Sermon Cloud

INTRODUCTION

If you are at all sensitive to our times, your own thoughts and heart, and to the artists of our day, you will agree that there is something wrong with the human race and society.  Things are not as they should be.  Tonight we're going to get into the reasons for our dilemma.

 

STUDY

The most common definition of sin if you've been a Christian for some time is that sin is disobedience to God.  But the Biblical view is more complex than that.  Much like there is a fullness to the Trinity and a fullness to the Gospel, there is also a fullness to the Biblical view of sin.  Sin has several dimensions, and we are going to look at the three most common types of sin in Scripture.  Here are three words for sin and their meaning found in the Old Testament.

 

1. Avah- which is often translated as "iniquity" (Psalm 51:2a) means to be twisted out of shape. 

 

Much like when a bone is dislocated from its socket it causes great pain and damage, so a heart that is not centered on God is filled with deeply distorted beliefs (self-views, God-views, world-views), and drives our desires to a place where they are inordinate, enslaving and misplaced.

 

"At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures...hated and hating." (Titus 3:3)

 

2. Chatha- often translated as "sin" (Psalm 51:2b) means to miss the mark or target.

 

Sin is the failure to live as God wants us to in peaceful harmony with Him, others, and the world.  Thus "omissions" (against God's call to love and contentment) are as wrong as "commissions" (against God's prohibition of lying, stealing, murder, etc.).

 

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

 

This is the mark that is missed.  We fail to live for God's glory and instead live for our own.

 

3. Pasha- often translated "transgression" (Psalm 51:1) means to willfully rebel against someone to whom you owe allegiance.

Despite being self-deceived and enslaved (avah) we are still responsible for our actions.

 

Our disobedience to God is a deliberate substitution of our will for His.

 

"For though they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks...they exchanged the glory of the immortal God and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator."  (Romans 1:21a, 23a, 25b)

 

Summary

 

          We sin when we refuse to live for God's glory and instead seek our own glory

          (importance, significance) in other things.

 

Sin is the misery of making anything in your life more important to your hope, identity, meaning, or joy than God.

 

What mistakes will we make if we forget that sin has different dimensions to it?

 

If we fail to keep each of these three aspects of sin firmly in our mind or we lose our grasp of all its dimensions we'll end up with a weakened view of sin and therefore no need to cry out for a savior.

 

Avah- If we forget the word "avah," distortion, we might develop a behaviorist model of sin.  That is, we might come to believe that sin is almost completely deliberate.

 

We would simply call people to stop sinning without recognizing how self-deceived and how unconscious of their sin people can be.

 

We will tend to focus only on the behavior of sin and not the inordinate and distorted beliefs and desires that underlie the behavior.

 

We might not look very carefully at our own hearts nor recognize that our biggest sin-problem is probably some area we are the least aware of. 

 

Chatha- If we forget the word "chatha," falling short, we might develop a "legalistic" model of sin.  That is, we might come to think of sin only in as violating prohibitions.

 

We would think mainly of sins of commission rather than of our more profound failures to live lives of love, generosity, justice, contentment, and peace.

 

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus showed clearly that each one of God's commands was not only a prohibition but an invitation.

 

• a) The command "thou shalt not kill" is only fulfilled if you are living a life of love.
• b) The command "thou shalt not steal" is only fulfilled if you are living a life of generosity.

 

If we remember this term for sin it prevents us from being self-righteous and legalistic, since everyone falls short of God's will for how we should be relating to Him, to others, and to the world.

 

Pasha-If we forget the word "pasha," rebellion, we might have a strictly medical model of sin.

 

          "Avah" shows us how deep, interior and complex sin is.

 

          "Chatha" shows us how impossibly high God's bar is.

 

If we just had those two terms we might be tempted to sit back and say, "Well, no one can help it!"  But this third term shows us that God holds us responsible for our behavior.

 

          This is both bad news and good news.

 

• a) It is bad in that we will be held accountable for what we do.
• b) It is good, however, since responsibility implies the ability to change. There must be hope for change and growth through repentance.

 

Put all of these together, we see what a balanced view of sin the Bible has.  We see that:

 

Sin violates God's authority.  It is being your own Master and Savior.  It is "pasha."  This leads to guilt and a debt that must be paid.

 

Sin violates God's design.  It is building your identity on something besides God; it is "avah."  This leads to slavery and inner corruption that must be healed.

 

Sin violates God's peace.  It is ruining God's creation; it is "chatha."  This leads to breakdowns in relationships and to spiritual, social, and cultural disintegration which need to be restored.

 

 

"Neither the language of medicine or of law is an adequate substitute for the language of sin.  Contrary to the medical model, we are not entirely at the mercy of our maladies...the choice is to enter into the process of repentance...Contrary to the legal model...the essence of sin is not the violation of laws but...a wrecked relationship with God, one another, and the whole created order.  ‘All sins are attempts to fill voids,' wrote Simone Weil.  Because we cannot stand the God-shaped hole inside of us, we try stuffing it full of all sorts of things, but...only God may fill it."    

