Let's Talk About Sin — Carter Conlon

In every home I got online, every person sitting in their kitchen, their living room, their car, their bedroom, every family looking for help and looking for hope. And we ask you again today as we always have, oh God, be our strength.

Arise, Lord, for your holy namesake, God, and set your church free, set your bride free, my God, from everything that would hinder her, Lord, everything that would stop her from becoming that last day beacon of praise and light in the world as you design and desire her to be.

And so, God, we're asking for miracles, miracles tonight, Lord. We're not asking just for things that can be done in human strength, but things that can only be done by the Spirit of God. Let there be miracles, my God, in every heart, in every life, and in every home.

And we give you praise and we give you glory. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. Thank you, everybody. God bless you. You may be seated here in the sanctuary and at home, too, as well. For those that are with us online this evening, I want to encourage you to prepare to have communion with us at the end of this service this evening.

We always take the bread and the juice, and you can use any kind of bread or juice that you find in your apartment or your home or wherever you are. And we celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross 2 ,000 years ago when he died in our place and prevailed over the power of the grave and death and sin and gave us the promise not just of eternal life, but of a new and a full and a meaningful life here on the earth as we live in him.

And so, I'm gonna give you an opportunity before we go to the communion table after I speak this word today to turn, in a sense, in your heart towards Jesus Christ and acknowledge him as Lord and Savior.

And when we do, there's gonna be a number that comes up on the screen that we're asking you to text in the word decided to the number 51000. That's 51 ,000. Text in the word decided. And when you do, somebody from Times Square Church will be in contact with you if you so desire.

There will be a series of five-minute videos sent to you explaining what it means to be born again in Christ and where do you go from here. How do you study your Bible, for example? What does it mean to be new in Christ?

How can you find fellowship with the people of God? Most, if not all, of those questions will be answered in these videos that will come your way. So, we encourage you to do that. The message I have today is a message that God spoke to my heart after listening to Pastor Tim Delina from Times Square Church, our senior pastor, on Sunday morning, where he talked about sin.

The Need to Confront Sin and Seek Salvation

He talked about the effects of sin. He talked about the penalty of sin. He talked about how sin is rarely even spoken about in a modern-day church today. He has an expression that he often makes that we are not mistakers in need of correction.

We are sinners in need of salvation. And I think for far too long, we've avoided the topic of sin in the house of God. Now, tonight, I wanna speak about sin, but I don't want what I'm about to say to condemn those of you who have a living relationship with God and you are struggling, the enemy is against you, is against your home, your marriage, your children, your mind, your family, whatever that is.

I'm speaking this message for the benefit of those who may be the situation that you find yourself in is because of sin, because of, we have so many prayer requests that have come in. My, you know, you'll find, I'll give you an example.

I'm a Christian person, and I'm trying to be a better employer or a better husband or father, whatever it is, and yet, at the tail end of the prayer request is I'm hooked on pornography, please pray for me.

I wanna suggest that in this particular instance, the problem is sin, and when you begin to deal with the sin, it opens that channel of God's grace to come into your life, God's power, God's freedom. Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly.

Now, the thief came to steal, kill, and destroy. He's come to steal your eternal soul, he's come to kill your hope for the future and your family, he's come to destroy any hope that you might have of ever amounting to that which God has called you to be in Christ, but Jesus, after these words, says, but I've come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.

Elsewhere in the scriptures, he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man can come to the Father except by me, except through me, so I wanna talk about sin. That's the title of my sharing this evening.

Sin's Origin in the Garden of Eden

Let's talk about sin, and in order to talk about sin, we have to go right back to the Garden of Eden to understand the origins of sin, how it got into the human race, what kind of a foundation is the sinful nature built upon, and in Genesis chapter three, you're gonna be surprised, some of you, to see that God, the gospel is already preached in Genesis chapter three.

