None are Righteous

What is Sin...........?

Intro:

Tonight, I wanted to touch on something we touched on briefly last week, and no, I’m not talking about Revelation!

I want to touch on sin, the effects, and the outcome.

Last week Abbie and I had a discussion mid-message about people who’ve never heard of Jesus.

And what I want to do is hopefully bring some clarity to those of us who are struggling with the idea that those people are destined for hell.

Because, by doing so, I think it will do two things for us:

It will make us that much more grateful for our salvation

I pray that secondly, it will fuel some of you to missions.

What is Sin?

Sin is not:

An illusion

Sin is a real thing.....it’s not a false theory. There is right and wrong in the world

An Accident

Like a little child spilling milk. We didn’t stumble upon sin. We didn’t accidentally sin

A Weakness

Define it for me:

Selfishness

Doing something that displeases God

Lying

Stealing

Not acting right

Sin is basically us not glorifying God as God

Sin is anything that does not conform to the character of God.

An illusion

Sin is a real thing.....it’s not a false theory. There is right and wrong in the world

An Accident

Like a little child spilling milk. We didn’t stumble upon sin. We didn’t accidentally sin

A Weakness

Would you say that all people sin?

, “All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - everyone one - to his own way”

Where did sin come from?

Have you ever thought about this?

Did sin just appear when Eve chose to sin?

Satan is the originator of sin, and sin existed outside of our universe.

In your opinion, do you think man is basically good? Or naturally good?

,, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins........among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

We all have this moral conscience, this feeling of what is right and wrong. We are made in God’s image.???

We are all basically sinful, and we’ve been that way since birth!

Original sin that leads to personal sin

says this, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

If necessary for rebuttal: Sin leads to death. Infants die. 2+2=4

- “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

So, do we all agree here?

Is sin dependent on Jesus?

We are all sinners. Because of Adam’s sin, it has been credited to all of us.

, “ 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

And even worse, tells us that the wages of sin is what?

Death

Is this fair?

Okay, I need 2 volunteers. Two volunteers

Have them sit down at the table and place Lego’s in front of them

These Lego’s here, represent a life, okay? So we have two lives playing out in front of us tonight.

Now remember, we just agreed on the fact that mankind is sinful, from birth, because we chose to glorify something other than God.

So these lego’s are a picture of lives that are broken by sin

Now, let me ask you this then, is our sin dependent on Jesus? Meaning, did we have to hear about Jesus first in order to sin?

No we did not.

Our sin is not dependent on whether we hear about Jesus or not.

Our sin is totally dependent on us choosing to glorify something other than God.

Turn with me to . Let’s read it, “ 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

See, Romans, Paul, tells us that what can be known about God is plain to us, that we see his attributes, we see his fingerprints all throughout the world. We see it in nature, we see it in ourselves.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

We were made in God’s image

So these Lego’s, we can look at them, we can look at these “lives” and we can see that there is a design here. That our lives were supposed to be a certain way, and that something is broken. “For all have sinned”, but God “can be clearly perceived.”

Okay, guys, what I want you to do is to build what these Lego’s were intended to build.

Go ahead, try.....build it

As they are attempting to build that, continue to listen to me. We are all sinful people, whether we live in America, whether we live on a mountaintop in India, whether we live in China.

And our lives are broken because of it....and we KNOW this. The Romans text goes on to say that we are without excuse.

And what we see a lot of people do is what these two are trying to do right now....rebuild their lives

That’s why we have so many religions

That’s why people try to fill their lives with whatever they can

That’s why some people are so deeply dissatisfied and depressed.

WE ARE BROKEN

How’s it going? Are you guys done?

What do you mean “NO?”

Hand out the instructions to one of the volunteers

And you see what we end up with, these futile attempts at fixing what is broken.

Because we can’t fix our lives on our own. We can’t fix our sin problem. Because we are sinful people, apart from something outside of us, we will always choose sin.

That’s our natural state. Don’t forget that.

Define the two lives by handing out the completed car to one of the sides

This life is a life that was told about Jesus

This life over here has not been told

Now, a lot of us in here, are believers, some of you may not be.

I pray for you

But most all of us have heard of Jesus and what He did on the cross of Calvary for us. Remember I said we needed something outside of us to fix us. That is Jesus.

So, let’s say will represent the person who heard about Jesus, and what He did on the cross. It’s almost like he received instructions ( have them start putting it together, telling me when they are done )

And some of us have experienced justification by faith alone

We’ve understood that we are broken

We’ve realized our depravity, our sinfulness before God, and have seen what Christ did for us, and we’ve come crying to Him to save us because we realized our brokenness and that there was nothing we could do on our own!

We can keep trying and trying and trying to fix things on our own, but we won’t. We need Jesus, and in order to have Jesus, we needed somebody to tell us about Him.

Maybe it was their parents who told them

Maybe it was a Sunday School teacher

Maybe it was a missionary

Maybe it was a local pastor

Maybe it was early in life

Maybe it was right before they died in a hospital

But at some point, they heard about Jesus....because somebody told them

, “ 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

Come back to the table, and ask the audience, “Now let me ask you, are both of these lives that we have up here, are they both still sinners?

The answer is yes, both were, and both still are sinners.

What’s the difference then?

One of the lives was changed by Jesus Christ

And now, when God sees this life here, He doesn’t see our sin, He sees the righteousness of Christ covering us.

But this life over here, He sees nothing but the ugliness of our sin.

But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t love both these lives equally.

Think through this with me:

We already saw that we are all sinful, yes? And we sin when we glorify something other than God

But God, being rich in mercy and grace, still chased after us by sending Jesus Christ to die for us.

That doesn’t sound like a hateful God to me

The only difference between these lives is this:

One life was told about Jesus, and chose to follow Him

They could have heard and chose not to follow, sure

This other life, never heard.

Application

1. What we need to remember first and foremost is all mankind is sinful. There are none who do good. We can’t forget this.

And I’ll say to you, if you don’t believe this statement, then you can’t understand grace and salvation.

So that’s the first point, have you, have each of you in here tonight, have you realized how big an issue your sin is before a God who is perfect?

2. Whether someone hears about Jesus or not, they are still sinners.

We don’t become sinners only when we hear about Jesus.

If that was the case, what is the worst thing I could ever do for someone?

Some of you drive, some of you don’t, but you will. I know when I go on long trips, here is what happens.

3. Finally, this is why we are called to take the Gospel to all nations.

As you enter unchartered territory, for instance when I drove to Wisconsin last November, as you do that, you realize that speed limits are always changing.

Because we know that all of mankind is sinful, whether our friend down the street, or the guy on the mountaintop in India, they both have inherited the same problem.....SIN.

And they are always going up and down. But let’s say I’m driving, and the speed limit is 80 mph. And I’m just minding my business, going 80 and all of the sudden I’m in some trouble....a cop has pulled me over

And they both have chosen to personally sin

You guys, people need to hear this good news, because they are dying daily, the statistics state that two people in the world die every second

And he comes up to my door, and says, “Sir, do you realize you were going 80 in a 60?”

And at least a billion people in the world have never heard of Jesus

I can respond, “No sir, the speed limit was 80, that’s the last sign I saw.”

Let’s