All have sinned

Good morning and welcome in today. Today, we are going to take a look at some scripture from Romans chapter 3. Before we do that I had a question for you.

What kind of cookies do you like? For 30 years my favorite ones are chocolate oatmeal drop cookies. The only problem is that when I come down to eat a few, the whole family seems to go through them very quickly. They eat every single one of those cookies up until they’re all gone and there’s nothing left but an empty bucket.

The word all means the entire amount.

Imagine coming over and borrowing some gas and I give you everything that I have. All is the entire amount or quantity.

How many people on the earth breathe oxygen? All of us.

How many people on the Earth eat food? All of us.

The scripture that we are going to talk about today applies to everybody on the face of the Earth.

Roman’s 3:23-24

²³ For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

When you come short of the glory of God, it means to fail to reach the goal or the standard. You’re trying to attain something, but you just can’t get there. Eternal life is something that we cannot attain on our own. We need God’s assistance to get there. This is why he sent his son Jesus Christ into the world. Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we could get forgiven for our misdeeds. We can come boldly to his throne of grace in time of need.

In the Old Testament when somebody sinned or made a mistake, they would offer a sacrifice unto God. Jesus Christ is the Lamb that God sent as a sacrifice for us. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice.

All of us have sinned and we cannot attain eternal life without coming to God through Christ Jesus.

Many years ago I remember a young child trying to learn how to ride his bicycle. He tried and tried and tried to keep his balance but kept falling over. Weeks went by but no matter how much effort and trying that he did, he continued to fall over again and again.

Finally the dad after seeing all of the sons effort and discouragement went to the store and bought something for his bicycle,… a set of training wheels. He took 10 minutes and attached them to the back of the bicycle and it wasn’t but a few moments later that the boy was riding down the road all by himself completely unassisted. He achieved what he wanted to do, it just required a little help. As he rode through the driveway he was grinning from ear-to-ear. What seemed to be impossible for him at the time, became possible for him with a little help. We all need assistance in this life in order to achieve the things that God is calling us todo.

God extends grace and mercy to us. The wages of sin is death. The Lord Jesus taught certain jews that if they didn’t believe in him, they were going to die in their sins. For us to obtain salvation someday, we have to get forgiven, otherwise we carry our own sins to Judgment Day. Sin will be punished.

In our general carnal nature each of us have great difficulty admitting fault. That is what the holy scriptures are there for, to show us the error of our way. God sent his son Jesus to help us from our sinful condition.

Even though Adam and Eve were separated from Paradise because of the fall In the Garden of Eden, God sent Christ to redeem us. Each of us need to come to the realization in our own lives that we are sinners.

Paul refer to himself as the chief of sinners, yet he was helping people to grow in their faith. Sinners help sinners in the church to accept the truth and receive God’s grace. God is changing and molding us into what he wants us to become.

Think about a classical composer. Each day they are working on a new piece of music and it changes from day to day. It changes so much that by the time they are finished with their piece, it doesn’t sound much like it was when they originally started on it. That is what God is doing with us in the church. Years may have passed by in your life but you are not the same person that you were in the past. Like a piece of pottery, God keeps changing us. We hear the teachings of the Holy scriptures and are trying to apply them to our daily lives.

Look at the changes that a butterfly has gone through in their short life. They don’t look anything like what they started out as. Our God is a God of change. He changes things.

Look at the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Look at the difference in the seasons that God created. Look how God changes the weather. It’s sunny in the morning but then he decides to have it rain in the afternoon.

To change means to make somebody or something different. It means to alter or to modify something.

Think about how many people might go to a high school reunion 25 years after they graduated. They walk around the reunion and people don’t even recognize them. They are completely different than what they were in the past. They are not the same person anymore.

God wants to change each of us into something different, it all begins with the acceptance of a simple truth,…. I’m a sinner. The fiirst step in Christianity is being able to admit that.

Those who claim that they have never sinned are only lying to themselves.

Remember, Paul was a Jewish Pharisee at one time in his life and accepted the fact that he needed to come to Christ.

Have you ever done any remodeling in your home? For 20 years you’ve been looking at the same walls and staring at the same paint, but you really want to change things up.

You finally begin to paint and change the wallpaper. You paint the ceiling and change the color of the carpet. You purchase different furniture.

You change and alter the design of the kitchen and the bedrooms. The house undergoes so many changes during your remodeling project, that people who come over don’t even recognize it. That’s what God wants to do in each of our Lives but it doesn’t happen overnight.

Living in the woods, I’ve learned that trees take many many years to grow. They don’t mature overnight. They begin as a small seedling, just a few inches off the ground but through the years they grow and grow and grow into maturity.

In order for us to grow in the church it requires that we are fed with nourishment. If everybody was perfect at day one, there would be no reason to keep preaching God’s Word. Through God’s grace we continue to grow day by day in order to become God wants us to be. We are striving for perfection but it doesn’t happen overnight for us either.

I was reading about one of the slowest flowering plants. It’s called a giant bromeliad that grows in the Bolivian Mountain somewhere. I read that the flower cluster emerges after about 80 to 150 years in that plants life. God created that plant, but it takes awhile to bloom.

God doesn’t want us to continue repenting from dead works but to grow into maturity. God gives us Grace, like having training wheels to help us to ride down the road until we eventually learn to do it on our own.

Through God’s mercy, he makes us righteous in his sight. He expunges our past and completely forgets about it all. He helps us to ride that bike even though at the moment we are incapable of doing it by ourself. Without his grace we’re like children who keep falling down over and over again. No matter how hard we try, we still come short of the glory of God.

Verse 24 says,… being justified freely by his grace.

When you are justified it means to be declared or made righteous in the sight of God. That’s what happens when God forgives us of our sins. It’s called faith righteousness. He makes us righteous through his mercy.

Imagine asking your mom at breakfast that you would like some more pancakes. She brings out a stack of them and says how many do you want? Then she freely gives you as many as you desire! This is like Grace in the church. It is freely given to us by God.

Redemption simply means saving or being saved from sin, error and evil.

Jesus took our sins at the cross and suffered death, which was the punishment for our sins. He is the righteous one who died for the unrighteous.

So you see, because of our own sinfulness we could not attain salvation. We were all born into the death of our sins because of what happened in Paradise. But through Christ Jesus there is life through His grace and mercy. We want to show that same mercy and forgiveness to others. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Read the story about The Prodigal Son. His dad completely forgave him when he returned and reconciled with him. That’s how God wants us to treat each other in a church because each of us are sinners. There are none righteous no not one.

Speak and do as those that will be judged by the law of Liberty. The law of Liberty is forgiveness and freedom from our sins.

God careth for you. We need to begin that walk on the path of redemption by admitting the truth that we are each sinners. When you believe the truth, it will set you free.

That’s where I’m going to stop right now but Lord willing we’ll talk to some more tomorrow. Till then, bye-bye everybody.