                                                          -Barbara Brown Taylor

 

 

What are the multitude of effects of sin upon mankind and creation?

 

Genesis 3:6-24:  "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  7  Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.  8  And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  9  But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?'  10  And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.'  11  He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?'  12  The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.'  13  Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?' The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'  14  The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.  15  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.'  16  To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.'  17  And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, "You shall not eat of it," cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;  18  thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.  19  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.'  20  The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.  21  And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.  22  Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever-‘  23  therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.  24  He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life."

 

 

What does this passage tell us about all the wrecked relationships sin causes?

1. There is internal shame and guilt.

 

"They realized they were naked" (v. 7).  Though the word "shame" is not used here, it is strongly implied, because this verse is the opposite of 2:25, where we read that Adam and Eve had been, "naked and unashamed."

 

This is the ruin of our psychological relationship with our selves.

 

2. There is mistrust and fear of others.

 

The need for clothing (v. 7- they...made coverings) is much more than a new reticence about sex.  Adam and Eve don't trust each other now.  They cannot live with the vulnerability of transparency.

 

Every human being, to some degree, is hiding from the human race.  We are all desperately seeking to control what others see of us, rather than allowing anyone to see the full truth.

 

This is the ruin of personal relationships with others.

 

3. There is a loss of our relationship to God.

 

As soon as God draws near, Adam and Eve hid from God out of a sense of fear (v. 10).

 

Adam's answer in v. 12 shows that even in the very presence of God, humanity has now become resentful of and hostile to God.  Adam says, "The woman you put here with me, she gave me...and I ate..."  This is a clear accusation that God himself is to blame for what Adam has done.

 

So we see that, just as with other human beings, our relationship with God is not simply one of mistrust, but of anger and hostility.  We consider God an enemy.

 

4. There is a denial of truth in our efforts of self-justification.

 

God's first question is general.  He asks, essentially, "Why are you in this condition-hiding?"

 

Adam's first answer to God completely avoids the real truth: that he has eaten of the tree.

 

God's second question is so direct that Adam cannot avoid the truth, but he immediately deflects the responsibility away form himself to Eve.

 

She does the same to the serpent.  Not only are we afraid and mistrustful of one another (v. 7) but we are positively hostile to one another.

 

This is the ruin of our mental relationship with the truth.  We cannot face the truth about ourselves.

 

5. There is a breakdown of relationships between groups.

 

Whether one holds to a traditional view of male-female roles or not, the curse in 3:16 shows that the domination of wives by their husbands is not the way God created marriage to function.  It is a consequence of sin.

 

"But he will rule over you" (v. 16) means, "instead, he will dominate you."  This shows us that sin does not only ruin relationships between human beings as individuals, but it also created divisions between genders, races, nationalities. 

 

This is the ruin of harmony in society.  There is constant "warfare" between the various groups and types of people.

 

6. There is economic-cultural breakdown.

 

In verses 17-19, God indicates that because of sin, our ability to work and build a culture is seriously affected and damaged.

 

Work was a good thing, put into Paradise as one of the things human beings need to be completely fulfilled and happy.

 

Yet here we see that work becomes "painful toil" (v. 17).  Work is not a curse, but work has been cursed.  Art, science, business, agriculture, education; everything will be frustrating and difficult and will wear us down.

 

7. There is physical breakdown.

 

The final thing we see in this passage is that "pain" and "sweat" lead to physical death itself.  "Until you return to the ground" (v. 19).

 

Disease, old age, natural disasters, and death itself are the results of sin.  Before the Fall, God ruled over Man who ruled over Nature.  Now, we see in verse 19, it is, "God-over Nature-over Man."

 

The dust of the ground "wins" over us in the end.

 

Summary

Not only are murder, adultery, and theft sins as a result of the Fall, so is poverty, mental illness, bad government, poor race relationships and other such suffering since it is part of the "groaning of creation" under sin.

 

Spiritual alienation leads to psychological, social, cultural, and even physical alienation.

 

Yet despite the bleakness of the event of the Fall, God injects a strong note of hope in verse 15.

 

God predicts that a descendant of Eve will some day come and battle the serpent who, of course, is Satan.  What will happen?  Eve's son will be wounded but Satan will be defeated.  This is the first prediction of the coming of Jesus.  God's words indicate that Jesus' coming will undo the work of the serpent-of sin and all the wrecked relationships sin causes.

 

As Jesus more and more influences our lives as Savior and Lord all the wrecked relationships begin to heal. 

 

 

 

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Many thanks to Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church (www.redeemer2.com) for their incredible resources and materials for these studies.