It certainly sounds counterproductive to study sin.
After all, common wisdom would say, forget the past and just move on with your life. However, I contend that you can never understand our great salvation until you understand how much we need it. It's once you need that and you are aware of that, that you appreciate the Savior that you have.
That's where hamartiology comes in. It explains the problem and it points to the solution. Sin is dangerous and it can't be brushed off, but you have a Savior who can break the chains of every single sin. Today on Connect with Skip Hyten, Skip begins a series called White Collar Sins, sharing how holiness allows you to live a truly fulfilled life in Christ. But before we begin, here's a great resource that encourages you to live with bold faith as you explore the inspiring stories of women in the Bible. You know Proverbs 31, the go-to passage that describes the ideal Christian woman and life. But let's be honest, that ideal can be as intimidating as it is inspiring. Here's Skip Heitzig with more. Can I just tell you, it's exhausting to just read that, let alone how on earth women could you ever do that?
Well let me say, first of all, you can't do that in a day. He's not giving the 24-hour description of the virtuous wife. This is a woman over time. Get to know some of the most incredible women in the Bible and in history with two inspiring resources. A six-message CD collection from Pastor Skip on prominent women in Scripture, plus the book Seven Women by best-selling author Eric Metaxas. This bundle is our thanks when you give $35 or more to help expand the Bible teaching outreach of Skip Heitzig. Charm is deceitful, beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Call now to request these captivating resources as our thanks for your generous gift. 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer.
Okay, we're in Matthew chapter 23 today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. When I was younger, when I was single, I used to have this mask, a full rubber mask that actually looked like a real person, a real ugly person and I wore that. I'd wear it like driving down the freeway. I put this mask on and people would do with double take and I'd wear it on my bicycle.
I'd wear it on my porch. I even wore it to a wedding once and this mask had a frown so it looked kind of like there was some scratches on his face and he was really kind of gnarly, really ugly and underneath I could be smiling. In fact, usually I was laughing but the mask canceled out what was going on underneath. Let's suppose that I wanted to have a serious conversation with somebody while I was having this mask on, wearing this mask. It really would be impossible to do so because they couldn't get past that mask.
It would just be weird because of what they were seeing versus what they were hearing. Well, in ancient Greek times in the theater, people wore masks. Actors wore a comedic mask. If they had funny lines, they would wear a tragic frowning mask. If they had sad lines and typically in Greek theater, if it was a comedy, they would get an oversized grin, place that mask up to their face, recite their lines and people would laugh. When it was time for a serious part, they would get the frowning mask, hold it up to their face, quote their lines, say them and oftentimes people would mourn.
They would weep depending on the nature of the lines. The Greeks in their theater had a Greek term for an actor. It was the word hupakrites, a hypocrite. It simply means somebody who wears a mask and we know the word to mean somebody who lives not being real, not being authentic, wearing as it were a mask. This series that we're doing, White Collar Sins, it's a borrowed term, it's a borrowed phrase from the world of criminology. The phrase white collar crime, white collar crime was a phrase coined by an American criminologist by the name of Edwin Sutherland.
He wanted to distinguish what he called blue collar versus white collar crimes. A white collar crime is a crime committed typically for financial gain, crimes like embezzlement, corporate fraud, money laundering. A white collar crime is defined as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his or her occupation.
So it's a non-violent crime. It is crime in a three-piece suit committed by those in the business world or even law enforcement world. And perhaps the most well-known white collar crime of late happened in 2009 with Bernie Madoff. Bernard Madoff, you've heard his name, it's a household name by now, he was convicted of massive fraud, a Ponzi scheme that cost investors 65 billion dollars.
Bernie Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence in a federal facility. So a white collar crime can actually incur as much or more punishment than some blue collar crimes. What we're going to do today and throughout this series is in effect give you a short theology of sin. I don't know if you know this or not, but in the world of theology there's a branch of theological study called hamartiology, which means the study of sin.