You don't have to wait till the New Testament to hear the gospel preached. God already preached it in the garden, and you're gonna see that in just a moment. Now, Father, I pray, God, with all my heart, God, anoint me, anoint my words, God, anoint the sharing, and I ask you to break the yoke of slavery to sin.

Break the yoke, my God, of whatever it is that's trying to destroy the people of God. Lord, we have to deal with this. If we are serious about living for you, if we are serious about serving you, we can't avoid the topic of sin, for you warned us in the scriptures, and you said the wages of sin is death.

It still pays what it always paid. Sin leads to death, and so, God, we're asking. The second part of that verse said, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So I pray, God, give me the ability to speak this so that people who are snared by sin might escape that trap and find life, purpose, meaning, a future, and an eternity in Jesus Christ.

And, Father, we thank you. God, overpower the frailty of this human body, the frailty of this human mind. I offer my body as a living sacrifice to you. I'm asking you to speak. My voice means nothing.

Yours is everything. Lord, speak to our hearts, God. Peel back the layers of resistance in the hearts of many who are hearing this evening, and God, give us the grace to deal with truth, to deal with reality, for it's only in truth that we can be set free, and we thank you for it in Jesus' name.

The Shepherd Who Removes Sin's Destructive Foothold

Now, years ago, we had a sheep ranch in Canada. Well, it wasn't that much of a ranch. I had 68, we had 68 female sheep, a couple of rams, a bunch of goats, and a duck, and things like that. One day, my wife, Pastor Teresa, came into the barn, and I had a sheep on its haunches.

When you take a sheep and you sit it down on its back legs, they become very docile. They just kind of sit there, and they don't move. And so, I had a can of spray disinfectant in my hand, and I had a very, very sharp knife.

She walked into the barn, and she said to me, what are you doing? And I said, well, this particular sheep, it was a Suffolk. That was the brand, the burden of, not the burden, but the, I forget the word for it, just the type of sheep it was.

And it had developed a parasite under its nose. Just, it was very pronounced. It was right in the center of its nose. The sheep have a very long snout. And this particular kind of a parasite, if you don't get it out, it multiplies under the skin.

It goes in through the eye sockets, and eventually into the ear canal, and it will actually drive the sheep mad. You'll look, if a shepherd doesn't deal with it, eventually the sheep will be running full speed into posts, and beams, and into barn walls because of the buzzing that's going on inside its head because of these parasites.

It literally drives the sheep insane, and it ultimately will run into things until it kills itself, literally. And I said to Pastor Teresa, if I don't take this parasite out now, if I don't get it in its inception, it will get into the various canals in the head of the sheep, and it will drive it absolutely crazy.

I remember she looked at me, and she said at that time, now it's a little different today, but she said at that time, I could never do that. And I said, well, as a shepherd, if I really do care for my sheep, I have to do that.

I have to make a cut, an incision, about a two, three inch incision. I have to get in with a knife. I have to dig this thing out, stitch it together, spray it with disinfectant. And that poor sheep, I mean, it looked at me, and they're so trusting, and it had no idea what I was doing.

And it was painful, there's no doubt about that. And for a little while after, the sheep was a little wary of me, and I'd come into the barn, and it would kind of crowd in the back corner, not realizing that I had saved its life.

That if I chose to do nothing, I could have been like some shepherds are, and said, well, hey, I got 67 other sheep, what does one matter? Why put myself through the pain of trying to extract this parasite that has gained a foothold in its nose?

But yet, the true shepherd will take the knife when necessary. Pastor Tim Delina did that last Sunday. The true shepherd will take the knife because the true shepherd sees the wolf coming and doesn't flee.

The true shepherd will cut with the sword of the word of God if it's necessary for your soul's sake. Not just so that we look good. If you're sitting under the ministry of a false shepherd, they'll just spend their whole time just telling you how wonderful you are.

As long as you keep filling the offering bucket, they don't much care about your soul's condition. If you backslide, if you fall away, if you fail and you walk with God, they don't much care because there's a lot of other people there that can keep their ministry active and alive.

