Hamartiology - Origin and Problem of Sin

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Alright, Brother Andy has given you your handout for the evening.
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As you all know, we are in our study of systematic theology, our longer study of systematic theology.
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We've looked at several different things in this study.
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And we find ourselves now in the section known as Hamartiology.
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Hamartiology is probably one of the more odd words that we learn in systematic theology.
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It's certainly not a word that we use every day, but it's based upon a Greek word, Hamartia, which is the word for sin.
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Hamartiology is the doctrine of sin.
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And last week we looked at the nature of sin in our first lesson.
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If you weren't here, I just very quickly will give you what we learned last week.
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We talked about the fact that sin itself requires a standard against which it would perform.
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So sin cannot exist without there being a standard of righteousness.
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God is the standard of righteousness.
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Therefore, when sin is defined as falling short, because that's what the word sin means, it means to fall short of God's standard.
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And we have the law.
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The law is God's standard.
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And we have fallen short, and that tells us that we are sinners.
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How do we define sin as being sinners? Well, we go through the law of God, and we see ourselves as having broken every one of His laws, and we see ourselves as sinners.
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And as I said last week, this is not a subject that is very popular.
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I had a dream this week.
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I dream a lot.
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I have a very interesting dream life.
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Sometimes I think I live a separate life in my dreams.
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And there are sometimes the most odd things.
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I've had dreams that were so vivid.
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Well, this past week I dreamed that I was invited to a mega church to preach.
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And trust me, that is not something I dream about in the sense of desiring.
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But I was invited to preach.
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And I remember thinking in the dream, I'm going to get to speak to people who will probably never hear about their sin.
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Because in a lot of mega churches, they just don't hear about the weight and the depth and the breadth of their sin.
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And I thought, that's what I'm going to preach on.
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If I get to preach to a large group of people, I'm not going to try to wow them with my homiletical gymnastics.
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I'm just going to preach sin.
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Because it's probably what they haven't heard.
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Because it is a subject that is not comfortable.
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Well, like I said, last week we looked at the nature of sin.
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Tonight we're going to look at, and you have this in your notes, you have the outline.
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It says it's supposed to be six parts.
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Some of the weeks may go more than one week, but the goal is to get through this in six weeks.
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But part two tonight is the origin and problem of sin.
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The question that we're seeking to answer is why does sin exist? That is not an easy question.
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In fact, as we're going to see, there are some real heavy thoughts that have to go into the question of why does sin exist.
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Not the least of which, if God is good, why did He allow sin to come into the world? That's the question.
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That's the origin and problem of sin.
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Why does evil exist? It's apparent that we see evil, pain, suffering, dissatisfaction, hurt, depression all around us.
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But where did it come from? And furthermore, if we have a benevolent God, why did it come? One of the most common objections to the Christian faith is normally given in this syllogism.
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I want to give it to you as a syllogism.
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If God is all powerful, He could stop all evil.
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If God is all good, He would stop all evil.
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Since evil exists, He cannot be both.
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He must either be too impotent to stop it or too malevolent to stop it.
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God cannot be all good and all powerful.
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The Christian God claims to be both, and therefore He does not exist.
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That is a very common argument from atheists.
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If God claims to be all good, He would stop evil.
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If God claims to be all powerful, He could stop evil.
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And since evil exists, He does not.
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That is a very common argument.
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And some of you may remember when we went through our study of apologetics.
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Jackie, you might remember that.
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When we went through apologetics a few years ago, we spent a whole few weeks on that question because that's one of the most common...
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That question showed up in a superhero movie.
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Not one of the good ones, but it showed up in one of the Superman movies.
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Lex Luthor said that to the character.
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I've learned as a child, if God were all good, there'd be no bad.
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If God were all powerful, He'd stop all the bad.
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I knew God didn't exist.
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The character in the movie made that claim.
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So tonight we're asking the question, why does evil exist? Where does it come from? We're going to begin in Romans chapter 5.
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This is where we're going to start.
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And I want to encourage you to turn in your Bible to Romans 5.12.
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Now, I do want to mention, in a couple of weeks we're going to be looking at the imputation of sin.
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That's week 4.
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And we're going to be back in Romans 5 then.
