“Sin”

Take your Bibles please and turn to the Book of Galatians.  We will be in Chapter 5 in just a moment, and I am so thankful to the Lord that he gave us music and I'm thankful to the Lord in our church that he has given us such great musicians.  I am in awe of that often.  Thank you, Penny, for that.  It just made me wonder as she was singing about our gentle Savior, some of you wonder about his gentleness because the conviction of sin in your life seems to be so harsh.  Others of you wonder if he is strong enough to take away your guilt.  He is both.  We'll learn at least about some of that this morning.

It might be good again to clue you in on the direction that we're headed.  This sermon and the next sermon are really built on building up our positive mindset.  This one is "Sin," next one is "Satan."   I thought that would really help you out.  The Bible is the place that we get our instructions about the Devil, who he is, where he came from, what he does.  The massive ignorance of the Christian church today about the Devil probably means he holds sway in our lives and in our churches that he should not.  I know educated people, bright people aren't supposed to believe in such archaic things, but I believe I said last week that since Jesus, the Creator of the world does, my Sovereign Lord, I believe in him, too, and we need not bow before him.  John Piper said that we should fear sin more than we fear Satan because sin can send us to hell; he can't.  I think there's some truth worth thinking about there.

After that we have a guest speaker named Don Mathis who is going to encourage us and our church in the issues of evangelism for our church for our community as well as instruct us in our leadership and our LIFE training that night.  Following that we're going to deal with three issues, two of them I'll classify as deeply spiritual that I have found through the years that Christians deal with and don't really know how to get a handle on them:

·                     Doubts and assurance; doubting your salvation; doubting God and finding assurance.  We have kind of preached a gospel that made that, that you're not supposed to do those things and we want to clear that up and how you find that assurance.

·                     Also the topic of guilt and forgiveness.  Some of us live under clouds of guilt and we need to understand the greatness of the gospel and God's forgiveness for use.

·                     And then one that has spiritual connections but it is a thing that anybody an go through, Christian or non Christian, but when the Christian goes through it, it causes all kinds of faith questions, and so as Biblically as I can and, and as practically as I can, to close out this little mini series, I want to try to address, on September 30, I think it is, the Christian and Depression or some other psychological  maladies that you may deal with or know someone that does and what is a real Christian perspective on those things?  Some of us think that if you are a Christian you don’t face issues like that and maybe we need to read our Bible better, so we will face those as we go along.

This morning I told one of the men who pray with me that we are going to learn about sin, and one of them said, "Oh, boy!  I'm going to bring some friends."  Well, you know, that's one thing…. [That was supposed to be funny, you could have laughed. Bess laughed, so….]

Learning about sin, sin is the one thing we don't have to be taught.  Have you ever figured that out? You are good at something; you are really good at sinning and so am I. Nobody every taught me how to lie, I know how to do that on my own, so did you, maybe so do you.  Why is that?  Why do you have to spend all your time teaching your children to do what's right?  By the way, is there really a thing such as right?  Is there a thing such as wrong?  I would be considered an absolute fool and idiot for thinking there really are rights and wrongs in areas like that in our world today.  I would be classified as a bigot, as closed-minded, as mean and harsh-spirited.  Well, just think with me for a few minutes, okay?  Think with me for a few minutes, don't feel.  I'm not asking you to feel because that's when Christians get in trouble, when we begin to think with our feeling or have convictions with our feeling and then somebody else comes up with some hair-brained idea that there is no such thing as good or bad or good or evil and we want to fight them emotionally, well, you've already lost the battle, my friend.  The whole of the day, those in the public and those who think like that that it is the demeanor with which you talk that is far more important than the truth that you say.  Words are relatively unimportant to people in our climate. So, let's make sure that we think about truth so our words do carry weight.

