Let’s Talk About Sin

Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. Everybody is blaming somebody for everything.

Nobody is taking ownership for anything anymore. It's somebody else's fault that I'm this. It's somebody else's fault that I'm that. Welcome to the weekly edition of A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. In today's message, Carter will point out what he calls the four points of sin found in the book of Genesis to defy the word of God and the will of God in our lives, declaring ourselves righteous when we're not, hiding from the presence and the voice of God, and blaming someone else for our sin. Let's discover more with Carter and let's talk about sin. I know I'm speaking to people who are really hurting.

I know I'm speaking to people who are addicted and afflicted and there's torment in your mind and your home and your marriages are falling apart and you've got problems with your kids. Before we even talk about what God can do and the miracle power of God, let's talk about the necessity of dealing with sin. Remember, John the Baptist was the forerunner to Christ and his message was repent. Repent means turn. Repent means agree with the word of God. Repent means that your ways are not God's ways.

God's ways are higher than your ways and God's ways are different than your ways. Agree with the ways of God. Die to yourself. That's what the baptism of John was all about. Die to yourself and start to live according to the will of God. Until we are willing to die to ourselves, to die to our old way of thinking and our old ways of doing things, Jesus Christ will remain a far off stranger.

There is really no living relationship with the Son of God until we have come through the waters of repentance. Repentance means I'm sorry for the way I've been living. I'm sorry for what I've done to other people. It's not about what other people have done to me.

It's what I have done to other people. I'm sorry for living in rebellion to the revealed word of God. When I knew what God was speaking but I chose my own way. And that's where we start in Genesis chapter three beginning at verse one. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat it, you shall not touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave to her husband with her and he did eight. Now here is the first foundation of sin in the human race. This is what separated men and women from God. This is why God had to send his son into the world later on to die on a cross to pay the price for our sin. It's when Adam and Eve made the conscious decision to defy the word of God and the will of God for their lives. They fell prey to a lie.

The lie says you can do what you want to do outside of the established order of God and somehow not pay a consequence for it. And I've always believed the devil was a very attractive, it describes his nature as a serpent. A serpent of course has no ears and is guided by his tongue. That's why he's described as a serpent. But I feel in my heart, now it's just my own feeling, but I feel in my heart he was the anointed cherub.

There was a beauty about him and it's almost like he appeared to Adam and Eve and says well look at me. I made my own decisions. I chose to do it my way. I stepped out from under the authority of God and look at me.

Nothing has happened to me. And Adam and Eve it says they saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes and was desirable to make one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate. So the fruit that they ate of was a theological fruit. That I can live outside of the word of God. I can defy the word of God or maybe put it this way. I can pick and choose what to believe from the word of God. I can believe what I want to believe and then I can disregard what I don't want to believe and somehow no consequence will come to me. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people fall into this trap over the years as a Christian man, as a pastor.

I have sat and reasoned with people and tried to help them to see the error of their way. It's heart rending because time and again I've just watched them go off a cliff into spiritual disaster and some to this day are not even alive anymore. They should have known that the way they were going was going to take away their strength. It was going to take away the relationship with God.

Now the next thing that happens after they make the choice and so my question to you. Are you living in the light of what God has revealed to you in his word or are you making excuses for it? Are you stepping outside of the lines of God's parameters for your life and somehow thinking there's going to be no consequence to it? The numbers of people who just get involved in things thinking I can handle this. It's not going to it's not going to take away the presence of God for me.

It's not going to destroy my life only to find out that they can't handle it. All you have to do is give the devil one toehold in the door of your life and he will come in to you like a flood before you know it. Verse seven of Genesis three says then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. So here's the second stage of sin. The first is willful rebellion to the revealed word of God.

Has God said? They knew what God said but they chose to do something else. The second is making themselves another covering other than the covering that has been provided by God.

I want you to picture this for a moment. Adam and Eve I believe were covered by the glory of God. The glory that shone from Moses face when he came down from the mountain. The glory that covered their nakedness because they were in the presence of the living God virtually every day and it was it was his presence his covering that covered them it covered their nakedness it covered them completely and when they sinned against God suddenly their covering was gone and they had to make another covering for themselves.

