sermon: The Scarlet Letter

Forgive Others as He Forgives Us
John Plunkett
Given 30-Apr-05; Tape #717C; 71 minutes

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Recently, my wife, Tricia, and I watched and enjoyed two movie versions of the interesting and informative nineteenth-century novel The Scarlet Letter, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read the novel last year, and I would highly recommend it to virtually all age groups. Today, as we keep this Last Day of Unleavened Bread, I would like to focus on some of the good, strong lessons that we can learn from this story.

First, though, let me ask what is pictured by this seventh and last Day of Unleavened Bread. We think of the number seven in the Bible as being the number of perfection and completion. Before and during the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread season, we are taught by God to think a lot about sin. We think of:

• The children of Israel coming completely out of Egypt.
• The people of God's church coming completely out of sin.
• Coming completely out of Satan's world.
• Our complete rejection of sin.

These are all very good topics on which to focus as we celebrate this special day. However, there are some others on which I would like to home in this afternoon as we draw close to the end of this spring Feast season:

• The complete forgiveness of our sins by God
• His complete forgetting of our sins

The story of The Scarlet Letter, which is based on actual events the details of which Hawthorne unearthed in some dusty old records, is set in seventeenth-century New England. A young woman by the name of Hester Prynne, is publicly tried, pilloried, shamed, and imprisoned by a Puritan court for her sin and crime of adultery. Hester has an additional penalty inflicted upon her, however. She is forced to wear a large, embroidered, red letter "A" on the front of her dress whenever she ventures out in public. The letter "A," of course, stands for "adulteress." This additional, continuing punishment is meant to shame her perpetually and to frighten others into avoiding committing this same sin. Nowhere in his book does Hawthorne condone the sin of adultery. He does, however, effectively expose the equally sinful hypocrisy of Hester's self-appointed, unofficial, self-righteous critics and gossips, as well as the lack of Christian mercy on behalf of her judges.

How does this story apply to God's church today? We do not live in seventeenth-century Puritan America. We live in the bustling twenty-first century, and today's immoral world generally cares little about the twin sins of adultery and fornication. Still, if a woman has a baby out of wedlock, for the few of us who do care, these particular sins carry some obvious built-in penalties and shame.

A few weeks ago, the parents and the young people of our Victoria congregation viewed the United Church of God's stunning DVD presentation, "Sex Has a Price Tag" by the internationally-acclaimed family and crisis counselor, Pam Stenzel. We were all shocked as to how very behind the times we had been regarding the myriad horrible dangers of extra-marital sexual activity.

Despite their many dangers, adultery and fornication are fundamentally no worse than any other sin any of us might commit. With the evidence of the young mother's expanded waistline and the eventual, resultant infant, the results are just more obvious! However, there has never been a need for the mother of a child born out of wedlock to have to endure the added shame of wearing a large, red letter "A" or "F" on her bosom.

Again, the sins of an adulteress and her partner—the adulterer or fornicator—are really no worse than any other sin; for example, the sins of lack of mercy or gossiping about fellow sinners. We may not have committed the sins of adultery or fornication (or we may not think so), but how would we like to be forced to wear the letter "G" because we habitually gossip? Or the letter "M" because we lack true Christian mercy and are thus branded as merciless?

These sins are small compared with immorality, are they not? No, they are not! To God, there is no such thing as a "small sin" in the same way as there is no such thing as a "white lie." Sin is sin, and every single sin has contributed to the death of Jesus Christ! Yes, every sin, whether it be pre-marital or extra-marital sexual activity, mass murder, lack of mercy, or a seemingly harmless gossip session. In this regard, John Ritenbaugh writes in his May 2005 Forerunner magazine "Personal" entitled "An Unpayable Debt and Obligation":

Though all are sinners, some have incurred more debt through the way of life each lived. Some are outwardly respectable, decent, and clean living, while others have fallen into gross, sensual, and open transgression?. One's sins may be blacker and more numerous than another's, but upon considering degrees of guilt and the complex motivations behind each one's sins, we may not be so quick to judge?

I would like to pause here to emphasize that it is not my wish to pick on the sins of adultery and fornication. I just wish to use them as cases in point.

Some time ago, I was talking with the mother of a young man who had sired a child out of wedlock. Nine months of pregnancy and a cute new baby made it obvious to everyone that he and his girlfriend had committed the sin of fornication. During our conversation, I was shocked by one observation from the young man's mother. I do not know whether it was just a side-comment or whether she had thought her words out in advance; but, after telling us of the pregnancy, almost as an aside, she said, "Yes. But we have all done it, have we not?"