If I was to, several years ago, decades --- maybe even longer ago-- asked the children in the church, "What is sin?" they would have said, "Sin is any transgression of the Law of God."  If you had asked an adult, they would have said something like "Sin is any want of conformity unto and transgression of the Law of God."  Those are catechism answers.  Baptist, yes, they used to catechize.  They taught children through that manner, and adults, to understand the basics of faith.  Well, since our world doesn’t believe in God or a law of God and God, if there was one, wouldn't be so crucial, how are we going to deal with it?  Well, first of all, let's think!  Think with me…. Do you believe God created the heavens and the earth?  Let me back up even further.  Do you believe there is a God?  Do you believe there really is a God?  Do you believe that God has standards?  That God is holy? That he is a God who demands justice and for things to be a certain way? Or, do you believe that man made God? Is God just a concoction of mankind over our evolutionary  history to where we've needed something as society and conscience developed, or is God real?  So did we make God or did God make us?  Because you see that is really the only two choices you have, there is no in between.  You either have to believe that humanity has made God or God made humanity, do you understand that? Because that's a very clarifying issue in clear thinking. 

Now, as you would assume, being your pastor, I believe God made man.  I believe God made Adam and Eve and just the way he said he did it in the Bible.  And that was no problem for a God who can speak all the stars into space and call them each by name.  Why would we ever think that is hard for God?  Hard for us to figure out, hard for science to explain, hard for God? No!

So, back up with me, because your view of sin and your view of God are inseparably linked together.  What you think about God will determine what you think about sin and what you think about sin will determine what you think about God.  Now, I know that sounds really great and positive, you're surely excited about hearing the rest of the sermon, so think some more with me.  If you were to boil down God's directions for life and somebody were to ask you, "Well, can I get a condensed version of this somewhere in the Bible, is there an area in the Bible where God condense his teaching down so I would know what God expects of me, where would tell them to go?  You can talk in church, it's okay.  Where would you go in the Old Testament?  Say it louder… Exodus! What's in there?  The Ten Commandments!  Way to go! Okay, you get an "A" on that one!  You go to the Ten Commandments.  We'll just stop there.  If you went to the New Testament you would find Jesus being asked what's the first and greatest commandment and he would say, "The first and greatest commandment is this, "Here O Israel, the LORD our God is one and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  The second is like unto it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

If there is a God and God gave us the Ten Commandments, are they a burden or a blessing?  Ask it this way, I just read an article in the paper this morning about the chief assassin and human butcher for Pol Pot, you can read the article.  He's become a Christian since he slew all those people and because of his open and honest confession he was arrested, which he should have been and will be tried; the only left to be tried, I think.  But, let me ask this question.  He broke one of God's commands, multitudes of God's commands.  Are they a burden or a blessing?  Would this world be a better place than it is today if everybody in the world kept the Ten Commandments?  If you think it would be better, raise your hand.  Okay, so why are we so convinced that God's commandments are a burden?  Those are not bad things, they are good things.  Lots of people would be put out of business, locksmiths, we wouldn't need locks because nobody would steal.  We wouldn't need divorce lawyers because nobody would ever get divorced; nobody would be committing adultery, nobody would be coveting.  Well, can you not see that God set a standard and he gave us instructions and this standard was good, and God saw what he made in the beginning was good, but are things good now, and are people in the business of keeping those commandments?  No!  Would you like for me to get personal and ask you if you've ever broken any of those commandments.  No?  Okay, let's go down them one-by-one and if you have, you raise your hand, okay? [Laughter]  The Bible says "Confess your faults one to another that you may be healed." Well, we could just put them all down just about, couldn't we?  You see Jesus taught them that the law did say "You should not commit adultery," but he corrected the pharisaical understanding of it. It was an elliptical understanding.  It took in the whole of the man, the human.  It wasn't if you committed adultery you broke the commandment.  He said if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you have broken the commandment.  So even if we don't do it on the outside, but we think it on the inside, we find out there's something wrong with us.  There is something that causes us to desire wrong things if there is such a thing as wrong and right.  That something is sin.  Now, let me give you an immense nutshell….. I don’t know how you do an immense nutshell….. a tiny nutshell of an immense truth!  You get the thought process there.  I'm going to tell you a lot of things in a little bitty space.

