Hamartiology - Consequences of Sin

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Well, good evening.
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We're back tonight in our study of Hamartiology, and just in case that's something you've forgotten, that means the doctrine of sin.
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We looked in the first week at the nature of sin.
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We said that sin can only be defined by God, and that sin is missing the mark, and so there has to be a standard or a mark to miss.
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And so the way we define sin, and in its very nature, is anything that does not conform to God.
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Whether it misses His command or whether it exceeds what He has allowed, it is sin because God is the standard.
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In week two, which was last week, we looked at the origin and the problem of sin.
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Does anybody remember how we defined the problem of sin? What does that mean? Why does evil exist? Why? That's right.
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The question of why does evil exist.
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And so we spent last week looking at that, what has typically been called the problem of sin.
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Well, tonight we're going to look at the consequences of sin.
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And if you notice in your worksheet, even though tonight we're looking at the consequences of sin, really the next three weeks are going to be looking at the consequences of sin, because the extent and imputation of sin is a consequence, and the bondage of the will is a consequence.
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So tonight we're looking really at the first part of the consequences of sin, and the next two parts will simply be extensions of that.
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I want to read to you a quote from one of the theology books that I'm using for my notes, and it says this.
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This is in Henry Thiessen's book.
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Immediate, far-reaching, and fearful were the consequences of sin of our first parents.
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It is difficult to suppress the desire to know what would have happened if they had not sinned.
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But the Scriptures are silent on the subject, and one must refrain from speculating where God has not seen fit to give definite revelation.
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It may be assumed, however, that the consequences of obedience would have been as great in the right direction as the consequences of disobedience have been in the wrong direction.
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Farther than this we cannot go.
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We can, however, look at what happened to Adam and Eve and their environment as a result of their sin.
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The first sin had an effect on our parents' relation to God, on their nature, on their bodies, and on their environment." So if you look at the outline, relation, human nature, body, environment, that outline is taken, our outline for tonight is taken directly from Thiessen's Systematic Theology.
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So I wanted to, anytime I take an outline from a book or from another person's sermon, I like to give credit.
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And so this tonight's outline comes from there.
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I use several theology books in the preparation of these lessons, and sometimes one will just stand out, and Thiessen's has stood out very well on this particular subject.
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I do want to quote again Miller to Erikson, another theology or theologian.
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He says this, Well, that's to put it lightly.
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That's to almost say something that need not be said, but we say it anyway because we want to be reminded of important truths.
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If you would take out your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 3, and we're going to look at the immediate consequences of sin.
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Now, we know we're in the Genesis study on Sunday morning, so some of what you're hearing today, we're going to hear in our sermon series.
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But the fact that this is chapter 3 and we're still in chapter 1, you probably won't hear it again for several months.
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So you may, may not be that big a deal.
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But we're going to look at Genesis 3 from verses 14 to 19.
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This is God giving direct consequences to the sins that were perpetrated.
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First, by the serpent, who we know is Satan himself.
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Then to Eve, who is the one who was tempted by Satan to sin.
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And then Adam, who the scripture doesn't say was necessarily tempted by Satan, but was led in a sense by his wife to follow that temptation.
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And so we see the direct consequences for all three of them.
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Genesis 3.14 says, The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.
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On your belly you shall go, and on dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
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I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
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To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.
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In pain you shall bring forth children.
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Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
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And to Adam, he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
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Cursed is the ground because of you.
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In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
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Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.
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By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.
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For out of it you were taken, for you are dust.
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And to dust you shall return.
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And so ends the reading of God's Word.
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It's an amazing section of Scripture.
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To put it bluntly, it's really a frightening section.
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This is God Almighty giving a direct and immediate punishment on behalf of the sin of Adam, and he is going down the list of the things that are going to happen to the serpent.
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He provides this curse.
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And I've often thought about this.
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We know that the serpent was simply a form that was taken by the devil, because this is the devil.
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And we know this for certain, not by simply inference.
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But in the New Testament, it's talking about the devil, and it says the serpent of old.
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So we know that it's referring to this serpent.
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And this serpent, though, is in the form of a serpent, yet is in the spirit of the tempter, is in the spirit of Satan.
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And so it's interesting that the animal that he takes the form of really is the recipient of the curse.
