The Story of Change: Who We Are

Introduction:

Skeleton Jokes

Why didn’t the skeleton like the Halloween candy? He just didn’t have the stomach for it…

How do skeletons say hello? Bonejour

Why are skeletons so calm… because nothing gets under their skin…

I hope that tickled your funny bone…

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen accidentally discovered x-rays while studying the effects of passing an electrical current through gases at very low pressures. His discovery revolutionized the medical world overnight. Within a year Glasgow established the first ever radiology department. The department head was ale to show incredible below the surface pictures of kidney stones and of a penny lodged in the esophagus of a child.

Often when people experience discomfort and pain, they go to the doctor to look below the surface and expose what is really going on in their body. It is hard to imagine the medical world without the x-ray. Seeing below the surface has allowed so many to be provided with the remedies and treatments that they need. It has allowed people to see fractures and breaks. It has been used to reveal arthritis and osteoporosis. It has allowed people to see cavities. It is allowed doctors to spot pneumonia and breast cancer.

In the same way the Bible takes an x-ray of our lives. When we are experiencing pain and heartache in our lives the Scriptures peer below the surface and exposes the true ailments that lie beneath the surface.

Over the next several weeks as we participate in “The Story of Change” we will discover how change takes place in our lives. At a foundational level, we must understand what the problems are that we are seeking to change. If we are open to being x-rayed by the Bible, it will diagnose us with a sin problem.

Every problem we experience in life can be traced back to sin and the carnage is has wreaked throughout our world. Because of sin our world is broken. Because of sin our health is broken. Because of sin violence is prevalent. Because of sin injustice stands. Because of sin peace is absent. Because of sin wars wage.

While on the outside things may look intact, underneath the surface we are fractured and broken. We are ridden with tumors of selfishness, hate, pride, greed, lust, and anxiety.

On the outside we may have the appearance of righteousness, but on in the inside we stand guilty of committing “cosmic treason against God”.[1] We are not just people who make mistakes or who have brokenness in our lives. We are sinners. To commit sin is to say, think or do, anything that is against God’s Word or against God’s will. To sin is to transgress God’s holy and righteous standard. As unholy sinners, we are disconnected and estranged from God.

Our biggest problem is the world is not the political climate, terrorism, health crises, or even racial injustice. Our biggest problem in the world is our sinfulness. If we want to see the story of change unfold in our world then we must realize who we are (sinners) and how we can change (through the power of the Gospel).

In Romans 3 the Apostle Paul is going to show us who we are as sinners. He is going to show us how sin invades every part of our person – head (our thinking) , heart (our desires), and hand (our actions) .

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; (Romans 3:9-10)

Throughout the Bible mankind is grouped into two distinct peoples, Jews, and Gentiles. In the Old Testament the Gentiles were the people who were not believers in God. Some translations call them “pagans”. They would be those who have no relationship with Yahweh. Jews were the people of God either by heritage or by religion. What Paul is doing here in Romans is showing us that the religious crowd and the non-religious crowd have the same problem. They are “all under sin”. No one is righteous. Paul tells us that the common denominator of everyone on planet earth has is their relationship with sin. Left on our own, all of us despite our culture, our place of origin, our upbringing – we are all “under” sin.

The original Greek word for “under” is the preposition hupo. In the Ancient Near Eastern world this word was used in the relationship that a slave had with his master or a prisoner had with the guard. A slave and a prisoner would both have to completely subject themselves to the wishes and commands of their master. Doug Moo tells us, “For Paul, then, the human plight is not that people commit sins or even that they are in the habit of committing sins. The problem is that people are helpless prisoners of sin.” [2] We are held captive by our propensity to sin. Sin has shackled us to the love of ourselves and restrains us from loving God.

Therefore, God did not send Jesus as a reformer to adjust a broken religious system or as a ruler to free Israel from the roman Emperor. Instead, God sent Jesus to be a liberator for humanity from the bondage of sin. While Jesus’ earthly ministry included teaching and healing; his modus operandum was his work on the Cross to defeat sin and death.

The Bible is clear that on our own we are slaves to sin (Rom. 6:17-18; John 8:34). Sin has not just damaged certain areas of our soul. It has corrupted everything about us. We are radically depraved.

The Apostle Paul in Romans 3 is going to give us a below the surface, x-ray, view of who we are and how deeply sin has affected our lives.