But the true shepherd cares. And the true shepherd will take the sword of God's spirit. So I want you to receive it in that context. I know I'm speaking to people online who are really hurting. I know I'm speaking to people who are addicted and afflicted and there's torment in your mind and your home and your marriages are falling apart and you've got problems with your kids.

But we need to, before we even talk about what God can do and the miracle power of God, let's talk about the necessity of dealing with sin. Remember, John the Baptist was the forerunner to Christ and his message was repent.

Repent means turn. Repent means agree with the word of God. Repent means that your ways are not God's ways. God's ways are higher than your ways and God's ways are different than your ways. Agree with the ways of God.

Die to yourself. That's what the baptism of John was all about. Die to yourself and start to live according to the will of God. And until we are willing to die to ourselves, to die to our old way of thinking and our old ways of doing things, Jesus Christ will remain a far off stranger.

There is really no living relationship with the son of God until we have come through the waters of repentance. Repentance means I'm sorry for the way I've been living. I'm sorry for what I've done to other people.

It's not about what other people have done to me. It's what I have done to other people. I'm sorry for living in rebellion to the revealed word of God when I knew what God was speaking but I chose my own way.

Rebellion and the First Covering of Sin

And that's where we start in Genesis chapter three beginning at verse one. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat it, you shall not touch it lest you die.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave to her husband with her and he did ate.

Now here is the first foundation of sin in the human race. This is what separated men and women from God. This is why God had to send his son into the world later on to die on a cross to pay the price for our sin.

It's when Adam and Eve made the conscious decision to defy the word of God and the will of God for their lives. They fell prey to a lie. The lie says you can do what you wanna do outside of the established order of God and somehow not pay a consequence for it.

And I believe, I've always believed the devil was a very attractive, it describes his nature as a serpent. A serpent of course has no ears and is guided by his tongue. That's why he's described as a serpent.

But I feel in my heart, now it's just my own feeling, but I feel in my heart he was the anointed cherub. There was a beauty about him and it's almost like he appeared to Adam and Eve and says, well look at me.

I made my own decisions. I chose to do it my way. I stepped out from under the authority of God and look at me. Nothing has happened to me. And Adam and Eve, it says, they saw that the tree was good for food and it was pleasant to the eyes and was desirable to make one wise.

And she took of its fruit and ate. So the fruit that they ate of was a theological fruit, that I can live outside of the word of God. I can defy the word of God or maybe put it this way. I can pick and choose what to believe from the word of God.

I can believe what I want to believe and then I can disregard what I don't want to believe and somehow no consequence will come to me. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people fall into this trap over the years as a Christian man, as a pastor.

I have sat and reasoned with people and tried to help them to see the error of their way. And it's heart-rending because time and again, I've just watched them go off a cliff into spiritual disaster.

And some, to this day, are not even alive anymore knowing, they should have known, that the way they were going was going to take away their strength and was going to take away their relationship with God.

Now the next thing that happens after they make the choice, and so my question to you tonight who are listening online, are you living in the light of what God has revealed to you in his word or are you making excuses for it?

Are you stepping outside of the lines of God's parameters for your life and somehow thinking there's going to be no consequence to it? The numbers of people who just get involved in things thinking, I can handle this, it's not going to take away the presence of God for me, it's not going to destroy my life, only to find out that they can't handle it.

All you have to do is give the devil one toehold in the door of your life and he will come in to you like a flood before you know it. Verse seven of Genesis three says, then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

So here's the second stage of sin. The first is willful rebellion to the revealed word of God. Has God said? They knew what God said but they chose to do something else. The second is making themselves another covering other than the covering that has been provided by God.

I want you to picture this for a moment. Adam and Eve, I believe, were covered by the glory of God. The glory that shone from Moses' face when he came down from the mountain. The glory that covered their nakedness because they were in the presence of the living God virtually every day and it was his presence, his covering that covered them.

