Three Things Lost Through Sin
Three Things Regained Though Grace
MH – 341 “To God be the Glory”
CH - 340
Campmeeting is over, but I hope many of you were able
to make it for some of the time.
There were some great
seminars.
The Rockey’s from Faith for Today had some
helpful presentations, and so did Dr. Kidder, from the Seminary.
All of it was good.
But one thing sinks
into my mind more
than some of the other items.
During an afternoon
missions program the
speaker talked about Rwanda and the geneside there, which is similar to
what’s presently going on in Congo. He
said that before the geneside, our church had 300,000 members in Rwanda.
After the geneside we had a little short of 200,000.
Over a hundred Thousand of our brethren in Rwanda were slain.
The union president
lost his wife,
children and 7 grandchildren.
That’s a horrible thing
to consider.
And it will probably only get worse as we approach the end of time.
Think of what we have
seen on our televisions just this last decade:
Pictures about the concentration
camps in Serbia during the war in Yugoslavia.
It's amazing.
Its like the Nazi
death camps during the 2nd world war.
I had thought never
to see the like of those pictures ever again.
But they keep coming
back.
Over and over again
violence breaks out on ever more horrendous levels.
It's all part of Man's
inhumanity to man.
Someone once remarked that human beings are the only
animal on the planet that cause suffering for the fun of it.
With all our
enlightenment,
you’d think we would be more gentle with one another.
What a mystery.
Yet it is a mystery all too real in
our world today.
How does it come to
pass?
What is its
cause?
Is there a cure?
I think there is.
Today, we will examine the beginning of Mankind's
downhill slide toward evil, to try to discover answers to
these questions.
P. There we will see that it is Though the
effects of sin upon Mankind that people have been so devastated. And that God holds the answer to our
dilemma.
Ts Let us look upon the effects of sin upon us
at the very beginning of its acceptance into the human race, and at what God
plans to do concerning it. Turn to
Genesis 3
6 ¶ So when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a
tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also
gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
7
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.
8
And 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 God among the trees of the garden.
9 ¶ Then the LORD God called to Adam
and said to him, "Where are you?"
10
So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid
because I was naked; and I hid myself."
11 ¶ And He said, "Who told you
that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded
you that you should not eat?"
12
Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me,
she gave me of the tree, and I ate."
13 And the LORD
God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman
said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Now we see several
things here but one is clear.
I. The primary effect of Sin upon us
all is separation. And there are
basically three separations that sin has wrought against us. Look at Gen.3: 8-13
1.
Separation
From his God v. 8-10, 23 ( cf. Is. 59:2)
8 And 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 God among the trees of the garden.
9 ¶ Then the LORD God called to Adam and
said to him, "Where are you?"
10 So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was
afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
And ultimately in verse 23 we see that God had to evict Adam and Eve from His presence and the Garden.
Note Man's Guilt
- - "Saw
himself as naked" - without righteousness.
Man's fear - - "He hid himself" separating himself
from God because of it.
Man is unable through
sin to accept God's presence.
But this is also true
from God’s side: As Isaiah writes in Isaiah 59:2
But your iniquities have separated you
from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So
that He will not hear.
From this separation, all others
procede.
2.
Separated From his fellow men. v. 11-12
11 ¶ And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have
you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
12 Then the man said, "The
woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I
ate."
Man's guilt causes
him to be critical of his wife, the one whom God created to be his closest
human companion and friend..
The blaming Syndrome
we see here begins to become a part of human behavior and remains to this
day. (we sometimes call this,
"passing he buck")
We see this even in
the behavior of primates.
Someone reported once
seeing a monkey rebuked (cuffed) by a more senior monkey at the zoo.
They watched incredulously as that monkey immediately went and cuffed
another monkey, inferior to itself in the pecking order of monkeys. and again
as that monkey passed the blow on down the order of monkeys until it reached
the very end.
The monkey was
saying, “you may
have cuffed me, but I can cuff him/her, and so I’m not so bad. I’m still somebody here.
This is very human
behavior.
- Mankind denounces
his fellows in an attempt to avoid looking bad himself.
-
You
see, when people can't face their
own guilt they hide themselves by blaming others ( also called
"Covering up")
- ultimately they and
we blame God As Adam said, “The
woman, Whom thou gavest me" v.12
-
(Sin
Defends itself in these ways because it cannot afford to see itself as it is.)
Now let me point out something else here
about blaming others.
When Adam said that Eve had been the one to give him the fruit, was
he speaking the truth?
Yes.
But he was
sidestepping God’s question wasn’t he.
God had simply asked
“did you eat of the tree?”
A simple yes or no would have sufficed.
But Adam elaborated saying who gave him the fruit
of the tree.
It was not a lie, but it sidestepped the truth of
his own guilt.
Adam did not have to take and eat of the fruit Eve gave him. He chose to do that, and disobey God. That’s the truth God’s question tried to reach, and the truth Adam was seeking to avoid it by blaming Eve.
Brethren in the truth, if we mess up in something, let’s just admit it and go on. It is not needful for us to examine the geniology of our mistakes, even if others had a part to play in them.
Perhaps that would be
a good place to start
in restoring our own relationships in the church. Amen?
3.
But
perhaps the most devastating separation humanity has suffered as a result of
the entrance of sin into it’s experience is that mankind became separated From
itself v.11-12 (By Implication)
Whenever we feel we have to dodge the truth about ourselves and hide from it, we are hiding from ourselves as well.
We are loosing part of our own being and integrity by practicing denial of our sinfulness.
