Apologetics Session 12 - Hamartiology

Cornerstone Church

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I had the opportunity to do theology at Justice It Deserves. I have a lot of books.

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I want to go through that. This is what we're going to do tonight. We'll pray in a second, get things started.

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Doctrine of sin, or the study of the doctrine of sin. And the reason we switched things around, too, was because we've kind of gotten to the point where we have proved what we can about the truth of the

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Bible from the archaeological point of view, the proofs of science and the resurrection, and the manual of evidence, and what is truth in general, and just some background information.

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All the arguments, a lot of the arguments that unbelievers would bring. But now, if we think that the Bible is true, what does the

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Bible actually say? So this is the first lesson that you would go through in a systematic theology class.

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And we're going to go through several of these. And the reason I switched theology with this, in particular, is because right after we do this,

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Matt is going to do soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation, the study of salvation.

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So it's like, well, you kind of need to know that you're a sinner before you need to be saved.

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So that's a good thing we're doing this tonight. So Bob, I think you can click us on if you want.

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You're on. Oh, I'm on already? Great. Haven't said anything dumb yet, have I? Getting no action.

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But, Bill, can I ask you to open us up in prayer? Yes. Lord God, we just thank you for tonight.

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Lord, we thank you for Drew's preparation. And we just pray that you would open our ears to hear, open our eyes to see,

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Lord. And God, I just pray that you would teach us tonight by your

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Holy Spirit. And we just thank you for what you have in store for us tonight, we pray in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Amen. Amen. So, yes, hemortheology, the study of the doctrine of sin.

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And I have a little sentence here. It says, hemortheology is somewhat of a sub -study of anthropology in general, the study of man.

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And we're not actually going to go through studying what it means to be made in the image of God and some of the other things that we would study about man in general.

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So we're just going to jump right into sin. And that's going to cover some of the things, obviously, that govern our condition as men right now.

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But hemortheology also includes the sin of angels, the fall of God's creation in general.

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And we're not going to say a lot about angels tonight. We're going to touch on it just a little bit. But really, I'm going to focus tonight on the sins of men, what it means, how it affects us, what it means going forward, how it's changed our nature, all of those sorts of things tonight.

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So even though we're covering this tonight, we're leaving some steps out. And I think that's good, though, for the level we want to cover in this class.

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So right off the bat, let's define what sin is, OK? So there's a

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Hebrew word in the Old Testament. We see it in Genesis 4 -7. Could someone read Genesis 4 -7 for us?

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We have a fairly wide amount of verses to read tonight. So if everyone could get their

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Bibles ready and read nice and loud. And we don't have

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Richie here tonight, I don't see. So the pronunciation of the Hebrew words, we might not be as good tonight as we would.

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So chetat, the definition, and that's the

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Strong's Concordance, that word right there. Do we have it, Rick? Go ahead. Yeah. If you do well, will you not be accepted?

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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

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So it's God's admonition, right, to whom in the Old Testament? To Cain, right, very early on in Genesis.

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So this word, chetat, is like a derivation of that, or this is a derivation of that word. And we have

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Genesis 39 .9. Let's read the context in that, if someone could read Genesis 39 .9.

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Go ahead, Dave. He is not greater in the house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife.

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How then can I do this, great wickedness and sin against God?

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Sin against God. Now, who are we talking about in that particular passage? Chalcedon. Chalcedon.

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Chalcedon. Genesis. Genesis 39. Oh, OK. So we're up to Potiphar's wife, who is the wife of the owner of the slave

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Joseph at this point, right? And Potiphar's wife is trying to seduce Joseph. And he says, how could

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I do this sin against my God and against his master, Potiphar? Sin, to lead astray, to lead off the right path or the right way.

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So those are two examples of sin in the Old Testament. And we'll talk a little bit more about other words as well.

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This word in the New Testament, amartya, the meaning in the

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Strong says it's just sin. We know what sin kind of means.

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It means we are missing the mark. And that's what this word, hamartano, that's where we say to miss the mark, to make an error or wander from the path of uprightness.

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And we get the idea, sin, and we're talking about individual acts here, not necessarily the nature.

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And we'll talk about the nature of sin a little bit. But we're talking about an individual act where you have this idea of walking on a straight path and you fell off that path.

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You deviated from it. Or sometimes you'll see transgression in the scriptures. And that has the idea of there's a line drawn in front of you.

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And God says, do not cross that line or it will be a transgression. And you stick your foot over the line, transgression, sticking your foot where it's not supposed to be.

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So all of these things together kind of give us the idea of what sin is.

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But let's read a little further. We have some other things we can read here.

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The idea in general is that there is a perfect standard, a mark to hit or to maintain.

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And in all these cases, there is a falling short or a deprivation of what we are supposed to do or a crossing a boundary that we are not supposed to go over.

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Now, Westminster Confession says this. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.

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And we continue the idea either falling short or crossing a line.

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And the idea is that this sin is against the holy order of God.

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God is the one who we are sinning against because he is the one who has made this perfect standard.

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And if we do not live up to that standard, then we are in sin. Then we're all good, right?

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I think that was sarcasm. But I'm thinking this dart board right here, right?