It covered their nakedness, it covered them completely and when they sinned against God, suddenly their covering was gone and they had to make another covering for themselves. That is the origin of all religion in the world today apart from Jesus Christ.

It is man making his own covering. His own covering that says, oh, I'm a good person and when I die the good is hopefully gonna outweigh the bad. I've never murdered anybody so why would God reject me from his kingdom?

I go to church, I even tithe. I give good portions of all that I possess to others but you see, none of these can save you. You see, you can't make your own covering and never get past and into the eternity of God because only one covering will suffice.

It's the covering of the shed blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Now in Genesis chapter three, verses eight to 10, we see the third stage of sin. Now remember, number one, it's a conscious decision to walk outside of the revealed word of God.

Number two is making another covering, declaring one's own righteousness in spite of the fact that the person is now in an unrighteous condition in the sight of God. Genesis chapter three is the third stage of sin.

Hiding from God's Presence and Voice

Verses eight to 10, it is hiding from both the presence and the voice of God and they heard the sound, Genesis 3 .8, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.

It's a type of a person who finds it very comfortable to hide in church and the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? As a matter of fact, Pastor William used to preach it this way, the actual Hebrew translation was, Adam, do you know where you are?

Do you know what you've done? Do you know what you have become? Do you understand that you are now separated from the life of God? Do you know what's happened to you? And he said, so he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

And so the next thing you find when people are living in sin is they start hiding. Now they don't mind going to church as long as the presence of God is not there and the voice of God is not challenging their sin.

I can't tell you the number of times over the last 25 or more years standing at the pulpit in Times Square Church when the presence of God just invaded the sanctuary. I would watch people run out of the church during the worship because the presence of God had come.

I would watch them run out during the sermon because the presence of God, the word of God was now challenging their behavior. And this is exactly what the third stage of sin is in the book of Genesis.

It's both hiding from the presence and from the voice of God and the sad thing is they were in the garden but they were hiding. There are people who attend church today but they're still hiding from the presence and they're hiding from the voice of God.

Blaming Others Instead of Owning Sin

And the fourth stage of sin is blaming others for our own actions. Now Pastor Tim spoke quite articulately about that on Sunday morning and you should listen to that message. I think it was called Has the Music Changed?

So in chapter three again now in verse 12, it says the man said, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. And the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. You know so the problem is now in the human race, the problem of sin, we live in a society today where everybody is blaming somebody else for their condition.

It's my father's fault that I'm the way I am. It's my mother's fault. It's my former church's fault. It's my boss's fault. It's my wife's fault. It's my husband. See I'd be such a great husband if it wasn't for my wife.

Or I'd be such a great wife, I'm sorry to laugh but that's just the reality of it. You know that we want to shift the blame for, you know I've had people, I had somebody in my office one time who was committing a grievous sin and looked at me with incredulously in a counseling session and said to me, if she wasn't the way she was, I wouldn't be doing this.

See there was no desire in his heart to take ownership for his own sin. It was his sin that had broken the covering off of his home and it is sin that had broken the covering off of his marriage and was causing it to dissolve.

But he had chosen, instead of taking ownership for his sin, he had chosen to blame somebody else for it, in this case his wife. James chapter one verses 14 and 15 says, each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desires and enticed.

Then when desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown brings forth death. So let's go over the four points of sin again in the book of Genesis. The conscious decision to defy the word of God for our lives and the will of God for our lives.

Secondly, making another covering, declaring ourselves righteous when we're not, declaring ourselves clean when we're not, declaring ourselves to be in right relationship with God when God's word clearly tells us we're not in right relationship with him.

The third stage is hiding from the presence and the voice of God, even in the house of God. That's why people will gravitate to churches where they want a fire insurance, they want the assurance that heaven's gonna be their home in a sense at the end of the journey, but they don't want the presence or the word of God to challenge their behaviors, their worldview, or even how they're living their lives.

