Spinning Sin

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order, that is what our slogan is and we try to teach you the Bible in a way that is engaging, it is relevant, it is missional.

I just want to teach you the Bible in such a way that you�ll say, �Hm, that�s interesting. I better study that a little bit more, or yes, I agree, or I should think that way, or no, that�s wrong, and I better call the guy up.

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The Society-Wide Spin on Sin

Today we�ll talk about spin and how society�s spin on things has slipped into the church. There�s spin everywhere. It seems like the number one rule today is how to spin it so you get the biggest bang for your buck and you try not to offend anyone so you could be litigation proof.

By the way, Robert Thornton at Lehigh University came up with some litigation proof phrases, virtually impossible to be sued when you use these phrases, which are in the lexicon of intentionally ambiguous recommendations.

Lexicon of intentionally ambiguous recommendations, L-I-A-R, voila. Here's some examples. If you've got to describe somebody at your job who's inept, I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.

Very, very nicely done, Robert Thornton. If someone is needing to be described as an ex-employee and he didn't get along with people and someone wants a referral and they call you, I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine.

Nice spin. How about someone who is an unproductive candidate? I can assure you that no person would be better for the job. Are these good? Man, these are nice. Good job, Robert Thornton. Does he play hockey for the Bruins?

Oh, he used to. Somebody who is not worth accepting as a candidate, as an applicant, I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment. Very good. I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.

Why the Church Must Recover the Doctrine of Sin

The thing is, in this society of spin that we have, the political spin that's seeped over into the world, it's also seeped into the church. So today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to talk about how people in the church spin the concept and the terminology known as sin.

The spin of sin. How these words for sin and the concept and the theological backbone that goes behind the word sin has been just taken away. Double speak everywhere. Spin rules. Unfortunately, for those that like to do that, God's word is clear.

How clear is it? Crystal clear, especially when it comes to this idea of sin. And remember, you have a great sin problem, but a greater Savior. And so what we want to do today is, I'm not trying to rub your noses in your sin.

What I am trying to do this, if you're not a Christian, you need to realize that there's no way you can extract yourself from your own sin. No way you can save yourself, autopistos, that you're yourself Savior.

You can't do it. There's nothing you can do. And just think, you commit one sin and you're just as guilty now of that one sin you committed 30 years ago as you will be in 50 years from now and in 5 billion years from now in hell, still just as guilty.

So you need to have a forgiver. You need to have a Savior. And so, if you're a Christian, the good news about sin is, when you think about your sin, you have a greater Savior than your sin, and it produces joy.

It produces thankfulness. For the unbeliever, when you talk about sin, it should produce conviction. It should elicit guilt. It should make you say, I need relief. I need my guilt assuaged. I need my conscience cleaned.

And so, we don't do ourselves any favor if we minimize the doctrine of sin. Jesus didn't, Paul didn't, John the Baptist didn't, Ezekiel didn't, Moses didn't. You just go down the list of people. Sin is everywhere in the Bible, and we are realists, aren't we?

We are sinful, and so sin and Savior go together. Not because sin goes together with the Savior, but the Savior's work, his mission, his purpose It goes together with what he saved us from. And what happens is, we have a politically incorrect word these days in the church, and that's the word sin.

Oh, that guy preaches about sin too much. Well, if the pastor preaches about sin without pointing you to the Savior, well, then that is problematic. But most of the time, people want to be stroked and talked to about their self-esteem.

Seeker-sensitive churches and churches trying to preach to empty pews instead of full pews, they've got a big problem, and they're afraid of the word sin. They are like Robert Shuler, who does not want to use the word sin, and if he does, he redefines it as a lack of self-esteem.

The church needs to recover her doctrine of sin, and when she does, then she'll see God His holiness, His justice, His righteousness. And then they'll also see that God is gracious, and He forgives sinners.

