WEBVTT 00:00:00.650 --> 00:00:03.169 Hello, you are listening to Second City Sermons, 00:00:03.270 --> 00:00:06.209 a ministry of Second City Church in Midtown Harrisburg. 00:00:06.870 --> 00:00:08.750 It's our hope that these sermons will draw you 00:00:08.750 --> 00:00:11.169 more into the life of following God, Father, 00:00:11.310 --> 00:00:14.150 Son and Holy Spirit. Please consider coming and 00:00:14.150 --> 00:00:16.469 joining with us each Sunday morning at 10am in 00:00:16.469 --> 00:00:18.809 the heart of Midtown Harrisburg. You can find 00:00:18.809 --> 00:00:22.329 us online at SecondCityChurch .org and on Facebook, 00:00:22.629 --> 00:00:25.030 Instagram and YouTube. We hope you enjoy this 00:00:25.030 --> 00:00:31.579 sermon. God Bless. Let me pray again for us, 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:41.740 Lord. God, we carry crosses around our necks. 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:48.079 We fold palm branches into crosses. We have them 00:00:48.079 --> 00:00:56.380 before us often. And yet, It is our desire, Lord, 00:00:56.380 --> 00:01:01.460 tonight to see it maybe more clearly, to have 00:01:01.460 --> 00:01:10.379 our gaze fixed more intently. Not just on a cross, 00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:14.359 but on you, the one who went to the cross for 00:01:14.359 --> 00:01:22.609 us. God, would you do this tonight in us? Would 00:01:22.609 --> 00:01:25.750 your Holy Spirit move among us that we might 00:01:25.750 --> 00:01:30.530 wonder again, wonder afresh at the extent of 00:01:30.530 --> 00:01:35.150 your love and your grace for us. Hear this prayer, 00:01:35.150 --> 00:01:40.150 Lord. May the words in my mouth and the meditations 00:01:40.150 --> 00:01:43.430 of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. Amen. 00:01:45.750 --> 00:01:49.170 Many of you are probably familiar with the Dutch 00:01:49.170 --> 00:01:55.959 Christian, Corey Ten Boen. She survived the horrors 00:01:55.959 --> 00:02:00.439 of the concentration camp. She had been harboring 00:02:00.439 --> 00:02:07.000 the Jews. She said, there is no pit so deep that 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:13.159 Christ is not deeper still. I suggest you tonight 00:02:13.159 --> 00:02:17.360 that sin makes us less human. Sin is a dehumanizing 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:23.400 thing. Now what it does is sin promises us sort 00:02:23.400 --> 00:02:28.219 of a godlikeness. What it does actually is it 00:02:28.219 --> 00:02:36.080 makes us subhuman. It humanizes us. In 1943, 00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:40.259 just months before Corey Ten Boom would be arrested 00:02:40.259 --> 00:02:43.180 and forced into the Ravensburg concentration 00:02:43.180 --> 00:02:46.379 camp, so right in the middle of World War II, 00:02:46.810 --> 00:02:49.870 The great author C .S. Lewis, whom I hope also 00:02:49.870 --> 00:02:52.430 you are familiar with, he gave a series of lectures 00:02:52.430 --> 00:02:55.889 at the University of Durham. Those lectures became 00:02:55.889 --> 00:02:58.969 one of his well -known books called The Abolition 00:02:58.969 --> 00:03:06.189 of Man. Abolition, the doing away with man. His 00:03:06.189 --> 00:03:08.909 argument, which is much easier to make in the 00:03:08.909 --> 00:03:11.889 middle of war when your country is being bombed. 