My first astonished reaction was to answer with a resounding, "No! We have not all done it! We have not all had pre-marital sex! We have not all fathered or borne what used to be termed 'illegitimate children'!"

Despite my amazement, though, I tried hard to exercise diplomacy; I merely answered her comment with a neutral clearing of the throat. However, I kept this new grandmother's observation in my heart, and I thought very much about it during the following months. As I explored my thoughts on her comment, I began to remember Jesus' admonitions; and I eventually came to realize how right that young man's mother was and how wrong and self-righteous I had been.

Matthew 5:27-28 You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

What mature human being—except Jesus Himself, of course—has never lusted after a member of the opposite sex—even if only a little? What? Only a little? Just a little? Have we not already established that, to God, there are no little sins? We know very well by this time, by this Last Day of Unleavened Bread, that even a little leaven leavens the whole lump

I Corinthians 5:6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Galatians 5:9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Perhaps the best-known scriptural example of sexual immorality is the one recorded in John chapter 8:

John 8: 1-8 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?" This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

Did you ever wonder what Jesus was writing on the ground, in the dust?

John 8:9-11 Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more."

These scribes and Pharisees were exposed by Jesus as merciless, self-appointed, self-righteous judges like Hester Prynne's Puritan magistrates in The Scarlet Letter. Yes, these scribes and Pharisees surely were self-righteous, but were they really righteous? Jesus knew they were not—and they knew they were not!

Again, what did Jesus write in dust with His finger? We do not know for sure, of course, but we may speculate. Was He, perhaps, jotting down times? Dates? Names? Places? Of the woman's accusers' sins, perhaps? Perhaps sexual sins? Perhaps encounters with this very same woman? Did you ever ask yourself how this woman's accusers knew exactly where to catch her in adultery? What about her partner? Why did he get off so lightly? If they caught her, surely they must have caught him at the same time. Why was he not also dragged into the temple and brought before Jesus? Was the adulterer somehow not as guilty as the adulteress? Was his sin somehow not as great as hers? Perhaps he was a crony of the scribes and Pharisees. Perhaps the whole episode was staged, as might be implied by verse 6, in their efforts to trap Jesus.

Again, please do not misunderstand me. Let me repeat, that I am not picking on those who have fathered or borne children out of wedlock. However, neither am I condoning adultery or fornication. There is no doubt at all that both activities are sins.

Like the author of The Scarlet Letter, Jesus—the same YHWH who engraved the seventh commandment into the tablet of stone, possibly with the same finger with which He wrote in the dust of the temple grounds—does not condone sins of fornication or adultery. He thunders out His command to all generations:

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Although Jesus exercised great compassion on the adulteress that day, He also warned her very firmly, "Go, and sin no more!"

What about fornication—pre-marital sexual activity? Is it any less sinful than adultery? Not at all! Through the apostle Paul, God repeatedly commands His people:

• Flee fornication! (I Corinthians 6:18)
• Avoid fornication! (I Corinthians 7:2)
• Let fornication not be once named among you! (Ephesians 5:3)
• Abstain from fornication! (I Thessalonians 4:3)

After reviewing these well-known scriptures and others, and after thinking and praying much more about these things, I came to the conclusion that that young man's mother was right! We have all done it! We never talk about it. We do not like to even think about it. Nevertheless, it is true! From God's point of view, if we have lusted, then we have thought about it. If we have thought about it, then we have as good as done it! All of us! I will admit that I have done it! If you are honest with yourself, you, too, will admit—not to me or to anyone else, but between you and God—that you have done it, too. I hope we have all repented of our sins of fornication and adultery, whether committed in body or in thought.

Referring again to The Scarlet Letter, it is probable that the Puritans took their authority for their harsh stance on the public shaming of adulterers from scriptures such as these:

Ecclesiastes 12:14 For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Matthew 10:26 Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22 For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.

Luke 12:2-3 For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.

I Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts.

More questions come to mind as a result of reading these well-known scriptures. Some of the questions are quite disturbing. For example:

• Is it fair and right that one's sins be made public by fallible, human, ecclesiastical courts or church councils?
• Does any man—any fellow sinner—have the right to make our sins public?
• Will God make our sins public at the return of Jesus Christ?

