Scripture: 1 Peter 4:8; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Exodus 20:2-3; Revelation 21:1-4; Luke 23:34-43 Series: 2021
A fourth-week Easter sermon in Bee Creek UMC’s ‘Works of Love’ series, preaching 1 Peter 4:8 (‘love covers a multitude of sins’) in light of 1 Corinthians 13. Opening with a personal story of festering hiking blisters that healed only once uncovered and dried, the sermon argues that sin must be honestly admitted, not ignored. It reframes sin not as a moralistic list of vices but, via the Greek hamartia (‘missing the mark’) and the priority of the First Commandment, as straying from relationship with God. Distinguishing justification from sanctification, it presents salvation as ongoing transformation toward holiness, and points to Jesus covering and overwhelming sin (Matthew the tax collector, the cross). The call is to admit our need and receive the grace that heals and covers sin, offering abundant life.
Illustrations: appalachian-trail-blisters, military-triage-origin, wild-pacific-crest-trail, stranded-lake-travis, calypso-apocalypse-wordplay, jesus-covers-sins-examples
I’ve shared a little bit about how I hiked after college. I tried to hike, hiking a lot during my life, but especially that time after college, when I took a bus from Austin to Maine, I started walking South and I had a lot of gear that first few weeks. And one of the gear I had was like really good, solid hiking boots. They were good boots. I’ve worn them in. Um, they were solid. They were designed for kind of like heavy duty, trucking carrying a lot of stuff going, going back, not kind of a low mileage time. Whereas going through all through hiking on the Appalachian trail is very light. You want to stay light. You have to have high mileage, low weight, especially in the Appalachian trail, as opposed to like the Pacific crest trail where you’re like the movie wild takes place. There’s a lot of places to get supplies, so you don’t need to carry everything. There’s a lot of places to get water, unlike hiking in Texas where, which I might have noticed I had done research before heading out, but I’d been backpacking before. So I took my backpack full of gear, in the first week, through this area of Maine called the hundred mile wilderness. And it might as well have been called the hundred mile swamp. It was a swamp. I went through and forded a few rivers and walked probably 20 miles on bog logs, which are logs on a bog: it’s bog log. And they keep you from sinking into mud, but they are as slick as ice. And so I slipped a lot and my feet fell in the water a lot. And you know, waterproof boots are great, they keep the water outside your boot, but if water gets in, they keep the water inside your boot as well. So a series of blisters developed over that first week on my heels. They were not comfortable. When I first noticed them, I was 50 miles away from any place I could go. There was nothing I could do. And so I had only been a little food, a limited amount of water. I was able to walk. I did the basic triage, the word triage comes from military medicine in the 19th century. And it’s like, yeah, there’s three options for a wounded person. “Can they walk? Can they not walk? Are they dead?” So I checked myself in order: Are you mobile? Are you alive? Um, in this kind of checking order and I was able to triage myself. Okay. I’m alive. Good. All right. I guess I can move good. Okay. I guess, then, I have to move. So I kept going and the blisters got bigger. You know, when you have a blister that’s bloody bleeding or any kind of wound, there is an option to ignore it. I mean, you know, if I had a cut on my arm, I could, you know, completely ignore it and move on. I could, I could cover it up and ignore it. I could bandage it and try not to think about it, but that’s not, it’s not going to get any better. If I do that, what ended up doing was switching to chacos. I had some chacos for camp shoes, which is also just like a really amateur mistake. Chacos are pretty heavy for sandals, but I started wearing chacos, i was able to dry out the chacos. They didn’t irritate the blister and the body healed. So healing a bleeding, pussing, blister is one thing. How can we heal the sin in our life?