Sin, Creation, and the Fall in Genesis

And so I think we need to brace ourselves now in this culture, because they're trying to spin sin. They're trying to spin God. They're trying to spin judgment. This goes way back to Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3, where you learn about the creation of God, and how He made man, and how He made woman, and they were made in His likeness and image.

And Satan comes along to tempt them, and you know, God didn't really say that. He didn't say you're going to surely die. The first doctrine in all the Bible that was questioned is the doctrine of sin leads to judgment.

I could put it this way on No Compromise Radio, if you teach a Sunday school class, you need to teach your children that they're sinners. If you're a preacher, you need to preach the doctrine of sin, so you can point to the Savior.

If you evangelize, you better talk about sin. This whole, well, we don't really want to tell people they're sinners, they already know that. No, they don't. They might know they're sinners, but not to the extent that they have been shut up before God, Romans chapter 3, verse 19, having no more excuses, saying that surely if there's a God like the one you're talking about, surely I'm so sinful, I'm doomed, I have nothing else to say, I can't offer my religion, I can't offer my self-righteousness, I can't offer my good works, I have no merit, I have no answer, I am undone.

We need to recover the doctrine of sin, and of course that means we have to talk about God's standards, and God's law, and God's perfections, and therefore God himself. You spin Easter, and what do you get?

You spin Christmas, what do you get? And so today on No Compromise Radio, we want to recover the doctrine of sin, and I don't want you to sit in a church where they say, we don't want to harp much on sin anymore, everybody knows we're sinful.

You need to vote with your feet is what you need to do, and don't go to such a place. You don't have a bad self-image, you don't need therapy, you need a Savior who's overcome sin, and that includes Christians as well.

Jonathan Edwards, John Stott, and the Weight of Personal Sin

Jonathan Edwards said this, I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared to me that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind, of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time, and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell.

Jonathan Edwards goes on to say, My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination, like an infinite deluge or mountains over my head.

I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite. Very often for these many years, these expressions are in my mind and in my mouth, infinite upon infinite, infinite upon infinite.

When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. End quote. Now what would people say today if the pastor got up and talked like that, or if the pastor said you were like that?

We would say you've got a bad self-image, you need to have therapy, no one's going to ever go to your church, you need to look on the bright side, you need to be known for what you're for, not what you're against, and the list goes on and on and on.

Where are the pastors who preach on sin? Where are the pastors who preach on judgment? Where are the fire and brimstone pastors that we hear about, caricatured in modern media today, but I never really meet anymore?

I never meet them anymore. Of course I'm saying preach Christ Jesus, the Savior of sinners, but you need to be understanding the depth of your depravity before you're ever going to want a Savior. I agree with John Stott who said, we are not in the least ashamed of the fact that we think and talk a lot about sin.

We do so for the simple reason that we are realists. Sin is an ugly fact. It is neither ignored nor ridiculed, but honestly faced. Indeed, Christianity is the only religion in the world which takes sin seriously and offers a satisfactory remedy for it.

The way to enjoy this remedy is not to deny the disease, but to confess it.". It reminds me of back in the day where MacArthur said, probably on a tape someplace, there was a book by Carl Menninger, an unbeliever, entitled the book, Whatever Happened to Sin?

Sin, Forgiveness, and the Need for a Substitute

Without the recognition of sin, well, what are you going to confess? How are you going to be restored? What are you going to be forgiven from? Just think about your background. Think about your thought life over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Think about all the skeletons that are in your closet. Think about the things that you did that you just wish you could somehow take back. Things that you did against God or other people. You need a Savior.

You need to have a perfect Savior, a substitutionary Lamb, so that Lamb could have your sins counted against Him. Psalm 130, God, if you count sins, who can stand? Stedman, Ray Stedman, told a story that a London psychologist once told Billy Graham that 70 of the people in mental hospitals in England could be released if they could find forgiveness.