00:03:12.169 --> 00:03:15.050 is that the world was losing its sense of what 00:03:15.050 --> 00:03:19.330 it is to be human. Our technological advances 00:03:19.330 --> 00:03:23.069 were, yet once again, as they continue to do, 00:03:23.610 --> 00:03:27.729 being used to destroy human life, to depersonalize 00:03:27.729 --> 00:03:32.250 others, to dehumanize. He begins the book largely 00:03:32.250 --> 00:03:34.969 talking, if you've read it, about a British textbook 00:03:34.969 --> 00:03:40.169 that was used in his day. because he was arguing 00:03:40.169 --> 00:03:43.370 that the intellectual and the cultural movements 00:03:43.370 --> 00:03:46.969 of modernity were a significant part of the problem 00:03:46.969 --> 00:03:49.710 of this abolition of man, this dehumanization. 00:03:50.930 --> 00:03:54.289 Modernity was dehumanizing. And of course, what 00:03:54.289 --> 00:03:58.490 do we say of the origins of modernity? The father 00:03:58.490 --> 00:04:02.810 of modern modern modernity philosophy is often 00:04:02.810 --> 00:04:06.409 called Descartes. Of course had the famous phrase, 00:04:06.430 --> 00:04:10.969 cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. And 00:04:10.969 --> 00:04:14.229 of course that was replacing St. Augustine's 00:04:14.229 --> 00:04:19.610 famous phrase, crede ut intelligis, believe in 00:04:19.610 --> 00:04:22.050 order that you might understand, that you might 00:04:22.050 --> 00:04:25.310 know. Which is to say that modernity is sort 00:04:25.310 --> 00:04:29.889 of founded on this idea of the supremacy of humanity. 00:04:31.350 --> 00:04:42.089 You can move God aside. We are enough. Sin promises 00:04:42.089 --> 00:04:49.269 us to be like God, can replace him. But it makes 00:04:49.269 --> 00:04:54.129 us less human, subhuman, dehumanizes. Think with 00:04:54.129 --> 00:04:56.689 me back to the garden, our original parents and 00:04:56.689 --> 00:04:59.329 their first rejection of God. The serpent comes 00:04:59.329 --> 00:05:02.490 to them, right? And he promises them to be like 00:05:02.490 --> 00:05:07.689 God. will not surely die for God knows that when 00:05:07.689 --> 00:05:10.230 you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you 00:05:10.230 --> 00:05:17.649 will Be like God And promises us this sort of 00:05:17.649 --> 00:05:24.529 godlikeness But makes us less human What are 00:05:24.529 --> 00:05:27.310 it what are its effects right initially its effects 00:05:27.310 --> 00:05:31.149 are hiding Hovering up that's the most immediate 00:05:31.149 --> 00:05:33.370 thing And then quickly, if you know the story, 00:05:33.490 --> 00:05:38.649 it's blame shifting. But then just as soon as 00:05:38.649 --> 00:05:44.250 they are out of the garden, what happens? If 00:05:44.250 --> 00:05:49.410 children were filled with envy, rage, revenge, 00:05:50.529 --> 00:05:57.250 and murder, sin is dehumanizing. And then you 00:05:57.250 --> 00:05:59.850 may remember this a little bit. At the end of 00:05:59.850 --> 00:06:03.129 the chapter four in Genesis, you have Lamech, 00:06:03.329 --> 00:06:08.209 Lamech who takes two wives, and then he has this 00:06:08.209 --> 00:06:11.709 song where he says, if Cain's revenge was great, 00:06:11.829 --> 00:06:14.449 mine will be sevenfold. It will be more complete. 00:06:15.350 --> 00:06:19.610 It will be more dehumanizing. Rejection of God 00:06:19.610 --> 00:06:24.970 leads not to a God likeness, a subhuman reality. 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:29.319 And if we could go through more stories in the 00:06:29.319 --> 00:06:30.740 scriptures, I'll just give you a couple kind 00:06:30.740 --> 00:06:33.240 of quick ones. Think with me of the beginning 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:35.699 of the next chapter or the next book in the Bible, 00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:40.079 the book of Exodus. Ancient Pharaohs were considered 00:06:40.079 --> 00:06:47.019 divine, gods, replacements for the true God. 00:06:48.339 --> 00:06:51.620 And what do we find that Pharaoh does with this 00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:56.680 so -called divine reality, God -like reality. 