.” Worthy says, “Lord, you are holy, I’m a sinner. I can’t pay for my sin. I can’t punish myself enough for my sin, but You did, and I receive your love. I receive your forgiveness.” I love the way Jesus established this. It’s a picture of Him, His body, and His blood, but the way we take it is by eating and drinking it. It has to go into us for it to change us. Are you with me?
It has to become intensely personal. You can’t drink it for someone else. You drink it for yourself. You can’t eat for someone else, you eat for yourself. It’s designed for your spirit, for your soul. It’s designed for your sins, forgiveness, mercy, and freedom. It’s designed for you to take in what Jesus has done.
So, here’s what we’re going to do. In just a moment, I’m going to pray, then I’m going to sit down. I want you to take some time and let this be a moment that you seek the Lord. I’m not asking you to punish yourself or perfect yourself. Paul said if we judge ourselves not critical, not harsh, but instead, we say, “Lord, I need you, the Savior to forgive and cleanse me.”
“I receive what you have done into me and I’ll live for you.”
This is the worthy way. This is judging ourselves and allowing the word to speak to us. If you need to repent of sin this morning, repent, change, and stop because there is grace.
There is forgiveness and there is healing. It may begin for us today.
May it heal all the dark places within us. I’m grateful for physical healing when it happens. I don’t diminish that but I will say this, the healing that happens in a person’s spirit and their mind, emotions, and behavior is a greater miracle than someone having their arm or leg or body healed.
It’s true, and may that be the story that we tell and we see happen here. Amen? Would you bow your heads with me?
Father, today, we are humbled at what you have done, that while we were in our sin, while we were caught, while we were in despair, while we were thinking it was up to us to claw our way somehow back to you. You sent your son to free us, to forgive us, to take upon himself our sin, the payment for sin, so that by his very wounds, we are healed. We are made whole.
So, this morning, we receive that gift, forgiveness, mercy, and grace. We respond by faith alone. We respond by receiving it and we receive communion this morning as a picture of that; not more punishing, not more perfecting, but in full faith for what you have done. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.