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You're playing darts, you think you're pretty good at darts, and you're like, even if you hit the bullseye here,

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I don't have it highlighted, but there's one little dot in the middle of that thing, which would be the holy, perfect righteousness of God.

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If we get close, it's not like horseshoes and hand grenades. We still miss the mark, even if we get closer than some others.

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And we need to understand that because God is holy and he is perfect. And that is the standard that we are going to be measured against.

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So you can be a good dart player, but how close is close enough? Well, if you say, well,

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I've done it to the best of my ability, is that good enough? I've done the best

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I could, Lord. I couldn't handle the situation any better. The answer is God still has a perfect and holy standard.

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And if our actions and thoughts don't measure up to that standard, we are still in sin. And we're going to define a little bit more about sin as we go forward, but this is an introduction to what sin is.

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So how are we doing so far? I think we're all in the same boat, but we're going to find that out as we keep going.

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I wanted to answer this question next. Where did sin come from?

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This is a tremendous stumbling block, and I actually heard it three times this last Sunday. Two people brought it up in conversations, and Pastor Jeff actually mentioned it in the sermon.

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He said, this is a tremendous issue. Where did evil come from? Do you remember what Jeff said when he said that?

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When he was teaching on Sunday? Now, if you were in the first service, you heard it. I don't know if he said it in the second service.

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But he basically said, we don't have a full understanding of how evil got into the world. And you know what?

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That's the honest answer. But let's look at some things that would clarify it a little bit for us, because it's not an easy answer at all.

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Let's look at first at Genesis 1, 31 through Genesis 2, 2.

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So if somebody could read those verses. It's like three or four verses. When God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

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And it was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, all the hosts of them.

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And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.

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So if God created everything as good, how can sin come in? Here's the question, as R .C.

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Sproul states it in his book, Why Is There Evil? He says, how can a being who is infinitely righteous, holy, and perfect create a creation or creature with even the possibility of sins being present?

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If all things go back to the being of God, would we not have to find evil somewhere within God himself to account for the presence of the evil in this world?

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Let's see what the unbeliever says about this. The unbeliever says, oh, that's a very good question, you

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Christians. And as a matter of fact, you can easily answer it. And I believe it's your

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Achilles heel, because you can't answer that question. To say

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God were all powerful and all good, there would be no evil in the world.

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That's what they say. And it makes sense on a logical level. Either God is not all powerful and cannot govern his creation, or he is not all good, for he has the power to stop evil, and he chooses not to do it.

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This is a difficult question indeed. And to get right to the point,

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R .C. Sproul says, again, there is no definite answer as to where evil came from. There have been many theodicies, which are justifications of why

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God does what he does, making arguments to figure things out. But there have been no sufficient real answers.

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Now, some of these theodicies revolve around this. Well, it's the free will of God's creatures. But still, that doesn't adequately explain where it came from.

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Well, when God created things, he created things with limited ability, meaning we don't have sovereignty like God does.

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We don't have omniscience like God does. So because he's created us with limited abilities, it was only a matter of time before we stepped into transgression and sin.

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But then, that means he is not able to create a creature that is equal to himself.

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So eventually, his creatures will sin, which, again, will go back to blaming God for sin in the world.

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And then, there's some other things. Some people say, well, sin is necessary, because if we didn't have sin, we wouldn't even know what good is.

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We wouldn't even know what redemption is. We wouldn't know how, you know, there wouldn't be a contrast.

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So we wouldn't be able to know the things we know. Now, in the final analysis, if we want to be honest, we do not know where evil came from.

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There is a theologian named Karl Barth, who is not a true believer. He's more like an antagonist philosopher kind of guy.

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He called this the impossible possibility, meaning that this is absolutely impossible for this to happen.

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There was no sin in the world. It was all good. There was no inclination of evil anywhere. But yet, it happened.

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So he calls it the impossible possibility. Well, that doesn't make us necessarily feel any better. But it is an honest answer.

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But the unbeliever and atheist have a bigger question to answer. And this is our trump card, by the way.

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Because the atheist can't explain where the concept of good and evil comes from, you see.

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Because if we say there is good and evil, that means there has to be good. There has to be some concept of good.

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There has to be an ultimate good, which does drive us to God. The existence of evil gives us that contrast.

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And the argument that they would say is, well, it makes no sense that evil is in the world.

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But how do you know even what evil is unless there is good? If this is just a cosmic accident, there is no such thing as good and evil.

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The fact that we acknowledge that there is good and that there is evil points to a perfect and a holy standard of which

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God is the master and ruler. So it is not an

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Achilles' heel for the Christian. It's actually a launching point into describing to the atheist or unbeliever why there is good and evil at all.

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Has everyone heard that argument before? The fact that if there is good at all, there has to be

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God? Well, it comes from a moral compass that if you have a moral standard, where does that come from?

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Right. That's exactly right. And that's a classic argument for Christianity.

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Because we all have the concept of good and evil, even pagans across the world.

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And whatever tribal language and tribal civilization they live in, there's still a concept of good and evil.

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Where does that come from? Where does that moral compass come from? It comes from the

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Lord who is their creator. Drew? Yes. We know that we all have a sinful nature.

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And we assume that Adam and Eve must have been born with that same nature. But we don't.

