Recognizing Your Sin, Receiving the Forgiveness of the Cross

7 min read

Introduction

This message opens the “Workers for the Harvest” series at the 2026 devotion gathering. Pastor Sakurai starts from a simple promise of Jesus: “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). A promise full of possibility, because it doesn’t depend on any human method, only on a request made to the Father.

But before we can talk about harvest, we need to go through a word many churches no longer dare to speak: sin. Not to condemn you, but to help you discover the depth of the forgiveness received at the cross. That is where everything begins.

This first session ties together two themes that may seem far apart (recognizing your sin and receiving Jesus’s forgiveness), and shows that together they form the foundation of every fruitful Christian life.

Sermon Outline

1. A worker is someone who connects people to Christ

“Pray… and he will send.” There is no other method in the Gospel. Christ doesn’t hand you a sophisticated strategy: he simply asks you to ask. If God sent his workers through some clever human method, the glory would go to whoever came up with the method. But God does not share his glory.

Pastor Sakurai says it again: a worker isn’t first and foremost someone who connects people to a church. The church is the body of Christ, it is necessary, but it does not save. Christ alone saves. A worker is someone who helps another person connect to the head, to Jesus himself.

Remember John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” A branch cut off from the vine bears no fruit. A Christian cut off from Christ bears none either. And Paul comes to understand this the day the risen Christ says to him on the road to Damascus: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” In persecuting the church, Saul was persecuting Jesus himself, because the vine includes the branches.

2. Sin is imperfection, and no one is exempt

The word “sin” isn’t fashionable. Many churches have set it aside. That’s strange, says Pastor Sakurai, because sin first means “incomplete,” “imperfect.” And no one is perfect, and without perfection no one can enter heaven.

So what do we do? The answer is Jesus. At the cross, he carried your imperfection, past, present, and future. Every useless word you ever spoke, every word you should have spoken and didn’t, everything you did and everything you should have done. All of it.

If you believe this, God declares you righteous in his place. This is what we call justification: God looks at you as if you were perfect, because of Christ.

3. Four cries from the cross that become four blessings

The pastor cites several. The first: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). David had written these words in Psalm 22, a thousand years before the crucifixion. The Holy Spirit had already placed these words in his mouth, far in advance.

Why did Jesus cry this out? So that you and I would never be forsaken. He was forsaken in your place. If you believe in him, God will never forsake you.

The second: Christ cursed in your place. Galatians 3:13-14 says it clearly: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us… so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” Christ took on every curse (yours, and your ancestors’), so that Abraham’s blessing could reach you.

The third: Christ made sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Every bit of your imperfection laid on him, all of his righteousness offered to you.

4. Repentance means receiving forgiveness, not torturing yourself

Many people think that recognizing their sin means beating themselves up. That’s wrong. Pastor Sakurai tells the story of a woman from the congregation. Before her conversion, she had had an abortion. After becoming a Christian, she kept running into people in evangelical circles who campaigned against abortion. She couldn’t sleep anymore. She kept coming to church but held onto her secret, convinced she was beyond forgiveness.

One day, she heard the testimony of another woman who had gone through the same thing and who, in tears, described being forgiven by God. She understood: recognizing your sin isn’t accusing yourself endlessly, it’s receiving forgiveness. She found the courage to tell her pastor, repented, and felt, in the quiet, a deep peace and a quiet joy. Then, through prayer and pastoral care, her wounds began to heal.

To repent means “to change direction.” To turn toward Christ. If every time you went to him he beat you, you wouldn’t go. But he forgives. That’s why you go to him.

5. The harvest is coming: don’t miss this hour

Matthew 13:38-39 says: “The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one… the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.” The harvest isn’t your work: it’s the angels who reap. You bear fruit. You help others bear fruit too.

And the end is drawing near. The pastor connects current geopolitics to biblical prophecy: Russia, Iran, and Turkey potentially joining forces against Israel (Ezekiel 38), the statue of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 (Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Rome reconstituted today in the European Union), then the stone cut without human hands (Jesus himself), which strikes the feet and fills the whole earth.

These signs should wake you up. Not panic you. Live calmly, love one another, help each other grow to look like Christ. Because “faith, hope, and love abide” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Everything else will pass away.

Key Takeaways

  • A worker for the harvest is someone who connects people to Christ himself, not just to a church.
  • Sin isn’t first and foremost some terrible moral failure: it’s your imperfection. No one is exempt from it.
  • At the cross, Christ carried your imperfection, past, present, and future. Forgiveness has already been secured.
  • To repent isn’t to torture yourself: it’s to change direction and receive the forgiveness offered.
  • The one who is forgiven much loves much. Without an awareness of forgiven sin, your Christian life dries up.

Personal Application

  1. Is there an area of imperfection or failure in your life that you’re hiding, convinced it’s beyond forgiveness? What would happen if you laid it before Christ today?
  2. When you feel forsaken (at work, in your family, in your church), can you tell yourself, “Christ was forsaken so that I would never be”?
  3. Is your service in the church motivated by gratitude toward Christ, or by something else (human recognition, guilt, fear)?
  4. Do you recognize that bearing fruit isn’t a matter of willpower but of the Holy Spirit? How does that change the way you pray?
  5. Do you simply pray for God to send workers into your city, your church, your neighborhood?

Scriptures Cited

FAQ

Why talk about sin at all today?

Because without an awareness of your imperfection, the cross loses its meaning. Sin isn’t first a list of horrible faults: it’s your incompleteness before a perfect God. Naming it doesn’t destroy you, it opens the door to forgiveness.

Is repenting the same as punishing yourself?

No. To repent means “to change direction”: to turn your face toward Christ. This movement is possible because Christ doesn’t strike you, he forgives. If you believed he would punish you, you wouldn’t come near him.

How do I pray for God to send workers?

Simply. Jesus gives no other method than “ask.” Ask the Father to raise up workers from within your own congregation and to add others from outside it, women and men who know how to help others connect to Christ, not just to a religious organization.

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