6 Questions to Ask Yourself About Sin | The Whole Counsel

Chuck, why don't we read these six questions, and then hopefully if these are things that really grip you, then you can get your hands on the sermon and kind of work through these on your knees before the

Lord and ask Him to use these to show you where you're really at. And if you're finding it hard to locate the sermon, then there is a link on the podcast that will take you to the website, and the text of the sermon will be on there.

So here's the first question. Does God's government appear reasonable and His law just?

So that just opening question, very simple. He does point out, in heaven they cry,

Hallelujah, just and righteous are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty. But what is the language of your heart?

So again, I beg generalities, but do you rejoice at this government? Yeah, when you look at the rule of God, so not in the abstract way, okay,

God is a king, that's wonderful. No, but when you see what God says He will do with those who reject

Him, when you see what God says He has the right to in your life, His claims, do you feel that this is just?

Do you say God is right in this? The second question, can you justify

God in His present dispensations toward you? Yeah, so this is a little more personal.

I mean, and I think this is a real stroke of genius. It's one thing for someone to say, you know, when the preacher says, now

God has a right to do this, and God says He's going to judge in this way, and they say, well, you know, the judge of all the earth will do right.

But you get in your car, and you drive home, and life is hard. You know, not just agitated, not just frustrating, but deeply, grievously hard.

You know, heartbreakingly hard. And how quick we are to say with other words,

God is right in the way He's dealing with everything out there, but God has not treated me right. And so it really does reveal that we're not quite in agreement with what

Bellamy says about God as a lawgiver. Number three, has it become natural to you to look upon hell as your proper due to such an extent that everything in your circumstances wherein you are better off than the damned appears as mere mercy, pure mercy?

And the fourth question seems to go along with that one. Do you deserve eternal damnation now, according to your own understanding, as much as you ever did?

Yeah, so two points under those two that are significant. One is not just making it personal.

Do you delight in the way God is governing your life in your circumstances, or are you complaining?

But then the further point, do you realize that even the worst thing that happens today compared to what we have earned in our sin, which is hell, is the merest form of mercy?

It's purest mercy. But then, you know, the other thing that you mentioned in the fourth question, that it is so easy, no matter how many times we're warned not to do it, to take what

God is doing in us today if we're Christians. So the sanctification, the work of God in you, and to substitute it in the place of the work of God for you.

So instead of looking to cross alone as the cause of my peace with God, I think, well, yeah, the cross forgave my sin, but the little sins

I do today, they're being basically paid for by my Christian life today, which is a dreadful lie.

The fifth question, he asks, Do all your hopes of finding mercy at last take their rise only and absolutely from the free grace of God through Christ as revealed in the gospel?

So that fifth question applies to what I just said. The sixth question,

Has it become natural to you to be afraid of sin? And that's a great question also. And not just sin that's open and that people see, and you're concerned, again, really about self and reputation, what people's opinion of you is, but sin that is secret.

So, you know, at home alone at night, in front of the computer by yourself, wherever.

Is that sin also dreadful to you now because you've seen what it is against God, who sees everything?

Yeah, it really is a remarkably searching, simple question. Why does sin bother you at all?

I mean, sometimes when people come and talk to us about wanting to become Christians, sometimes the question I ask people is,

Well, you know, you have everything that life offers. You have a nice family. Maybe you have a nice job or loving parents, and maybe they're part of a family that has a lot of, you know, of what the world provides.

Why do you need Christ, you know? Do we hate sin for the right reason?

Do we hate sin because it's against a king that has loved us while we sinned against him?

And we see that. So we think that the most horrible thought imaginable is that I would live one more hour for me and that I would hold off an hour of living for the king.

Yeah, and to come to that place truly is a work of God. We don't arrive there by ourselves.

No, certainly not. Yeah, it really is a mark of God having awakened us, you know, regenerated us.