00:06:57.899 --> 00:07:04.040 He enslaves. We read he murders babies. He hardens 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:06.980 the workload on others. He treats others as though 00:07:06.980 --> 00:07:12.879 they are subhuman. God -like thing that is promised 00:07:12.879 --> 00:07:23.060 with sin dehumanizes. He enslaves. promotes violence, 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:27.339 dehumanization. If we went a little bit farther 00:07:27.339 --> 00:07:29.420 along, one of the things that happens that once 00:07:29.420 --> 00:07:33.180 these Israelites are saved out from that, and 00:07:33.180 --> 00:07:35.959 they make the long journey, often rejecting God, 00:07:35.980 --> 00:07:37.459 and the journey gets longer, and they're finally 00:07:37.459 --> 00:07:41.500 brought into the promised land, having followed 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:45.220 Moses and Joshua, they're then there in the promised 00:07:45.220 --> 00:07:47.360 land. And the book of Judges, one of the refrains, 00:07:47.459 --> 00:07:53.319 the refrain of the book of Judges, tells the 00:07:53.319 --> 00:07:55.920 story of them rejecting God and doing their own 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:00.100 thing. Everyone did what was right in his own 00:08:00.100 --> 00:08:06.120 eyes. I am the arbiter. But what you find story 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:12.560 after story is the destabilization of the people. 00:08:14.019 --> 00:08:17.620 violence again and again, dehumanization again 00:08:17.620 --> 00:08:19.519 and again, as they lived into this dynamic that 00:08:19.519 --> 00:08:21.360 they're just going to do what is right in their 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:29.720 own eyes. Sin promises godlikeness. I can decide. 00:08:29.800 --> 00:08:36.220 I can do. But it makes us subhuman. Think of 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:38.840 the Ten Commandments with me. Historically, you 00:08:38.840 --> 00:08:40.159 may know this, the Ten Commandments are kind 00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:43.990 of broken down into two tables. oftentimes it's 00:08:43.990 --> 00:08:47.190 thought of as the table that is God word and 00:08:47.190 --> 00:08:51.009 towards our fellow humans. You can think of, 00:08:51.269 --> 00:08:53.710 you know, you shall have no other gods, you shall 00:08:53.710 --> 00:08:56.029 not worship idols, you shall not take the Lord's 00:08:56.029 --> 00:08:58.889 name in vain, honor the Sabbath, orient your 00:08:58.889 --> 00:09:01.389 time as God has instructed and God has oriented 00:09:01.389 --> 00:09:04.269 His. All these have to do with our relationship 00:09:04.269 --> 00:09:07.990 towards God, right? But then the commandments 00:09:07.990 --> 00:09:11.330 that flow from these have to do with our relationships 00:09:11.330 --> 00:09:19.230 with others. Honor your father and mother, but 00:09:19.230 --> 00:09:21.789 also lying and stealing and adultery and not 00:09:21.789 --> 00:09:27.070 coveting and all the rest flow out of this. And 00:09:27.070 --> 00:09:30.409 what happens when you actually don't follow the 00:09:30.409 --> 00:09:31.950 first ones is that you don't follow the second 00:09:31.950 --> 00:09:34.629 ones because rejection of God is the dehumanization 00:09:34.629 --> 00:09:41.500 of others. So again, sin promises us to be like 00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:44.340 God, but makes us subhuman. And think about this. 00:09:45.299 --> 00:09:46.799 The first one that's oriented towards humans, 00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:50.779 murder. What does murder do, but make us believe 00:09:50.779 --> 