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Because it's the snake who becomes the one who will walk on his belly.
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And it's the snake who will eat dust.
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And we know they don't eat dust as a meal, they eat mouse, mice and other animals.
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But they do lap up the dust as they go along.
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I mean, if you drug your chin across that ground for any length of time, you'd get mouthfuls of dust too, you know, and that's pretty much how they live.
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It's just an amazing reality that this is what happens.
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And is it not true that serpents even today are among the most universally hated of all creatures, especially by me.
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Somebody sent me a video this week on Facebook, and it was a somebody had a shed in their backyard, and they picked it up with a forklift and under it was mounds and mounds of rattlesnakes.
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And they sent it to me, because they knew I'd love it.
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And my answer is burn it to the ground, move, change your address.
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Somebody said they found a snake in their closet, what would you do? I said, put the house up for sale.
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I have no interest in snakes.
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I have no interest in lizards.
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I ain't up to snakes with legs.
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I'm not interested in any of it.
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And it's interesting that I am not alone.
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There is there is not a universal hatred of snakes.
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I know some people have them as pets.
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We've talked about that.
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But that is not a that is not the norm.
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Of course, a lot of folks, I don't even go in the snake area at the zoo.
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My wife takes the kids in there, but I don't go.
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So anyway, the point of the matter is the serpent receives this punishment as the image the one that the the the devil had had bore that image and, and he receives the punishment thereof.
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And then the woman receives a punishment.
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And it's an interesting punishment, if you think about it, it's multiplying a pain in childbirth.
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It kind of makes you wonder what childbirth would have been like were it not for the fall.
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I know what childbirth is like, I have no idea what it feels like, but I know what it looks like.
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And it don't look very comfortable.
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It hurts, you know.
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And it's an amazing reality that that that moment that is so powerful, and so beautiful, and so miraculous is still a repercussion of the fall.
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And we see that right here.
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And don't we know that childbirth is not only painful, it's dangerous.
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Women die, giving birth, especially in generations prior to ours, we're in, we're in a generation of great medical technology.
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And as a result, there's a lot of safety precautions that happened today that didn't happen in generations prior.
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And so women are able to survive things they couldn't survive before, blood loss and things like that and get transfusions.
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And so it's an amazing time we live in, and yet women still die in childbirth.
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This is serious consequence to the fall.
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And there's also a and this is a little bit of a peculiar statement here.
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It says your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
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There's there's some debate as to what that means.
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And I don't really want to get into it tonight, because it's not the focus of the lesson.
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But there's debate as to how what does this basically mean? And some people think that it means that the wife will, will will will have have a desire to rule the husband and the husband's going to rule her.
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And I think there's some there is some truth to that.
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I mean, there is a there we've all we've all heard of the battle of the sexes.
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And you know, they say the battle of the sexes is comes from the foundation of the world.
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You know, it's always been a battle.
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But I but there's the idea here, though, is at the same time, we see the the major issue is that she is now going to have a position of of servants to her husband, he's going to be in the position of authority.
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He already had that position in the sense of being the federal head, but now it will be exercised differently.
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And then we get to Adam, and Adam is going to receive the punishment not of work, but the punishment of working in an environment that works against him, rather than with him.
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Prior to the fall, and I can't prove this, but I just have to believe that prior to the fall, you know, every seed that fell on the ground sprouted, you know, there was no need to, to work the field in the sense of having to having to do all of the the strenuous labor of catching the thorns in the hands and all of those things.
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It seems as if the garden was an amazing and miraculous place.
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And now it has resulted in a ground that is cursed.
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And it's going to bring forth not just the good fruit, but it's going to bring forth weeds, it's going to bring forth thorns, and it's going to be something that causes discomfort for Adam.
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I don't think that work is a result of the fall.
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I've said this before, work is not a result of the fall, discontent in work and pain in labor.
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And, and I don't know how many of you, some of you men are retired.
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But you work these jobs, you get up and you go and you do what you hate all day, just to put food on the table.
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And a lot of people do that because they just hate what they do.
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Because it's laborious, because it's it's painful.
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And it's tough.
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And yet, when we get to heaven, we're still going to work.
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I don't think that we're going to get to heaven and just sit on clouds and strum harps and be ethereal little cherubs sitting on clouds.