Series Intro
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on the works of love on looking at how we can respond to the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. In this season of Easter in practical ways, a few weeks ago, we talked about how love builds up that love is both the foundation and what builds up in people. And that when we see others as children of God, when we see that love is already present, that we can act differently and build up that level. We can see ourselves already as children of God. And we see that love is already present in us. We can build up. And last week, two weeks ago, we talked about how love believes all things believes all because Jesus believes in us. Jesus believes all things. Jesus, doesn’t dismiss you no matter what you have done, or no matter where you have God, Jesus believes last week. Pastor Matt talked about how hope, love, hopes all. And this week we’re talking about how love covers a multitude of sins. These are verbs around love with love. Does this passage comes from first Peter, but it feels with the flow and the logic of first Corinthians 13 love for love covers a multitude of sin. Some translations happen love for canvas multitude or love hides. A multitude. The word in Greek is literally color. I love covers a multitude of sense, but it’s more than a multiage it’s a crowd. It’s the same word as crowd and playfulness. If there’s a crowd out there, there’s a playfulness here to listen to me, crypto, like the music Calypso, doesn’t really similar as well as you, but, but Calypso, we there’s a version of it that is very familiar with us apocalypse Apocalypto. So Apocalypto means to uncover something. The apocalypse of John is the uncovering of Christ’s true plan for all of creation. And the apocalypse is not the four horsemen. Uh, it’s what happens at the end of the book of revelation. It’s an apt behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem descending, and there was no more reaping or crying nor gnashing of teeth. That’s the apocalypse here in first, Peter four is the Calypso CallLoop plank. Love covers a crowd I’ve sent. We need to start with what a sin is. And this is something I know our confirmation crew has talked about. And it’s one of those things that, you know, it’s really good to, to clarify about because sin is a word that may or may not be used in popular parlance, but it’s one of those words that we, most of us think we have a sense of when more often than not are use in English of sin is very different from its use in Greek or in Hebrew. Okay. SIM is commonly thought of as just like bad things like sin or faults or things you don’t want to do vices. So if the language of vice is very, um, personal focuses on what are the things I do, what are things I shouldn’t do? Um, it’s all about me. And this is, you know, a lot of societies are based around this. We have laws of individual behavior and action. It’s like, it’s some ways it’s in commandments are read in this fashion, do this, don’t do that. You know, honor your mother and father don’t bear false witness. Don’t kill don’t steal. Don’t covet, don’t commit adultery fees, these kinds of things. But what that view of the temple, Mrs is what the first commandment is. The first commandment has nothing to do with me or you. That is so important that God’s first command to Moses and to the people from Mount Sinai had nothing to do with the people. It had nothing to do with what they could do. It was not about their moral behavior. Is that I am the Lord. Your God. Sure. I have no other gods before me. That comes second. And that’s important. I would have other guides don’t have idols, but the first command is I am Lord God. When we talk about sin, we need to start with, Oh God, yes. Sin is not this kind of list of legal parameter under which we can best send it’s about our relationship with God. Hamachi on the pretty court for sin is a, um, an archery term is a term used when you miss the target. And so if you’re pulling, shooting an arrow and you don’t hit the target, you commit Marty, Marty on, you said it was used and appropriated by the church to refer to ways in which we stray from the path of God. But it can only make sense in the context of who God is, what God offers before us. There’s no such thing as a sin apart from relationship with God. In fact, one of the things Paul emphasizes. Is that we only know. Our sin because of our knowledge of God. After we become aware of God’s presence and existence, then we become aware of the distance between ourselves and God. And then became aware that we cannot on our own bridge, that Gulf between ourselves and God. That’s why we need grace and hold her to do that. No. And the early church and throughout history, there’s been like different emphases on where the grace impacts us for instance, and after the reformation and for many, most Protestant churches, the last 500 years salvation, what salvation means what to say? It means that I am saved, that you are saved, has to do with