The Spread of Sin

Opening

Tonight, we’re continuing in our creation series. Can anyone tell us what the last 2 lessons in this series talked about? (creation and the fall)

Tonight, we’re looking at how Adam and Eve’s disobedience led to the spread of sin throughout the entire world.

But first, I have a question for you- Do you ever get songs stuck in your head? What’s the last song that was stuck in your head? Why was it stuck in your head/where did you hear it that made it stick in your head? (I think back to Ecuador, when those songs were stuck in our heads ALL the time. the fiesta song especially)

Sometimes, it’s a good thing if it’s a song we like. But if it’s a song or radio jingle that’s super annoying, then it’s not fun. and No matter how hard you try, that song always creeps back into your head. The best option is to listen to something else over and over again to try and replace it.

what does the Bible say about it?

Sin is kinda like one of those annoying songs in your head, except a million times worse. We talked last time about how Adam and Eve brought sin into the world when they disobeyed God by eating the fruit.

Does anybody remember some of the specific consequences of sin we read about in genesis 3 last week? (pain in childbirth, man rules over you, curse the ground, thorns, etc.)

So sin was soaking into everything. It soaked into the hearts and brains of all mankind and has been causing pain and disaster in our lives and in the world ever since. It’s like a nasty infection or virus. (has anybody in your family or on a sports team or in your class been sick and then you caught it somehow? when anyone in my family is sick, i walk around with my shirt covering my face and spraying a can of lysol everywhere i walk, trying to avoid it. But a lot of time it sneaks up on us. Sometimes a virus is present before we see the symptoms, making us susceptible to catching it while we’re completely unaware of what’s happening. And by the time we try to prevent ourselves from getting it, it’s too late.) Adam and Eve caught it, then passed it along to everyone else, and it just keeps spreading, infecting everything it touches. Sin makes life harder, it puts up barriers between people, tells us lies about ourselves, and worst of all- it separates us from God. And ironically, God is the only one who can fix all those problems.

The good news is when Jesus replaces our sinful nature with his own holiness (like an annoying song being replaced by a good one or a nasty infection being finally healed), we are recreated in Jesus’ own likeness. Our old, damaged relationships with God are thrown out and we start fresh.

How many of you have ever held a grudge against someone after they did something to you? (When i was growing up and me and my brothers would fight, my mom would force us to make up and apologize to each other. ’d put on that fake sweet face and say “I’m sorry, please forgive me” in the most sarcastic tone ever. Because I wasn’t really sorry. I was mad at him and wanted to get back at him. Or sometimes, my mom would make us sit on the couch and hold hands for like a minute without talking. would sit there and dig my nails into my brothers hand because I just wanted to get back at him, and I’d be like “don’t talk or we’ll have to start the timer over” like I was MEAN. I held a grudge.)

But the good news for us is, God doesn’t hold a grudge. When you sin, he doesn’t say “ooooh just you wait…I’m gonna make this next week of your life miserable. I forgive you, but I’m gonna pay you back.” It’s not like that!

And in order to understand how great that news is, we have to understand just how bad our sin is. And the passage we’re going to look at tonight reminds us just how terrible our sin is, especially because sometimes-like that song in our head-we get used to it and don’t really recognize how bad we are. We become so accustomed to our sin that we start to convince ourselves it’s okay. (Can you think of something that maybe when you were younger you told yourself you’d never do? for example, drinking, partying, smoking, sleeping with your girlfriend or boyfriend, lying to your parents about where you are or what you’re doing. whatever it is. You told yourself “oh I’m never gonna do that.” and then you did it. and you did it again. And maybe you felt bad the first time, but after the second or third you kinda started telling yourself “this isn’t that bad. I’d never do THIS though” and say something else that you’d never do. until you do it. But we’re going to read and talk about some sins that the people in Rome faced.

scripture

Turn to .

Before I start reading, I’m gonna give you a little bit of context about this passage. So, Paul is writing this letter to the Roman church who were really struggling. There was this big split between the Jews and the Greeks. The Jews were kicked out of Rome for a while because the Roman emperor didn’t like how they were trying to convert everyone to Christianity. While they were out of Rome, some of the Gentiles began to convert to Christianity, and they took over some of the synagogues. So when the Jews were allowed back into Rome, how do you think they reacted? (like any time someone takes some of your stuff and then you show up and see then using it) they were mad. They wanted their synagogues back, they didn’t like how the Gentile Christians were probably outnumbering them in certain areas, and they just thought they were better than the Gentiles. They were God’s chosen people, not them.

But listen to what Paul writes to them in verse 16.

Read verse 16.

He says that salvation is for EVERYONE who believes. It didn’t matter if you were a Jew or not. And that’s really good news for us, because we’re Gentiles, and we desperately need that salvation.

Let’s keep reading. Read 18-20.

Paul’s saying that when it comes to knowing God, who He is has been made clear to us through His creation. We have no excuse to deny God’s existence because it’s obvious. And if we’re able to know that God exists, then it just makes sense that we would obey Him and want to follow Him, right? Well that’s not what happened.

Verse 19-32.

another illustration

here’s a scenario for you. Would you rather eat an apple with brown, wrinkled up skin that’s obviously rotten or an apple that looks perfect on the outside (golden or red or green or whatever color is your favorite) but is rotten on the inside? Neither of those are good right? They’re both rotten! One may appear worse than the other, but neither is good to eat.

Jesus tells us something similar about sin. What were those people called back in Jesus’s day that thought they were better than everybody else? (Pharisees)

These people were like the apples with the pretty exterior. They thought they could act good, give money to the poor, say the right prayer, go to church, do everything right in front of everyone else so that God would think highly of them. Yet they looked down on the obvious “sinners” or clearly rotten apples like the tax collectors or the people who drank too much or the adulterers.

It’s the same in this passage. The Jews appeared better on the outside. They were God’s people. Said all the right things, did all the right things. Compared to the Gentiles, who were clearly sinners.

But Jesus explained that internal sins like pride, anger, lust, being judgmental and arrogant, those are just as bad as external sins-like the ones we read in this passage: murder, sexual immorality, adulterers.

The Pharisees were no better. They just sinned differently. the Jews were no better than the Gentiles. They just sinned differently. They were just like a rotten apple pretending to be perfect by putting on a nice exterior. Paul even continues in chapter 2 telling the Jews that by judging the Gentiles for their sins, they’re condemning themselves because they do the same things.

The Pharisees, the Jews-they were so consumed with themselves, they thought they were better than everyone else. They proved that they really didn’t care about God or other people.

And that’s us. That’s how we are. That’s who we are. We’re so caught up in ourselves and we’re too arrogant to admit when we’re wrong. We make excuses for our sin rather than owning up to it. We think we’re better than other people. We judge the sins of others when we’re no better.

But Jesus wouldn’t let those people get away with pretending they were perfect when they needed a savior just as much as everyone else. And he won’t let us get away with it either.

We might not think our sin is as bad as what we just read in , or we might say “i would never do that.” but it’s the same sin that has infiltrated all of our hearts. We’re all in desperate need of a savior.

So, yes, sin came into the world and yes, we will struggle with it every day for the rest of our lives. But Jesus also came into the world so that those sins will no longer be held against us, and that’s the good news for us today.

Prayer and then Small groups