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I don't think that's what's going to happen.
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But I do think the pain of labor and the discontent in our labor will be gone.
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I think we will have a joy in our labor.
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And I think that's what Adam had before the fall.
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So all of these are things we see in this text.
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But the most important thing we see is in verse 19.
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It says by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread that's talking about work.
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But then it says this until you return to the ground.
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See, that was the great consequence of sin is now you're going to die.
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Now you're going to die.
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What did God tell Adam? Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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For on the day that you shall eat of it, you shall surely die.
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Now a lot of people take issue with the fact that Adam didn't keel over dead the day he ate the fruit.
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And they say, well, God is a liar.
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God said you're going to die the day you eat of it.
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And he lived another 900 and something years.
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Is God a liar? And I've heard some really creative ways to get out of it.
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One old boy said, well, to the Lord, a thousand years as a day.
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He didn't live a whole day in the days of the Lord.
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He lived 900 and something years and then he died.
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He didn't quite make it to one whole day.
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I don't think that's what it is.
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It's a creative answer.
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But, you know, we don't get points for creativity in our exegesis, unfortunately.
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The answer that has tended to be understood is that he died spiritually.
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That his death was a spiritual death.
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And it didn't happen when God gave the punishment here.
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It happened the very moment he sinned.
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There was a spiritual death that occurred the very moment he sinned.
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And as a result of being spiritually dead, he was now also going to reap the consequence of physical death.
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And physical death is a process.
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We're all dying little by little every day.
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We're dying.
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And that's what I believe began the very moment he ate the fruit.
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His spiritual death was an instant, but his physical death began.
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But he was a perfect specimen.
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He was the perfect human being physically.
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Hand made by God.
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He looked like me.
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I'm just saying.
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He looked like the perfect man.
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And as he began to die, he lived a long time and yet still that perfect body gave up and he died.
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So those are, that's just a little overview of the text.
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Now I want to look at our outline.
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This is the outline of the consequences of sin.
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You'll notice that I have here four from Mr.
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Thiessen and then one that I added on the end makes it five.
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And that is the effect on the environment and the effect on the effect of the eternal state.
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So I'm going to look at each of these.
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I'm not going to spend a lot of time on each one, but I'm going to give you a few thoughts to consider when we think about each of these as a consequence of the fall.
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Number one, the effect on the relation to God.
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Before the fall, Adam and Eve were in a fellowship with God and with each other.
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That was unbroken.
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They had a relationship with God.
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The Bible says they walked with God in the cool of the day.
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They were able to have unbroken, unbridled fellowship with their creator.
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But now they have a sense of displeasure.
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God's displeasure.
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They have disobeyed him.
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They explicitly done what he commanded not to do.
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It wasn't a shortcoming.
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It wasn't a mistake.
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It was a downright, outright rejection of his command.
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You know, we've lost the word sin in our vocabulary and we've replaced it with the word mistake.
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We've taken every vile practice and we've now made it into a sickness.
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Rapists are sexually repressive or they're sexually addicted, right? A person who is going through bouts of anger, well, he's missing some kind of a chemical that he needs.
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And so he needs to take this pill to make him happy.
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And so everything is a sickness, not a sin.
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Adam and Eve knew that they had sinned.
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They knew they'd lost their standing before God.
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And they knew that instead of seeking him and going to him for forgiveness, they should run and hide.
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Their guilty conscience did not permit them any rest.
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They tried to hide their sin.
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They covered their nakedness with sown fig leaves, which is an interesting thing that even the fact that they were naked became a problem.
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So they covered themselves up and then God came and what did they do? Well, Adam blamed God.
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And you say, wait a minute, Adam blamed Eve.
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No, Adam blamed God.
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If you go back and read the text, he says, the woman whom thou hast given me.
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Who's he pointing at? He's pointing at God.
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Yeah, the woman who you gave me.
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If you'd have gave me a better woman, I wouldn't be in all this mess.
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Why didn't you give me a few spares? You know, Adam and Eve and Deborah and Joanne and, you know, you know, if I would have had more women, this has been all right.
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No.
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So Adam blames God.
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That doesn't work.
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Eve blames the serpent.
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That doesn't work.
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Because ultimately, no matter who tempts you into sin, it is still your responsibility.