this. What’s called justification, the doctrine of justification and that what Christ does in the atonement and how the resurrection functions for us. And so that is what for the past 500 years ago, the key emphasis on justification others before many, especially in the early part of the church, salvation had to do with sanctification, which means being made Holy, being made more Christ like simplification is about the transformation God continues to do in us. Salvation is about this transformation of going from being a. Child of sin. Holiness. What it means to be a child of sin does not mean to be a person of debauchery or whatever cultural assumptions are it about Someone who is strain? Sure love God has for us and the purpose God has for us. In this life. Again, it’s about our relationship with God. Primarily. Now we get back to this issue for the scripture for today, but love covers a crowd of sins. Love covers a multitude of. Sam love covers it up. Like I covered up my Buster when love covers something up,. Instead of it, continuing to fester, if feels Sandy is healed. Yes. Sin and love do not mix. If we are to understand sin is straight from God. We are to understand, love as connecting with God. It’s following God. Love is seeing as God sees us having the eyes of God, the heart of God in our lives to love someone truly is to see them as God sees them as AP love it. Not as this object set, um, to be used for us and for our advantage. Other people whom we love are not just like supporting actors in the movie of our life. They are individual agents with, with will and purpose. And we see how love lives and what love does most purely in the life of Jesus Christ. This is how love lives. The God who is love lives in this way. And we have many examples in the life of Jesus, of the love of Christ covering a multitude of sins. It’s not just for keeping them, but covering them over, whelming them Christ. Doesn’t just forgive sins. Like you forgive a car loan and move on with your life Christ overwhelmed sin. We see this in the example of this trial, instead of grand standing in front of pilot, inherit Christ before welcomes them with love. We see on the cross with Beretta. Price for realms him with love. He says today you shall be with me in paradise. He says, father, forgive them for, they don’t know what they do. When Jesus comes to the adulterous woman at the well, he doesn’t see her as an adulterous woman, but a woman. Oh, well, his vision is not on sin, but beyond sin. And in that covers, it happened when he is calling the disciples. He calls Matthew, the tax collector covers his sin. When he says to today, I am going to your house. That’s the thing. About Jesus and about love is love. Doesn’t look past sin nor said it covers sin until it is no more. Jesus literally loves the sin out of the people. I think again, we need to understand the sin, not in this moralistic way, but in the specific way of connection and relationship with God and ways that people stray And that sin is not just a thing that other people do, but it is the way that we turn and stretch. From God. And if we refuse to admit it, if we refuse to admit those ways that we turn away from God, those ways that we miss the Mark, we’ll not be able to receive the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ. That covers the crowd of our sins. That covers the multitude of our sins. If we fixate on salvation as purely this thing that happened when we said we were saved, we’re going to miss out on the salvation that continues to be offered this day and each day to you and to me,. Okay,. To cover the multitude of our sins, not to leave us in the same place, but to bring us cross the shore. I’ve used this analogy before, but it’s so clear and helpful to me, bears repeating God, doesn’t come to us as if we are stranded in the middle of Lake Travis and say, how’s it going? Need any help? And we say, yes, cut. Doesn’t just go away after meeting us there, God, hasn’t come around and say like, Oh wow. It looks like you need something. And then leave. God comes, God doesn’t come to us. Like, you know, alleviate or a priest thinking, Oh, I’d love to help better things to do while we’re flailing around in the middle of the water. But if we denied, if we say no, I’m fine. I’m good. I got it. No worries. I got to cover it. If we refuse to receive the help of God’s mercy, we are the ones who suffer. If God is reaching as a handout to pick us up and we refuse to grab it because we refuse to admit we’ve missed the Mark. We are, the ones was that for the season of Easter. If we are going to accept God’s grace and God’s love and admit, we must admit that we need God’s grace and God’s love. And then we can receive the love that covers a multitude of sins. Then we can receive, I love that covers and Smothers sin that heals or sin the heels, the ways that have strayed from God, so that we can see rightly and see God’s love rightly and see ourselves rightly as children of God, that we can be honest with ourselves, with