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We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that includes Adam and Eve. They didn't, though.

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They had a perfect moral compass and a perfect union with God. That's not even in the list of arguments, really.

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It's pretty much understood by the scriptures and biological arguments, too, that Adam was created good and there was no human.

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As a matter of fact, we're going to read the verses coming up here in a second and talk about how all this comes to be.

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Because we do know there's sin in the world. And we do know it happened. So let's ask a deeper question here again.

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Is God the author of sin? Is he the one that's responsible for bringing sin into the world?

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The Westminster Confession, again, says that God neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.

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That's our Westminster Confession thing. Those are our Presbyterian friends. We love our Presbyterian friends. Reformed theology guys, right?

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Louis Sperry Schaeffer, who was the original president and head of Dallas Theological Seminary, said this.

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What is good and true is not a law which governs God. Meaning God is not held captive by his attributes.

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God is who God is. And his attributes come forth from his being. It's not that good defines

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God. It's that God encompasses all these wonderful attributes because he is who he is.

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That's the essence of who he is. He is in no sense the source of evil and untruth.

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Evil and untruth have no original source. Now that's hard to wrap around.

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We're going to get into that a little bit more. There was a time when evil could have been contemplated only as a possibility.

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But good, like all divine attributes, in its most exalted reality, has the same eternal existence which belongs to God himself.

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There was a time, if time be, when evil was only an anticipation. There will be yet a time, if time be, when it only will be a memory.

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Good is immutable from everlasting to everlasting. Meaning, think about the things we know about in this world, the things that exist in this world.

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The Godhead existing from eternity past, in perfect harmony, Father, Son, Spirit.

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Good did exist back then. Love did exist back then. Righteousness did exist back then.

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Evil was not a reality in this world. Evil came into this world by two disobedient acts.

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One by Satan, one by man. But from all eternity past, there was no such thing as evil.

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Evil is going to have its time, and we're living in that time right now. But if we think

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God has not the power to control evil, we're not in a good situation, folks.

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You know why? Because it will never be gotten rid of. Death and Hades are going to be thrown into the lake of fire, and all righteousness will rule.

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And that is because God does have providence over evil. He is permitting it now for his own purposes, and we're going to read more about that in a second.

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But if God did not have the power over evil, we would be in really bad shape, because he couldn't promise us that our sins would be forgiven, and we would be forever sinless before him in eternity to come.

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If he didn't have power over sin and death, what kind of future would we have?

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So that was the argument back then. It was like, well, if God has this world that he created, and he can't govern evil, that's why evil is in the world, what kind of God is this?

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But God is going to conquer evil. Evil is going to have its time, but it is going to be eradicated.

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Were you going to say something, Kevin? I was just going to ask you, because sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around, you know, the chicken and the egg.

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Chicken. Because, you know, when Satan was there, and like you said, so he chose,

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I mean, obviously he must have given all the angels, when he created the angels, free will, I mean, free choice like we have.

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And like when Satan chose that he felt he was more beautiful than God, and he should be God. You know, and the fall was, so wouldn't evil have been in existence at that time, because he chose evil?

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Or no? He did choose it. I mean, I know you said it. That's when he fell, when he was thrown out, you know, and came here, and then evil got introduced here.

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He did choose it. We're going to see from Ezekiel 28 here in a second how Satan came to find a nickname for him.

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But it doesn't define how it happened. It defines when it happened and the decisions that were made to bring sin into the angelic kingdom.

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So sin didn't happen in heaven. It happened here on earth, so. I mean, like when he went against God, that was not sin in heaven.

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That was when he was thrown out and came down here. I'm not sure I quite followed you.

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And then the snake, you know, which tempted Eve, you know what I mean, was there. That was a creature, creature probably created by God, but Satan inhabited that creature.

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The timeline is the angels were created first, then all of the world and the six days that we know of creation.

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Everything was good at that point. Satan at some point chose to disobey God, so he now is corrupt.

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And he had several angels follow him at that time. At that point, he wanted to destroy man as, you know, his vengeance against God who has now basically cast him down and cast him out.

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He still had access to God. He could still accuse the brethren, as we know, in the book of Job and the book of Revelation.

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But at that point, he came down, yes, and he sinned. Or he tempted Adam and Eve to sin.

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And then Adam and Eve made that choice of themselves to disobey God. But at that point in time,

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Adam, you know, was in perfect union with God. There was no sin in him.

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So let's look at a few more things here. Maybe this will help a little bit. So R .C.

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Sproul says we don't understand where this initial evil came from. But he says

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God has his purpose for the entrance of evil into this world. And in a certain sense, as Augustine said centuries ago,

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Augustine was about 500, I think, A .D., God even ordained that evil came into the world.

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If he did not ordain it, it would not be here. Because evil had no power to overcome the sovereign providential government of the universe.

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Many Christians love Romans 8 .28. And, of course, we know what 8 .28

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is, right? For God causes all things to work together for the good. That those who love him are called according to his purpose.

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Unless God has sovereign power over all, he could not make that promise in the verse.

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If he will bring about good, even though there is evil in the world. God, in a certain sense, ordained that evil come into this world, not naively, so that you may experience the difference between good and evil, but for a redemptive purpose.