That is the origin of all religion in the world today apart from Jesus Christ. It is man making his own covering. His own covering that says oh I'm a good person and when I die the good is hopefully going to outweigh the bad. I've never murdered anybody so why would God reject me from his kingdom?

I go to church I even tithe. I give good portions of all that I possess to others but you see none of these can save you. You see you can't make your own covering and never get past and into the into the eternity of God because only one covering will suffice. It's the covering of the shed blood of the Son of God Jesus Christ. Now in Genesis chapter 3 verses 8 to 10 we see the third stage of sin. Now remember number one it's a conscious decision to walk outside of the revealed word of God.

Number two is making another covering. Declaring one's own righteousness in spite of the fact that the person is now in an unrighteous condition in the sight of God. Genesis chapter 3 is the third stage of sin verses 8 to 10 that is hiding from both the presence and the voice of God. And they heard the sound. Genesis 3 8 they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.

It's a type of a person who finds it very comfortable to hide in church. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him where are you? As a matter of fact Pastor William used to preach it this way. The actual Hebrew translation was Adam do you know where you are? Do you know what you've done? Do you know what you have become? Do you understand that you are now separated from the life of God?

Do you know what's happened to you? So he said I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And so the next thing you find when people are living in sin is they start hiding. Now they don't mind going to church as long as the presence of God is not there and the voice of God is not challenging their sin. I can't tell you the number of times over the last 25 or more years standing in the pulpit in Times Square Church when the presence of God just invaded the sanctuary. I would watch people run out of the church during the worship because the presence of God had come.

I would watch them run out during the sermon because the presence of God, the word of God was now challenging their behavior. And this is exactly what the third stage of sin is in the book of Genesis. It's both hiding from the presence and from the voice of God. And the sad thing is they were in the garden but they were hiding.

There are people who attend church today but they're still hiding from the presence and they're hiding from the voice of God. And the fourth stage of sin is blaming others for our own actions. Now in chapter 3 again now in verse 12 it says, the man said, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me the tree and I ate. And the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. You know, so the problem is now in the human race, the problem of sin, we live in a society today where everybody is blaming somebody else for their condition. It's my father's fault that I'm the way I am. It's my mother's fault. It's my former church's fault. It's my boss's fault. It's my wife's fault. It's my husband. So I'd be such a great husband if it wasn't for my wife.

I'd be such a great wife if I started to laugh, but that's just the reality of it. Somebody in my office one time was committing a grievous sin and looked at me incredulously in a counseling session and said to me, if she wasn't the way she was, I wouldn't be doing this. See, there was no desire in his heart to take ownership for his own sin. It was his sin that had broken the covering off of his home and it is sin that had broken the covering off of his marriage and was causing it to dissolve. But he had chosen instead of taking ownership for his sin, he had chosen to blame somebody else for it.

In this case, his wife. James chapter one, verses 14 and 15 says, each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin with it is full grown brings forth death. So let's go over the four points of sin again in the book of Genesis, the conscious decision to defy the word of God for our lives and the will of God for our lives. Secondly, making another covering, declaring ourselves righteous when we're not declaring ourselves clean when we're not declaring ourselves to be in right relationship with God. When God's word clearly tells us we're not in right relationship with him. The third stage is hiding from the presence and the voice of God, even in the house of God. That's why people will gravitate to churches where they want a fire insurance.

They want the assurance that heaven's going to be their home in a sense at the end of the journey, but they don't want the presence or the word of God to challenge their behaviors, their worldview, or even how they're living their lives. And fourthly, blaming. If sin becomes evident instead of dealing with it, blaming somebody else for it. I'm a drug addict because of this.

I'm an alcoholic because of that. I shared with a person recently, I said, until you're willing to take ownership for your sin, you will never be free. Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth. So I'll set you free. And the inference of the word no implies in the Greek, at least it's a heartfelt embracing.

You shall heart feltedly embrace the truth about yourself, about your condition, about how, why you're doing things about your relationship with God and how it's affecting the relationship around you with others. Now thank God in Genesis chapter three, not only do we see the peril, the pitfall in the fall of humanity, we see the mercy of God. It's absolutely amazing. In Genesis chapter three and verse 21, it says, for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. See Adam and Eve had clothed themselves in fig leaves. I often think of how ridiculous they must have looked.

