FoF Part 7
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Announcements:
Announcements:
Downtown Trunk or Treat event
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Intro:
Intro:
Series recap
This series can set a foundation for your faith
You will have access to all the knowledge you will need to be able to follow, love, and serve Jesus well.
Not all the knowledge you can have but all the knowledge you will need
Today we will cover “hamartiology”
The doctrine of sin, the study of sin
So a real uplifting one this morning
But a topic that is crucial to our understanding of the redemptive story, God, ourselves, and one another.
If you believe there is no such thing as sin, as the Bible describes it, you then see no need for God’s moral law, the wisdom of Scripture, a dependency of God, the need of grace, the ministry of the church, or the hope of eternity
this is a theme that is woven all throughout Scripture
Right? So, not just 3 chapters into the story of God and man and we are hit with this catastrophic event that alters the history of mankind
Hallmark movies:
Find love and everything is good and great and then boom! the guy has a girlfriend.
And so we see at the beginning of time
God creates all things and all things are good
He creates mankind to dwell with Him
And everything is good and then bam!
Man sins, sin enters the world
And now there is this fight to get back to what has now been broken and shattered
And although sin itself is evil and dark and dispicable
The study of sin actually answers many questions that all humans must wrestle with
Why is the world filled with suffering and injustice?
What went wrong and why?
How bad is it really?
And next week as we get into the good news in what Christ has done for us, I always have said, to fully grasp and understand the good news we must first understand the bad
And ultimately the bad is going to make the good that much better.
The doctrine of sin helps us better understand the doctrine of grace
pray
Flow:
Flow:
I know there is sin in the world because I am a parent
My girls are little sinners, and im a big sinner and your a sinner
We all are because Scripture says so
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
So, there are a few things we need to make sure that we are clear on to be able to understand the study of sin truthfully according to the Bible
#1 you are a sinner
And I know you are because we all are
#2 your sin is rebellion against God
You are not a mistaker, you are a sinner
You don’t just mess up here and there
You sin against God, therefore you rebel against God
Genesis 3 shows us that sin is rebellion and that sin is relational
And the sad fact is that, the average person in our culture today has little if any awareness, understanding, or guilt of sin.
Sin is no longer a category in people’s minds.
It’s not being taught in schools, it’s doesn’t shape the way we think about injustice, politics, abuse, media, marriage, parenting, etc
And when sin is a category you’ve left behind, you have to explain human tragedies some other way
and no other explanation does justice
So its important to understand sin and it’s important to understand that sin is rebellion against God and His created order.
And all sin can be summed up to one idea
From the original sin to the personal sins
Summed up to: believing that God is foolish and we are wise.
Sin is disordered affections and distorted knowledge
The Bible recounts our rebellious decision:
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Sin is rebellion and it’s rebellious because it elevates our will above God’s
#3 Sin is relational and it impacts our relationship with God
And not just with God but also with ourselves, one another and even creation as a whole.
Sin has caused us to be exiled
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
In the same way that the original sin cause Adam and Eve to be exiled
our sin caused us to be exiled as well.
Humans, who were made to enjoy the presence of God are cast out from His presence
There are always consequences to sin
And as a whole, the consequences of our sin is a life without God
So, how bad is it?
We can never fully grasp the impact of sin
But with a view of how good it was in Gen 1 and 2 we can begin to understand the fall from such beauty and perfection
Just think for a second about the tragic stories you’ve heard the last couple of weeks
in our community, across the world
Think about the tragedies you’ve heard the last few years
in your lifetime
Think about every human failure, broken promise, every word misspoken, every deceitful act, every abuse, every crime, every act of neglect, every injustice, every single dark and distasteful behavior
And all of it can be traced back to the fall in Genesis 3.
Disease, sickness, poverty, illness, famine, war.
It’s so devastating we can’t fully grasp the impact of sin
As we talked about last week that we were created to bring order to chaos
and instead we brought chaos into God’s order
Sin has affected every human and every part of creation
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
bondage, decay, frustration. these are the results of sin for you and me and all of creation.
And the question that is probably rattling in your mind right now is:
But why is the sin of Adam and Eve our problem?
Why don’t the consequences of their sin stop with them?
The Bible teaches us that Adam and Eve’s sin does not just belong to them but to all of us
Now, how can that be?
Paul emphasizes this very thing in Romans
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
The Bible teaches us that we are all represented by Adam and as sin entered through the one and death through that sin, sin and death came to all because all sinned
Now, we don’t like this idea. that Adam is our representative.
we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be held responsible for his sin and his mistake and if it were us there, that the outcome would be different.
But, if God is indeed sovereign and good, then His choice of Adam for this role is the best choice.
It is a just choice because God is just
And we can know that, had we been in the garden, the outcome would have been the same.
Otherwise we have been dealt with unjustly in the matter of representation
So either, God is not just and you were dealt with unjustly
Or God is just and the outcome would have been the same
Lastly, and then we will end on some good news
The consequences of our rebellion are not just exile and relational but also a spiritual and physical death.
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
God made man a promise. If you sin, you will certainly die
And God is not a man that He should lie
And when Adam and Eve took a bite from that fruit
They were not given what was promised to them by the enemy but what was promised to them by God
And as you come up on one of the many genealogies in Scripture
As boring and pointless as they may seem to you
All of them are at the very least, reminders of this promise.
Over and over and over again we see a man’s name the number of his years and the ringing out of the consequences of sin, “and then he died.”
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, what a massive problem!
Right? Sin has entered through Adam to us
We are all sinners
We have rebelled, been exiled, and face death
But why does any of it matter to you personally?
It matters because there is something wrong
It matters because there is a really really big problem
And if we don’t understand the problem, we won’t know the solution
So understanding the problem means everything
Like a doctor that misdiagnoses a disease
If you get that part wrong, then you will mess up the treatment plan and you’ll never get better
And this is a personal issue
It’s one thing to understand in theory the doctrine of sin
It’s another to personalize it
You will never feel the weight of sin until you personalize it
Until you realize every moment you’ve lied, you’ve lied to an honest God
Every time you’ve cheated, you’ve cheated against a holy God
Every time you’ve hated, you’ve hated against a loving God
Every time you’ve lusted, you’ve lusted against a pure God
You! You have done this! It’s a personal issue!
It has impacted each and every one of us in this room
The world would teach us and have us believe that the greatest problems in the world are external to us
But the bible teaches us that the greatest problem in the world is in every single one of us
Now, I told you I would end on some good news
Just as we are born into sin through Adam
We can be born again through the 2nd Adam - Christ Jesus.
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
The fall through Adam destroys our ability to not sin
The cross restores it.
the 4th century theologian Augustine offers us some helpful categories for how we relate to sin through different ages in redemptive history
Look to graph