The answers to the first two questions are quite obvious: No! The answer to the last of the three questions is both simple and comforting: God will not reveal what He has forgiven, and He cannot reveal what He has forgotten. Yes, forgotten! Let us explore this concept a little.

In a repentant attitude, David begged God to forget his sins:

Psalms 25:7 Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness' sake, O LORD.

Psalm 51: 1, 9 According to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions? Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Were David's earnest requests merely wishful thinking? Not at all. Is God like those cruel, unforgiving scribes, Pharisees, and Puritans we have been discussing? No. Of course He is not. We well know that He is infinitely forgiving, loving, and merciful—BUT!—but He does require repentance. He wants—no, He demands—of His children a real, sincere change of direction. Then He will forgive us.

Isaiah 1:16-18 Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. "Come now, and let us reason together," says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

Even as we human parents will happily forgive an errant child if he or she shows real fruits of change, if we will truly repent, then God will gladly forgive our sins and will even forget them. Though our former sins were glaring like letters and words boldly written in brilliant red ink on a white page, upon our sincere repentance, God causes that red ink to become like invisible ink, which is designed to turn white and totally disappear:

Isaiah 43:25 I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.

Jeremiah 31:34 "No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," says the LORD. "For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

Hebrews 8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.

Hebrews 10:17 Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember more.

Because of our sins, we are all guilty of the death of our Elder Brother, the Son of God. However, our loving Father tells us again and again that if we will repent of our sins, He is so very willing to forgive them. Yes, and even to forget them! To totally blot them out of His perfect memory, just as though we had never committed them!

Have you ever erased a favourite audio tape and wished that you had not? You fast-forward through the tape in the desperate hope that its contents are still somehow there, but all you hear is total silence! The tape is blank! You computer users, have you ever erased an important file by mistake and have not been able to get it back? You search and search in the vain hope that your file is still hiding somewhere on your hard disk. Alas, no! Even Norton Utilities will not bring it back. It is gone forever! These two common illustrations picture how totally and completely God is willing to forgive and forget the sins of His children, if and when we sincerely repent.

Yes, when God decides to forgive and forget our sins, they are completely gone out of His perfect memory. He, though, did not lose them by some mistake. He forced them out of His memory. He erased them—on purpose!

To a certain degree, we are to emulate God in this forgetting of our sins. If you have sincerely repented of a sin, you should not keep dragging it back up and beating yourself up over it. When God has forgiven and forgotten it, so should you (but with a certain qualification, to which we will come presently).

As we mentioned earlier, one of the lessons of this Last Day of Unleavened Bread is that we must come out of sin completely. We believe that the ancient Israelites marched through the Red Sea on this very day. When they were faced with this vast barrier of salt water, what did they do? Even after God had miraculously taken them through that huge obstacle, every time they faced other difficulties, what did they do? Did they fall down before their great God? After all, had they not seen the working of His mighty hand over and over again? Did they humbly plead with Him for the help that they needed?

No, they did not. The response of so many of them to any trial and difficulty was a burning desire to go back to Egypt. Let us take a little time to study this proclivity:

Exodus 13:17 Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt."

God knew in advance of the tests He planned to put them through that they would react this way.

Exodus 14:11-12 Then they said to Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, 'Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians?' For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness."

Exodus 16:3 And the children of Israel said to them, "Oh, that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

As slaves in Egypt, had they really enjoyed such a fine diet? Did they really believe that God had taken the time and effort to bring them out of Egypt just to kill them in the wilderness? It appears that their memories and their logic may have been perverted by their apparent hunger! Then God decided to give them another test—this time, a trial of thirst:

Exodus 17:3 And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and said, "Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"

I have often wondered about the mention of livestock in this and other similar verses. If the Israelites owned cattle, sheep, and goats, could they really have suffered from the level of hunger of which they complained in other verses?

Numbers 11:4-6 Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!"

Here we see another example of those perverted Israelite memories! Notice, as well, how they despised the miraculous manna, as well as the God who sent it and whom it symbolized (Deuteronomy 8:3; John 6:31-58).

number 11:18-20 "Then you shall say to the people, 'Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, "Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt." Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the LORD who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, "Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?"'"

Again, we see how the ungrateful Israelites proved to God how much they despised Him.

Numbers 14:1-4 So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, "If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the LORD brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" So they said to one another, "Let us select a leader [KJV: captain] and return to Egypt."