And fourthly, blaming. If sin becomes evident, instead of dealing with it, blaming somebody else for it. I'm a drug addict because of this. I'm an alcoholic because of that. I shared with a person recently, I said, until you're willing to take ownership for your sin, you will never be free.

Jesus said you should know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And the inference of the word know implies, in the Greek at least, it's a heartfelt embracing. You shall heartfeltedly embrace the truth about yourself, about your condition, about why you're doing things, about your relationship with God and how it's affecting the relationship around you with others.

God's Mercy and the Promise of a Blood-Bought Covering

Now thank God in Genesis chapter three, not only do we see the peril, the pitfall and the fall of humanity, we see the mercy of God. It's absolutely amazing. In Genesis chapter three and verse 21, it says, and also, for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them.

See, Adam and Eve had clothed themselves in fig leaves. I often think of how ridiculous they must have looked. Can you imagine? These broad green leaves and they've made like a hat, like a lampshade for themselves and they've made skirts and whatever it looked like.

Must have looked absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine they had the glory of God covering them and they exchanged it for fig leaves? They exchanged it for like a plant and thinking somehow this has covered me, somehow my bankruptcy before God is not gonna be exposed.

I've made my own covering. Now God could have exiled them as he did from the garden, as he did all of humanity because of sin, knowing what sin was going to produce in the human race. He could have, technically, he could have destroyed the whole thing and just recreated it all over again at that point.

You know why he didn't? For God so loved, that says it all. For God so loved Adam and Eve. For God so loved their offspring. For God so loved the world. God so loved the next generation, the next generation, the next generation right down to you and I.

That's why he didn't destroy the whole thing. That's why, in a sense, evil sin has been allowed to prosper. It's only because of the mercy of God. God knew what humanity would do once humankind, men and women, were living outside of the revealed will of God and were blaming one another.

Can't you see it on full display now in our society? Everybody is blaming somebody for everything. Nobody is taking ownership for anything anymore. It's somebody else's fault that I'm this. It's somebody else's fault that I'm that.

And they made their own covering and God could have justifiably just put them out of the garden with the fig leaves on them. Said go, all the best to you. But you see the mercy of God and God was pointing to something already in verse 21 because it said he made tunics of skin and clothed them.

He took, in a sense, the fig leaves off of them and put the skins of animals on them which was the first indication that a blood sacrifice was going to have to be made to cover the sins of humanity. You see, these animals had to die.

They had to shed their blood, they had to give their lives so that their skin could be used as a covering for the failures of Adam and Eve at this time. And this was right after, in Genesis chapter three verses 14 and 15, the gospel is preached.

Did you know the gospel is preached in Genesis three? Your Bible called students in the sanctuary and many of you online, you've studied your Bible. You should know this. The gospel was first preached in Genesis chapter three right in the garden, before Adam and Eve were put out of the garden, the gospel of Jesus Christ was preached.

Genesis chapter three verse 14. So the Lord God said to the serpent, that's the devil himself, because you've done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.

Now I've often interpreted that, it's my own interpretation but mankind, humankind was created out of the dust and it was the curse in a sense. You're gonna spend your whole existence trying to devour the creation of God.

That which God raised out of the dust, you're gonna crawl on your belly on the earth. It's as if he was saying to Satan, you could have lived in the heavens. You were the anointed cherub. There was none like you for beauty but instead of being where you were and where you were created and what you were created to be, you're gonna now go on your belly on the earth and you're gonna spend your whole existence during the lifespan of planet earth as it is, you're gonna be attempting to devour.

The thief has come to kill, steal and destroy. You're gonna be attempting to devour men and women and children. That's exactly what the devil is doing in our generation. The only way to beat him is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, through a living relationship with the son of God.

And he says in verse 15, I will put in between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. In other words, God says in the Garden of Eden, I'm going to have a people and from that people, a Messiah is going to be born.