Now there is nobody I have to live
closer to than myself. There is no way for me to get away from my own
presence. Nor for you do get away from
yours. So what we find is
a. Men and women finding themselves unable
to accept there own guilt
b. Now We all need above all things to
believe in and accept ourselves. (This is called self concept) [Even
criminals refuse to accept the idea that they are in the wrong.]
c. But sin causes us to be faced with our
failure, our moral failure; which we cannot logically accept
and still believe in our own goodness. Therefore sin ruins our feelings
about ourselves.
d. It is the Low Self Concept that causes
us to blame others in an attempt to deny our own culpability. We want to bring others down to our level
so we won't look so bad to ourselves.
Let's look as some
behavioral examples of this syndrome
1. "It may be wrong for me to [fill in
the blank], but I'm not half so bad as the fellow over there." we
say.
2. “Everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn't I?
3. "All they do is mess up over
there "
4. "I really like her but...
It is because we
do not accept ourselves that we feel the need to criticize others, and blame
them for our failures.
Because sin
divides us from this most basic need in our own characters, mankind can no longer be
considered mentally healthy.
[And often it is those
among us who are most aware of their condition who resort to insanity, in order
to survive.]
But there is a way
out for man.
There is nothing
broken here that cannot be fixed.
God has provided A
way to be returned to health and happiness without fantasy or blaming others.
And that way, is the
way of His grace.
II. God's solution restores man. Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.
God promised to place a hatred
between us and sin.
He does this through an uncompromising love which He extends to every sinner who is willing to receive it.
In God's
acceptance of me I have my greatest reason to
accept myself.
(Romans 5:6)
For
when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
He willingly took my
guilt and the penalty
for my guilty deeds upon Himself, and offered me His grace.
God's grace erases
my guilt and your guilt through forgiveness.
God's grace
restores our perfection in His eyes through repentance.
Ps.32:3-5 pictures the experience of all sinners who find this
grace and power through Christ to live in it.
3 When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the
day long.
4 For day and night Your hand was heavy upon
me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah
5 I acknowledged
my sin to You, And my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, "I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD," And You forgave the iniquity of my sin.
The knowledge of God’s wondrous love and grace causes His children to be restored to wholeness, from the inside.
That which Sin has
broken, our
relationship with ourselves and our ability to feel wholesome and good within
ourselves, has been restored through Christ.
In Him, we can
actually reverse the ancient decision at the Tree of Knowledge that set our feet upon paths of pain
and rebellion.
But that is not
all. \
Now only does God
restore us to ourselves,
2. His Grace restores men and women also
To their fellow man
As we learn through
Christ to accept ourselves, we begin to feel secure in Him regardless of the tempest
without.
Our new security now
leads us to be able to accept others "just as they are."
Jesus said “Freely
you have received, freely give”
I can accept God's
work as going forward
in you even when you dissappoint me.
As long as I keep my
attention fixed on Christ, my redeemer, your failures will not disturb my
ability to stay open to you.
It is as Isaiah once
said:
“Great peace
have they that love Thy Law,
and nothing shall offend them.”
I believe that If I
can just live by this principle alone, I will become a strength and power for
peace in the church, and so will you.
Because God is restoring us to each other through His Son.
3. And finally, Grace restores
mankind To his God:
Rm.5:11
says –
we
also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now
received the reconciliation.
“He accepts me,
therefore I can be restored to myself”
“He accepts me, now I
can accept others and be restored to them as well.”
"He accepts
me and I am freed to be restored to
Him."
"We love Him
because He first loved us."
1Jh.4:19
I no longer feel the
oppression of guilt
and therefore I can come to God as a new being- freed from sin to live with God
through Jesus Christ forever.
What a wonderful
destiny!
Conclusion:
Mankind fatally
wounded itself in Eden - destroying all that made life worth while.
You and I have
suffered all our lives from that event, in one way or another.
But because God's
love did not fail us, but sent His Only Son to "Be wounded for our
transgressions", we can be freed from sin’s Guilt through accepting
Him.
When we do this, we are taking our first steps toward
reuniting the scattered pieces of our lives and personalities
that sin has imprisoned so long.
And the more we
experience this wholeness in Christ, the more we can be gracious and understanding to each
other, for we can understand their struggles as our own.
True, we are not completed yet.
Perfection is a process.
But As Our Mental, Social, Physical and Emotional lives find their stability through the
wonderful grace of God, God's people will become the first wonder of the
world to all who behold the miracle of their new birth and will themselves
drawn to Christ through them.
There was a time
during their desert wanderings, that the children if Israel lost their focus on
God and began to grumble and complain about themselves and their leaders and
God.
God’s presence
withdrew from them, and that allowed Satan to attack them with fiery serpents.
God instructed Moses
to place a silver serpent on a pole before the tabernacle, and to tell all who
were bitten to look upon it.
All who looked were
healed.
Jesus told Nicodemus
in John 3 that the serpent represented Him, becoming sin for us upon the cross.
Friend, if you are
struggling with emotional pain today and feeling lost within yourself, Have hope and look to Jesus. In him you will find rest for your soul.
If you have
disappointed yourself because your behavior was not perfect – have patience
with the process and turn yourself to behold Jesus. He is the lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world to
open the way of God’s power to help you and transform you “from glory to glory”
until you reach “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
If depression
threatens you, telling you that you are worthless and that your life has no
meaning, rebuke it in Christ. Look
to Jesus and behold God’s undying love for you and know that you are
loved and that you have value and for you in His plan that no other life
can fill. Only you can fill it.
Just Admit your need
and Believe in Him and Claim your place with Him in His kingdom. You can do that right now as we sing Hymn
341 together.
Let us sing, and then
we will pray.