It comes from two words hamartia, which is the Greek word for sin, and the other word lagia, which means to study. So it's the study of sin. Now most people when they hear that go, why on earth would you ever want to study that? That is like the most depressing subject you could ever come up with. It certainly sounds counterproductive to study sin.
After all, common wisdom would say, forget the past and just move on with your life. However, I contend that you can never understand our great salvation until you understand how much we need it. It's once you need that and you are aware of that, that you appreciate the savior that you have. That's where hamartiology comes in. It explains the problem and it points to the solution. And I could well ask when somebody said, why on earth would you ever want to study sin? I would ask, why would you ever want to get an x-ray? Or why would you ever want to go get a blood test or an EKG or an electroencephalogram answer? Because I want answers.
I want to find out what the true condition and the nature of what I'm feeling and going through is all about in hopes to point to a solution to it. Now in this series of white collar sins, let me just tell you my aim, my purpose. It is not to condemn. It is not to make people feel bad about themselves. It's not so that you can leave church defeated. It's like, let's go to church and get depressed.
The idea is not, oh great, just when I thought it was fun to come to church, you got to pull this series out. My purpose is to simply make us feel my purpose is to simply make us feel less comfortable wearing the mask. To aim for mask less living. To be honest about who we are and what God has done and is doing with us and saving us from our condition. And in turn to be much more gracious with other people around us when they falter and they fail. Well, we're in Matthew 23.
I've asked you to turn there this morning and let me just give you a background. This is a time when Jesus confronts the religious elite of Israel. It's not the first time. This is passion week. It's the last week of his life. He's had several run-ins with the religious elite, the scribes, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and he's never had like a great relationship with him in the past. There's always this simmering going on underneath, a confrontation going on.
Here, the simmering is at a boiling point. And here's what's interesting about chapter 23 of Matthew. Matthew 23 is the last public sermon Jesus ever preached that is recorded at least. Now that in and of itself is intriguing because you might think, well, the last sermon Jesus would preach would be a sermon on salvation or a sermon on resurrection or a sermon on how to get along with each other. But he doesn't preach any of those subjects. The last sermon he preaches publicly that is recorded is a confrontation.
It is a polemic. He pulls their masks off. He shines the bright light on them. He unmasks their hypocrisy. We're not going to look at all of this chapter, but we're going to look at some verses.
We're going to make note of it. And what I want to do in looking at Matthew 23 is to look at five characteristics of sin, five of them. Number one, sin is detectable. God always can detect it. God always knows who we are.
We never pull one over off on God. He knows our hearts from the beginning. He can detect it and hear Jesus confronts it. So we have in this chapter, Jesus, the perfect standing next to the pretenders, the perfect one and the pretending ones.
Verse one, Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples saying, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe that observe and do, but do not do according to their works for they say, and they do not do. We always have to understand that sin is detectable to a holy God. The Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. John wrote, if we say we have no sin, we lie. We're liars and we do not practice the truth.
We deceive ourselves. Now, the most common word in the New Testament for that word sin in English is that word I just told you about, harmatia. And harmatia used over 200 times, 200 and let's say 40 times, 220 to 40 times, means to miss the mark or to fall short. So it implies there is a divine standard in place that we have missed. So let me give you a working definition of sin in general, a short one. Sin can be defined as any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude or nature.
Once again, it's any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, in attitude or in nature. Now, I mentioned just one word from the Greek language translated into English, harmatia. But if you were to just look at your English Bible, forget the original language, just look at English. All the different words translated for that one English word sin, you would discover that the word sin in your English Bible appears 446 times in Scripture. The plural form sins another 187 times and put all of the different forms together, sinful, sinning, etc. It shows up over 700 times in Scripture. What that means is you can virtually look anywhere in your Bible and you are confronted with the idea, the problem of sin.
