Sermon Tone Analysis

My Theme:

 

Put more succinctly, in the words of the Wisdom of God, “he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death.”[1]

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I. What Sin IS

!! A.           Actual sins are hatred of God

The English word “sin” corresponds to a number of biblical expressions, word groups, and associated ideas.[2]

Most often it expresses  violation of the Divine requirement of the creature, a trespass or transgression of God’s law, a failure to keep His covenant, a “missing of the mark,” where the mark is a due performance of obedience to God, and consequently a debt against a creaturely obligation.

When this is remembered, it is not difficult to see that actual sins (whether prohibitions violated or good omitted) are expressions of hatred of God.

If this seems too strong, consider what it actually means to transgress God’s law.

It is to disregard God’s revelation of His will, which is a rejection of His authority, a denial of His right as Lord.

His Lordship, moreover, is rightly His as the perfect and simple “I AM”, and as the creator of all that exists.

Each and every act of sin, then, is a denial and rejection of His infinity, His eternity, His immutability, His wisdom, His power, His holiness, His justice, His goodness, and His truth.

It is to refuse to respect His right as the creator, preserver, and governor, whose glory and pleasure is the chief purpose  of all things.

Sin against the creation is against God because the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

Sins against our fellow man are all directly and indirectly, i.e., doubly, sins against God, for man is the image of God, and there is not a single crime or offense committed against men (insult, slander, theft, robbery, adultery, murder, etc.) that is not committed against God’s own person, attributes, or office, in every sin that is committed.

Sin is a worship of that which is not God, the performance of that which is opposed to God.

It is a robbery of God, treason against God.

Ultimately, to sin is to wish that God would not be the God He is; which is to wish Him *not to be*, for He cannot be other than what He is.

In addition to the idea of acts of transgression against God’s law, sin has another meaning—not just what you do, but what is at work within you, your spiritual condition.

God’s law addresses not only what man /does/, but also what he /is/.

It commands what he is /to be/, and forbids what he is /not to be/.

The scriptures utilize a particularly rich vocabulary and vivid imagery for this as well: sin that “lieth at the door,” a heart whose thoughts are “only evil all the time,” deceitful and desperately corrupt, it is pictured as the uncircumcised heart, the corrupting leaven, leprosy, “the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.”

Those demonstrating its character are thistles, thorn bushes and evil trees that receive God’s rain and produces only evil fruit, whose end is to be burned.

It is described as pollution, corruption, foolishness bound up on the heart of the child who is “born in sin and shapen in iniquity,” going astray from the womb.

It is evil, loving the darkness and hating the light, having a hard forehead, dull ears, and a fat, stony, and impenitent heart, foul bondage, the flesh, the evil concupiscence, the man of sin, and the sin that remains in our members and which seeks to reign over us.

It is that worldly, fleshly mind that cannot be subject to the law of God for it will not.

Why not?

Because it is at enmity with God since it cannot bear that there should be another god but itself.

Even in the godly (in whom it remains dwelling in the body and its members) it seeks to reign, and those Christians who fail in their campaign against it, who fail to mortify and crucify it, grieve the blessed Holy Spirit, bring humiliation, sorrow and divine chastisement to themselves, great disadvantage to the church, and occasion for the enemies of God to blaspheme.

Its “exceedingly sinful” character is demonstrated in the way it is excited into rebellion by the holy, just and good law of God.

So powerful a force against God is it that it drives the godliest of men to cry out, “O wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Indwelling sin is hatred of God, and God is utterly opposed to it.[3]

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II.

What Sin Deserves –Every Being the transgression of the Law of God, God must punish it.

God must punish sin.

There are at least six scriptural arguments in support of this view.

Let me mention 4 of them.

!! A.           First, Scripture describes God’s pure and holy nature as opposed to sin, as hating and detesting it.

God’s holy nature and its profound detestation of sin is apparent from Habakkuk 1:13 – He is “of purer eyes than to look upon” it.

Again, in Joshua 24: 19, it is due to God’s holy nature itself, that Joshua argues that the Israelites cannot lightly serve the Lord, for “he is an holy God; he is a jealous God.”

To assert that God is holy and just is all the same as to say that it is a fixed feature of God’s nature to hate and punish sin.

Sin-punishing justice is inherent in God’s nature, as revealed by his name.

Throughout the scriptures it is declared, as a divine excellence praised by saints and angels, that God’s very nature is opposed to sin. 

*4 *     For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;

          evil may not dwell with you.

*5 *     The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;

          you hate all evildoers.

*6 *     You destroy those who speak lies;

          the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

Indeed, the scriptures describe the opposition of God’s holy nature against sin by the most vivid negative expressions.

He is said to hate, detest, abhor, loath, despise, and abominate sin, and react to it with anger, fury, and rage; bringing upon the sinner bowls of wrath, the sword of vengeance, the winepress of his indignation, crushing, bruising, smiting, affliction and other expressions.

The scriptural witness is incontrovertible: God hates sin.

!! B.           Scripture ascribes to God the office of a judge, who will judge all things with justice.

God, who commands earthly judges to judge with justice, neither condemning the innocent nor excusing the guilty, does so because they are his own agents, representing him and administering justice at His will.[4]

It is the glory of God as a judge to judge justly, which glory the saints acknowledge in Rev. 16:5-6, “Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.