Can you imagine? These, these broad green leaves and they've made a like a hat, like a lampshade for themselves and they've made skirts and whatever it looked like must have looked absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine they had the glory of God covering them and they exchanged it for fig leaves. They exchange it for like a plant and thinking somehow this has covered me. Somehow my bankruptcy before God is not going to be exposed.

I've, I've made my, my own covering. Now God could have, could have exiled them as he did from the garden, as he did all of humanity because of sin, knowing what sin was going to produce in the human race. It technically could have destroyed the whole thing and just recreated it all over again at that point. You know why he didn't? For God so loved.

That says it all. For God so loved Adam and Eve. For God so loved their offspring. For God so loved the world. God so loved the, the, the, the next generation, the next generation, the next generation, right down to you and I.

That's why he didn't destroy the whole thing. That's why in a sense evil sin has, has been allowed to prosper. It's only because of the mercy of God. God knew what humanity would do once humankind, men and women were living outside of the revealed will of God and we're blaming one another. Can't you see it on full display now in our society? Everybody is blaming somebody for everything. Nobody is taking ownership for anything anymore. It's somebody else's fault that I'm this.

It's somebody else's fault that I'm that. And they made their own covering and God could have justifiably just, just put them out of the garden with the fig leaves on them, said, go all the best to you. But you see the mercy of God and God was pointing to something already in verse 21 because it said he made tunics of skin and clothed them. He took in a sense the fig leaves off of them and put the skins of animals on them, which was the first indication that a blood sacrifice was going to have to be made to cover the sins of humanity. You see these animals had to die.

They had to shed their blood. They had to give their lives so that their skin could be used as a covering for the failures of Adam and Eve at this time. And this was right after in Genesis chapter three, verses 14 and 15, the gospel is preached. Did you know the gospel is preached in Genesis three, your Bible college students in the sanctuary and many of you online, you've studied your Bible.

You should know this. The gospel was first preached in Genesis chapter three, right in the guard before Adam and Eve were put out of the garden. The gospel of Jesus Christ was preached. Genesis chapter three, verse 14. So the Lord God said to the serpent, that's the devil himself, because you've done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field on your belly. You shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. Now I've, I've often interpreted that it's my own interpretation, but mankind, humankind was created out of the dust and it was the curse in a sense. You're going to spend your whole existence trying to devour the creation of God, that which God raised out of the dust. You're going to, you're going to crawl on your belly on the earth. It's as if he was saying to Satan, you could have lived in the heavens. You were the anointed cherub.

There was none like you for beauty, but instead of being where you are and where you were created and what you were created to be, you're going to now go on your belly on the earth and you're going to spend your whole existence during the lifespan of planet earth as it is you're going to be attempting to devour. The thief has come to kill, steal and destroy. You're going to be attempting to devour men and women and children. That's exactly what the devil is doing in our generation. The only way to beat him is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ through a living relationship with the son of God. And he says in verse 15 I will put inmetry between you and the woman between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. In other words, God says in the garden of Eden, I'm going to have a people and from that people, a Messiah is going to be born and through him a seed, a righteous seed is going to come back into this world and I'm going to put enmity between you, between your seed and her seed.

Her seed, the seed of the woman, which of course is Israel, Jesus Christ was born through the seed of Jacob. I'm going to put a division between you. One is going to live in light and the other is going to live in darkness. One has an eternity in heaven with God, the other has an eternity in hell with you.

And I'm going to make a division between the two. There's going to be no waffling in between the two as a serpent would like it to be, but my people are going to live for me. They're going to be a people of truth. They're going to be redeemed by the blood. They're going to be empowered by the spirit of God. And they're going to have power to stand against you and your lies that you imbibed into the spirit of humankind in the garden of Eden.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. And I'm going to send a savior. That's what he was saying in these verses. And you will bruise his heel in Psalm 22.

Jesus quoted it on the cross in Psalm 22 verse 16. He says, dogs have surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me.

They pierced my hands and my feet. You will, you will Bruce his feet, but he shall bruise your head. He shall tread upon you. He shall destroy you.