One time D.L. Moody, Dwight Lyman Moody, the guy who started Moody Bible Church, that evangelist from Chicago, he was a guest speaker at a church that asked him to come. So he got there, he was ready to give his message. And the leadership, one of the elders came up to him and said, Mr. Moody, we just want to warn you that this church may be very different from the church that you're at, Moody Church. He said, in this church, it's not uncommon to have a church to have members of the congregation get up and leave before the sermon is done.
So he said, thank you, fair enough, fair warning. So he gets up to the pulpit and Mr. Moody said, ladies and gentlemen, today, I want to address two different groups of people. I first want to speak to sinners, then I want to speak to saints. So he spoke a while, then he said, now I'm done speaking to sinners. So if you want, the sinners can get up and leave.
I'm going to now speak to the saints. They said, for the first time in that church's memorable history, no one got up early and left the service. The reason everyone stayed is most know that sin is real, but it's sort of hard to admit they're part of the problem. Sin is not a popular concept. And that is because in our culture, mankind is viewed, not morally, not spiritually, but just mechanistically.
You are just, you exist biologically. There may or may not be a God, but it's not a big deal. So it's a purely mechanistic view of our culture. So sin is explained away. It's explained in a way that God has explained away. It's explained away like God has explained away. Sin is explained away as a psychological conditioning or a social conditioning.
Years ago, John Lennon sang that song, God is a concept by which we measure our pain. That's how people feel about sin. Sin is just a concept by which we measure guilt and have to deal with guilt. And so we call it sin and you feel good when you think I've appeased a God up there somewhere. That's how they look at sin. Sin is explained away. Unfortunately, it's not only in the secular world, but in the religious world.
Many religions deny sin. Hinduism, for example, teaches the good and evil are relative terms that we all stumble on our way, our journey to finding ourselves. And if we fail in this life, you'll always be reincarnated into another form. And perhaps then or in another life or another life, you'll get it right.
No, thank you. The Unitarian Church, oddly called a church, believes that man is basically good. There's no such thing as sin. It's ridiculous belief system that you don't need saving from anything. They will tell you, you save yourself by improving yourself. Life is about self-improvement. That's what salvation means.
Just get better, be better, be nicer. Then Christian science, which is neither Christian nor science, denies sin, denies death, and denies evil. They do not exist in that ideology. All of those things they say are just a result of faulty beliefs. But it's not just in other religions and in cults. But one eminent pastor who was very popular on radio and on television for years around this country said, and I quote, I do not think that anything has been done in the name of Christ or under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to the human personality and hence counterproductive to evangelism than the often crude uncouth and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition. In other words, here you have a pastor in a pulpit of a mainline church saying the worst thing you could ever tell someone is that they are sinners in need of a savior.
And I listen to that and then they'll never go to the savior because they'll never know the need that they have to be saved. So sin is detectable. Jesus could smell it a mile away. And though He doesn't name it as sin in this chapter, He names the sin that they were committing, and that is the sin of the mask, hypocrisy. So sin is detectable.
Jesus detected it and He nailed it. A second characteristic I'd like you to notice is that sin is dangerous. It's dangerous verse. Well, look at a few verses. Look at verse 13. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Verse 14. Woe to you. Verse 15. Woe to you. Verse 16. Woe to you, blind guides. Eight times in this chapter, he says, Whoa, trust me, I counted.
And you may go, oh, let me count. Okay, whatever. Eight times he says, Whoa, it's a word of denunciation, condemnation. It's an exclamation of grief. You could translate it this way.
How terrible for you or man, are you in trouble? Or look out. You know what the word is in the original language? Both Greek as well as Hebrew in the Old Testament, the term, whoa, both the same word, essentially. Oi.
Sounds so Jewish, right? It's like, Oi. Whoa. Oi.
Ouch. Look at verse 13 for a moment. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you, shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. Do you hear what he's saying? He's saying you religious leaders are not going to heaven.
And anybody who gets close enough to want to enter the door, you slam the door so they can't get in. Verse 15 gets even more scathing. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte.
Now, stop right there. A proselyte is a convert. And in those days, there were two types of converts, what you might call a half convert and then what you might call a full convert. One was called the proselyte of the gate.
