Sermon Archive

Certain words have an amazing effect on people. The words “Thank you,” are like that. When we say, “Thank you,” in school the face of our teacher lights up, in the supermarket the cashier’s frown goes away, at home the shoulders of our mail carrier lift up, and the feet of our young next-door neighbor skip away in joy as she calls back, “You’re welcome!”

One of the most famous “Thank you’s” in history is the one I just read to you from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus had healed ten people from a terrible skin disease, all at the same time. But only one of them came back to say thanks. And he wasn’t even from Jesus’s own people, the Jews. He was a foreigner, and he followed a different religion. But he was the one among those healed who came back to say, “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart,” and his words moved Jesus deeply.

Here’s another couple of words that have an amazing effect. Listen: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” When we say these words, the frustrated gesture of our parent, or child, turns into a hug, the clenched jaw of our teacher melts into a smile, the hands-on-hips stance of our boss gives way to a shrug of the shoulders, and the broken relationship with our friend is healed, as he replies, “That’s all right. You’re forgiven!”

Today’s First Lesson comes from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. He lived in the old days—more than 2,500 years ago—but he had a pretty modern understanding of both God and human nature. You children who’re in the Primary Class will remember that you studied Jeremiah’s words last week with Laura Jervis.

Jeremiah understood that most of the people of his time and place had a “stubborn and rebellious heart” (Jer. 5:23). Their hearts had turned away from God, and they were not obeying God’s laws. They didn’t feel true love for God, the One who had created them and provided them with food and water (Jer. 5:24). And they were being mean and unjust to their neighbors, busily grabbing others’ things and piling up lots of stuff for themselves (Jer. 5:26–28).

So Jeremiah pleaded with everyone who lived in his nation, saying, “…[W]ash your heart clean of wickedness so that you may be saved” (Jer. 4:14). And when they went to God’s house, he urged them to ask forgiveness for their bad deeds (Jer. 36:4–8) by offering words to God from one of the temple prayers, like these (Psalm 38:18): “[God,] I confess my [faults]; I am sorry for my sin.” And after they’d prayed that, Jeremiah wanted everyone to go home and start doing good things, like being kind and helpful to others (Jer. 7:1–7).

Jeremiah promised the people that when they’d finally said, “God, we confess our [faults]; we’re sorry for our sin; we’re sorry from the bottom of our hearts,”—when they’d finally said that, then God would say to them, “That’s all right. You’re forgiven!” (Jer. 31:7–14, 34c) And God would then re-establish a close relationship with the people, and God would act to change them so that their hearts would no longer be stubborn. They would be made new, with God’s laws written right there on their hearts. And thereafter, they would do what God wanted them to do because they wanted to do it. They would want to love God back, and they would want to be kind and helpful to others.

Now here’s the point, children and grownups. Because we follow the teachings Jesus and Jeremiah, when we come to God’s house on Sundays, we ask God’s forgiveness for the bad things we do, and we say words like, “God, I confess my [faults]; I’m sorry for my sin.” We say words like these in the part of our worship service called the Prayer of Confession, a prayer that we all say together, out loud. We say “I’m sorry” out loud because feeling sorry inside can feel pretty bad until we let it out by telling God and everyone else just how sorry we are. And we say “I’m sorry” together, with a whole bunch of other people, because it’s helpful to know other people have stubborn hearts too—because then we can all help each other to be honest and to feel better.

When we come near the end of our Prayer of Confession, we ask God to help us not to do those bad things again. We ask God to write God’s laws on our hearts and to be present with us in our hearts, so that from then on we’ll want to do what God wants us to do.

So Jeremiah teaches us to offer prayers of confession. And Jeremiah also teaches us that after we’ve asked God to forgive us for the bad things we’ve done and asked God to help so we won’t do them again, God will assure us that God does indeed forgive us.

Everybody, please turn with me to the Prayer of Confession in your bulletin. You’ll find it begins at the bottom of page 2.

And let’s say the first two lines together again: “Gracious God, we confess that we have not loved You with all our heart.” In those words, we’re telling God that we know we haven’t been thinking enough about God, or praying enough to God, or listening enough to God’s stories and teachings. Especially we haven’t been listening enough to the most important of all God’s teachings: that we should love God with our whole heart and we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

So after we’ve said that we haven’t loved God enough, we go on to say that we also haven’t loved our neighbors enough. And let’s read together the next five lines in the prayer: “We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have sometimes been mean to people who love us. We have ignored people who need our help. We have been careless with water and food and other things You have given us.”

I bet everyone of us can think of someone we’ve been mean to this past week, maybe someone right in our own family. Let’s think about that person now. And I bet each of us can also think of someone who needed our help but wasn't given it, someone at school or in the office. Let’s think about that person now. And, of course, we aren’t being thoughtful of the needs of others when we waste food or water or anything else God has made. For if people continue to be wasteful there won’t be enough of these things to go around. Let’s think about the time this past week we put more water than we needed in the bath tub or pigged out on food, or threw away food we should have eaten.

So we haven’t loved God enough, and we haven’t loved our neighbors enough. Therefore, we say to God “I’m sorry,” and then we go on to ask God to forgive us and change us: to change us, first, by giving us the strength to say “No” to bad things and “Yes” to good things; and to change us, second, by opening our hearts to receive the love God offers us. And we’re able to ask God for these really big things because God came in Jesus to tell us we can ask for those things. So that's the meaning of the last three lines of the prayer. Let's say them now: “Merciful God, forgive us. Strengthen us in all goodness, and open our hearts to Your love. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

Now right after we say those words, the pastor begins the part of the service called the Assurance of Pardon. You see that on page 3.

The pastor says, “Friends and neighbors, children and adults: Hear the good news! God loves us always and without exception.”

God loves us always. Think about the worst thing you’ve ever done. God promises that even that cannot stop God from loving you. And God loves each and every one of us, no exceptions. Think about the worst person you’ve ever known. God has promised never to stop loving even that person, so we can be sure that God will never stop loving us.

And because that is really the best news it’s possible to hear, we all say at the end of the Assurance of Pardon a great big “Thank You, God!” So let’s say together again that last line printed in big, bold black letters: “Thanks be to God!”

Certain words have an amazing effect on the one who hears them.

Whenever we say to God, “I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. Please forgive me,” our broken relationship with God is healed, and God replies, “That’s all right. You’re forgiven!”

And whenever God says to us, “That’s all right. You’re forgiven,” our fears, our anxieties, about the bad things we’ve done just seem to disappear and go away, and we find ourselves saying in relief, “Thank You, God. Thank You from the bottom of our hearts.”

And whenever God hears us say “Thank You,” we can be sure that God’s face lights up!

Let’s pray: