Sermon Cloud

My aim this evening is to try and get us to both see and feel the sinfulness of sin.  Many times we acknowledge, in our minds, sin as wrong, but I wonder if we grasp how offensive it is to God - & therefore how angry God is with us.  We usually fall on the side of his LOVE and think he would never get cross with us – but just say “Dear, dear, never mind, I forgive you”  A friend used to say that God is always bound to forgive – for that’s his job!
But is that right?  

Sin is serious
In Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, notice how God puts his curse on us and on the world?  He isn’t just mildly cross – he is angry.  The Bible’s word is wrath.

We might think of sin as just a mistake or a mild slip-up, but God sees it so differently; he is angry. Why would he be so cross? We need to remember just who he is – he is GOD; there’s no-one greater. He is the Maker of all things – the one who gives life to all people.  
We must remember just who we have sinned against. And then we must remember just who we are; we are people made in his image, made by him, who have decided NOT to listen to him, but to listen – and agree with – an alternative voice; namely his arch enemy, the devil.

This wrath of God is not merely an emotional outburst; it is his steadfast attitude to everyone and everything that offends Him.  I suggest that he has every right to be so angry!  DON’T YOU?

Look how the NT picks this up. Keep a hand in Gen 3 and come over to Rom
According to Rom 1:18 he is wrathful over human godlessness; and in particular the way we suppress the truth.  What truth is that?  It is the truth that God has shown us about himself 1:19. He has made plain certain things about himself.

Paul’s language here takes us back to the early chapters of Gen. 20, since the creation of the world.  
Ever since creation, God has been disclosing these great truths to us – he’s shown his invisible qualities, 20 namely his eternal power & divine nature.. what he is like seen in what he has made

The fact is, no-one is let off the hook – we are all guilty. 20c men are without excuse.

You see, people who should have known quite a bit about God, refuse to honour him, 21b; they just will not make him the centrepiece of their lives. He does not figure as the key person in their thinking.  No, the world revolves around US/ME – not around God. This is the seriousness of sin; it is living life centred elsewhere – on me and not on God

Gen 3 shows how this happens:  Look at the text with me, 3:4. Satan undermines God and his authority.  He wheedles his word into our minds and tells us that we are free to be the rule-makers.  God is far too harsh; he doesn’t really mean it when he says “Don’t eat or you will die” In fact if you do eat, you will be like him; you could make the decisions as to what is right and what is wrong. Now that is very appealing, and all the more so today with our great idol called CHOICE. “Don’t you just love being in control”. Gas ad

As you know, when they ate, the lights went out – they and the whole world were plunged into darkness. As Paul says; Rom 1:21: their thinking became futile, & their foolish hearts were darkened

Of course they did, cos what was God’s prerogative – being the Sovereign Lord of the universe, they now decided they would like a bit of that. And they bit into what they couldn’t handle; they were on the road to death; something they were never designed for. They now believed satan and not God. Rather than the lights going brighter, the fuse blew.

But it wasn’t the eating of the fruit that was so bad, nor the taking of it.  That’s merely how the sin showed itself; that’s the result of something that took place in their minds and hearts.  Gen 3 gives us a clue as to the real sin when it says the woman saw, the fruit was pleasing to the eye, 6, and also desirable for gaining wisdom. That’s it – desirable, pleasurable.  Don’t ever think sin makes itself unattractive; it’s often dressed up as good, it will do us good, we will feel more human.

The real issue of sin is not that we DO bad things; no, its that we do what seems right to us. Sin begins in our imagination. We doubt that God is really good, and believe that satisfaction is found elsewhere.   What is wrong comes to us attractively packaged. So we smile. But the real sin is committed in the mind and heart. To admire beauty is wonderful, to lust after merely outward attractiveness could be sin. And it may not merely be what we see, but what it could do to us – we could become so wise in our own eyes.  We could know what few others know.  

You see what’s happened?  We’ve replaced what GOD asks of us – with what WE long for.    You see who’s in control? You see what captivates our hearts and minds? It’s no longer God



Sin is idolatry
A dark exchange has taken place; the truth of God - demoted & a lie put in his place, Rom 1:25 (P. 793)
This is idolatry; a God-substitute. Created things have replaced the Creator in our minds and hearts.   This is now our default position as human beings. God has merely confirmed what we wanted to do.  

We humans wanted to follow the lie – so God handed us over.  God gave us what we wanted.  But, of course, we didn’t realise just how terrible that was; we didn’t know the complete mess we would get ourselves into. Rather like a young child who always says “I know” – we humans don’t know.  

Look at the phrase; 1:24 God gave them over. It’s devastatingly awful. 1st God gives us over to impurity - the sinful desires of our hearts; thus we degrade our bodies with one another.  

2nd 1:26 God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Are you surprised that the gay agenda is so prominent?  Remove God from the centre, & human beings take his place. The unnatural replaces the natural - that’s idolatry. And what we love we worship, so we adore the human body – we pamper it, idolise it, make it our role model.  Our shameful lusts are everywhere to be seen today

3rd, God gave them over, 28 to a depraved mind. So now people are doing what they ought not to do, as the huge list shows,29ff. This is the result of a depraved mind combined with a dark and foolish heart.

God gave them over is a terrible, terrible indictment of us.  We have been left to our own devices. And what have we done?  You see how serious sin is?  We’ve removed God from his central no. 1 place – and putting on the pedestal anything else, be it an idea, or an action, another value, a religion, or any human choice.  So serious is it; it’s idolatry.  

Think of the 10 Commandments Ex 20:2; God comes first    I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, and straight away the first rule is: you shall have no other gods before me.  
“An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God” – Richard Keyes

Brothers and sisters; we are idolaters. Our default position is to put up God-alternatives; be they good or bad things, ideological or religious. As soon as God is moved to one side, and something else replaces him on the centre-spot, that is our idol. To fail to love God with ALL our heart, mind and soul, is not only sin – it is idolatry. To check yourself; ask what you dream about; work out how you spend your time; what charges your batteries, what are your uncontrollable emotions? They may well be good things – but they may well be your idols.

What is the solution?  
You cannot just pluck up an idol and cast it aside; it grows back again.  Bad patterns repeat themselves. Will-power is never strong enough; repentance that we actually have the idol is insufficient. We can only remove the problematic idol by re-placing it with a bigger one. Repentance plus faith.   Like so many answers: Jesus is the answer!

Jesus Christ is the only idol we’re to worship; because he is the perfect image of the invisible God

That’s what we’re told in Col 1:15 he is the image of the invisible God.  And Col 3:1, P 833 Since then we have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God
We must so love the Lord Jesus, find him so enjoyable, so satisfying, that he meets our very deepest of needs. We will explore this more in our next series on Contentment.

~~end
Pray  Holy God, you are the most gracious one imaginable.  Here we are as true rebels, deserving of all your wrath, and yet you woo us, draw us, provide for us, sacrifice for us, all so that we can come to you. You have a pure heart that can never look on evil, and you make provision that we could have such a heart also. How generously kind! It may well be that we have never really considered the seriousness of sin; nor seen it for what it really is – idolatry.  We thank you that you have pointed this out to us this evening. Now we are left with the question: what should we do about what you have said.  We can hear the devil saying to us that the solution is far too radical, keep hold of the idol and just try to put some good things in its place.  But O Lord, unless you fill the horizons of our mind; unless you become our all-consuming love and desire, we’ll merely repast past patterns.  Come and truly fill us this evening we pray.  For your glory alone Amen