1. We Are Sinful in our thoughts – there is none who understands

The Apostle Paul strings together an argument of the depravity of mankind through recalling the longest series of Old Testament quotations in the New Testament.[3] The first thing he reveals to us about our problem with sin is that it starts with our minds. The Scriptures tell us, “there is none who understands”

Paul is not telling us that we are not able to learn. We know that is simply not the case. He is not even telling us that we cannot learn truth about God or theological doctrine. There are many people who know theological facts. They know the Bible inside and out, but what they lack is information shifting to transformation. We simply cannot understand rightly because of the influence of sin on our minds. Philip Ryken and James Montgomery Boice so eloquently stated:

“This does not mean that a person cannot have a rational under-standing of Christianity of what the Bible teaches apart from the illumination of his or her mind by the Spirit. On one sense, a scholar can understand and even teach theology as well as any other branch of human knowledge. An unbelieving philosopher can lecture accurately on the Christian idea of God… But such professors do not believe what they are teaching. If they are asked their personal opinion of what they present, they say that is all nonsense. “[4]

The missing link between information and transformation is understanding. What we lack as human beings is not knowledge but spiritual understanding. Paul would go on to write to the Church at Ephesus:

“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” (Eph 4:17-18 ESV)

Sin has so warped our minds that it prevents true understanding about who God is and what He desires to do in our life from taking place.

If we look back to the Garden of Eden the strategy of Satan against Adam and Eve was to get them to believe wrongly about God. Satan raised doubt concerning God’s word to Adam and Eve. “He [ Satan speaking through the serpent]

Said ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ “(Gen 3:1). Satan discredited God’s character with a question. His scheme was to cause them to think wrongly about God, to create doubt and to inject lies into their mind. Later in their conversation he would try to persuade them, “You will not sure die” (Gen 3:4). He denied what God said was true.

Satan proposed an alternative plan to God’s plan. A false plan. He suggested that his plan would allow Eve to do the thing that God would not permit and not experience any of the consequences that God had promised would take place. Satan accused God’s restrictions on Adam and Eve to be restraining instead of protective.

And since then, sin has solicited us to take the same path. Sin causes us Believe wrongly about God. Our sinful thinking discredits God. Our warped minds lead us to take an alternative route from what God has established. Sin points out restrictions all the while never revealing the true results of disobedience. Sin always overpromises and under delivers.

Sin distorts our thinking. It misshapes the way we perceive the world and the way that we perceive God. Living life with a sinful mind is like looking into a carnival mirror. Certain facets of ourselves appear bigger or smaller than in reality. We may look and see that we have a skinny waste but a giant head. We have long legs and a short torso. We appear to have a giant nose and a thin chin. Our sinful thinking distorts and twists the way that we see the world. Sinful thinking always over-emphasizes self and minimizes God. Our sinful minds never give us an accurate view of God, others, and the world. Our sinful thinking prevents us from truly understanding the way God originally intended us to.

2. We are Sinful in our motives – There is none who seeks after God

Our minds are polluted by sin. That pollution has drifted 18inches south into our hearts. Scripture is clear that there is none who seeks after God. What an indictment upon us. If we are left on our own, we do not desire God. We are far more wicked and guilty than we would like to believe. We are far more sinful than we would like to admit.

There does need to be some clarification with this because there is a vast majority of people in the world that even though they are not Christians they are religious. But the Bible is not speaking of religion. Seeking religion does not equate seeking a high and holy God.

Back in the ancient days, before the advent of the iPhone, children used to play outside. When we would play, and somebody would hit a car with a ball or break a window we would all run. As sinners when trouble arises, we have been runners from the very beginning. This can be traced back all the way to the Garden when Adam and Eve sinned against God. When they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil the Bible says, “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 hit themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (Gen. 3:8 ESV). When sin entered the picture Adam and Eve did not seek out the LORD. The hid.

The guilt that our ancient ancestors felt that caused them to run and hide from God has been passed down from generation to generation. We are all hiding from God. Instead of hiding behind bushes and sewing fig leaves we hide behind our everything else in our lives. We do not pursue a relationship with God, instead, we hide behind our families. We hide behind our social media profile. We hide behind our activity in the community and even our own generosity. We hid behind our careers. No matter how hard Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves, God knew their true condition. He knew they were naked, and ashamed. Just as Adam and Eve stood before God naked and exposed, we stand before the Word of God naked and exposed as sinners with corrupt hearts.

The Bible tells us in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (ESV) The hear of the problem for the human condition is the problem of the heart. We do not desire God. It is not that we do not have the capacity to love the Lord, it is that we do not have an appetite for the things of God.

In the 1700s Jonathan Edwards who was an American Revivalist and was used by God to spark the Great Awakening wrote a treatise entitled Freedom of the Will. In this work he makes an argument that distinguishes between moral and natural inability to demonstrate how the human heart chooses and craves sin versus righteousness.[5] To borrow an example from the realm of nature; there are animals that eat meat called carnivores, and there are animals who eat vegetables called herbivores. Imagine taking a hungry lion and placing before him two different options a trough full of lettuce and spinach or a slab of meat. It is easy for us to conclude that the lion will pick the slab of meat. Why? Is he not physically able to eat the trough of lettuce and spinach? No. Physically, he has all the capability of eating the trough of spinach and lettuce. But he does not want to eat it and will not eat it because it is not in his nature to eat salad over steak.

