The Heinousness of Sin | The Whole Counsel

The Whole Counsel and the Place of Bellamy in the Salvation Series

Welcome to The Whole Council. I'm Chuck Bagot. I'm here with John Snyder. We're currently discussing the book Salvation in Full Color, a book edited by Richard Owen Roberts. The book is comprised of 20 sermons by Great Awakening preachers.

It's important to note that these are not just 20 random sermons on the topic of salvation. Rather, the term salvation is viewed as an umbrella term under which all these other topics fit. Terms like justification, regeneration, adoption, etc.

Or we could view the term salvation as a rainbow and these other terms as the various colors of the rainbow. Each of them necessary to get a full picture of the rainbow term of salvation. Also, regarding these sermons not being random, they are in a particular order and that order is important.

The order that these topics are laid out in represents the usual way in which God works in a soul to bring that person to salvation. So far we've covered the character of God, the law of God, total depravity, and this week we'll be looking at the heinousness of sin, a sermon by Joseph Bellamy.

John, what can you tell us about Bellamy? Bellamy was born in 1719, so that puts him in the American colonies growing up during the time of the Great Awakening. He was, even as a young man, he had a keen intellect.

He graduated from Yale at age 16. After graduation, though, he comes under a serious conviction of sin and is wonderfully converted. He began his ministry by filling in at a Congregationalist church, but through his ministry, even in the early days, so many were wonderfully converted that the church extended a call to him, and in 1740, only a few years after his conversion, he was ordained as their pastor.

He remained at the church for 50 years until he died in 1790. The parish in which he was laboring was a small country parish, and this left him a lot of time to really give earnest attention to continuing theological study.

In 1740, you understand that Whitefield, especially in 1740, 1742, Whitefield is making these trips from England over to the colonies, so much so that his British friends complained. Some of the Welsh friends said, you know, has not America its witness?

Can, you know, can you not work here a little more? But the Lord was using George Whitefield in such an extraordinary manner, and during the early 1740s, that really, I think, would have been the high-water mark, and Bellamy agreed that this was a wonderful work of God, and he began to assist it.

He began to travel at first, just a little bit, and then more and more, balancing his pastoral labors at home with working abroad. He soon became recognized as a powerful preacher of the gospel. His voice was large, they said.

His sermons were penetrating. He was more of a Boanerges, a son of thunder. He did not equal Whitefield, according to contemporaries, in earnestness and, you know, in delivery, but in clarity, in theological precision, he excelled him.

And I think you see that in this sermon. It's very detailed. And in another way, I think you can see why Whitefield was so extraordinarily popular compared to other godly men, that when we get to Whitefield's sermon, you'll see that it's so simple.

Bellamy's is not simple. It's clear and helpful, but it does require a little more work than a Whitefield sermon. Bellamy, interestingly, along with some other men in his day, felt that the Great Awakening really signaled the beginning of the end.

Jonathan Edwards was one of them. They were post-millennial in their views of eschatology. And so they thought that—I mean, you understand that such a wave of grace was flowing over the colonies. So many were being converted that they thought this must be the marker that Christ is coming, and this is the last great harvest before he comes.

He later, like Edwards, became deeply disappointed when he saw, you know, some men joining late in the later years of the Awakening. These men joined and they were not careful. They were not as godly.

Their theology wasn't clear. And we would kind of consider them as, you know, kind of fanatics. And they did a lot of damage to the reputation of the work. Bellamy never quite recovered from that disappointment.

He was, you know, he was grieved by that to the end of his life. But nor did he say that it wasn't a real work of the Lord. Bellamy did write one very popular book, and it's called True Religion Delineated.

It's got a very long title, but that's the short title. But along with Jonathan Edwards' book on religious affections, it is the book on how to understand if what is occurring on the inside of people, if the experiences we're having are from God or they're just kind of from fanaticism and from emotions.

And so that's a book that really deserves a careful look. Let me kind of just give the overview of his sermon. The sermon is entitled The Heinousness or the, you know, the Horribleness of Sin. And he takes as his passage Psalm 51 verse 4, where David says, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.