We're answering the question basically this morning what I want to focus on is "If I am a Christian, why do I struggle so with sin?  Sinful impulses….sinful actions…sinful thoughts….. why do I struggle?  Now, I'm going to be very honest with you, this is focused more on those who have placed their faith in Christ.  I will deal somewhat with those who are not certain about Christ, they've never trusted him, they are not a Christian individual, but our focus today is "Why is it still there if I am really God's child?"

Big picture: God created the heavens and the earth.  God, on the 6^th day, made man and woman.  He created them; he created them perfect, he said it is good.  We find out just a couple of chapters later that Satan, who had already fallen from heaven, one of the angels, he came in the garden, he tempted Adam and Eve and they had the choice of believing what God said or what the Devil said and what their eyes wanted. They took what their eyes wanted, they ate the forbidden fruit and they fell in sin.  So you have Creation, you have the Fall.  You say, Well that was Adam and Eve, that wasn't me.  But Adam was the father of the whole race, just like Jesus is the father or the head of the church, all of his children.  In Jesus, you get all that he could give us; that is forgiveness of sins, freedom, justification by faith.  In Adam you get all that he can give you and that is life, human life, and sin.  It's passed down.  We have that.  We don't become a sinner because we commit sins.  We commit sins because we're sinners.  We have a bent to do wrong.  Now, I know that really doesn’t build up human self-esteem to have somebody standing up here almost sounding arrogant and saying that you're a sinner.  I am not saying that in any arrogance at all.  I wouldn't dare do that!  We're all in the same boat and his truth today can be a truth that sets you free from the law of sin and death. 

Now, we sinned and God had a plan of redemption. So, three words:

So, that being true, that being the gospel story in that nutshell, packed in there so dense, it tells me that there are essentially two kinds of people in this world:  There are unredeemed sinners and there are redeemed sinners.

A redeemed person is one who has accepted the price paid for their sins on the cross; Christ and his redemption.  They have placed their faith in him as the gospel and God's life came to them; they have trusted Christ for salvation.  When you bent your knee or bowed your heart and said, "Lord Jesus, would you save me?" He forgave your sins and literally the life of came into your soul.  The Lord Jesus took up residence there; your soul became the temple, your body became the temple of the Holy Spirit.  That's what happens when you become a Christian, you are made God's child.  You are perfect in his sight and you say, "Well, if I'm God's child and I'm perfect in his sight, why am I so lousy?" 

So, now we want to answer the question, "If I'm a Christian, why is there a struggle with sin?"  One more comment:  In the church, because of our misunderstanding of sin, we have been accused of, and it's true that we deal with sins too often.  We want to talk to people about their abuse of alcohol, or their abuse of their spouse, or their cheating at work or their lying and stealing, we want to pinpoint sins and we fail to deal with sin.  I couldn't tell you how many men I've shared the gospel with, and upon sharing the gospel, they'll say, "Well, you know, Tony, I've got some things I need to get straight in my life."  My answer to them is, "No, you don't! There is nothing  you need to get straight in your life.  You need to come to the One you can straighten your life out; the one who has power over sin.  You've got to deal with sin, because sin is what condemns me.  My sins are the fruit of what's in me, so what does a believer do with a struggle with sin?  Why do I have one?

Galatians Chapter 5, Verse 16:

Paul is dealing with three things; he is dealing with people who want to bring a law back into Christian living and say, "If you want to serve God, if you want to serve Christ, if you want to go to heaven, you have to believe in Christ and do these rules; those are legalists.  There was another group of people who said, "No, we've become Christians.  We are God's children and we're going to heaven when we die, no matter what.  So, we can do anything we want in this freedom Christ has given us."  So, they're not legalists, they think grace is a license; neither of them understood salvation. Paul wanted them to understand that Salvation is a life; a new life given to you by the Spirit of God, so he says:

Galatians 5:16

    [16]But I say, Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. [17]  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh: for these are opposed to each other: to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.