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His purpose in allowing evil to come into this world is beyond us. Except, through the purposes of God, we now understand many things we would never have understood.

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If evil was not present, would we really understand the holiness and the righteousness of God?

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Would we understand the tremendous sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Would we understand the redemptive actions of Jesus Christ?

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And the tremendous love that was displayed by Jesus by laying down his life on the cross.

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Now, that's obviously going into salvation and sacrifice again. But I think to understand why this was allowed is a good thing.

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Because we can understand that God is producing good from it, even though evil has been allowed.

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And some of these things, folks, are just beyond us. Because we can wrap ourselves around R .C.

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Sproul's arguments or John Calvin's arguments or Thomas Aquinas's arguments. But the fact is, why this was allowed and why it happened is a mystery to us.

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And God may reveal it to us someday when we're in his presence. But we can see the good that has come from evil being in the world.

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Drew, where did you say that paragraph came from? That last one was from R .C.

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Sproul again. And that was from... Well, I have footnotes for all this stuff. I'll send this out later.

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So what about the angels? Ezekiel 28, 11 through 19.

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Let's have someone read some of that. That's kind of a long section. Let's read some of that, and we'll cut it off when we kind of feel like we got the gist of it.

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But I think we have to read... I forget if we have to read 19. We have to read one verse in particular.

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So we may have to ask folks to jump to the end. Okay, Bob.

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The word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre, and say to him,

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This is what the sovereign Lord says. You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

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You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone adorned you. Carnelian, chrysalite, and emerald, topaz, onyx, and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and beryl.

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Your settings and mountings were made of gold. On the day you were created, they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian chariot, for so I ordained you.

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You were on the holy mount of God. You walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

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Okay, I think you can stop there. So, what kind of a being was

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Satan? This is Lucifer, this is Satan. How does it describe this being that God has created?

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Was he lacking anything? Was he deprived of anything? Was he ugly?

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Was he evil? Beautiful, God's creatures.

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Blameless, perfect, created in beauty. And then that one verse that Bob read, until iniquity was found in you, we do not know why

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Satan chose to rebel against God. We know his heart was lifted up and he wanted to be like God.

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We don't know where that evil inclination, that evil intention came from. But at that point in time, that's when

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God declared him unrighteous and declared him as evil because he stepped outside the boundaries of holiness that God had given him.

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Up until that point, he was in perfect harmony with the Lord. So let's read in Jude 6.

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Some of the angels also chose to go with Satan. And this is one of the verses that talks about that.

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So if somebody reads Jude 6, obviously that's not Jude chapter 6, just Jude 6.

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And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

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So there are other angels that left also and they're going to be under judgment and they're locked away until that time.

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Some of them are also loose and creating havoc as demons on us. There was a third, wasn't there?

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Wasn't there a third of the angels? Yeah, yeah. A third of the angels were swept away. So what about man?

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Is man responsible for sin? We see Satan is going to be responsible for the sins that he committed.

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And the angels will be also. What about man? What happened to man? Let's read just Romans 5 .12.

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Everybody has that?

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Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

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For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

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That's fine, right? That's 12 and 13. Yeah, it's going to go on until about 19,

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I think, and talk about how sin destroyed the nature of man and how sin affected mankind.

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But we're going to get into that a little bit later on down here. But the fact is, just as through one man sin entered into the world, this is the human race now, but it also, as we're going to see, the results of man's sin is going to have effects on a lot of things, not actually just on mankind.

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But through this one man's disobedience sin entered the world.

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So God holds Adam accountable for what he had done. He had the opportunity to choose what was right, and he had an inclination towards God at that point in time.

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He was not corrupted. Why did he choose to disobey? We can't answer that question.

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That's what a lot of people have tried to answer, but we haven't answered that question. Excuse me. I think when you go back to Satan, Lucifer, believing that he could be better than God, that's,

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I think, with most men that aren't, for one, aren't believers, that they believe that they can be their own

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God. That was the temptation. It was really the same sin, almost, really.

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They chose to disobey the word of God, but they also, the thing that tempted them, it seemed like that Satan said, you shall be like God, and God's holding this back for you.

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I think that stops a lot of unbelievers from coming into faith because they believe that they are their own

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God. And that's exactly what Ivan said a few times in the various lessons that he's done.

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You can choose either to have God as your God, or you can choose another

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God, which is always yourself, because you're exalting yourself. You know more than God. You think that your way is right and not

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His way, so you choose your own way. And that's where we're going to get into the sin nature here coming up. It's also interesting that Adam is the one held accountable, not

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Eve. Yeah. It says that she was deceived, and that doesn't give her an out either because God also held her accountable.

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But Adam was not deceived, and he had really authority as the head of his wife and family to be the one who would protect and maintain

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God's commands and God's laws in his family. And it was only one command, really. It was very simple.

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And he knew exactly what he needed to do. Eve was deceived. He was not deceived. The Lord holds him more accountable.

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Did they repent? Well, I think based upon what we see in the

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Scriptures where God taught them that an animal sacrifice was a picture of an innocent life to be given for the penalty of sin, it seemed that they got on board with that and understood that now that they have sinned, in order to bring back a right relationship to the

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Lord, that they did believe that an innocent life had to be sacrificed for their sins.