00:09:54.700 that we are the ones that decide when life can 00:09:54.700 --> 00:09:59.000 happen or not, when somebody can exist or not? 00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:07.870 God -like action is dehumanizing. What does adultery 00:10:07.870 --> 00:10:11.809 do? What does lust do? What does pornography 00:10:11.809 --> 00:10:18.730 do but make others objects? Objects for our use. 00:10:19.450 --> 00:10:26.129 Sin dehumanizes. Sin dehumanizes. What does stealing 00:10:26.129 --> 00:10:29.990 do but make us the one who decides who has what 00:10:29.990 --> 00:10:36.649 possessions? We can be like God. And yet it's 00:10:36.250 --> 00:10:39.070 dehumanizes others. What does lying and deceit 00:10:39.070 --> 00:10:41.870 and covening and all the rest do but make us 00:10:41.870 --> 00:10:45.509 believe that we can control the narrative? We 00:10:45.509 --> 00:10:50.429 can decide what others believe or not. A God 00:10:50.429 --> 00:10:53.909 -like reality that is dehumanizing. Again and 00:10:53.909 --> 00:10:57.090 again and again, again and again, we see this. 00:10:57.629 --> 00:11:01.169 Sin promises this idea. You can be like God. 00:11:03.230 --> 00:11:07.210 What it does is it makes us less than human, 00:11:09.409 --> 00:11:15.710 less than ourselves. Is it any wonder that on 00:11:15.710 --> 00:11:22.769 the first holy week, way back when, you know, 00:11:22.769 --> 00:11:24.389 there's a lot of events in the gospels, of course, 00:11:24.470 --> 00:11:26.629 that take place that we've recounted some this 00:11:26.629 --> 00:11:30.080 week together. But in that week, some of the 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:32.720 Pharisees get some of their crew to go up to 00:11:32.720 --> 00:11:37.240 Jesus and ask him about paying taxes to Caesar. 00:11:37.799 --> 00:11:41.100 And the very coin that they would have shown 00:11:41.100 --> 00:11:48.620 had both the visage of Caesar on it, but it also 00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:50.919 would have had written on it, Tiberius Caesar, 00:11:51.220 --> 00:11:57.610 Augustus, son of the divine, Augustus. to be 00:11:57.610 --> 00:12:01.549 claiming to be like God. And it's in that context 00:12:01.549 --> 00:12:05.929 where Caesar was the divine, where people would 00:12:05.929 --> 00:12:09.029 literally have to offer incense to Caesar and 00:12:09.029 --> 00:12:13.690 bow down and say, Caesar's Lord. It was in that 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:20.730 context in the world of the divine Augustus that 00:12:20.730 --> 00:12:26.659 the instrument of torture was created. The most 00:12:26.659 --> 00:12:33.080 dehumanizing instrument of torture came to be. 00:12:33.399 --> 00:12:36.779 Form of torture that hung you for the world to 00:12:36.779 --> 00:12:40.600 see as you died. And the cross is where people 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:49.159 hung, often naked, almost always publicly, slowly, 00:12:50.159 --> 00:12:56.029 slowly dying. Cross. is where Jesus would go 00:12:56.029 --> 00:13:01.330 after a throne, sorry, a crown of thorns was 00:13:01.330 --> 00:13:05.429 pressed upon him. It wasn't a real crown. They 00:13:05.429 --> 00:13:09.129 knew he was being mocked. They were treating 00:13:09.129 --> 00:13:16.370 him as less than worth dignity, a subhuman. You 00:13:16.370 --> 00:13:19.970 know that he was instructed to carry his cross 00:13:19.970 --> 00:13:23.549 out. to the place of the skull, where all the 00:13:23.549 --> 00:13:29.870 crowds were, treating him as subhuman, less than, 00:13:30.250 --> 00:13:36.610 dehumanized, across where he would be nailed 00:13:36.610 --> 00:13:42.549 to and raised up, for all to mock him, to laugh 00:13:42.549 --> 00:13:47.470 at him, to scoff him. It was dehumanizing at 00:13:47.470 --> 00:13:52.639 its best. If there's a death that epitomizes 00:13:52.639 --> 00:13:56.960 the dehumanizing effects of sin, it's the cross. 