our others is humility and righteousness. And that that is possible for us. It is possible for you to become more. Holy. It is possible for me to become more. Holy. This is not just for other people. It’s not just for people who are already born. Holy. Think about someone in your life who you admire and you respect someone who’s shown courage, thoughtfulness. Well, good. They have points to the God who is love and what good they have comes from the God who has left and what good they have that came to them can be yours. Love covers a multitude of sentence and offers life abundant, the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen. I’ve shared a little bit about how I hiked after college. I tried to hike, hiking a lot during my life, but especially that time after college, when I took a bus from Austin to Maine, I started walking South and I had a lot of gear that first few weeks. And one of the gear I had was like really good, solid hiking boots. They were good boots. I’ve worn them in. Um, they were solid. They were designed for kind of like heavy duty, trucking carrying a lot of stuff going, going back, not kind of a low mileage time. Whereas going through all through hiking on the Appalachian trail is very light. You want to stay light. You have to have high mileage, low weight, especially in the Appalachian trail, as opposed to like the Pacific crest trail where you’re like the movie wild takes place. And, um, it was a lot of places to rehab. There’s a lot of places to get supplies, so you don’t need to carry everything. There’s a lot of places to get water, so you don’t need to carry everything. So I might have noticed I didn’t do a ton of research before I’d been backpacking before. So I took my backpack in here. It was not, um, super helpful. I, in the first week it goes through this, this area of Maine called the hundred mile wilderness. And it’s basically, I mean, it might as well. You called the a hundred mile swamp. It was a swamp. I went through forehead, cover a few rivers and walked probably 20 miles on bog logs, which are logs on a bog it’s bog log. And they keep you from sinking into mud, but they are not the least slick surface bill ever walk on. And so I slipped a lot and my feet fell in the water a lot. And you know, it’s like waterproof boots are great. They keep the water outside your boot. But if water gets in, they keep the water inside your boot as well. So it developed over that first week was a series of blisters that were not comfortable blisters on the heel, especially. And at first I looked through it, I was, I was 50 miles away from any place I could go. There was nothing I could do. And so I had only been about food, limited amount of water. I was able to walk. I went, you know, did the basic triage, the standard of triage comes from military medicine in the 19th century. And it’s like, yeah, there’s three options for a wounded person. Can they walk? Can they not walk? Are they dead? Like these are the three options it’s kind of when you’re need to technically triaged someone like that’s the first question. Can you, are you mobile? Are you a mobile? Are you alive? Um, in this kind of checking order and I was able to triage myself. Okay. I’m alive. Good. All right. I guess I can move good. Okay. I guess then I have to move well. So I kept going the blisters got bigger in general. You know, when you have a blister that’s, that’s bloody bleeding or any kind of wound, there is an option to ignore it. I mean, you know, if I had a cut on my arm, I could, you know, completely ignore it and move on. I could, I could cover it up and ignore it. I could bandage it and try not to think about it, but that’s not, it’s not going to get any better. If I do that, what ended up doing was I switched to tacos. And so I had some tacos for camp shoes, which is also just like a really amateur mistake. Tacos are pretty heavy for sandals. It’s like, you know, Crocs are good. They’re captures. They’re, they’re really liked super light. And it’s like, it gives your feet space to swell. Cause that’s what, after you’re walking 20 miles a day, your feet are going to swell. I went from an EA to a 40 after my hike because my, my foot flattened, but I started drinking tacos, able to dry out the tacos. Didn’t um, irritate the blister and the body healed the body healed. So, you know, a bleeding, pissing, blister is one thing. How can we heal the sin in art life? My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on the works of love on looking at how we can respond to the miracle of Christ’s resurrection. In this season of Easter in practical ways, a few weeks ago, we talked about how love builds up that love is both the foundation and what builds up in people. And that when we see others as children of God, when we see that love is already present, that we can act differently and build up that level. We can see ourselves already as children of God. And we see that love is already present in us. We can build up. And last week, two weeks ago, we talked