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So it seemed that they did. I'm going to expect to see them in glory. And I'm not mad at Adam.

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I'm really not. Well, we're going to talk about the effects of sin here. There's a lot of effects of sin.

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We could be upset about this world we live in. But compared to the glory that's going to be revealed to us, this life that we're passing through is going to seem like just a mere blink.

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And it's not worthy to be compared. But that's more down the line. That's more the, you know, the math soteriology realm.

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Let's look at the results of what happened. So as a result of the disobedient choices, however they came to be, what has become corrupt?

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So let's look at Genesis 3, 14 -19. We'll read that whole thing.

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If somebody could read that. The Lord God said to the serpent,

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Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and 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. And then he says to the woman,

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There's more. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

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In pain you shall bring forth children. 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

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I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. 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. 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, and to dust you shall return.

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That's quite a list, and a lot of results of sin, none of which are good, except for this promise, that one is going to come and bruise the serpent on the head.

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A great promise came in the midst of all that, and we know that the serpent is going to be bruised by the

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Lord Jesus Christ when he comes, which he did, and defeated Satan. But all these other things we deal with now.

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There's fallen humanity. We have pain. We have enmity, because there's strife between husband and wives.

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There's a contest of authority. The ground is cursed. We have weeds.

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We have thorns. And we have hard work. All of these things are part of the fall, and probably the biggest part, and we'll go through this right down here.

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You know, this wasn't a great trade for a piece of fruit. It looks like a pear.

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Yeah, no, you don't say those things. You always say, oh, it's an apple. Maybe it was a pear, right? We're not sure.

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Maybe it was a mango. But you see Adam looking on. He's like, hmm,

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I wonder if I should say anything. Yeah, you should have said something, okay? You should have stepped in there and taken charge.

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But that's the way sin is. Sin is like that. It promises sweet things. Its results are bitter and painful.

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It's always like that. Sin is a temptation. It seems very sweet. Now, what are some other things that happened because of the fall?

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Well, let's read what the Lord said in Genesis 2 .16. This was

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His command to Adam. This was not the devil's interpretation, and it was not

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Eve's interpretation. This was the original command to Adam. And the

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Lord God commanded to man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

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For in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. The Lord was honest, and the

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Lord was warning His creation because He didn't want Him to do it. Man chose to do that, and God's word did come true because as soon as he did partake of that fruit, he died in the spirit, and his fellowship with the

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Lord was broken right away. And he also began to physically deteriorate.

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This began the process of physical death. Yeah, he only lived 950 years.

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Well, that goes against the whole evolution thing, right? Because supposedly we're getting better and better.

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But really we're deteriorating, deteriorating, deteriorating. And that's kind of a second law of thermodynamics thing.

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We talked about that under the science. But I'm glad we're not going to live 900 years in these bodies.

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I'll tell you that right now. I feel at 58 I'm kind of not sure if things are holding together.

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The government will like it. Social Security will like it. Don't worry, they'll create a disease to get rid of us.

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So here's another thing that happened from Paul. Genesis 3, 8, and 9.

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If somebody could read Genesis 3, 8, and 9. And they heard the sound of the

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Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

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Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him,

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Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

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He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?

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The man said, The woman whom you gave me to be with, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.

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Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate.

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Is it just 8 and 9 you got there? Oh, I don't know. You know, I like it so much I hate it. 9 is good.

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Yeah, 7, 8, 9. It couldn't suck good story. Well, they didn't know anything about shame.

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They didn't know anything about hiding from God. Immediately when they committed this sin, they realized there was something seriously wrong with them.

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And they had an inclination now away from God. They did not have that before.

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They have an awareness of guilt. They have an awareness of shame. It did not exist before this.

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Now, does anyone know who Paul Little is? Paul Little is a theologian who wrote some books a while ago.

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But they're good books. Know what you believe and know why you believe. There's two of the books he's written.

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They're very helpful. This is what he says in Know What You Believe, that one book.

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And I have the footnote here. As a result of the fall, the image of God in man was badly marred in both its moral and natural dimensions.

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Man lost his original inclination towards God and became a perverted creature, inclined away from his creator.

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Now, that had never been like that before because there had always been a perfect union. Man really didn't even have probably the concept of self -awareness or independence.

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There wasn't this concept of, like, we think it's great, we're independent, we're independent people. But remember what

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Jesus said in his high priestly prayer in the book of John, where he says,

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I long for you to become one, even as the Father and I are one, and you will be one with us.

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The same mind, the same heart, the same inclination. This was lost right here.

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Now there is an inclination to go my way, not God's way. And all men are in that situation now.

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And even he says, he talks about the intellect was bound, his emotions corrupted. Basically, all these things happen to mankind because of the sin.

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And we understand so many of these other things too now. What about the world we live in, right? Were there any wars, you know, disease, divorce?

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I even put SIDS up here. Anyone who's gone through that? I'm really sorry if that brings up some bad memories.

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But don't worry, the Lord is going to make it all right one day. We would not have a prison system. We wouldn't have a police department.

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We wouldn't have lawsuits. We wouldn't have bad backs. I don't know why you're putting that in there.

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And I even put acting in there in case anybody's dealing with that. Not acting. Yeah. But it's not just us who has been affected by this.