00:14:00.299 --> 00:14:05.059 Where man is enthroned as God, dehumanization 00:14:05.059 --> 00:14:10.279 runs rampant. Because sin promises us a God -like 00:14:10.279 --> 00:14:14.639 reality, it is actually a dehumanizing thing. 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:19.240 It makes us sub -human. But here's the wonder. 00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:26.860 But in the providence, in the unbelievable thought 00:14:26.860 --> 00:14:33.919 of God, that is how Jesus dies for us. The most 00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:36.799 dehumanizing death, and that is what he went 00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:42.860 to for us. That's where Jesus hangs. That's where 00:14:42.860 --> 00:14:48.100 Jesus dies. Because Jesus does not just come 00:14:48.409 --> 00:14:51.389 among us as one of us, which we celebrate wonderfully 00:14:51.389 --> 00:14:55.149 at Christmas. He does not just come among us 00:14:55.149 --> 00:14:59.190 and die some kind of way, but he dies the most 00:14:59.190 --> 00:15:03.509 dehumanizing kind of way. He goes to the place 00:15:03.509 --> 00:15:07.289 that epitomizes the effects of sin in the world 00:15:07.289 --> 00:15:11.730 that he might bear our sin in his body on the 00:15:11.730 --> 00:15:15.950 tree. He not only gives up the glory of heaven 00:15:15.950 --> 00:15:19.809 to walk among us, but to the go to the place 00:15:19.809 --> 00:15:27.450 that epitomizes the effects of sin. Our sin is 00:15:27.450 --> 00:15:31.110 where we decide that we must be our own gods, 00:15:31.190 --> 00:15:36.309 but it's God Himself who comes among us and dies 00:15:36.309 --> 00:15:39.149 for us the very death that shouts the effects 00:15:39.149 --> 00:15:42.570 of sin. You want to see the effects of sin, you 00:15:42.570 --> 00:15:46.250 look at how we dehumanize others, how we decide 00:15:46.250 --> 00:15:51.230 how we are God. And one of the greatest pictures 00:15:51.230 --> 00:15:57.409 of this is a cross. And yet, Corey Ten Boon says, 00:15:58.289 --> 00:16:04.789 there is no pit so deep that Christ is not deeper 00:16:04.789 --> 00:16:13.029 still. If you were to swim off the coast of Italy, 00:16:13.149 --> 00:16:17.509 just north of Portofino in the Bay of San Fruttuoso, 00:16:17.970 --> 00:16:20.919 if I can say that right. and you were to dive 00:16:20.919 --> 00:16:25.299 down 56 feet, you would find a bronze sculpture. 00:16:25.340 --> 00:16:28.179 That bronze sculpture was submerged in those 00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:33.899 waters on August 29th in 1954, 10 years after 00:16:33.899 --> 00:16:39.179 Cory Ten Boom was arrested. And there, if you 00:16:39.179 --> 00:16:42.740 drove down there, you would see this large sculpture 00:16:42.740 --> 00:16:47.879 of Christ and his hands are reached up. His hands 00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:51.490 are reached up like this. And I want you to think 00:16:51.490 --> 00:16:56.009 of this, instead of this massive bronze sculpture, 00:16:56.210 --> 00:16:58.190 life -size sculpture being installed in this 00:16:58.190 --> 00:17:05.869 great church or a great museum, it's their submarine, 00:17:06.430 --> 00:17:09.329 right? Below the water, below the surface of 00:17:09.329 --> 00:17:12.750 the water, which is to say it's even below the 00:17:12.750 --> 00:17:16.529 surface where we exist. In some ways, it's almost 00:17:16.529 --> 00:17:23.019 subhuman. It's below our dwelling. And it's a 00:17:23.019 --> 00:17:26.819 lovely picture because that is exactly