What Paul is saying in Romans 3 is that sin has corrupted our nature. It has changed our appetite. We do not seek after God. We do not desire him. We do not have an appetite for righteousness. Instead of choosing purity, we would rather choose lust. Instead of choosing generosity, we would rather choose greed. Instead of choosing to love we would rather choose apathy. Instead of choosing God we would rather choose self. We have an appetite for sin and without the transformative work of the Holy Spirit in our lives we will choose sin over righteousness.

3. We are Sinful in our actions – There is none who does good

With a sinful mind and a sinful heart, it is no surprise to us that we would perform sinful deeds. What lives in the human heart must come out. Imagine living in a world when the evening news is not speaking of some crime committed, there’s no mention of a life that was taken, there is no mention of a crime committed, there is no mention of a political scandal, or a rumor of war between countries. It seems so farfetched. The reality is the “happy news hour” does not exist because we live in a world filled with sin. Bad news surrounds us. Murder abounds. Domestic abuse is present. There will always be discord between political parties. We will never cease to have wars and rumors of them until Jesus returns.

Paul moves on to what it is exactly that we do sinful. He builds his case quickly, incriminating all of us and stacking the evidence, by telling us we have:

Throats that are an open grave

Tongues that keep deceiving

Poison under our lips

A mouth full of cursing and bitterness

Feet that are swift to shed blood

Destruction and misery are in our paths

And we do not know the path of peace. (Rom 3:13-17)

This is no surprise to us. It is no surprise that Paul would accuse us of destroying people with our words. We have experienced and participated in the deadly effects of the tongue uncontrolled. We have felt the sharp stabs of words used flippantly. We have all said things in moments of passion and anger that we regretted later because we know the pain would continue long after the heated argument simmered down.

Paul is not establishing this argument against some foreign non-religious people. He is not saying this about unreached natives in the Amazon jungle. He is writing this letter to the Church at Rome. He wants to inform them, that apart from the deep heart transforming work of the gospel we will all think sinfully, desire sin, and carry our sin out. He is saying this about all of us. We are sinners. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23)

In totality we are desperately wicked and devoid of righteousness. This makes absolute sense when we look at the world and see the pervasive brokenness, frustration, and pain.

The world is trying to treat the symptoms of sin, and not the disease. We believe that education will help to relieve the sinfulness of our thoughts. If we can just think better, then we can be better. If the world will become educated it will become more wholesome. The world thinks the remedy for a sinful heart is romance, fame, wealth, and notoriety. If we can just have what our heart desires, then we will truly be happy. The world believes the solution for a sinful will is reform and charity. If we can help this cause, give these people pure water, alleviate poverty to this group, build homes in this remote village, and bring wellness to varying communities then things will ultimately get better.

Our world is desiring a utopian society where everyone is educated, has all the things they desire, and enacts good will toward one another. But the Bible’s response to that is we cannot treat the symptoms of the sickness in the world we must treat the disease itself. The bible would tell us that what humanity needs is not reformation but transformation. We need to be made brand new from the inside out. We need our minds to be renewed by truth. We need our hearts to be satisfied by grace. We need our wills to be redirected by true righteousness.

Why is Paul establishing such a strong case of our sinfulness? Why does he spend so much time showing us x-ray after x-ray of the afflictions that lie deep within our soul? It is because before we can accept the good news of what God has done for us in Christ, we must accept the bad news of who we are without Christ- sinners.

How His Plan Shapes our Purpose

When you enter a jewelry store to look at diamonds the jeweler always sets the diamonds on a black cloth. The jeweler wants the radiance of the diamond to contrast with the depth of the blackness of the cloth. He wants all the color and the sparkle to be ever so evident. The depth of the black cloth helps to showcase how beautiful the diamond is. In the same way radiance of the gospel shines brightest when it is contrasted with the depth and blackness of our sin. His grace glows when we see the shadow of our sin. We marvel at His mercy when we gaze out our own wickedness. Before true salvation and can take place in our lives there must be conviction over our sin.

It is never an enjoyable experience to be reminded of our sinfulness. But it is necessary. John Stott said, “We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.”[6] Before we think we are spotless we must be reminded of the miry bog that God picked us up from. We must remember that we are sinners saved by grace. Our sinful minds need consistent transformation by the Word of God. Our sinful hearts need to be transformed by His grace. Our Deeds need redirection from wickedness to righteousness. Thankfully, we will see next week that is just what Jesus does.

[1] https://www.ligonier.org/blog/sin-cosmic-treason/

[2] Moo, D. J. (2000). The NIV Application Commentary: Romans (p. 122). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

[3] Ibid. 110

[4] Boice, J. M., & Ryken, P. G. (2009). The doctrines of grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel (p. 77). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

[5] Jonathan Edwards, “A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will”, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol.1, rev. Edward Hickman with a memoir by Sererno E. Dwight (Edinburg: Banner of Truth, 1976) 3-93.

[6] Manser, M. H. (2001). Bible. In The Westminster collection of Christian quotations (p. 19). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.