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The whole of creation has also been affected by sin. Let's read Romans 8, 18 through 22 if somebody could read that.

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For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed.

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For the creation awaits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

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For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together out of pains of childbirth until now. Creation's groaning.

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And we see that every single day. And in the more of the creation realm, we see animals dying.

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Animals, unfortunately, have been pulled into our sinfulness. Animals eat other animals.

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That didn't happen before. Trees even age and die. Parasites living off other beings.

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That wasn't something that happened. Weeds, ticks, holes. Which side should the politicians be in this?

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That would be parasites. Oh, parasites. I was going to put lawyers up here, too.

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But listen, there wouldn't be any lawyers because there wouldn't be any problems. That's not a bad lawyer joke.

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That's a reality. Some good lawyers are going to heaven. That's right. And we wouldn't have these natural disasters either.

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There would be no such thing. So sin has infected this world incredibly.

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And each one of us along the way. It's a lot to take in. And again, the unbeliever is going to think, well, why doesn't

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God do something about this? Why does this have to be so bad? But I think that's going to become clear as we maybe get down here a little bit further.

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So this is a statement, is a word that a lot of people don't like.

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Total depravity. What kind of state is man in now? It's called total depravity.

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Meaning you are deprived of something. You are lacking something. And there is no doubt that we all are.

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As we stated above, our inclination now is not towards God, but towards our own desires.

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Towards what we want. But total depravity doesn't mean necessarily what we think it does.

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Because we have a tendency to think of something a little more...

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We want to pin total depravity into a really, really, like these nasty, nasty people.

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But kind of not include ourselves. You know, like a Hitler or Mao Zedong or something like that.

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Those people are totally depraved, but not me. Let's see what it says here. I think this quote was from...

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I think it was from Paul Little again. The doctrine of total depravity was never intended to convey the meaning that man is as bad as he possibly can be and that every trace of moral rectitude has been lost in fallen man.

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Total depravity is intended to indicate that the evil principle has invaded each part of human nature, that there is no part of which can now invariably perform righteous acts or invariably think righteous thoughts.

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What does this mean? Okay, it means every area of our lives is tainted with sin. It does not mean that every act he commits, man, is an atrocity every day.

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People think this total depravity thing is like, well, you must be going around with hatchets and hacking people up every day.

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That's total depravity. No, total depravity is the lack of ability to do what

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God wants you to do. The lack of ability to do what is holy and righteous.

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Sometimes that manifests itself, you know, still we have natural love in this world.

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There's still human love in this world. People love their families. There are still kindnesses.

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We see kind acts by people who don't know Jesus, and sometimes it's a shame that Christians don't act more like maybe some of the unbelievers that are around them because they're more kind and they're more loving, it seems.

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And you say, well, how do you explain that? It's like, what does this total depravity mean? Like, if somebody's totally depraved, what does that mean?

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Okay, let's read this little section. It says, The nature that man now has is corrupt. Man has lost his freedom not to sin.

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He is free to carry out the desires of his nature, but since his nature itself is corrupt now, he is really free to only do evil.

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Augustine used the phrase, The will is free, but it is not free.

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And that means that sin has tainted everything that we do. So, if we want to bring a basket of flowers over to our neighbor because they are sick, which seems like a very good thing to do, sinful us in there is going to want to take credit for that, be prideful for that.

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Maybe be whining and crying that the flowers cost so much in our hearts. There is a whole litany of things that we have issues with, even when we try to do the right thing.

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Attitude is all part of it, but also not giving glory to the God who's created all of us and giving him the rightful honor and just due that he deserves in all the acts we do.

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The very fact that we have breath right now, we need to be praising the Lord and thanking him for that.

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And when we're in this state, we have not the ability to carry out any of those things.

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As a matter of fact, I didn't write it down, but in Romans 8 it says, without faith it is impossible to please him.

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Or maybe that's Hebrews 11. I think it might be Hebrews 11. But the Bible describes the condition we're in, our state.

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Let's read Genesis 6 -5 and then these on down the line. So if someone could take Genesis 6 -5.

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Drew, can I ask a question on that paragraph above? But since his nature itself is corrupt, he is really free to do only evil.

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I'm having a little problem with the do only evil. I understand that nature is evil. Your free will now, your creaturely will, is to do what you desire to do.

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And if your desires are of this corrupt nature, you will only choose what is corrupt.

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Even if it looks good, or we can try to justify ourselves and say, well, he's really doing good.

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I'm not sure if that totally makes sense. I'm trying to explain it. I'll have to think through that. Like we're dead in our trespasses.

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Yeah, we're dead. That's for sure. Well, let's read some of these verses.

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I know you guys know all these verses, but let's read them all. And get a better picture of what kind of condition we are really in.

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So could somebody read Genesis 6 -5? The Lord saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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And we know the flood came because of that. That was the condition of men's hearts.

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How about Proverbs 14, 1 -3? Psalms. Oh, Psalms.

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I'm sorry. The fool says in his heart there is no

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God. They are corrupt, they are abominable deeds. There is none who does good.

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The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there is any who understands, who seeks after God.

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They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, no, not one.

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Isaiah 64 -6. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

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We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind take us away.