what Jesus 00:17:26.819 --> 00:17:31.200 does on the cross. He goes to the place where 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:37.519 we are sort of subhuman, takes our sin upon himself, 00:17:37.799 --> 00:17:42.799 which dehumanizes others. And what he's doing 00:17:42.799 --> 00:17:46.960 there in our subhuman reality is lifting us up. 00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:50.849 As His hands are outstretched, that is exactly 00:17:50.849 --> 00:17:54.549 what He is doing. It's going to the low place 00:17:54.549 --> 00:17:58.829 that even there He might lift us up out from 00:17:58.829 --> 00:18:02.490 our sin. There is no pit so deep. There's no 00:18:02.490 --> 00:18:05.690 pit so deep that Christ is not deeper still. 00:18:09.269 --> 00:18:12.809 And we see that wonderfully in the deeps off 00:18:12.809 --> 00:18:17.509 that seacoast. But we also see it more clearly 00:18:17.509 --> 00:18:19.690 and more wonderfully in what we celebrate tonight. 00:18:20.849 --> 00:18:25.230 That Jesus goes to a cross for you. He bears 00:18:25.230 --> 00:18:28.549 the dehumanizing effects of sin. He bears your 00:18:28.549 --> 00:18:36.410 sin upon himself on that tree. Thin promises 00:18:36.410 --> 00:18:40.589 us a god -like -ness. Brothers and sisters, it 00:18:40.589 --> 00:18:45.210 makes you less human, subhuman. But it's where 00:18:45.210 --> 00:18:48.490 the cross at the cross this place of dehumanization 00:18:48.490 --> 00:18:51.630 where Christ's arms are outstretched that he 00:18:51.630 --> 00:18:57.650 goes to deep place and he lifts us up May pray 00:18:57.650 --> 00:19:04.769 for us Lord pray that we would hate our sin I 00:19:04.769 --> 00:19:08.730 pray that we would see how it wrecks ourselves 00:19:08.730 --> 00:19:15.210 and others And I pray that we would see how it 00:19:15.210 --> 00:19:19.269 makes us less than what you intended for us. 00:19:20.470 --> 00:19:23.849 That it dehumanizes not only those who we sin 00:19:23.849 --> 00:19:27.910 against, but we ourselves. And so God, I pray 00:19:27.910 --> 00:19:30.569 that we would throw it at the cross where you 00:19:30.569 --> 00:19:35.150 took our sin upon yourself. God, that we would 00:19:35.150 --> 00:19:39.710 rest in this reality that you, Christ, Lord Jesus, 00:19:39.730 --> 00:19:44.740 you died for us. That though we rejected you 00:19:44.740 --> 00:19:46.859 in the garden long ago, that we rejected you 00:19:46.859 --> 00:19:49.279 right out of the garden, that we rejected you 00:19:49.279 --> 00:19:56.799 time and time and time again. You came for us. 00:19:57.359 --> 00:20:03.119 You died for us. There is no depth that you would 00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:07.140 not go to. There's no shame that you would not 00:20:07.140 --> 00:20:12.920 bear. There is no sin to grave. that you would 00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:15.680 not lift us up as your hands were outstretched 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:25.180 on that cross. Just again, the wonder of your 00:20:25.180 --> 00:20:34.900 death. Amen. Thank you for listening to Second 00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:37.700 City Sermons podcast. We hope this sermon has 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:39.720 encouraged you to worship God and to celebrate 00:20:39.720 --> 00:20:42.569 the gospel of Jesus. Please consider subscribing 00:20:42.569 --> 00:20:45.430 to this podcast and joining us in person each 00:20:45.430 --> 00:20:48.289 Sunday at 10 a .m. You can find us online at 00:20:48.289 --> 00:20:51.450 SecondCityChurch .org and on Instagram, Facebook, 00:20:51.710 --> 00:20:54.210 and YouTube. Thanks again for listening. God 00:20:54.210 --> 00:20:54.549 bless.