For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.”

!! C.           Scripture asserts that sin is, and must be, punished for the glory of God.

If God’s chief end in the creation of the world is the manifestation of his own glory, if sin is such a God-denying thing, utterly opposed to that glory, it is also clear that God, to preserve his glory as the Holy One, as the wise creator and the just judge of all, must, by a necessity of His nature, punish sin.

This association of God’s righteousness, anger, and glory is clearly seen in 2 Thess.

1:6-10,      

/…it is/ a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to /give/ you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.

!! D.   Scripture asserts that Christ was crucified for the exercise of divine justice against sin.

There is no other just or sufficient cause for the cross of Christ than the propitiation of divine vengeance against sin.

Indeed, the scripture reveals that by this divine execution of the penalty for sin, God has demonstrated his justice with regard to past, apparently unpunished sins.

Indeed, this is the glory of the gospel, that in the cross of Christ, God has demonstrated his justice more clearly and powerfully than in any other possible way, and has done so the praise of his glorious grace in the salvation of his enemies.

Nevertheless, apart from the clear demonstration of the sinfulness of sin and the sin-punishing justice of God, the gospel cannot be understood, which was the purpose served by the giving of, and in the preaching of, the law.

!! E.   Scripture asserts that God has demonstrated His justice in the world.

Thus we turn now to consider the spiritual and temporal miseries of sinners.

! III.

The Wages of Sin

Having seen that sin ought to be punished, and that God, being God, must necessarily punish it, we come now to examine the biblical teaching of the /way/ He does so.

The confession summarizes it by calling it “death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.”

The association of sin and death could not be more positively revealed: “In the day that you eat of it you shall die,” “the soul that sins, it shall die,” “through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned,” “the wages of sin is death,” “the law of sin and death,” “dead, in trespasses and sins,” “sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.”

Nevertheless, it is apparent in the scriptures that this judgment of “death” is carried out in a number of stages and dimensions.

!! A.           God Has Punished Sin.

At the beginning of his exposition of the gospel, Paul asserts, that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

Peter and Jude, seeing the obstinacy with which men will suppress and deny this truth, remind their readers of some of the more outstanding proofs of the divine wrath.

First they say, God spared not the angels that sinned (2 Peter 2:4).

Angels--sinned--and were not spared.

The thought of it should make us all shudder, aghast with horror.

Here, if anywhere, might be made a case for simple pardon, but these creatures were given neither the opportunity for repentance, nor a mediator to assume their nature and die in their place.

Instead, they were cast down to hell and delivered into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment.”[5]

Next, though not mentioned by Peter and Jude, God punished Adam and Eve with expulsion from the garden, the loss of the glory of their creation.

Who, besides themselves and the fallen angels can imagine that day?

They next tell us that God destroyed the old world.

Here is a fact in the lore of all the nations of the world, though little regarded at Peter’s time or ours.

How horrible must be that vile poison of sin, that it brings the world to such a state that the gracious, long-suffering God must cleanse it with such a deluge!

In the Biblical record we also find God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, plague against Israel’s Egyptian captors, an entire generation (excepting only two persons) perishes in the Wilderness, the “Amorite” is made put to the sword and fire when his iniquity has become full, all but a remnant of Israel and Judah perish for their apostasy from their covenant God, and the wicked nations that greedily gave themselves to destroy them are overthrown.

Indeed, the entire history of God’s relationship with his people, based as it is upon a covenant made in the blood of a substitute leaves no doubt that God punishes sin.

!! B.              Spiritual Death, Spiritual Miseries

Paul, in expounding the ways the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven” might well have begun with that which is most obvious.

He could have elaborated upon the groaning of the creation, its subjection to futility, the cursing of the ground, which yields its produce only after much sweat and toil against the thorn, under the sun that smites by day, until the worn-out and pain-wracked body, yields to death and returns its dust to the ground from which it was taken.

He could have spoken of disease, disaster, and war, expounding the curses of Deuteronomy 28:15-68 with seemingly endless examples from sacred and secular history.

Instead, he directs our attention to that first act of the divine displeasure: the death of the spirit through its loss of fellowship with that God who is its life: “their foolish hearts were darkened,” and they were “given up.”

Men became, as it were, spiritual zombies, “dead in trespasses and sins,” even while they “walked in them.”

Dead to God, yet living in His world, cast away from his gracious presence.[6]

What, then, are the miseries that accrue to the spirit that does not have God as its friend, life, and light, but is under His condemnation and curse?

Naturally some of these will vary in kind and degree from individual to individual, according to the providence of God, but among them are the following: futility of thought, spiritual blindness, inability, a guilty, accusing conscience, hardness, “the plague of his own heart,”[7] vile passions, prejudice, burning in lusts, the emptiness of unsatisfied desires, confusion, gullibility, foolish vanity, loneliness, suspicion, envy, self-flattery, obsession, bondage through the fear of death.

They are hopeless, or else they lean on reeds that will break and pierce their hands.

They are enslaved by the devil, in mind and body, individually and corporately, giving heed to seducing spirits, and some actually undergoing demonic possession or direct demonic torment of mind.

!! C.             Punishment beyond the grave, and beyond the Day of Judgment