And through him, a seed, a righteous seed is going to come back into this world. And I'm gonna put enmity between you, between your seed and her seed. Her seed, the seed of the woman, which of course is Israel.

Jesus Christ was born through the seed of Jacob. I'm gonna put a division between you. One is gonna live in light and the other is gonna live in darkness. One has an eternity in heaven with God, the other has an eternity in hell with you.

And I'm gonna make a division between the two. There's gonna be no waffling in between the two as a serpent would like it to be. But my people are gonna live for me, they're gonna be a people of truth, they're gonna be redeemed by the blood, they're gonna be empowered by the spirit of God and they're gonna have power to stand against you and your lies that you have imbibed into the spirit of humankind in the Garden of Eden.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. And I'm going to send a savior. That's what he was saying in these verses. And you will bruise his heel. In Psalm 22, Jesus quoted it on the cross. In Psalm 22, verse 16, he says, dogs have surrounded me.

The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. You will, you will bruise his feet. But he shall bruise your head. He shall tread upon you. He shall destroy you. He shall destroy the reasonings that you have planted into those created in the image of God.

And he will triumph over you. He will take captivity captive and give gifts unto men. He will be a redeemer. And the scripture tells us in verses 30 and 31 of Psalm 22, listen to these words. A posterity, in the original King James says, a seed shall serve him.

It will be recounted to the Lord for the next generation. They will come and declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has done this. A seed shall serve him. A seed shall serve him.

Repentance and the Lamb of God

So my challenge to you online tonight, turn from your sin. Turn from that which would destroy you. Turn from living according to your own will and your own way. Turn from your rebellion to the words and the will of the living God.

Turn from trying to make yourself another covering that God says is not righteous. Turn from hiding from the presence and the voice of God. Turn from blaming others for the struggle that's come into your life and maybe even in your home because of your sin.

Turn from your adultery. Turn from your pornography. Turn from your alcohol. Turn from your drugs. Turn from your bitterness. Turn from your unforgiveness. Turn from the lust in your heart and the lies on your lips.

Turn to the living God. That was the message of John the Baptist. That was the introduction to Jesus Christ and the people had the common sense to come streaming out of a religion that was hiding from God.

A whole religious system that had made its own covering. A whole system that were hiding from the presence and the voice of God. A whole system of blaming one another and they went and humbled themselves in the sight of God.

Went down into the waters of baptism and when they came up, John said to them, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There is no beholding of him until there's repentance in the heart.

We're not mistakers in need of correction. We're sinners in need of a savior. And so here's my question to you. You can lay down in your own garden with your own coverings, hiding from the voice of God and blaming others.

And you can do it for the rest of your life. And sad to say, your eternity will most likely not be with God in some cases. Or you can be among the seed that Jesus Christ spoke about in Psalm 22. The seed that recognized that God had to send his son to a cross to pay the price for the wrong things that you have done that the Bible calls sin.

The things you did. The choices you made. The coverings that you procured for yourself. The false reasonings that you allowed to get into your mind. He had to send his son to die to pay a price. To restore you and to give you back the covering that was lost in the Garden of Eden.

The Cross Restores the Lost Covering

You know, in the Garden of Eden, they were banished from the tree of life. It says, lest they should live forever in this sinful condition. They were banished from the garden and the covering was lost.

The covering of God was lost. At the cross, the tree of life was regained and the covering was given back. And through Jesus Christ, we're brought back into a right relationship with the living God. And the glory of God becomes our covering again.

The blood of Christ washes away all of our sin. We're brought back into relationship with God where we can actually hear his voice again in the cool of the day. And we're no longer afraid to be challenged by his presence or by his words.

And we delight in our hearts in living inside the boundaries of the word of God. We're no longer looking to see how far we can get to the edge without ending up in hell. We now want to live as close to the center of those two borders as we can.