The Great Evil of All Sin - Part 3 — Richard Owen Roberts

Sin as an Assault on God's Rights

To life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but where did we get those rights? You heard my quotation. We have been endowed by our Creator, and I'm going to endow your pastor with $10 million. He's a very pleasant and fine man, and he says, thank you very much, but the problem is I don't have $10 million, and how am I going to give it to him when I don't have it?

If God has endowed us with certain unalienable rights, you must know God has his rights. And what are those rights? Why, the things that people are insisting are their rights are in actual fact God's rights.

God's Rights Over Human Conduct

God created sex, and God stated what his rights were in terms of your use of sex. God forbid fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, etc. God laid out in the Ten Commandments his rights, and you don't have any rights unless God gives them to you, and God didn't give you any right whatsoever to sin.

He made it crystal clear that you had to follow his rights and loyally submit to his rights. You don't have any right over the use of his name, that's his right. You don't have any rights over the use of the Lord's Day, that's his right.

You don't have any rights in terms of truth, it's his right. He demands that we speak the truth. You don't have any rights with somebody else's property, it's his right to say who has the right and who does not.

In all the realms where people are clamoring for their rights, God is insisting they are his rights. And can you imagine what happens to a society that tries to take God's rights as their own rights? Well, you don't have to use your imagination, all you have to do is to consider what things are like in the United States.

We're in turmoil, we're in desperate wickedness, we are destroying ourselves with our iniquity because we have tried to appropriate for ourselves rights that belong to God and God alone. And everyone here who tolerates sin in their life must face the fact that the great evil of all sin consists in the fact that it is against God.

Sin Against God's Holy Nature

Now, not only is sin against God's sovereign rights, sin is also against God's nature. God is holy. God has a hatred of sin. God has zero tolerance of sin. God does not allow those who treasure sin in their hearts anywhere near him.

Isn't it tragic that literally millions of Americans love their sin and yet think that Christ has received them as his own? Somehow they've twisted things up, some of you have twisted things so badly you think Christ saves from hell.

Salvation Must Deliver from Sin

But that's nonsense. When Joseph was struggling with the realization that the woman he was engaged to was already pregnant and he was trying to be what he really was, a just man, and he was contemplating and weighing and struggling with what to do with this girl that he loved, an angel spoke to him and said, Joseph, that which is conceived of Mary is conceived by the Holy Ghost.

Do not hesitate to take her for your wife. Now, here's an assignment concerning the son to be born. Thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin, not from the their sin, he shall save his people from their sin.

And here gathered this morning are some who don't even want to be saved from sin, just from the penalty of sin. But it won't work that way. If Christ does not save you from sin, he does not save you from its penalty.

All sin is against God's nature. He hates sin. All who practice sin are aliens from God. Doesn't matter what religious experiences they've had, doesn't matter what decisions they've made, doesn't matter how frequently they ask God to save them from hell, he only saves them from sin.

And when they're saved from sin, they're automatically saved from hell. But have you faced the fact that sin is against God's nature? That's why Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. That's why time after time throughout Old Testament history, God abandoned his own people and turned them over to their enemies.

Sin Against God's Holy Name

That's why the prophet Isaiah cried out, why have you turned us over to the power of your enemies? Because God hates sin, and all sin is against his nature. But it must also be said that not only is sin against God's divine or sovereign rights, and against his nature, but it's also against his name.

My wife over the years has called me many things, but never once did she call me holy. And rightly so, thus saith the high and the lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in a high and lofty place with him also, who is broken and contrite, to revive the heart of the broken one, to revive the spirit of the contrite.

God is holy. That's his name. If you call yourself by his name, if you speak of yourself as a Christian, that's a declaration that even as he is holy, so also you are holy. After all, God makes it plain, without holiness no man shall see the Lord.

Sin is against God's holiness. If there is sin in your heart and in your life, you are a sham. You're a hypocrite when you claim to be a Christian. Christians are those who have turned from sin to Christ.

In repentance and in faith. All sin against God's rights. All sin against God's nature. All sin against God's name. All sin against God's word. You see, that's what I pointed out to you from 2 Samuel 12, when Nathan pointed the finger and said to David, why have you despised the word of the Lord?

Sin Against God's Word and Human Pride

You say, I'm not really all that much of a sinner. How much sin does it take to demonstrate that you despise the word of God? You say, well, really, I admit I'm not very prayerful. I admit I don't love God very much.