Now whether that's true or not, I don't know, but forgiveness is a major problem and you're not going to get forgiveness if you don't understand what sin is. Sproul said, sin is cosmic treason. Can you imagine trying to overthrow the government of God, disloyalty to God, owing complete allegiance to God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength to love Him, and then betraying that trust with disloyalty and treachery?

The sinfulness of sin, the wickedness of sin. I think Ralph Venning wrote the book, The Sinfulness of Sin. MacArthur said he read that book every year. Just how bad is sin? I think of Sirhan Sirhan, just after he shot Kennedy.

They can gas me, but I'm famous. I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do. Now there's a group of Christians these days who love to quote C .S. Lewis. And he's a great writer.

He wasn't very orthodox in his Christianity. But these same people love to quote G .K. Chesterton. And G .K. Chesterton was one smart man. And he was well written, and he wrote well, and he was well read.

And he was a smart guy. But he's Roman Catholic, and it bleeds over into his writings. And so when people quote him all the time, I don't really like it. So I don't quote him very much, but I am going to quote him this time, because he's right when it comes to this topic.

The London Times ask a lot of people to write essays on the topic, what is wrong with the world? And here's Chesterton's reply. Dear sirs, I am sincerely G .K. Chesterton. So with the late Walt Kelly in his cartoon strip Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Defining Deviancy Down and the Moral Deregulation of Society

Friends, it doesn't do you any good to spin your alienation from God, your estrangement from God, estrangement from others. Even U .S. Senator, ex-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, he published an essay when he was in office called Defining Deviancy Down, Defining Deviancy Down.

And it was in the November 22nd issue of the New Republic. And so here's what Krauthammer said about Moynihan. Moynihan's powerful point is that with the moral deregulation of the 60s, we've had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior and public displays of psychosis.

And we have dealt with it in the only way possible, by redefining deviancy down. So as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, ordered and healthy society long ago would have labeled, and long ago did label, deviant, end quote.

Or we could label it sin, rebellion against God. Moody Monthly published a short little article, a little poem, and most of you know it. By the way, my name is Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio. We're talking about the spin of sin today.

How people are spinning sin. So we don't have to talk about it, but we've got a problem because when sin is redefined, then Jesus must be redefined. When sin isn't preached, there's no need for the solution because the problem is sin, and God hates the wicked, and God is an enemy of those who are born in sin, that's everybody except Christ Jesus who was not, then you don't need a savior.

And so maybe the reason why there's not a whole lot of preaching Christ Jesus these days and crucified, there's no need to crucify him in the minds of these pastors. If you've got a moralistic, therapeutic, deistic, how-to church, and every week it's the how-to formulas, and there's not much talk about sin, and you need to have an adjustment, or you need to have your change of your mind, I guess that's repentance, so that one wouldn't count necessarily, but these kind of adjustments and moralistic how-tos without the gospel, well, it makes sense because no preaching sin, no need for the gospel.

No need for the gospel, let's define it down to Mormonism and moralism and just how to be good. Now, I like moral neighbors, but they're still going to go to hell if they die without Christ Jesus, and so I think this all goes together.

Biblical Words for Sin and the Universality of Human Depravity

When the biblical terminology of sin is gone, what do you do? Part of this is the lack of expository, verse-by-verse, sequential preaching in churches. You can't preach very far without running into the problem with sin.

I'm reading Judges now in the morning, and that book is replete with sin. You can read any book of the Bible. I don't know if there's any book in the Bible that doesn't address it, but when you see what happens and how bad sin is, you'll say, I'm super thankful for Jesus, my Savior.

Now, if you read your Bible through, you'll see there's all kinds of Hebrew words for sin. Hatar, it means to miss the mark, to miss the goal, to shoot the soccer ball towards the goal and hit the post.

That's what that means, hatar, and it means to miss the mark, and you fail to meet God's standard on purpose. The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave, Genesis 18, verse 20.