Is that a description of your life, if you're a believer?  How does that happen? I think I would say it this way:  If you are a Christian seeking to please your Lord, within your own soul is a battle of epic proportions; not a poem, real life!  It's a struggle to life and death.  What you wrestle against is just unbelievable.  It's there all the time.  You see, when you became a Christian, the life of God was put into your soul.  You were buried with Christ by baptism and you will be raised with him in the likeness of his resurrection, but you're still on this earth and you have this flesh with you.  Sometimes flesh describes the body we have, but many times in the New Testament, flesh describes this humanity that we have, this leftover-ness of our sinful nature.  And it battles continuously with the new life that's in you to keep you from doing what you want.  Look at the words and tell me, does this not sound like a battle? First he gives them a command to walk by the Spirit, that should be your lifestyle, you should do it all the time.  Why? To not gratify, that word is fulfill, the desires, the lust, the passions of the flesh.  For the desires, those present tense, ongoing desires of your flesh, of that which is in you which is bent to sin are against, opposed to, always continually the Spirit that is in you and, thank God, you have new desires of the Spirits; passions; and they are against, opposed to, always, those of the flesh and because of that contest "for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do."  Why is it so hard to do right and so easy to do wrong?  It's a battle of epic proportions. Remember, your view of sin and your view of God are directly tied together.

I want to read just a little further, say a few comments about this passage of scripture. 

Galatians 5:18 -21

   [18] But if you are led of the Spirit, you are not under the law. [19] Now the works of the flesh are evident; Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,  [20] Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, [21] Envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I have warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

That's just plain and simple. Those are the things our flesh naturally will do; we don't have to teach it to do. 

[22] But the fruit of the Spirit [the Spirit that has given us new life] is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self control: against such there is no law.

That's the contest going on in you.  You have a spirit that longs to produce this fruit in you.  Now, the works of the flesh don't have to be cultivated, they grow on their own, but this fruit of the Spirit, this new life in you that is new to you, you've got to cultivate that so this fruit can be healthy and be born in your life.  You're not going to naturally be full of love, joy and peace, you're going to have those, but you have to cultivate that as you grow, as well as you have to do something else to this sin nature that is there, this flesh hanging on.  It doesn’t need cultivation, it needs mortification. It needs crucifixion. 

[24] And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.

Being a Christian does not fix you so you cannot sin.  I would agree with Robert Murray McShane, a very holy pastor who said, that "He knew that the seed of every sin known to mankind still resides in his heart."   I have seen good people fall in the church and fall far and hard.  Does that mean they are not Christians? Some of them, it is very true of them, they were false professors the whole time, they never were born again, they never did really bear fruit.  Some of them were genuine believers and, instead of crucifying their sin, they put it in a cage and made it a pet, and they'd stroke it every now and then and say, "Now I've got you under control, you just stay right there."  And they'd feed it a little bit every now and then and it seemed contained in that cage, but then they got real comfortable with it and they would open the door and let this pet sin come out every now and then and sit on the couch with them and they would stroke it just a little bit, and every now and then they would think what a nice pet this is.  And just like the magicians who used to do tricks with white tigers, and the wild in the tiger came out just one time and he almost bit the magician's head off.  That's exactly what sin will do to you.  If you don't mortify sin, if you don't kill it, it will kill you.  I've seen it happen to my dearest friend in ministry.  He petted his little sin a little too long and the serpent rose up and bit him and absolutely destroyed his ministry.   So, it's possible that we can sin and sin grossly.  We won't stay there; God will correct us and God will discipline us.

The flesh works need no cultivation; it will just happen.  You've got to put them to death.  You have to take positive action against them.  The spirit fruit needs positive action for it, you need to cultivate it, to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  Now, I want to set down one more thing so you can understand this.  The Bible's view of this in the Christian is not that, "Boy, you got saved when you were 10 years old, now you're a good little boy and you're going to be good the rest of your life."  The Bible's picture of this:  Picture the most violent war you have ever seen, a war scene in movies, most of us have never seen war, but some of you probably have; the most violent you have ever seen and that at days is what is going on in your soul and if you don't understand that, one of two things will happen.