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So that polluted garment, as you guys know, right, what the language is there, that it's a used menstrual cloth that a lady would use.

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So that's what our best works are. That's the best we can do is bring filthiness before the

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Lord. That's the best of what we have to offer because of our corrupt nature. So Jeremiah 17 -9.

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I got it. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.

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Who can understand it? God can. We have a tough time even understanding our own hearts.

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We really do. And these verses are not popular with unbelievers, and even maybe some who have walked in the church for a while and said, this is tremendously offensive.

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You are calling me the worst of all words. You are a scoundrel. That's what you're calling me.

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Well, I'm just reading what the Bible says really. The Bible is saying that's the state we entered into.

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And that state was inherited from our predecessor.

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The Bible says that we inherited this nature from him. And then, you know, and I probably, as of time, these verses talk about the inheritance that we have from Adam's sin nature and how we now are walking in that nature.

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But the question would be, well, if Adam and Eve were the original sinners, why should all mankind suffer for their transgression?

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That does not seem fair. That is not right. And you know many people who come to that conclusion and are very, very defensive about being called sinful, and especially if their sin is really tagged to what

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Adam and Eve did thousands of years ago. So let's see what Sproul said about this.

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Is it not the case that we can blame Adam for giving us a sin nature? Rather, if any of us were in his position, we would have done the same thing.

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And if we're honest with ourselves, we would. But how can we be responsible for being sinners if God gave us a hopeless start?

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How can he condemn us? The answer is twofold. First, as we have seen, we share

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Adam's sin, meaning we would have sinned also. But beyond that,

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God has made full provision through the sacrifice of Christ for us to escape judgment.

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The Scripture emphasizes man's ability to receive Christ if he wants to. As Jesus told

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Nicodemus, this is the judgment that light came into the world and that man loved darkness rather than light.

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We couldn't help how we were born. That's true. We have to admit that if we were in the same spot, we would have done the same thing.

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But we also have to understand that God took responsibility for his creation, and he has now given us a path through Jesus Christ to be reconciled to him through faith and the sacrifice of Jesus.

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Now, that's soteriology again, but the fact is if we're complaining about our sinful nature, if we're complaining about the situation that we're in,

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God has given us the opportunity to escape that situation. Now, because of the situation of sin,

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God must judge because he is a righteous and holy God. That is more of the bad news.

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I'm just going to read parts of this because we're a little bit late here because I want to get to the bottom. I'll read this part.

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It says, The supposition that the creature is free from responsibility and accountability to his creator is the worst of delusions, second only to the irrational notion that God is not cognizant of the creature's sin or that sin can be hidden from God.

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Concerning the divine observation of the creature's sin, it is written, For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, and he seeth with all his goings.

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God is going to judge, and he's going to see everything, and he's going to be fair about his judgment because he knows all things, he sees all things, and he understands what is good and what is righteous.

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There is not going to be anyone who is judged by God that says, He wasn't fair with me.

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Even in the great by -throne judgment, people will admit. Maybe they won't,

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I don't know, but they'll admit that God, when he opens the books, that everything that they have ever done is before a righteous and a holy

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God. And they're not going to be able to argue or complain. Their mouths are going to be shut.

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And unfortunately, they're going to bear the penalty of their sin. So this is another verse about judgment.

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I could have put a lot more verses in here about judgment and about the condition of man, but I think kind of we got the gist of that.

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I want to answer another question, though. We're saying all this about sinful man, and we're going to ask the question again.

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Are we really that bad? Can't we...

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Aren't these things just ways to have a balance so people who do good might not be under judgment?

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The problem is everything that we do is tainted by sin. Remember what Isaiah 64 says, Our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

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Now imagine being right before God was a contest, actually. The standard is perfection.

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Matthew 5 .48, You shall be perfect as your father in Heaven is perfect. And in our scenario, let's imagine that perfection is swimming from Atlantic City to England.

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Okay? Some of us might get a little closer than others. You know, maybe if you're a really good swimmer, you could get a couple miles offshore.

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But who's going to make it to England just swimming by their own power? There's nobody that's going to make it.

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And you might get a little further than someone else, and you might think, Wow, I'm really good. But you know what?

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You're still going to perish. And you can look at it that way as far as if you think you're good before God, which none of us are.

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If you think you're doing better than someone else, you're comparing yourself against someone else, which the Bible says is foolishness, by the way.

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You're not going to reach the standard that God demands, which is holiness and righteousness. And you might even get eaten by a shark.

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There's another reason you might not make it. And I think there are sharks off the coast of New Jersey. Land sharks.

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So, we're all guilty. We're all going to face judgment. There's more verses on that.

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No one is going to have an excuse. Sin is present, and God is going to deal with sin.

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Well, wait a second. Can't I save myself? Some people think, and they know they've done wrong things, but they say,

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Well, wait a second. Can't I make it up somehow? Can't I do something?

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You know, maybe, yeah. Lord, I spoke harshly to my wife last week, and I know that's a sin, but... Lord, I haven't been faithfully giving, but I really wanted to save up for this boat.

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Well, there go your dreams, my friend. What does the

01:00:09

Bible say about someone who tries to do good most of the time? Well, the

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Bible says no one does good. We've already read that verse in Psalm 14. It's also in other places.