That's a half convert. Proselyte of the gate is somebody who believed in the God of the Jews, who would go to the synagogue, was not allowed to go sacrifice in the temple because they had not been circumcised. But then there was the full proselyte. That's called the proselyte of righteousness.
That's what they were after. So listen to what he says. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte. And when he is one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.
Oi! Ouch. So here's the principle we glean from just those two verses. Sin in its undetected form, in its unrepentant form, bars a person from heaven.
Sin is detectable to God. It is dangerous for people. How bad is it, you ask? It's so bad that it brings separation from God, and it brings the judgment of God on an eternal basis. That's how bad.
How bad is it? It's so bad that God's activity on the earth, all of his activity on the earth, could be focused on curing this problem. That's what redemptive history is all about, curing the sin problem. If you want to see how bad sin is, just look at the cross. That's what sin did.
It put the perfect one, the holy one, the righteous one, the sinless one, in that kind of agony and pain and bloodshed, as he took sin, our sin, upon himself. But this disease is so bad that often those who are most infected do not realize how sick they are. As Billy Graham once said, the most devastating effect of sin is that we are blinded to it. Now here's where the blindness gets really dangerous. It gets dangerous because typically you and I are really good at spotting somebody else's sin, and really bad at smelling our own. It's like we're like the guy with Lindburger cheese on his mustache, and we're going around going, this world stinks.
Well, the problem is right here. Martin Luther put it this way, the recognition of sin is the beginning of salvation. Now let's suppose you have a new car. You say, well, from your lips to God. But let's just suppose you have a brand new car.
Now I'm going to use this illustration to illustrate how people handle guilt in their lives. So you get a new car, and this car has all the bells and whistles, all the fancy screen gadgets. It tells you the weather in Dubai, and are the planets aligned, and all that stuff. So you get a new car, and this car has all the bells and whistles, and are the planets aligned, and all that stuff. As you're driving down the street, you hear a noise, a pleasant sound perhaps, maybe even a voice that says, the air pressure in your left front tire is low. It might have an icon, it might even be in a British accent, the air pressure in your left front tire is low.
Oh, how nice. Or check coolant. Or, my wife and her car has this little pleasant bing, and it goes off if you go too fast. Now it's set, there's a factory setting, and then you can change it, you can move that setting of what is too fast. Well, we have changed it since we got it.
And I'm not going to tell you what we changed it to, okay? So let's say we're driving down the street, bing, and let's say that means you've got to check the coolant soon, which is critical. Or the air in your tire needs to be filled up. So there's a couple ways you can handle those notifications.
Number one, you can go and get it fixed, put air in your tire, put coolant in, don't go so fast. Or there's another way you could handle it. You could carry in the glove box of your car a nice little hammer. It could be chrome on top, and maybe the leather handle matches the leather seats. It could be just a really nice hammer.
And so when that light goes off, when that warning light goes off, you just reach into the glove box, take that little hammer, and smash the thing that's telling you you've got a problem. That's Skip Hyzen with a message for you from the series White Collar Sins. Right now, here's Skip to tell you how your support helps keep these messages coming your way and connects more people to Jesus. God knows all of our failures, all of our mistakes, all of our weaknesses.
But that doesn't stop him from pursuing us with a steadfast love. Our goal is to help friends like you connect with that loving God by sharing these encouraging messages. And when you give a gift, you ensure this biblical teaching can keep coming your way. So please consider giving now to help connect you and others to the life-changing love of God. Here's how. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.
800-922-1888. Coming up tomorrow, Skip Hyzen shines a light on the deceptive nature of sin and the freedom from sin you have in Christ. What of all of those who claim to believe, but in their daily life they live as though God does not exist? This is why we need to seek God intentionally. As Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. As Charles Spurgeon put it, if you're not seeking the Lord, the devil is seeking you. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on his word. Make a connection. Connect with Skip Hyzen is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
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