You will get so guilty over yourself because of these thoughts you have in your mind, these impulses you have, you're thinking, "I'm a child of God, why did I feel that way, why did I think that way? Sometimes, why did I even act that way? And guilt is going to overcome you because you think you shouldn't do that anymore and there is a bit of truth to that, but you need to understand the gospel and if your view of sin is not right, your view of God is not right, then you can't rightly understand or appreciate the gospel.  The other side of that is, if we don't understand sin and we pet it, and keep it and don't do anything about it, then we live on life's edge.  We've got to understand that this is a battle!  Let me give you the Bible's terminology:

In Galatians 5:17 we saw that they oppose each other.  In verse 24 we are told that we need to crucify the flesh.  That's not a comfortable thing.  If you're good with your Bible, turn over two books to Colossians Chapter 3, Verse 5.  This is something a believer in Christ is to do. 

Colossians 3:5, we've already been instructed in what to think about and then he says this is what you do in your daily life:

Col. 3:5

   Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you (so he's writing to Christians; these things are still inside of Christians) Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

Those are still in us; it can be done by use, except we don’t have to do them.  The Bible says when you became a Christian you were no longer under the law, but you were under grace, and sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under the law, under grace, you, because you have the power of the Holy Spirit in you, you can still be tempted and you can say, "No, I will not do that because I have Christ in me."  You have the power to say no, but if you don't cultivate that power, and if you're not close to walking with God, when temptation comes, my friend, you are going to have difficulty saying no.  And you can never, never, never say "The Devil made me do it."  We can't say "God tempts us" because James wrote, "God cannot be  tempted, neither tempts he any man, but every man when he is tempted is drawn away of his own lust and enticed."  Drawn away…..  So somebody is casting the bait, that's the Devil, but the temptation lies within me.  It's out of the heart that the mouth speaks, Jesus said, so we have to understand that in us, in me, in you is something that can be fished out.  You have your weaknesses, I have my weaknesses, and if I don't guard myself from those weaknesses, I can fall in a moment and so can you.  It's a battle, so how do you deal with them? You kill them!  You put them to death!  Gentleman if you have a problem with looking at women scantily clad, it would not be beyond you to need to take the internet out of your house.  Jesus said, "If your right eye offend you, pluck it out! Because it's better to go into life maimed than to hell, whole."

Now, I know you think that is absolutely ridiculous; you can't live without the internet in your house.  If you can't stay away from it, what are you going to do?  I don't know where your weaknesses are.  I certainly know where mine are.   I told you before, the path I take is the most safe I know how.  If the edge of my sin is here where I'm most tempted and the road is here, the cliff falls off here, the mountainside is here, I do my best to walk over here next to the mountain.  I might look like a wimp in the eyes of the world, but it's because I know I serve a strong and holy God, I am a wimp but I don't want to fall off the edge.  I've seen too many people do it!  And if I follow God's Word, not only do I have a hope for heaven and what will be there perfect, but my dear friend, this life of not sinning as best you can, and I'm not saying we ever live without sin, it's always with us, but the more pure your life, the more joy you have!  Read the list of the Ten Commandments and think if you just did them all what your life, your marriage, your job, your social circumstance would be like!  John said, "Herein is love for God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome."

Okay, Tony, why do I still want to do that?  I pray, I've asked God a thousand times to take away this particular temptation, I've sinned, and I've asked forgiveness a thousand times and I go do it again, what is wrong with me? 

1 Peter Chapter 2, Verse 11:  You've got to get the right picture.  I am not making light of our responsibility, but you can't hold your responsibility if you don't know what you're fighting against.

1 Peter 2:11

  Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which war against your soul;

You've got snipers, you've got roadside bombs, you've got atomic  bombs, you've got guided missiles within your own flesh and it is most present, Paul said in Romans 7, "When I want to do good I find that evil is present with me."  In your most holy moments is when you're likely to be most attacked. So, the first thing I want you to know is the struggle you have may be one of the best assurances you are a Christian, because the person who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit in them doesn’t struggle with those things.  You may have a tinge of conscience because of the way you've been brought up, but you don’t have the Holy Spirit saying "that's wrong according to God's standard." 