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Let's look at a verse from James, though. This explains why the Lord will judge even if someone supposedly has just done a few things wrong, even though really we've all been corrupt and done things wrong all our lives.

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Genesis 2, 10 through 11 says, For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.

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For whoever said, Do not commit adultery, has also said, Do not commit murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you are a transgressor.

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You're a lawbreaker. Any law that's broken by yourself, you become a lawbreaker.

01:01:05

Now, that could be not getting a permit for your shed. What's the law?

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Getting a permit for your electrical work at your house to show that you can do it yourself? You've broken the law.

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Keep going. 55? It'll move over.

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It's going to burst into flames. It's going to burst into flames. No, there is no possibility that we are going to do some good things to save ourselves.

01:01:33

The Bible actually says we're helpless. Why we're helpless? Yet at the right time, Christ died for the young God, and we praise

01:01:40

God for that. But we are helpless before Him if it were not for Jesus Christ. And what is the penalty that's going to be paid?

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We've already spoken about the broken fellowship caused by sin. Isaiah 59 talks about that.

01:01:56

But what about the final judgment? What is the penalty that we're going to pay beyond this earth? Because in this earth, we had all those things which were the results of sin.

01:02:04

What's beyond this earth? Romans 6, 23 says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

01:02:13

Lord. If you don't want

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Jesus, you will get the wages of what you have done in your life, which will be death.

01:02:27

And it's not just physical death. Revelation 20, 14, 15 says, and death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

01:02:35

This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

01:02:47

And again, we have an argument here. Well, that's not fair. Lake of fire for what

01:02:53

I've done? I've been a pretty good person. I haven't been that bad. Well, maybe not compared to others.

01:02:59

But compared to the holiness of God, your righteousness is filthy. And the transgressions that you might think are small are not the issue.

01:03:08

If you say, well, yeah, I might not have given as much as I should to the church, or I was mean to my sister when

01:03:14

I was little, you know, whatever these things are. The issue is the one who you have sinned against is an eternal, holy, and righteous

01:03:23

God. And the nature of the punishment has to do with the nature of His character, not what you think the gravity of your sin is.

01:03:31

Because the gravity is you are sinning against Almighty God. And that deserves separation and punishment for Him for all eternity.

01:03:41

And that's what that lake of fire is. This is the bad news, folks.

01:03:48

But there's good news, too. Sin has infected all of us, and we're all guilty before the

01:03:54

Lord. But we don't have to face this lake of fire in eternal hell, the place of suffering and torment.

01:04:06

It is a place that Jesus spoke of quite often in the Gospels. And it's a place where we do not have to go.

01:04:14

You can't save yourself, but you can fall on the mercy of God. There is One who took the penalty of sin for you, and His name is

01:04:22

Jesus. And Matt will get into how to be saved next time, but we kind of talked about it a little bit.

01:04:32

I kind of skimmed through some things, but does anyone have any questions on sin in general, how it's affected us?

01:04:43

The whole idea of a sinful nature, I think, is difficult to grasp sometimes, that our inclination is against God now, as opposed to when

01:04:53

Adam was first created and we were one with Him in heart and spirit, and we will be again.

01:05:00

For those who love Him and are called according to His purposes, He is going to bring us back into union.

01:05:07

Now, as a believer, what I don't have up here is what does this mean for a believer now? Because you, if you have been born again by the

01:05:15

Spirit of God, you have been given a new nature, right? I was like, well, how does that work?

01:05:20

We're still living in a sinful body, but now we have a new nature. If we yield to the new nature that God has given us, we can now walk in the inclination of that nature, and yes, choose the will of God for our lives and be pleasing to God in that.

01:05:38

We do now have the ability to please God with our actions. It's not that we're sinless and we don't commit sins anymore because we live in this body of corruption, but as we yield to this new nature that has been given to everyone who is born in the

01:05:52

Spirit, we now have a choice. And remember, we read that verse that says, you are free only to do evil.

01:06:00

Now we are free to submit ourselves to the Lord or to submit ourselves to the flesh.

01:06:08

And the flesh is that corrupt nature. So we can choose now. And hopefully, by God's power, we'll choose

01:06:15

Him. It's not going to mean we're perfect, though, folks. We still have to confess our sins. It's still going to be a struggle in this world, but He's going to get us there.

01:06:28

What do you think? Not all bad, is it? True. I think that was fantastic coverage.

01:06:36

Well, we tried to cover it in one shot so we wouldn't spill into Matt's time. You did a tremendous job.

01:06:45

You covered it well. Hopefully we have a good understanding of what sin is and what it's all about.

01:06:53

Now next week is Memorial Day, so we will not be meeting folks.

01:06:58

I don't feel bad about that. But that gives Matt an extra time to prepare for the study of salvation and the gift of life we have in our

01:07:11

Savior Jesus. And all these doctrines are important to know where we stand and what

01:07:17

Jesus has done. The doctrine of soteriology is going to be a real joy to go through.

01:07:24

So let's close up in prayer. If I could ask...

01:07:29

Dave, could you close us in prayer? Sure. Heavenly Father, we thank

01:07:34

You for this time. We thank You for Drew's preparation and teaching us. Please be with us as we go home.