Our short-sighted, logic-challenged forbearers rejected their true Captain (Hebrews 2:10) and sought another who would lead them back to Egypt, to slavery, and to probable death!

Numbers 20:1-5 Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there. Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. And the people contended with Moses and spoke, saying: "If only we had died when our brethren died before the LORD! Why have you brought up the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink."

This "evil place," as the Israelites so foolishly and inaccurately described it, was Kadesh-Barnea, which means "the holy place in the desert." Why was it holy? It was the gathering place—the jumping-off point—for their final entry into the Promised Land. However, because of their wretched and faithless attitudes, God turned this generation of Israelites back from completion of their goal. Is it not ironic, seeing that they desired Egypt so much, that God actually sent them back in that general direction from Kadesh? Of course, He did not allow them to get all the way to Egypt but caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty long years.

Numbers 21:4-5 Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread."

To what depths of folly could these people sink? Did they not realize that it was their own murmuring that had caused them to remain in the wilderness? In addition, how could they so openly loathe the wonderful manna which God miraculously sent them each day, this "bread" that represented Christ Himself?

Deuteronomy 1:27 "And you complained in your tents, and said, 'Because the LORD hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.'"

These are like the totally untruthful and unreasonable ramblings that one might expect of the mentally deranged!

Deuteronomy 17:15-16 "When you come to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, 'I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,' you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the LORD has said to you, 'You shall not return that way again.'"

Even after their time of punishment and wandering was over, when they were settled in their new land, God, looking hundreds of years into the future to the time of their first human king, knew that that there would still be a strong inclination amongst the Israelites to want to go back to Egypt. Like a huge electro-magnet, Egypt held a very strong attraction for them. These fickle Israelites expressed their desire over and over again to go back to their previous miserable lives of slavery. As we have seen in these scriptures, both their memories and their logic were very faulty. They were like certain young girls of our modern era who, after having been kidnapped, defend, support, and say kind things about their abusers. It has been said before that God had no trouble getting the Israelites out of Egypt but that He had some major trouble getting Egypt out of the Israelites!

God wanted them to forget Egypt, which, as we well know, symbolizes sin. He wanted them to put Egypt completely behind them. In the same way, He wants His New Testament children—the present-day Israel of God (Galatians 6:16)—to put our sins behind us. However, the Israelites insisted on remembering their lives in Egypt—rather, they remembered twisted, inaccurate versions of it. They just would not let those memories go!

Are we not the same as our Israelite forefathers in some respects? God is very desirous to forgive our sins and to completely forget them when we repent. He forgets them and puts them completely in the past, but we keep dredging them up! We do this in two different ways: Firstly, we might recall the sin, allow ourselves to be re-tempted, to like the idea of that particular sin again, and then foolishly re-commit it. Secondly, we might keep dragging up the memory of some sin and keep beating ourselves over it again and again, just as though God had not forgiven and forgotten it as He promised.

All the things we have discussed so far do not mean that we can take lightly the seriousness of our sins or the greatness of God's mercy. We must beware, once again, of throwing the baby out with the bath water! In this regard, then, it is healthy for us to keep a basic memory of our former sins in the backs of our minds. Here is what John Ritenbaugh writes about this in a few more quotes from his May 2005 Forerunner "Personal":

If a man is honorable today, he has not changed the fact that he was dishonorable yesterday. Historians try to write accounts that will make their nations' actions and motives appear pure. But is it realistic to believe that history can be cleansed, virginity restored, murder undone, slander recalled, or deceit purified? Can we just wipe acts from our memories? We cannot return to the past to undo things, let alone redeem them. We may mend our ways and we rightfully should, but so doing leaves the past untouched. We may hate the evil, which will keep us from repeating it in the future, but it does not affect our responsibility for what has been done!

Perhaps there is no finer example than Paul. He never forgot what he had done, or its contrast between the immensity of what he had been freely forgiven and offered. Late in his life as an apostle, he was still keenly aware of the enormity of what he had been forgiven. He probably purposely kept this memory alive so as not to take any chance of losing his sense of responsibility.

Many will remember the 1970 movie Love Story, a tear-jerker of a film, unfortunately and unnecessarily laced with bad language. Its famous sub-title, which has survived these thirty-five years surprisingly well, proclaims, "Love means never having to say you are sorry." Although it sounds very nice and poetically romantic, this sayin