about how love believes all things believes all because Jesus believes in us. Jesus believes all things. Jesus, doesn’t dismiss you no matter what you have done, or no matter where you have God, Jesus believes last week. Pastor Matt talked about how hope, love, hopes all. And this week we’re talking about how love covers a multitude of sins. These are verbs around love with love. Does this passage comes from first Peter, but it feels with the flow and the logic of first Corinthians 13 love for love covers a multitude of sin. Some translations happen love for canvas multitude or love hides. A multitude. The word in Greek is literally color. I love covers a multitude of sense, but it’s more than a multiage it’s a crowd. It’s the same word as crowd and playfulness. If there’s a crowd out there, there’s a playfulness here to listen to me, crypto, like the music Calypso, doesn’t really similar as well as you, but, but Calypso, we there’s a version of it that is very familiar with us apocalypse Apocalypto. So Apocalypto means to uncover something. The apocalypse of John is the uncovering of Christ’s true plan for all of creation. And the apocalypse is not the four horsemen. Uh, it’s what happens at the end of the book of revelation. It’s an apt behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem descending, and there was no more reaping or crying nor gnashing of teeth. That’s the apocalypse here in first, Peter four is the Calypso CallLoop plank. Love covers a crowd I’ve sent. We need to start with what a sin is. And this is something I know our confirmation crew has talked about. And it’s one of those things that, you know, it’s really good to, to clarify about because sin is a word that may or may not be used in popular parlance, but it’s one of those words that we, most of us think we have a sense of when more often than not are use in English of sin is very different from its use in Greek or in Hebrew. Okay. SIM is commonly thought of as just like bad things like sin or faults or things you don’t want to do vices. So if the language of vice is very, um, personal focuses on what are the things I do, what are things I shouldn’t do? Um, it’s all about me. And this is, you know, a lot of societies are based around this. We have laws of individual behavior and action. It’s like, it’s some ways it’s in commandments are read in this fashion, do this, don’t do that. You know, honor your mother and father don’t bear false witness. Don’t kill don’t steal. Don’t covet, don’t commit adultery fees, these kinds of things. But what that view of the temple, Mrs is what the first commandment is. The first commandment has nothing to do with me or you. That is so important that God’s first command to Moses and to the people from Mount Sinai had nothing to do with the people. It had nothing to do with what they could do. It was not about their moral behavior. Is that I am the Lord. Your God. Sure. I have no other gods before me. That comes second. And that’s important. I would have other guides don’t have idols, but the first command is I am Lord God. When we talk about sin, we need to start with, Oh God, yes. Sin is not this kind of list of legal parameter under which we can best send it’s about our relationship with God. Hamachi on the pretty court for sin is a, um, an archery term is a term used when you miss the target. And so if you’re pulling, shooting an arrow and you don’t hit the target, you commit Marty, Marty on, you said it was used and appropriated by the church to refer to ways in which we stray from the path of God. But it can only make sense in the context of who God is, what God offers before us. There’s no such thing as a sin apart from relationship with God. In fact, one of the things Paul emphasizes. Is that we only know. Our sin because of our knowledge of God. After we become aware of God’s presence and existence, then we become aware of the distance between ourselves and God. And then became aware that we cannot on our own bridge, that Gulf between ourselves and God. That’s why we need grace and hold her to do that. No. And the early church and throughout history, there’s been like different emphases on where the grace impacts us for instance, and after the reformation and for many, most Protestant churches, the last 500 years salvation, what salvation means what to say? It means that I am saved, that you are saved, has to do with this. What’s called justification, the doctrine of justification and that what Christ does in the atonement and how the resurrection functions for us. And so that is what for the past 500 years ago, the key emphasis on justification others before many, especially in the early part of the church, salvation had to do with sanctification, which means being made Holy, being made more Christ like simplification is about the transformation God continues to do in us. Salvation is about this transformation of going from being a. Child of sin. Holiness. What it means to be a child of sin does not mean to be a person of debauchery or