Presentation 11

Presentation 11

When AI Capone the American gangster was arrested and put on trial he did not think he deserved the title, 'public enemy No 1’. He could not understand why there was such a hue and cry to bring him to justice. This is what he said, “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, and I get all this abuse the existence of a hunted man".

He was not unique in finding it hard to face the seriousness of his sin. His difficulty is one that is shared with a great many people.

Introduction

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Today, many attempt to play down the seriousness of their sin. First of all, the language currently used to describe sin is designed to make it appear less heinous than it really is. People talk about being ‘economic with the truth' instead of ‘lying’. ‘Selfishness’ has been replaced by 'standing up for ones rights'. ‘Theft’ is 'helping oneself to the perks of the job!’ ‘Immorality’ has become ‘sexual experimentation' or 'the fulfilment of unsatisfied appetites.'

However, there would be an uproar if a chemist trivialised the nature of drugs and wrote on a bottle of arsenic the caption, 'a most effective anti-depressant'.

Sin Defined

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Men deceive themselves by saying that sin is not quite so sinful as God says and they are not so bad as they truly are. Our reluctance to face sin is not only seen in the language we use to describe it but also in the reasons we provide for its practice. Some see it as a no more than ‘human weakness’ and so seek to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their behaviour.

Imagine someone arguing that if a vacuum cleaner blows dust out into the air, then the manufacturer must be to blame and it has nothing to do with the person operating it!

Sin Defined

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Others have suggested that sin is a disease – a chemical imbalance in their body so that they are not responsible for their actions. Someone wrote recently:“People are no longer sinful. They are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick”.

Modern philosophers have tried to solve the problem by saying there is no such thing as sin and help needs to be given to those experiencing guilt feelings. Man is not responsible for his actions. These same people see no contradiction in complaining about the wrongs and injusticesof society when their own lives are under threat. This attempt to play down the seriousness of sin is the response of a society that fails to take God and his Word seriously.

Sin Defined

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“Unless we see our shortcomings in the light of the law and the holiness of God, we do not see them as sin at all. For sin is not a social concept, it is a theological concept. We never know what sin really is until we have learned to think of it in terms of God and to measure it not by human standards but by the yardstick of his total demand on our lives. " JAMES PACKER

How do we begin to measure sin in terms of God? We could examine some of thebiblical words used to describe sin.

One speaks of ‘missing the mark’, aiming at some target of righteous behaviour but failing, again and again.

Sin Defined

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Another word speaks of a ‘deliberate perversion’ or ‘twisting’. It describes not some accidental or unwitting act of wrongdoing but an action which is quite deliberate.

Another speaks of ‘overstepping a recognised boundary’.

Another speaks of a ‘breach in a relationship, an act of rebellion, a revolution’. It is perhaps the most profound of the O.T. terms and sees sin as nothing less than a rebellion against God's Lordship. The list goes on but the most characteristic feature of sin in all its aspects is that it is directed against God.

Sin Defined

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How can we tell if God views sin seriously? By asking how he responded to the sin of our first parents. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they had been warned of the consequences of disobedience.

Thomas Jefferson, former president of the USA said, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just".

Unlike Jefferson, Adam and Eve failed to tremble! They failed to take the justice of God seriously. Perhaps they hoped, as many do today, that the justice of God was little more than an empty playground threat, not to be taken seriously. Or did they think, "One sinful act is not so serious!"

Sin’s Consequences

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John Bunyan wrote, “One leak will sink a ship and one sin destroys a sinner”.Gen3.14ff makes it very clear that the justice of God is very real. When man sins he invites God's justice to move against him. He sends an invitation with the letters R.S.V.P. in bold print. However, we must not make the mistake of confusing justice with some kind of arbitrary vengeance.

God is no heavenly tyrant with a thirst for blood. He does not send an angelic hit squad after the rebellious couple. God's aim here is however, to showthat we cannot break the rules without paying a price.

Sin’s Consequences

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First, notice how God deals with Eve in v16. She is to experience increased pain in childbirth. If there had been no fall there would have been no need of hospital labour suites. Childbirth, one of woman's greatest joys was to be clouded by this painful reminder that she has rebelled against God who should have been the object of her greatest joy.

Secondly, we discover that her relationship to her husband is to take on a new turn. It is to become one of increasing dependency.

Sin’s Consequences

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What then does God have to say to Adam his vice regent on earth? cf v17, 19. His work which previously had been one of his greatest pleasure was now to be characterised by hard graft. In Rom. 8.20 ff Paul speaks of 'creation subjected to frustration not by its own choice" and of ‘creation groaning awaiting its liberation from its bondage to decay’. The whole of the created order was plunged into disharmony by Adam's sin.