There's another word, pasah, which means to breach the relationship or to rebel. There's another word, awan, which means to have perverseness, iniquity, twisted, perverse. I won't even repeat all these other Hebrew words, but there's another Hebrew word for mistake, another Hebrew word for godlessness or injustice.

Another one, amal, sin or mischief or oppression. The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And then you've got Greek words, six Hebrew words and six Greek words.

Harmartia, where you've got a word that means to miss the mark, offenses against God's law. You've got lapses, you've got unrighteousness or unrighteous deeds, you've got transgressions and trespasses, godlessness, impiety, lawlessness, all different words for sin.

Ephesians 4, 17, and this I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.

And they having become callous have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity and greediness. Friends, as Jesus said in John 8, everyone is a slave to sin. All unbelievers are slaves to sin.

We need a savior. She will bear a son, Mary will, and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their lack of self-esteem. No, from their sins. Luke 1, 77, to give his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

Friends, if you're listening today and you're not a Christian, you've got a major problem. Your problem isn't your wife, your finances, your debt, your house, your health. Your problem is your sins. And the good news is the Son of Man came to seek and save that was lost.

That's who he came to save. It's interesting with the Pharisees around Jesus. Pharisees saw this. They said to his disciples, Matthew 9, why is your teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?

But when Jesus heard this, he said, it is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. People that know they're sinful, they know they need a savior. People, if you're sick, you go to the doctor.

You don't go to the doctor if you feel good, unless you're a crazy hypochondriac. Do not be amazed that I say to you, Jesus said, you must be born again. That's what you need. You need new life. You need to be following the friend of sinners.

You need to trust in the one who came to save sinners. You need the one who can show you that you aren't righteous. Maybe in your own eyes you are, but you need a substitute. You need a savior. You need an atonement for your sins.

You don't need recovery if you're an addict. You need to be no longer in enslavement to sin. That's what you need. Blessed are those, Jesus said in Matthew 5, who mourn, for they shall be comforted. You see God is holy, and you see that as you look at the holy God and realize what life you are meant to live and realize the difference between the two and then realize how hopeless you are without Christ, how helpless you are, then you'll say, I ought to mourn.

I ought to mourn because I see my sin as an atrocity against a holy God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. You ought to mourn because your sin has been repulsive to God, is repulsive to God.

He's, as it were, allergic to it. It's an abomination in his sight. Sin is horrible, likened in the Bible to poison. And sin kills, kills Adam, tries to kill God, killed Cain. The wages of sin is death.

Sin separates. God is so holy, he can't look upon sin. You can't look in God's, look at God's holiness and live to tell about it eternally without a savior. Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil. Thou cannot look on wickedness with favor.

Arthur Pink said, and it was because the savior was bearing our sins that the thrice holy God would not look on him, turned his face from him, forsook him. The Lord made to meet on Christ the iniquities of us all and our sins being on him as our substitute, the divine wrath against our offenses must be spent upon our sin offering.

You might hope that God forgets your sins. You might try to distract him by being good. You might try to outweigh the good with the bad, but you're a sinner and you need forgiveness found in Christ's great life, death, burial, and resurrection.

Quadriplegic Johnny Erickson Tada, Johnny Erickson Tada, excuse me, said, but more than I am looking forward to my new body, I'm looking forward to a heart without sin. You've got to have the right diagnosis to get the proper cure.

And you have the right theology like Johnny does, and then you think differently about the entire world. Do you need relief? Do you need forgiveness? Do you need cleansing? Do you realize that when you stand before God without a mediator, you're going to be undone?

Then you need to look to Christ. You need to turn from your sins and to believe in the atonement that Christ provided for all those who would look with saving faith and repentance, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to look away from your sins and to say, God, I take your word for it, that if I look to you and I believe what your son has done for me, you'll cleanse me.

That's what you need. And then you can read Psalm 51 and just rejoice in creating me a clean heart, oh God. How great is God? How gracious is God? How good is God? No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE in staff or management.