His sermon is made up of three major points. First, how and in what respect is sin against God? Second, how great and evil sin is on that account. And third, this is the great evil of sin that it is against God.

Under the first point, I do want to mention he has a number of sub points. In fact, here they are. He says sin is contrary to God in the fact that it's contrary to the nature of God. It's against the law and the authority and the government of God.

Sin is against the being of God. Also, sin is against the honor of God and sin is against the happiness of God. Now, following the three major points, he gives a number of remarks. First, sin is a very different thing from what we naturally imagine it to be.

And he points that out, that the cultural definition of sin is so far from God's definition. It's shocking, but I think, Chuck, you and I would agree that it's not just in the culture. It's in the church, and it's not just in the church.

I mean, it's in me. You know, when I read this sermon, I realize how much my view of sin is being fashioned by the cultural statement or the religious culture. And so, certainly, this sermon is of great value to any believer wanting to maintain a clear view of the nature of sin and of grace.

Second, he says, the amazing patience of God is viewed and understood better when we see that he is constantly seeing the sin of humanity in its true light. And still, he's merciful to them. Third, if we see sin in its correct light, we have some better understanding of how dreadful the day of judgment will be.

When God's, you know, apparently endless patience comes to an end, and his vengeance takes hold of the sinner. Fourth, it is far beyond any finite, limited human to make amends to God for the very least of our sins, because sin casts an infinite contempt upon the Most High God.

Fifth, it is necessary that our Redeemer and Savior must be God himself, obviously, as no one else could make amends for our guilt. And finally, the final remark he says is, what an amazing goodness we see in God that he would give his only son to die for his enemies who treat him villainously and despise him.

Then what follows is an application of all of this, and he gives it in six pretty probing questions. Questions I find hard to answer correctly. Certainly questions that are very helpful to lovingly present to a lost person, and questions we're going to see helpful for the Christian to continue to grow in clarity in this area.

But Chuck, you and I want to talk about that more in depth, so I'm not going to run through that list right now. Well, the sermon is very detailed, and there's just so much here that we feel that we really can't go through each part equally, so we wanted to just choose a few things that we thought were most significant for our day.

Seeing Sin and the Gospel as God Sees Them

So I'll just jump in there. One that I'm really gripped with is the amazingly significant impact of what his basic premise is, and that is, no person can correctly feel about spiritual things until they correctly see those spiritual things.

So we could apply that in more than one way. One way, of course, is to the issue of sin, which he basically applies it to. No man really feels the ugliness and the shame and the weight of his sin until he sees sin as God sees sin.

But also, and Bellamy doesn't mention this as much in the sermon, it's not his emphasis, but I was thinking, it also applies to the beautiful things of Scripture. No man can really understand the infinite, measureless beauty of the gospel and of the love of God, which surpasses understanding.

We can't feel those things if we don't see them as God sees them.

Bellamy emphasizes this point in a quote on the bottom of page 64, where he says,. It is quite beyond our capacity to comprehend the vileness there is in treating God as the sinner does, unless we could, as he can, comprehend all his greatness and glory, and fully see all the grounds and reasons there are for us to love, reverence, and obey him, and feel all their binding force.

God is fully conscious to himself that he is the maker and Lord of the universe, the maintainer and upholder of the world, the rightful king and sovereign over all. He is fully conscious that there is an infinite reason for us to rejoice in him, exult in his government and be glad in his service, and that the contrary temper and conduct of his creatures is infinitely unreasonable and wicked.

So, God looks at everything and he sees everything as it is, and that informs, we can kind of say, it informs the way he feels about those things, the way he views them, he sees it. How could we feel about these things, what God feels, when we are confused about them and they're blurry to us?

I think a really important question for us to ask ourselves is, what is informing my opinion on these matters? I mean, it's a simple question, but it may not be as easy to answer as we think to get to the truth of it.

I mean, am I being daily informed regarding the nature of sin and regarding the nature of the gospel? Am I feeling the weight of these matters correctly because I'm being informed by God?

Yeah, and there's probably a temptation on our part to think that we do feel about those things correctly, particularly the Christian, you know, that we are informed. We probably do not recognize the degree to which the world still affects us, and so there's the temptation to think, well, yeah, I do.