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No matter who leads you into sin, it is still your decision.
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It is still your choice.
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It is still your consequence.
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On Judgment Day, you will not be able to say to God that it's his fault or your mom's fault or your dad's fault or anyone else's fault.
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They were guilty.
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They bore the responsibility of their guilt and their relationship with God was broken.
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Sin brings man into a position of enmity with God.
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That word enmity, enmity is actually how you say it.
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I usually get the M and the N mixed up, but the enmity means to be hostile towards something.
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And if you have ever, if you've ever talked to an unbeliever about Jesus who didn't want to talk about Jesus, you know just how quickly and hostile a person can get when it comes to the things of God.
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Man is at enmity with God, but there's a mutual nature to that enmity because God is also at enmity with them.
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The relationship wasn't just Adam had been at war with God, now God was at war with him.
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You say, where do you get that, Pastor? Psalm 5.5 says, The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.
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You hate all evildoers.
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That's a tough passage because we don't like to think about God hating the one who does wrong.
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And yet, the Bible clearly in so many passages tells us that God has a form of holy hatred for the wicked.
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Jacob I have loved.
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Esau I hated.
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See a lot of people have real issue with that.
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They say, I can't believe that the Bible says Esau I hated.
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I agree with R.C.
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Sproul.
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I can't believe it says Jacob I loved.
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Because I understand why I would hate Esau.
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I do not understand why he would love Jacob because Jacob was worse than Esau.
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Jacob was a scoundrel.
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He was a liar.
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He was a thief.
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He was a trickster.
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And yet, God loved him.
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And by the way, that passage is right smack in the middle of the most explicit statement of the elective purpose of God in all the Bible, Romans chapter 9 verse 13.
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Showing that God can choose and does choose as he wills.
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And like I said, don't ever get upset that it says Esau I hated.
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Wonder and amazement that it says Jacob I have loved.
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And I know you've heard me say this before, but people say, why does people say God hates sin, loves a sinner? I say, well, that may be true, but he doesn't send sin to hell.
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He sends sinners to hell.
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I remember one night sitting at a restaurant.
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I was sitting at BJ's and I was sitting with a couple of friends.
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One of my friends who's a Baptist sitting right next to me and we're just chatting.
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And somebody said something about some kind of a sin.
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I don't remember even the context of what sin was brought up, but my buddy just said that.
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He said, well, God loves sinners and he hates sin.
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And I said, and I just sort of cleared my throat.
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Oh, what's wrong with that Foskey? He doesn't send sin to hell.
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He sends sinners to hell.
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Why does God send sinners to hell? Because he is at enmity with that person and they are at enmity with him.
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And guess what? The enmity doesn't end when they get to hell.
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People don't get saved when they get to hell.
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They keep hating God.
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Why does hell go on forever? Because their hatred of God goes on forever.
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That's the most amazing reality.
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They don't go down there and get redeemed and become sanctified.
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They continue to hate him.
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Jonathan Edwards said this.
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He said, so it is with the natural man towards God.
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They entertain very low and contemptible thoughts of God.
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Whatever honor and respect they may pretend and make a show of towards God, if their practice be examined, it will show that they certainly look upon him as being that, or excuse me, as a being that is but little to be regarded.
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The language of their hearts is, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? Exodus 5.2.
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What is the almighty that I should serve him? And what profit should we have if we were to pray to him? Job 21.15.
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They count him worthy neither to be loved nor feared.
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That's the natural man toward God.
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Neither to be loved nor feared.
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Primarily to be ignored because there is no God that sits upon my throne except me.
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I remember one comedian on, back when Bill O'Reilly was on Fox News, he said, in my sanctum sanctorum, I set the cover charge.
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What do you mean? He was talking about in my holy of holies, in my spiritual realm, I set the cover charge.
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I'm in charge.
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Millard Erickson says this, he said, by sinning, we place ourselves on the wrong side of God.
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We are on the wrong side of God.
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That.
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Losing side.
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Yeah, brother, you said it best.
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We are not only on the wrong side.
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We are on the losing side.
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We, we're in the bad side.
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Well, I'll tell you what time is getting away from us and we got four more to go.
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I don't want to rush these.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm going to finish this one up because I got a few more things to say, and then I'm going to stop.
