The Truth About Sin - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Scripture is clear. Only God can renew and restore what sin has destroyed. Here's today's podcast revealing more truth about sin. I want us to understand what God says about sin.

I want us to understand what the principles are. Not simply what somebody's experienced, but what does God say about the nature of sin? When you and I look at the nature of sin, it's very evident in the Scripture several things. The lost person, the natural man, does not understand the things of God. He's blind. He can't see them. Because he has an old sin nature, you don't expect him to be able to discern and perceive and understand what only the Spirit of God can reveal when he's rejected the Spirit of God.

Man's blind. And so he goes on in his endless search, trying to gain, trying to possess, trying to climb the ladder, wanting recognition, everything, trying to do what? Fulfill something inside of him or her that drives them and drives them and drives them.

What is it? It is the Spirit of God reaching into that life and convicting and trying to make aware that their need is of God and turning that off. They try that much harder, that much more determined to make life complete. You can't complete something when God and God alone holds the final piece of the puzzle.

And everything man attempts is going to be futile. And he's blind, so he just goes on. It blinds his mind.

What does the Scripture say? It defiles his heart. In Jeremiah, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked or desperately sick. We look at our society and, you know, intelligent men and women know better. But when you are blind to the truth and your heart is defiled and deceitful and desperately wicked, what does man do? When he steps out of dependence upon God, the first thing he does is he becomes outrageously greedy and selfish and attempts to satisfy something in the human heart which he cannot satisfy.

Sin blinds. That's why our society isn't the mess it's in. You look in every area of our life, politics, science, education, religion, you name it. And what is man doing but making distorted decisions. And we Christians look and we think, hey, anybody knows better than that. Can't you see the truth?

No, they cannot. Blinded, not having the Spirit of God to give them guidance, they're just acting out what comes naturally. The tragedy is that we who are believers have become so weak and wishy-washy and don't have the courage we ought to have. That is, we get weak and weaker, sin rises and becomes stronger and stronger in the society. That's why they feel so free even now to express the lewd, evil, wicked, vile filth that they're expressing all over us because they don't feel the conviction they once felt. They're not stunned by believers in their presence anymore.

Is it because we're too much like them? Have we been so hoodwinked by sin that now we've said, well, that's the way it is. And are we indulging in, partaking of, participating in, and has our conscience been so dulled by having heard it for so long and seen it so long and been in the midst of it so long, has our conscience been so dull that now we even agree?

And I believe that every person in you who's lived to be 40 or 50 years of age, you can look back and you don't have to look back long to say, you know, I am absolutely amazed at what we tolerate. Sin, outright rebellion against God. And the way we rationalize it is this, we go to the Bible and we say, well, that's not really what that means.

And it's amazing to me when I hear a man that I heard preach 20 years ago get up in the pulpit and rationalize the passage of Scripture that is absolutely a violation of the Word of God. What has happened? What is happening? And I think all of us need to take inventory once in a while to say, Lord, am I being caught up in this? Is my viewpoint distorted?

Have I been deceived? Do I see sin as wicked and as vile as you see it? Or have I been caught up with the rationalization and say, man, don't fight, it's not going to work, you might as well give in. You know, why beat your brains out? You don't have to beat your brains out, you just live holy before God. That'll beat them out. They can't stand that. And the greatest contribution that you and I can make to the world from their point of view is just get more and more easy and more and more lax and just accept them and everybody just take it easy.

Man, just don't fight it. That's not what Jesus said. He talked about salt and light.

He talked about a bright light, not covering it up, a bright light. Sin blinds man's eyes, perverts his will, and when you look to see how it has defiled man, then you and I begin to question, what about the results of all of this? What about the results of sin? Well, let's look at it from several perspectives beginning, as he says here, just as through one man, sin entered into the world and death followed it.

Death, therefore, has now spread to all men because all have sinned. Well, what was its effect, first of all, upon Adam and upon Eve? Do you realize if you'll take the book of Genesis, the third chapter, and see the effect of sin on Adam and Eve's life, it hadn't changed one bit?

There was shame, fear, banishment, death, and a lot of other things that happened as a result of their sin. Sin hadn't changed. Sin offers nothing in your life that is lasting. Somebody says, but you have a lot of fun sinning.

Is that right? You may be able to experience some form of release in your spirit or in your body for the moment, but anything that destroys you could not ultimately be fun. And you see, a lot of those folks who are talking about how fun sin is, they don't tell you how they feel when they get in the bed at night, the lights are off, and all of a sudden self comes glaring in at them. And they feel dirty and nasty, unless that is their conscience has been so defiled and so deadened because of continuous sin, they don't feel anything anymore.

So I want to give you a warning. If you, my friend, are one of those persons whose mouth is filthy, whose actions are immoral, whose lifestyle is independent of God, and it doesn't bother you and doesn't faze you, I want to tell you, you are in the most dangerous position a man or woman or young person can ever be in. It says something about the possibility that your conscience has been seared and you no longer even feel the hot iron when it's placed on your heart. You don't feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit anymore. You're not stunned by your own actions anymore.

You've become so rationalistic because of your blindness to reality. You've accepted it as a way of life, and now you've decided that your God, that is the one that you created by your blind mind, an independent spirit, your God would never send you to hell. I don't know who your God is, but I want to tell you the God you're going to stand before one of these days.