Creation underwent a transformation not just In the reduction of soil fertility, Adam no longer had the same easy access to food. Indeed, the introduction of pestilence, disease and competitive crops like thorns and thistles Created an upheaval of such magnitude that man would be continually confronted by the need of hard backbreaking work.

Sin’s Consequences

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What is said of agricultural work in the Genesis text has of course a far wider application. Work as such is not a punishment, it existed prior to the fall and was part of God’s good creation. The punishment lies in the difficulties and frustrations involved in the accomplishment of the work. There was to be no rest from these burdens throughout life.

Sin’s Consequences

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Human life was also cut short by physical death. The death process had begun. Cf. Rom.5.12. "just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin.." However, the most serious punishment of all is found in v24.. both man and woman are driven out of the garden.

They were excluded from the intimacy of communion with God and cut off from the possibility of reaching the tree of life by their own endeavours. They are dead to God in the sense that they are separated from him, spiritually cut off and removed from the source of eternal life.

Sin’s Consequences

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Paul described the condition of the Ephesians prior to their conversion in the following terms, "dead in your transgressions and sins“ 2.1. And again his description of the unbeliever in 4.18 as "separated from the life of God." By excluding man from the garden and placing at its entrance an angel with a flaming sword, God made it impossible for man by his own efforts to access the tree of life. Someone has said ‘man sins on the instalment plan’. The bills may come in later but come they will, for sin makes us pay handsomely and relentlessly.

Sin’s Consequences

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Not only is the Bible clear about what sin is, it is also quite clear about why we sin. We sin because we are sinners. The rebellion we express by our sinful actions is consistent with our sinful nature. Just as an apple tree quite naturally produces apples and not bananas because by nature it is an apple tree, so man, when he sins is expressing what he is by nature - a sinner. William Golding wrote, “I know I am born with a great capacity for evil and a warped ability to enjoy it.”

He recognised he was not born morally neutral but with a sinful nature, -i.e. original sin. There is within our hearts a natural bias towards wrongdoing. It is not environment or education that truly shapes behaviour but the natures we are born with.

Sin’s Consequences

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You may have seen the film based on Golding’s book, 'Lord of the Flies‘. It describes a group of boys from 'good homes' whose plane crashes on a desert island. They are free from external, harmful influences but also from the restraints of society. Their behaviour becomes increasingly bestial.

“I wrote ‘Lord of the Flies’ after the war. I remembered my experience as a schoolmaster when a class of boys was left to organise itself, and I remember the gangs of Russian children after the revolution, who roamed the streets murdering people. I wanted to say to the English, 'You think you've won the war and defeated Nazism so you're all nice decent people. But look out the evil is in all of us. 'Original sin'.” William Golding

Sin’s Consequences

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There is one final question we need to answer. 'How serious is sin to me?' Sometimes people object to the teaching of the word of God because they think that somehow it makes them appear to be the worst of criminals. They argue, 'I am basically a good person, I am not a murderer, a bank robber or a rapist’. However, to argue in this way is to take refuge in the knowledge of the sins we have not committed in order to excuse those they have.

Attitude to Sin

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We talk about our small sins as if they were of little importance. But no sin is small. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch. You do not need a missile to burst a balloon, it only takes a pinprick. In Jas. 2.10 we read, 'whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.' Perfection is God's standard and 99% in his exam is viewed as a failure. Some argue that, 'we are no different from anybody else'. But there is no safety in numbers. The fact that everybody sins does not make sin excusable.

The attitude of some towards sin is to persuade as many others as possible to join in as if a majority view could outvote God cf Rom. 1.32... They are deceiving themselves.

Attitude to Sin

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It is easy to persuade ourselves that we have become God's friends by our best religious efforts. You may protest that you do not hate God but if you live in sin, you are among God's enemies. You stand under Satan's flag and have enlisted to serve hid cause. You may wish you were elsewhere. But our attitude to sin reveals, where we stand in relation to God! John Owen, one of the greatest Christian minds of a previous generation writes:

“I cannot understand how a man can be a true believer for whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble”.

Is that our attitude to sin?

Conclusion

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Do we make light of sin or treat it seriously? God takes our sin seriously! Only when we begin to view it as God does will we see how badly we need someone to deliver us from its awful penalty and power.

Only then will the cross of Christ find a truly central focus in our lives. The sinner and sin must quarrel if he and God are to be friends.

Conclusion

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