I'll even admit that I'm a bit proud in heart. Can you find any single statement in the Bible indicating that God has anything whatsoever to do with the proud in heart? Everything I've read says quite plainly, God keeps the proud in heart at a distance.

He never draws near to them. I quoted a few moments ago, Isaiah 57, 15. God demands us to understand he has limited habitation. I dwell in the high and the lofty place. I make one single exception to this.

I dwell in the heart and in the spirit of the broken and the contrite and the proud. The arrogant don't have a ghost of a chance because their pride, their arrogancy is against God. It's very common in the church, even in meetings of this sort.

Some man will come up to me and say, oh, I admit that I'm proud. And then you'll add a stupid statement like, of course, if you had known my Uncle Tom, then you would have really known a proud man. I don't care to know the Uncle Tom is bad enough knowing him.

Sin as an Assault on God's Person

Sin is against God's word. He commands us to flee from sin. All sin is also against God's person. Nathan made this clear to David. You perhaps have never thought to do this, but what if you took your fist and, if given an opportunity, smashed God in the face?

Oh, you say, I wouldn't do a thing like that. But when you sin, that's what you do. You assault God in his person. And you complicate that when you claim to be a Christian, and yet you are tolerant of sin in your life.

Sin's Damage to God's Creation

Will you face this morning this critical truth? All sin is against God's person. But I would like also, as my sixth observation, to declare to you that God's creation is at stake here. All sin is against God's creation.

He made the world for righteousness and unity, and whatever defiles must be destroyed. Some of you are aware of Romans chapter 8. I have the lovely privilege not only of being an itinerant and traveling about preaching, but when I'm home, I'm preaching currently in the First Baptist Church of St. Charles, Illinois.

Every Sunday I'm home, I'm preaching there. And two weeks ago, when I was last home, I finished a series of 13 sermons on Romans chapter 8. But in that Romans series, I called their attention to that incredibly important passage about what happened when Adam sinned.

And the whole divine purpose of God in the creation was thwarted by the sin of Adam. And in consequence, the entire natural creation is groaning and travailing in pain, even until now, awaiting the redemption, awaiting that time when this world is delivered from sin.

And when you tolerate sin in your life, you add to the bondage of creation. You sadden the trees and the rocks, the flowers and the rivers. They all hate sin. They're longing. They're weeping. Even as a mother in childbirth is groaning and travailing, creation is awaiting the moment when sin is put away.

And you have the gall to call yourself a Christian and yet live a life of sin. Your sin is against God's creation itself. These things ought to sober us sufficiently so that we determine to discover in reality what repentance really means.

Sin Against God's Saving Love

Well, that's a rather serious list I've given you, but I've got a few more points I must yet make before I leave this pulpit. Not only is our sin against creation, but it's against God's love. God looked down from his eternity long before you were formed in your mother's womb.

And God fixed his love upon you. God determined to let his son come and die in your place. God said in his heart, that's one I must have in my kingdom. And whenever you sin, you sin against that love.

Oh, many of you have experienced his love time after time in your life. But when you sin, it's as much as saying to God, I care nothing for your love. I don't need you. I don't need your affection. I've got my own life, and I'm going to lead it however I please.

And if you love me, I don't care. And if you want me to repent, I don't intend to. I'd rather violate you and your love than come under your domination and control. All sin is against God's love. Now, people don't normally consciously say, I'm going to prove to God I don't care for his love.

Sin Against Christ's Body and Blood

But when we sin and allow ourselves, as David did, to wallow in that sin, for a period of time we demonstrate that we really don't care about the love of God. But I must add as well that not only is it the violation of God's love when we sin, but it's an actual violation of the body and the blood of Christ.

Why do you suppose in the communion we are required, if we follow the word of God, to warn that anyone that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to themselves? You come to the Lord's table with sin in your heart.

You violate the blood of Jesus Christ. All sin is against his body and his blood. And how can you go to sleep at night having sinned against the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? How can you be so careless?

Sin Against God's Warnings and Threats

How can you be so lacking in caution in terms of sin when indeed your sin is truly against the body and the blood of Christ? And we need to face the fact also that all sin is against his divine cautions and warnings and threats.

God has made it crystal clear. The wages of sin. Death.