But if we're not careful to come back to Scripture and read and see what God says and constantly be informed by that, then we're dealing with vague generalities and not with the truth.

Yeah, and those six applicatory questions at the end, I think that'll help us to kind of get a more honest assessment of ourselves, whether we are being fashioned in our thoughts by what the culture says or by what God says.

And because this is so significant, it is a very encouraging reality to be reminded of that God himself has not left us to kind of vaguely wander in the mist and shadow and to try to arrive at the right understanding.

God has, throughout the centuries, guided the pens of men to tell us the truth about sin, to remove the false advertising from sin, to tell us the truth about himself, to give us the right measurement of God and of his mercies, and not allow us to have our measurements given to us, handed to us by the religious culture or the world.

And God has sent his Spirit to be our instructor. So no person, lost or saved, who cries out to the Lord and says, show me the truth for your name's sake, I think no person that does that has a right to despair.

The Logic of Guilt, Law, and Offense Against God

That really leads to one of the second big points, I think, that this speaks of, and that is, he says there's this unavoidable logic, we could say, and that is, you don't feel that you yourself are blameworthy for your behavior if you're not aware of the obligations that you're failing to meet.

That makes sense. If you don't see a no trespass sign, you don't know that you crossed a barrier. If you don't know there's a rule in God's Word about a certain aspect of life, like marriage, kids, money, you know, free time, leisure thoughts, then you're not aware, perhaps, that you're actually breaking the law.

You don't know the obligation that God has laid out clearly, you don't know your guilt. But then another thing he says, but you won't feel the weight of that blame if you don't see that that obligation, that law, that no trespass sign, is right, is just, is fair, is perfect.

And so that really is very helpful because I think what we see is, if men don't see the obligations that the lawgiver has placed in his Word, then they only feel what you mentioned, a vague sense of sinfulness.

Well, okay, none of us is perfect. But if they don't see how wonderfully perfect that law is, then the weight of their shame and guilt in ignoring that law is never felt. And sin is only viewed as something that is keeping you from reaching your potential.

So yes, once we see this, what you called, unvoidable logic, this obligation that is ours, and we begin to see how terrible sin is, then we do begin to see why it's so offensive to God. Bellamy states on page 68 how different a thing sin is from what an apostate rebellious world naturally imagines.

And you don't have to look very hard to see that in the world around us, or as you mentioned, even in our own selves at times. How do we tend to think about sin? I think generally we tend to think about sin as how it affects me more than anything else, more than how it affects my neighbor, though we might think about that sometimes, and certainly more than how it affects God.

But how does it affect me, whether it be my reputation or my pleasure or whatever else? And if you only see sin that way, then David's statement in Psalm 51 has to sound really strange. Against thee, or against you, and you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

How does that even make sense to a person who doesn't see things as God sees them? I mean, you think about David's sin, what he did. And, you know, so he sinned against Bathsheba, sinned against Uriah, sinned against the nation, his wives.

How does that make sense? 2 Samuel 12 is a big help here. Nathan the prophet confronts David and he charges him with three things. In verse 9 he asks, why have you despised the word of the Lord? And David had despised God's word.

He knew God's commands. And in previous times he's loved God's commands, but now he willingly and gladly breaks God's commands. In verses 10 and 11, Nathan tells him that he has despised God. God speaking through Nathan, you have despised me.

Not just God's word, but God himself. And again, we can think of times where David obviously has walked with the Lord and enjoyed the communion with God, sweet fellowship with God, but now he has gladly chosen sin over God and his own pleasure over God's righteousness.

And then, thirdly, in verses 13 and 14, Nathan points out that David has given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme God. You can think about times in David's past when he has been zealous for God's reputation.

When the nation of Israel was lined up against the Philistines and Goliath kept coming out. He was very zealous for God's reputation in front of this giant, Goliath. But now he's forgotten all about God's reputation and is protecting his own reputation as he kills Uriah and tries to cover up his sin.

And so, in all of that, he is declaring, in a sense, that he cares more for his gratification and his reputation than he does for God or for God's law or for God's honor or God's authority. And whether we see our obligation to God or not, this is, in fact, what every sin amounts to.