He shall destroy the reasonings that you have planted into those created in the image of God. And he will triumph over you. He will take captivity captive and give gifts unto men. He will be a redeemer. And the scripture tells us in verses 30 and 31 of Psalm 22, listen to these words, a posterity in the original King James says a seed shall serve him. It will be recounted to the Lord for the next generation.

They will come and declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has done this. A seed shall serve him. A seed shall serve him.

So much challenge to you. Turn from your sin. Turn from that which would destroy you. Turn from living according to your own will and your own way. Turn from your rebellion to the words and the will of the living God. Turn from trying to make yourself another covering that God says is not righteous. Turn from hiding from the presence and the voice of God.

Turn from blaming others for the struggle that's come into your life and maybe even in your home because of your sin. Turn from your adultery. Turn from your pornography. Turn from your alcohol. Turn from your drugs. Turn from your bitterness. Turn from your unforgiveness. Turn from the lust in your heart and the lies on your lips.

Turn to the living God. That was the message of John the Baptist. That was the introduction to Jesus Christ. And the people had the common sense to come streaming out of a religion that was hiding from God. A whole religious system that had made its own covering. A whole system that were hiding from the presence and the voice of God.

A whole system of blaming one another. And they went and humbled themselves in the sight of God, went down into the waters of baptism. And when they came up, John said to them, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There is no beholding of him until there's repentance in the heart.

We're not mistakers in need of correction. We're sinners in need of a savior. And so here's my question to you. You can lay down in your own garden with your own coverings, hiding from the voice of God and blaming others.

And you can do it for the rest of your life. And sad to say your eternity will most likely not be with God in some cases. Or you can be among the seed that Jesus Christ spoke about in Psalm 22. The seed that recognized that God had to send his son to a cross to pay the price for the wrong things that you have done that the Bible calls sin.

The things you did, the choices you made, the coverings that you procured for yourself, the false reasonings that you allowed to get into your mind. He had to send his son to die to pay a price to restore you and to give you back the covering that was lost in the Garden of Eden. You know, in the Garden of Eden, they were banished from the tree of life.

It says, lest they should live forever in this sinful condition. They were banished from the garden and the covering was lost. The covering of God was lost at the cross. The tree of life was regained and the covering was given back. And through Jesus Christ, we're brought back into a right relationship with the living God. And the glory of God becomes our covering again. The blood of Christ washes away all of our sin.

We're brought back into relationship with God where we can actually hear his voice again in the cool of the day. And we're no longer afraid to be challenged by his presence or by his words. And we delight in our hearts with in living inside the boundaries of the word of God. We're no longer looking to see how far we close we can get to the edge without ending up in hell.

We now want to live as close to the center of those two borders as we can. Our delight is in the law of God, the word of God. If God says it, that's what we want to be. If God tells us that it's what we should do, that's what we want to do. We want to live inside the word, the will of God.

We want the covering that only Christ can provide that is ours at the cross. And we want to stop blaming others and take responsibility for our own actions. Yes, my somebody may have done something to me. And I'm not responsible for what they did to me. But I'm responsible for the unforgiveness and bitterness in my own heart. And the unwillingness to release the debt as the word of God says that I should. And so will you be among the seed? Will you be among those who are technically back in the garden again with God technically covered our nakedness is covered.

Our bankruptcy is covered. Our foolishness and our failure and as all the things we've done are covered, and we're declared the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, that would be blasphemous word not written in the word of God. It means we are as clean as God is in Christ Jesus.

You can't have it two ways. That's what the Bible says. We're the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

And it gets even better than that. God now opens his word again to us because we want his word and he gives us of his Holy Spirit, the power to live in his word, the power to obey his word, the power to walk in his word, the power to become everything that Adam and Eve lost because of sin. Oh, thank God for the cross. Thank God for men and women who are just going to say, Lord, forgive me. Forgive me for what I have done. Forgive me for the sin that I have committed. Forgive me for despising your words, creating my own covering, making my own excuses for my behavior. Forgive me for blaming others for the way I behave. Oh God, in Jesus' name, would you restore me.

That's got to be your prayer today. The message today has been brought to you by Carter Conlon from Times Square Church. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. Plan to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.