It's the God of this Bible, and He identified Himself as Jehovah, the Lord God Almighty. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God. I don't know who you think you're going to stand before. You're going to stand before a God before whom you're going to have to give an account for every idle word and every action of sin and all of your pleading and all of your excuses and all of your rationalizations that you've convinced yourself that legitimizes your actions.

I want to tell you, my friend, it's all going to disappear in a split second. And you're going to stand with your wicked, vile, rebellious, independent heart before a holy God. And do you realize that when you stand before Him, you won't have any arguments? There'll be no excuses to offer, or you may try.

I don't even really think you'll try. It'll be so glaringly evident to you that you chose to live your life independent of God, rebelling against God, doing your own thing, convinced and persuaded that you didn't need Him. And then He's going to say to you, out of His own grieved and broken heart, Depart from Me, ye that worketh iniquity, I never knew you.

If anybody else says that to you, you can laugh it off. But the day you stand before a holy God, and He says that to you, all the laughing will have been over a long time ago. Sin is devastating. How did it affect Adam? Shame, fear, banishment, death. But what has it done to you and me?

There are several words. Number one, it has enslaved us. Every evil habit is a form of slavery. Every single person who is unsaved is a slave of sin, Satan, and a slave to themselves. Slave to their bodily appetites. Slave to their old sin nature. Slave to Satan. It enslaved us.

But did something else. He says as sin entered the world through one man, then came death. Sin has separated us from God. Separated us from each other.

It is a separator. Sin's results in your life and mine is this, it made our bodies, our human bodies, Satan's playground. Whatever our appetite may be, whether it is an appetite for food, for knowledge, for beauty, for sex, whatever it might be, Satan has made the human body a playground.

That's where he plays. He's made the human body his tool. We work on each other, sinning against each other.

What has it done to us? As one man sinned against God, he says, then death passed upon all men, made us all guilty. The Bible says all of us are guilty before God.

And only by the grace of God are we relieved from that guilt. Then there comes separation from God, banishment from God, physical death is the result of sin, but ultimately the wrath of God. Now death is not the wrath of God.

The wrath of God is the vengeance of God upon sin. Physical death all of us are going to experience because of the nature of sin, because all of us have sinned against God. Even after you're saved, you're still going to die physically. The only difference is this, that for the believer, when you and I pass on from this life, absent from the body, present with the Lord, you can't bury a child of God. You may put the body in the earth, but not the saint or in the presence of God. So death of the believer, which is one of the consequences of sin, God through redemption has turned it into a doorway into our presence with Him. But for the lost person, it is a doorway into eternal torment. That's what sin does.

What's the cure? Isn't it interesting what the apostle Paul said? As through one man sin came into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all have sinned. Then he says, through the obedience of one, the many were made righteous. Do you realize there's only one hope from sin?

That's the person of Jesus. There's not anything you can do about your old sin nature if you're an unbeliever. When you are saved by the grace of God, you confess to the Lord Jesus Christ that you are a sinner by nature.

And you sin against God. And you ask Him to forgive you based on the shed blood, which is God's purchased price for our sinfulness. And the moment you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, it is the blood of Jesus that atones or pays the penalty.

Now I want you to listen carefully. It is the blood of Jesus that atones for or pays the penalty for my sin, therefore I do not have to be lost. It is the presence of Jesus that makes me qualified to live victoriously in this life. It isn't simply confession. It isn't simply just having my sins forgiven.

You see, that wasn't enough. That's why Paul said, I've been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but it is Christ who now lives within me. And the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. It is the blood of Jesus that takes care of the penalty of my sins. It is the blood of Jesus that takes care of the penalty of my sins. It is the person of Jesus that enables me to live above the power of the principle of sin that still indwells the believer and gives us a hard time.

The blood took care of my S-I-N-S. It took the person of Jesus united to Him, indwelled by the Holy Spirit to enable us to overcome the indwelling principle of sin with which we have to wrestle every single day of our life. No matter what you say, what you do, how much money you have, who you are, how much prestige, how much power, how much prominence, it doesn't make any difference. You nor anyone else will ever change the law of God. And the law of God is this. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved. Reject the Lord Jesus Christ and you will incur the wrath of God forever and ever and ever. I don't want that to happen in your life.

So, I want to help you if you'll let me for just a moment. If you'll pray this prayer, God will change your life and He will change your eternal destiny. But if you refuse to pray the prayer, you'll keep on living rejected and one day you're going to look at that big, awful, empty mess.

And it's going to be too late to relive your life. Would you pray this prayer to the Father? Heavenly Father, I have sinned against You. I have tried to live independent of You. I've disobeyed You.

I've wanted to have it my way. Father, forgive me of my sins. I do believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins.

I accept His death as full payment for my sin. Here and now I receive Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and the Lord of my life. I submit my life to You, Lord, to follow You all the days of my life.

As the Holy Spirit enables me, I will walk obediently and uprightly before You. Now, Father, in Jesus' name, I thank You for every person who's prayed that prayer. I know that You have saved in these moments every single person who prayed that prayer sincerely out of their heart. And now, Father, would You grant them the confidence that they need to share what has happened to them with someone else? And, Father, to find a good church that teaches the Word of God where they can be baptized into that fellowship and now begin to grow in the Lord. Thank You, Father, for what You're going to do now in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of The Truth About Sin. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.