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So we're going to look at this passage more than once in our study of sin because this passage is overflowing with information.
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And it's more than I'm going to be able to get through in just one sitting.
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But Romans 5.12 begins a lesson from the Apostle Paul on the subject of the origin of sin.
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Beginning in verse 12, he says, Therefore, just 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.
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But sin is not counted where there is no law.
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Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
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Now, I don't want to go further, but in a couple of weeks we will.
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We'll actually read on where Paul talks about sin coming through Adam and righteousness coming through Christ and the ones who are in Adam are lost, the ones who are in Christ are saved.
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He makes the distinction and he makes the comparison between the work of Adam and the work of Christ later in the passage.
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And we're going to look at that.
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But tonight I just want to draft a few thoughts from this.
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And they're in your notes.
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You don't have to write these out.
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The outline is there.
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The three points of our outline tonight are simple.
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All human sin began with Adam and Eve in the garden.
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All sin originates from a desire to overthrow God.
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And all sin is part of God's sovereign plan.
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That last one is the hardest one to swallow.
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That last one is the hardest one to take.
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But I hope that by the end of tonight you will be convinced that all three of these things are accurate to the text and are actually taught in the Bible.
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But let's look at the first one.
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All human sin began with Adam and Eve in the garden.
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In Genesis chapter 1, which we've been studying on Sunday morning, and then in chapter 2, mankind is created, male and female He created them, and they are deemed part of God's very good creation.
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Therefore man, when he was created, was not created with a sinful nature.
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That tells us that sin is not an essential part of humanity.
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Some people say to err is human.
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You've probably heard that.
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Or you've probably heard sin is an essential part of what it means to be human.
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That's actually not true.
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When God created Adam and Eve, He created them as the consummate being.
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They were the man and the woman.
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In fact, Hadam in Hebrew, that means man.
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The word Adam simply means man.
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Now he later was called Adam, and he was given the proper name Adam, but the word, he is the man.
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She is the woman.
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In fact, her name is Eve because she's the mother of all living.
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She's the fountain from which all of the earth would be birthed essentially.
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So Adam and Eve are the consummate man and woman.
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This is really bothering me.
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I may have to move that because I can't see Jack and Shirley.
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I don't know.
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It's a little higher.
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I'm going to bring it down.
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We'll leave it for tonight.
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No, it's okay.
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I just want to make sure they're not making faces at me.
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It's okay, Jack.
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I was just kidding.
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Yeah, okay.
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So, getting back.
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Adam and Eve are the consummate humans.
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They are created without a sin nature.
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Some people claim that sin is a necessary part of being human, but that is not true because of Adam and Eve, and it's also not true because of Christ.
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Christ did not have sin, and yet He was fully human.
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That's one of the things we confess as Christians.
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Christ is fully man and fully God.
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And in His fully human nature, He did not have sin, and yet He was still a man.
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Sin becomes a negative introduction into God's good world.
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Genesis 3 tells us the serpent comes in.
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He tempts Eve.
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Eve sins by listening to Him, taking of the fruit, giving it to her husband.
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They share in this fruit together, and thus we have the introduction of sin into the world.
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The first sin in humans is performed by Adam and Eve.
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If you do not believe in Adam and Eve, if you believe that Adam and Eve are a myth, if you believe that Adam and Eve are a fairy tale, then you have a problem with your theology because the entire Bible is predicated on the historicity of Adam and Eve.
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Abraham's lineage is traced all the way back to Adam, and we can follow his lineage all the way back to our first father.
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Jesus Christ's lineage is taken all the way back to Adam in the Gospel of Luke.
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To deny the historicity of Adam is to deny the very foundation of the Christian faith.
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Adam and Eve are the first two human beings, sinless, and I would say even holy, because they are made in the image of God.
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Unblemished.
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They are given one command.
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One test of faithfulness.
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Not ten, not six hundred.
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One.
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See that? Don't eat that.
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I mean, I'm being a little silly, but you understand it was one command.
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You had one job.
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Very good.
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You had one command.
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They are convinced by Satan that God is malevolent.
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Remember what Satan said.
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The only reason God says you shouldn't eat of that is because He knows that when you eat, you're going to be like Him.
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So Satan convinces Adam and Eve that God is the villain.