It is an offense against God. And what we're saying now is that when we learn to see that, we feel it, and then we're in a position to actually repent.

Yeah, so without seeing these things the way God saw them, David continued at least nine months, we know, to just go through the motions. As far as we know, still attending the temple services, at least appearing to be a king that loved the Lord.

Certainly, David didn't hang a sign out on the palace saying, I no longer love the Lord, you know. I mean, can you imagine David going to the temple and hearing his psalms sung that he wrote in those days when the love for the Lord was clean?

And now everything is muddied, and his sense of it all is so dull. I don't know what is more terrifying for a Christian man, to think that we can sin like David sinned in those original sins, or to think that you can reach a place of such dullness of heart that you don't even feel that you've sinned.

You know, it was my right to do what I wanted to do. How many times have we misnamed sin in ourselves when we're talking to other people, and you realize you learned to talk that way from somebody other than God?

And to even justify yourself, and maybe not, sometimes verbally, to, you know, I was right, but you think, you know, when Nathan comes to David with that account of this man who stole a sheep, the little lamb, David's indignant and is ready to kill that man, you know?

And it's only when Nathan turns it around and says, but you're the man that David understands.

David's Blindness, Repentance, and the Search for Honest Self-Assessment

Yeah, so in a terrifying reality, you can walk with the Lord for decades and love His honor and love His Word, and that is not a guarantee that tomorrow morning you will not despise Him. You know, we must walk humbly.

And you can be full of zeal and passion for God's honor and God's doctrine today, and be a man at that same moment like David that is unaware of the heinousness of your sins that you are protecting. So, obviously, if it weren't for the Lord Jesus working in us, we would despair, you know?

But He is the hope. One thing that would help us get clarity with this is these applicatory questions. And, Chuck, you mentioned the fact that He opens it with a really— the whole application section is opened with a great question.

You want to tell us what that is?

Yeah, He asks the question, are you convinced of these truths? I mean, if you're not, then you're not going to get any further than we've read, right? But if you're convinced of these truths, then there's room for repentance.

There's reason for repentance. You see something now that you didn't see before. But until you're convinced of these truths, then you need to go back and look at what we've been talking about, the character of God, the law of God, and see God as He is and His declaration of His rights over you, His command over you, and where you've fallen short.

Yeah, in a sense, the opening of that application, it's almost as if He's saying, you know, you can apply it to the book. You cannot read any further with any genuine benefit. You cannot read about the love of God, the atonement of God, the regenerating work of the Spirit, the effectual call, you know, seeking the Lord, repentance, faith, justification, adoption.

None of that will really mean anything to you if you don't go back to the character of God and the nature of the law of God until you feel how God would have you feel.

And if you do, then how much sweeter are all those things? You know, if you see them as God declares them to be, if sin is heinous or horrible, then the love of God is much more amazing. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, great benefit to be had by following the order of those truths biblically. Chuck, why don't we read these six questions? And then hopefully, if these are things that really grip you, then you can get your hands on the sermon and kind of work through these on your knees before the Lord and ask Him to use these to show you where you're really at.

And if you're finding it hard to locate the sermon, then there is a link on the podcast that will take you to the website, and the text of the sermon will be on there. So here's the first question. Does God's government appear reasonable and His law just?

So just opening question, very simple. He does point out,.

In heaven they cry, Hallelujah, just and righteous are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty. But what is the language of your heart? So again, not vague generalities, but do you rejoice at this government?

Yeah, when you look at the rule of God, so not in an abstract way, okay, God is a king, that's wonderful. No, but when you see what God says He will do with those who reject Him, when you see what God says He has the right to in your life, His claims, do you feel that this is just?

Do you say God is right in this?

The second question, can you justify God in His present dispensations toward you?

Yeah, so this is a little more personal. I mean, and I think this is a real stroke of genius. It's one thing for someone to say, you know, when the preacher says, now God has a right to do this, and God says He's going to judge in this way, and they say, well, you know, the judge of all the earth will do right.

But you get in your car and you drive home, and life is hard. Not just agitated, not just frustrating, but deeply, grievously hard, you know, heartbreakingly hard. And how quick we are to say with other words, God is right in the way He's dealing with everything out there, but God has not treated me right.