So, what do we do?  Let's recognize a couple of things.  There are different ways people respond to this.  Some temperaments look at it and say, "That's a great truth. Man, I'm just going to start fighting sin; I'm going to overcome this."  There are other people whose conscience is more tender.  They look at it and say, "Oh, I am such a rotten sinner; I've got all this filth dwelling within me.  I'm going to confess this to God." But, for so many people they don't understand the victory of the gospel.  When you understand the greatness of sin, you must understand the greatness of God in the gospel to forgive that, and so when we come to confessions, those of you who are tender and you go a lot by how you feel, the Bible tells us to confess and forsake our sins and we'll have mercy; not to confess them and feel bad about them.  God is not impressed when you feel badly about your sins.  That's your self -punishment and I want to promise you the root of that is pride. You think, "It's not pride." It's pride!   What do you think? You need to feel bad so Jesus will have enough power to forgive you? You think you need to help him out, his cross is not enough to set you free so you can walk in victory and happiness?

And then there are others who don't take their sins seriously enough, as we have talked about, and they just play it down and they get sneak attacked and fall hard.

John Owen said "Nothing changes the nature of sin."  When God saved you, he changed your nature, but he didn't change the nature of sin.  Sin cannot be dealt with by changing it, sin must be killed.  Sin is ever within you so we ever need to be on guard.  If you don't kill it, it will kill you!

So, what do we do?  I guess I'm actually talking to two different kinds of people this morning:

One is the Christian who is weakened, woeful, discouraged and depressed because they feel so sinful and unusable by God.

The other would be the believer in Christ who is confident, assured and likes to take a few too many liberties.  For you, I want to warn you; for you I want God to comfort you.  How does the comfort come? It comes like this, and here's our application:  We need to get Biblical proportions and perspectives on sin and grace; Biblical proportions.  We need to understand the high holiness of God.  We need to understand the utter horror of being a rebellious sinner.  We need to understand eternal death and we need to understand eternal life, and we begin to get these proportions right.  Remember, I said more than once, that your view of God and your view of sin are directly related?  If you make light of sin and it's really no big deal to you, then I want to tell you what, you serve a wimpy God.  God doesn’t mean much to you.  You don't need him!  I mean, this really isn't that big a deal, so I know God's not upset about it.  If you don't view sin properly, you can't view God properly, and if you don't view God properly, you can't view sin properly. 

The gospel lens is the only thing that allows us to see God and sin in its proper proportions.  God left heaven, became a man, took on flesh like ours, bore our sin because no one else could do it.  It took God himself to die for use to take away our sin.  That's how great it was.  That being the case, then I can risk seeing the darkest pit of my soul and see what it does to a holy God, because that holy God hung on a cross and said "I will take your sins and I will give you my righteousness."  That is how we deal with the burden of sin in our lives at conversion and all the way to heaven, because Jesus took it. 

So when God is rightly viewed and sin is rightly viewed, the gospel can be rightly believed.

What does that mean?  I’m not even certain that I have said and stayed with the point that I wanted to stay with this morning, but I want you to know this:  First, dear Christian, if you are dealing with guilt, if indwelling sin assaults you and you live with a cloud over top of you, don't you really think that Jesus' death on the cross was enough to take that sin away and forgive you?  Wasn't it enough?  You can't help him; you don't need to help him.  So when that arises, recognize he told "You're going to have a battle in your soul, but I died to forgive you of those sins and to give you life, rise up, don't mope over it, face it and annihilate it."  That's what he wants you to do.

And I think about those of you who aren't Christians, and you're thinking, "Well, I just don't know about this sin stuff anyway; sounds kind of harsh to me." Do you believe in God? Do you believe you're going to die one day? Do  you believe there is a heaven and a hell?  Well, I would think at least one thing that would make you think is, "I wonder what's going to happen at my death and how I've dealt with sin?"  One sin is enough to send you or me to hell, but a million sins can't send you to hell if you've trusted Christ.  It is no joking matter.  The proportions are huge!  So, where are you with Christ?  Have you really turned it loose and said, "I don't even understand all of this Lord, but I do understand I am a sinner and you can forgive me and give me eternal life."  That is not something to be played with.