Do it or Else!
Sin & Salvation • Sermon • Submitted
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Only After Sundown
In 2013, New York City narcotics agents announced an unusual indictment of five Brooklyn men. These types of indictments are, unfortunately, commonplace in metropolitan areas like New York, but this one did stand out.
The men who were charged were members of a Sabbath-observant drug ring. Though cavalier about New York’s drug laws, the group was scrupulous about observing the Sabbath. Text messages from members of the gang show them alerting their clientele of their weekly sundown-to-sunset hiatus.
Text messages, used as evidence against the group, included group chats to clients, “We are closing 7:30 on the dot and we will reopen Saturday 8:15 so if u need anything you have 45 mins to get what you want." The name of the NYPD sting operation that led to the drug bust: "Only After Sundown."
Source:
Talia Lavin, "On the eighth day, God made oxycodone," Jewish Journal (9-11-13)
Two weeks ago we touched on the topic of sin. We attempted to address the question “What is Sin?”
What is Sin?
What is Sin?
So what is sin? Sin is seperation of our attachment to God & attachment of our affections to anything or anyone who is not God.
George Knight puts it this way:
Eating rats, snakes, snails, or even hogs is not SIN.
Sabbath breaking is not SIN.
Murder is not SIN.
Theft is not SIN.
SIN is prior to all these things. They may be sins—maybe—but they are not SIN.
SIN is love.
George R. Knight, I Used to Be Perfect: A Study of Sin and Salvation, 2nd Edition (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2001), 13.
Today, by God’s grace, you will see that how we define sin is critical. Our definition or view of sin will lead to approach the law in a radically different manner. Our definition of sin is so vital, because it will also colour the way we interpret the Bible! We will travel down one of two roads. This morning we will explore those two roads.
Traditional Approach to the Law
Traditional Approach to the Law
4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
The traditional approach to this text is to simply equate lawlessness with sin… sin is lawlessness. In order words sin is the commission of lawless deeds, such as lying, stealing, coveting, killing etc… This is how most Christians view sin. Let’s take for example another passage:
21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Christ will save his people from commiting lawlessness or lawless deeds.
George Knight describes the peril of viewing sin in this traditional approach as described by these drawings.
When someone views sin as a series of downward steps or declining lawless deeds… lying, stealing, coveting, bigger lie, bigger theft, murder etc… the end result if the individual continues down this past is eternal loss… the wages of sin is… death. This all makes perfect sense. Now, if this is true, we have to take in consideration the opposite trajectory...
A series of upward, lawful deeds or actions… or righteous deeds… leads to salvation!
Now, good Bible students will quickly say, “We are not saved by our good deeds, that is righteousness by works.” “We believe in righteousness by faith.”
But here’s the problem, if you define sin as lawless deeds, then you are unwittingly admitting that righteousness comes by lawful deeds!
15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.
With this understanding of sin, this traditional approach to the law… this passage is understood in this manner:
John 14:15 (TNKJV)
15 “If you love Me, [you had better] keep My commandments… [or else]!”
This is how the text is rendered in the TNKJV, the traditional NKJV
Finally, if you get good enough at keeping my commandments you will be saved, you will have eternal life.
You might be saying, “No, no, that’s silly, that’s not what we believe!” But I’m here to challenge you and contend that if your definition of sin is lawless deeds, then that is exactly what you believe.
This is why so many of us are stressed out and miserable. Because our emphasis is right behavior, “If I can just conquer these sins, then I will be saved.” Some of the most righteous people are some of the meanest people!
Multitudes of Seventh-day Adventist who subscribe to Christian perfection as the ultimate goal subject themselves to strict diets, austere country living, and other preparatory measures to ensure their fitness for the time of trouble and living in the presence of God without a mediator, yet are at times wracked with guilt, and under provocation are “as mean as the devil.”[1] Worse of all, they judge those who do not eat like them or dress like them!
[1] George R. Knight, I Used to Be Perfect: A Study of Sin and Salvation, 2nd ed (Berrien Springs, Mich: Andrews University Press, 2001), 36, Logos Bible Software.
One can do all the right things but still be as mean as the devil!
Non SDA might wag their finger in the face of SDAs and saying, you Sabbath keepers are all a bunch of legalist!
But guess what, they approach the law in the same manner minus the 4th commandment or the Sabbath Commandment… thus they are unwitting legalist themselves! If I don’t steal, If I don’t kill… I’ll make it!
Radical Approach to the Law
Radical Approach to the Law
4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
Sin preceeds lawless deeds. Do you remember what happended to Eve at the tree?
The serpent led her to doubt God’s Word
The serpent deceived her into deviating from God’s clear declaration.
The serpent led Eve to question God’s intentions
Once her affections were seperated from God, and placed squarely on self achievement… she committed the lawless deed of eating the fruit.
Sin at its core is a state of seperation, a deep-seated rot the dwells within each one of us that wants nothing to do with God. Paul describes it as a principle… the law of sin and death! When When this principle has free reign…
The Bible declares that without Christ we are enemies of God
10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
The problem with viewing sin as simply behaviors that must be overcome is that like a bad physicain we are focusing on the symptoms rather than the root cause. Sins or lawlessness or lawless deeds are the symptoms, lying, stealing, gossiping etc. SIN is the root cause. If we give a person cough medicine who has a bad cough, will that cure them of emphazema or COPD?
21 And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
I would like to suggest to you friends that Christ came to save us not from our sinful deeds, he came to save us from our state of seperation!
Me… from my sin… singular… me… sin (state of seperation, penchant for separating from God)
People… plural… sins (state of seperation…
1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
What is Jesus stressing with this metaphor? Relationship… connection… intimacy.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
What words, God’s promises to you and me…
8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
9 “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.
10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
The emphasis of this beautiful metaphor is not… keep my commandments to prove that you love me… no the emphasis is relationship… connection… in other words, keeping my commandments is evidence of your connection with me.
You may asking yourself, what does abiding in His love mean? And that is an excellent question. But, I don’t want to overwhelm and confuse… we will answer the question in a future message.
We can apply this approach to the same diagrams, but we get an altogether different result.
12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Righteousness > Righteous deeds… He who has the Son has life… He who abides in Christ’s love has life… He or she who is connected to Christ, the vine… has life!
Unrighteousness > Unrighteous deeds… He who does not have the Son of God is a slave to the rot that is within them… He who does not have the Son of God is disconnected from Him, and when the life support is finally removed, because it has been rejected…
Appeal
Benediction
Eph 3.20-21 “20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”