whatever cultural assumptions are it about Someone who is strain? Sure love God has for us and the purpose God has for us. In this life. Again, it’s about our relationship with God. Primarily. Now we get back to this issue for the scripture for today, but love covers a crowd of sins. Love covers a multitude of. Sam love covers it up. Like I covered up my Buster when love covers something up,. Instead of it, continuing to fester, if feels Sandy is healed. Yes. Sin and love do not mix. If we are to understand sin is straight from God. We are to understand, love as connecting with God. It’s following God. Love is seeing as God sees us having the eyes of God, the heart of God in our lives to love someone truly is to see them as God sees them as AP love it. Not as this object set, um, to be used for us and for our advantage. Other people whom we love are not just like supporting actors in the movie of our life. They are individual agents with, with will and purpose. And we see how love lives and what love does most purely in the life of Jesus Christ. This is how love lives. The God who is love lives in this way. And we have many examples in the life of Jesus, of the love of Christ covering a multitude of sins. It’s not just for keeping them, but covering them over, whelming them Christ. Doesn’t just forgive sins. Like you forgive a car loan and move on with your life Christ overwhelmed sin. We see this in the example of this trial, instead of grand standing in front of pilot, inherit Christ before welcomes them with love. We see on the cross with Beretta. Price for realms him with love. He says today you shall be with me in paradise. He says, father, forgive them for, they don’t know what they do. When Jesus comes to the adulterous woman at the well, he doesn’t see her as an adulterous woman, but a woman. Oh, well, his vision is not on sin, but beyond sin. And in that covers, it happened when he is calling the disciples. He calls Matthew, the tax collector covers his sin. When he says to today, I am going to your house. That’s the thing. About Jesus and about love is love. Doesn’t look past sin nor said it covers sin until it is no more. Jesus literally loves the sin out of the people. I think again, we need to understand the sin, not in this moralistic way, but in the specific way of connection and relationship with God and ways that people stray And that sin is not just a thing that other people do, but it is the way that we turn and stretch. From God. And if we refuse to admit it, if we refuse to admit those ways that we turn away from God, those ways that we miss the Mark, we’ll not be able to receive the overwhelming love of Jesus Christ. That covers the crowd of our sins. That covers the multitude of our sins. If we fixate on salvation as purely this thing that happened when we said we were saved, we’re going to miss out on the salvation that continues to be offered this day and each day to you and to me,. Okay,. To cover the multitude of our sins, not to leave us in the same place, but to bring us cross the shore. I’ve used this analogy before, but it’s so clear and helpful to me, bears repeating God, doesn’t come to us as if we are stranded in the middle of Lake Travis and say, how’s it going? Need any help? And we say, yes, cut. Doesn’t just go away after meeting us there, God, hasn’t come around and say like, Oh wow. It looks like you need something. And then leave. God comes, God doesn’t come to us. Like, you know, alleviate or a priest thinking, Oh, I’d love to help better things to do while we’re flailing around in the middle of the water. But if we denied, if we say no, I’m fine. I’m good. I got it. No worries. I got to cover it. If we refuse to receive the help of God’s mercy, we are the ones who suffer. If God is reaching as a handout to pick us up and we refuse to grab it because we refuse to admit we’ve missed the Mark. We are, the ones was that for the season of Easter. If we are going to accept God’s grace and God’s love and admit, we must admit that we need God’s grace and God’s love. And then we can receive the love that covers a multitude of sins. Then we can receive, I love that covers and Smothers sin that heals or sin the heels, the ways that have strayed from God, so that we can see rightly and see God’s love rightly and see ourselves rightly as children of God, that we can be honest with ourselves, with our others is humility and righteousness. And that that is possible for us. It is possible for you to become more. Holy. It is possible for me to become more. Holy. This is not just for other people. It’s not just for people who are already born. Holy. Think about someone in your life who you admire and you respect someone who’s shown courage, thoughtfulness. Well, good. They have points to the God who is love and what good they have comes from the God who has left and what good they have that came to them can be yours. Love covers a multitude of sentence and offers life abundant, the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Amen.