And so it really does reveal that we're not quite in agreement with what Bellamy says about God as a lawgiver. Number three, has it become natural to you to look upon hell as your proper due to such an extent that everything in your circumstances wherein you are better off than the damned appears as mere mercy, pure mercy?

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

As much as you ever did? Yeah, so two points under those two that are significant. One is, not just making it personal, are you, do you delight in the way God is governing your life, in your circumstances, or are you complaining?

But then the further point, do you realize that even the worst thing that happens today, compared to what we have earned in our sin, which is hell, is the merest form of mercy, it's purest mercy. But then, you know, the other thing that you mentioned in the fourth question, that it is so easy, no matter how many times we're warned not to do it, to take what God is doing in us today if we're Christians.

So the sanctification, the work of God in you, and to substitute it in the place of the work of God for you. So instead of looking to cross alone as the cause of my peace with God, I think, well yeah, the cross forgave my sin, but I mean, but the little sins I do today, they're being basically paid for by my Christian life today, which is a dreadful lie.

The fifth question, he asks, Do all your hopes of finding mercy at last take their rise only and absolutely from the free grace of God through Christ as revealed in the gospel? So that fifth question applies to what I just said.

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

So, you know, at home alone at night, in front of the computer by yourself, wherever, you know, is that sin also dreadful to you now because you've seen what it is against God who sees everything?

Yeah, it really is a remarkably searching simple question. Why does sin bother you at all? I mean, sometimes when people come and talk to us about wanting to become Christians, you know, sometimes the question I ask people is, well, you know, you have everything that life offers.

You have a nice family. Maybe, you know, maybe you have a nice job or loving parents, and maybe they're part of a family that has a lot of, you know, of what the world provides. Why do you need Christ, you know?

Do we hate sin for the right reason? Do we hate sin because it's against a king that has loved us while we sinned against him? And we see that. So we think that the most horrible thought imaginable is that I would live one more hour for me and that I would hold off an hour of living for the king.

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

No, certainly not. Yeah, it really is a mark of God having awakened us, you know, regenerated us. So all these questions are beneficial because, as Bellamy points out, you know, it is only to the degree that you see things as God sees them that you will feel as God would have you to feel.

And there is a matter of degree there. There's a growing, the Christian ought to be growing in his awareness of these things so that he's growing in the awareness of sin's true nature, growing in his delight to walk as far from sin as possible, and growing in his gratitude for the gospel.

But another application is to take these and to help a person seeking the Lord who says, I know I'm a sinner. I just need to be saved. And we can say, well, it's good that you know that you're a sinner.

But maybe we can stop and think through that carefully. And, you know, these kinds of questions can really peel back those onion layers of kind of self-deceit in our masks, you know, that we put on ourselves, even when we say to someone, I'm being really honest.

Yeah, so beyond, yeah, I'm a sinner. Everybody's a sinner, too. No, I've sinned against him, and I don't want to offend him ever again.

Bellamy's Final Warning and the Call to Repentance

It'd probably be nice to close with Bellamy's own conclusion here. And he uses some old language here, so it might seem a bit shocking for the preacher to talk to you this way, but don't let it shake you.

He says some helpful things. He says this, awake, oh, stupid sinners. Look around. See what you're doing. See where you're going. Consider what the end will be. Can your hands be strong or your heart endure, you guilty rebel, when God Almighty shall come forth to deal with you according to your crimes?

Behold, now is the day of grace. God is ready to be reconciled. A door of mercy is opened by the blood of the Son of God. Pardon and peace are proclaimed to a rebellious and guilty world. Repent, therefore, and be converted or be turned that your sins may be blotted out.

But, he goes on to say, if you, in a hardness of heart, continue to go on treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath, you will know to your everlasting sorrow that it is a fearful and horrible thing to sin against the Lord.

It is so kind of God to give us passages like David's, examples throughout history, and preachers like Bellamy, who long before we have to stand before the king, like, you know, it reminds us of Psalm 2.

The call goes out. Kiss the son, lest he be angry. You know, embrace his grace now before he comes in wrath.