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Y'all mind carrying over to another week or do y'all want me to go for another half hour? Everybody's shaking their heads.
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No.
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Okay.
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Well, just all you out there in wifi land, just know that everybody just shook their head.
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No.
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So let me finish with saying this.
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When I say that the natural man is at enmity with God, the natural response, I don't feel like I'm at enmity with God.
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You talk to the unbeliever, you're at war with God, but I don't feel like I'm at war with God.
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In fact, what does, what does so many people say to me? I've been good with God forever.
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I've always been good with, I've always walked with God.
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And some maybe have, I mean, I'm not going to deny that there are people who get saved at a young age.
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In fact, I love the story.
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I think it was D.L.
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Moody which went to a revival to preach and he came back to his home church and they said, brother Moody, how many people got saved? And he said, um, he said two and a half, two and a half.
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What do you mean? Two adults and a child? He said, no, two children and an adult.
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He said, because those children will have their whole lives to live for Christ.
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And that adult has already wasted half of his life on sinful living.
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So I have no issue with a child being saved.
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And so if a person says I've walked with Christ my life, my whole life, I would, I have to go back to at some point you got saved though.
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At some point, the Lord changed your life.
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Even if you were eight, 10 years old, it can happen.
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I mean, my friend, brother Andy Smith, he was saved as a young man, um, and is a pastor preacher of the gospel, you know, and, and preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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I mean, I have all confidence in the world of his, of his faith.
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And, and he, and he, he grew up in church.
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Grandfather was a pastor.
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He was, he was a pastor, you know, and, and, uh, daddy, you know, so, so, so it can happen.
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But in general, when I hear somebody say, well, I've always walked with God, it does raise a question because what that tends to mean is that they never understood themselves as an enemy of God.
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And they never understood their sin before God.
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And I think that's a real issue.
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Because if the if the relationship was never broken, it was never meant to be or never needed to be mended.
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If there was never a if there was never a sense of lostness, why where's the profundity in the being found? I'm not saying everybody has to become a person in a ditch that has that has gone way into the dregs and had to come out.
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Now, that's great.
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When you see that happen to people, when you see somebody who's, I mean, gone into the way side, and they've been brought back, that's great.
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I mean, what I've always said about my kids, what I would love to see with my children is that they have a boring testimony.
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I pray that my children will have a boring testimony.
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And what I mean by that is that they wouldn't fall into those wayward ways that they wouldn't go off into rebellion and that they would love the Lord from a young age.
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But even then, my little sweet babies are sinners.
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They are.
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And if you don't believe it, I'm gonna let them come spend a night with you.
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And after they are there for several hours, and you've called me six times to come get them, you will know that I am not a liar.
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Romans 5.10 says this, we were enemies, and Christ died for us.
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We were enemies of God.
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Isaiah 59.2 says, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear you.
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This is the estate of the unbeliever.
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And God comes to them, and he saves them out of that rebellion.
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He restores the relationship that is broken, as only he can do.
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So if someone says to me, I don't believe in Christ, but I don't feel like an enemy of God, I would say this, it really doesn't matter how you feel.
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It matters what the Bible says.
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And the Bible says, if you are outside of Jesus Christ, you are at enmity with God.
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Because the only person who can restore the relationship that was broken by sin is the one who never sinned.
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The only one who can bring you back to God from whom you rebelled is the one who never rebelled.
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And so what does sin do to the relationship with God? It breaks it.
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But Christ overcomes it.
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And he gives us an atonement.
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By the way, that's what we'll end with that.
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What does the word atonement mean? The word atonement is actually, it's actually an interesting etymological word.
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Because the word atonement has the idea at one minute, two parties that are separated from each other.
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The separation is removed and the relationship is restored.
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That is atonement.
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Reconciliation between two warring parties.
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That's what Christ does.
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He gives an atonement.
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Next week, we're going to look at the effect on the nature, the human nature, the human body, and on the environment.
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Hopefully, we'll get through all of them when we get there.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to study tonight.
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I pray that as we continue to move forward in these studies of the subject of sin, Lord, I pray that we would understand even more of the blessing of the Savior.
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And as we move from the study of sin to the study of salvation, oh, what a glorious thing it will be to be reminded of what Christ has done for us.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.