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He's the hero.
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Satan is the one who's bringing enlightenment.
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You know God doesn't want you to be like Him, and if you eat, you're going to be like Him.
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And what did Adam and Eve want? To be like God.
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But that leads to a question that many people ask immediately.
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Well, if Satan was tempting them, that means he was already evil.
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So he had already fallen.
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So there's a sin that predates human sin.
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In some form or fashion, Satan fell before Adam and Eve fell.
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Because this is not the actions of a good angel.
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This is not the actions of a holy angel.
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This is the actions of a diabolos.
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Diabolicals.
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Or we get the word from the Greek, diabolos.
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And that's what Satan is called.
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The diabolical one.
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The demonic one.
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The evil one.
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And he came to tempt.
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And they listened and they fell.
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People say, well, when did Satan fall? I do not know.
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If you've been on Sunday mornings, you know we talked about the gap theory.
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Some people say he fell between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.
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Or Genesis 1-1 and Genesis 1-2.
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I have trouble with that because the Bible says over and over, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was very good at the end of day 6.
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And we know that in that creation is not only the creation of the earthly, but is also the creation of the heavenly.
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We see this in the book of Job.
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We see this in the Psalms.
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The creation of the angels is also part of God's creation.
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Angels are not eternal beings.
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They are created beings.
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And so they had to have been created sometime in that period.
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And so my belief is that it happened after day 6.
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After God declared everything very good, Satan fell.
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Because we don't know how long it took Adam and Eve to fall.
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We don't know how long they lived in a state of holiness.
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We don't know how long they lived in a state of righteousness.
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But we know they had a state of righteousness for a time.
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And it could have been during that time that Satan fell.
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And when he fell, he chose to take mankind with him.
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Why? Because mankind is God's image bearer.
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He hates God.
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He wants to be like God.
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What is the best thing that he can do? He can take the image bearer with him.
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If he is going to fall and he wants followers, he takes the image bearers of God with him as the one who hates God.
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Now people ask the question, Why did Satan fall? The best we have to go on from Scripture is Ezekiel 28, 11-19, and Isaiah 14, 12-17.
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We looked at those in our study of angels, so I am not going to go over them again.
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But essentially what it says is pride.
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Satan was created beautiful.
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And as a beautiful cherub of God, he lifted himself up and wanted to sit on the throne of God.
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He wanted to be God.
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And because of that pride, he was cast down.
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That is the understanding that we have from those passages.
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So Satan's was not an external temptation, but an internal one.
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His temptation was to be like God.
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And he became then the external tempter of Adam and Eve.
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But that is the origin of mankind's sin.
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The origin of mankind's sin.
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God did not create a bad world.
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God created a good world.
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Satan introduces temptation.
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Man falls to the temptation.
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And at that moment, everything changes.
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Sin is introduced into the world that was good.
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And the Bible says, and we are going to talk about the consequences of sin next week, but the Bible says everything changed.
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Even the very will of man changed.
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His ability to will righteously, to do good was changed.
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His ability to think rightly was changed.
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Even the world around him became different.
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No longer was it a joy to work the fields, but now he would work in misery and sweat and pain and thorns.
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The Bible says the earth is like a woman in childbirth waiting for her baby to be born in that travail of time because the earth has been subjected to this painful thing of sin.
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So we'll look at that more next week because that's on the consequences of sin.
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But it all goes back to Adam and Eve.
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It all goes back to our first parents.
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All human sin began in the garden.
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Number two.
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All sin originates from the desire to overthrow God.
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Though we can say Satan's fall was mysterious, it was not without impulse.
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He wanted to take God's place.
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And some people say, well, how foolish would anyone have to be to believe they could replace the Almighty? But then, I would just encourage you to look at yourself.
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How many times in your life have you put yourself on the throne and asked God to move? God commands of you something and you say, I think it'd be better if it were another way.
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I think it'd be better if I do it this way.
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People come to me all the time, Pastor, I know it's wrong, but...
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I never am excited to hear what's on the other side of that but.
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I just want you to know, whatever's on the other side of that but is wrong.
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You done said it.
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And people say, Pastor, I know it's wrong, but...
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What you're saying is, I know God's supposed to be on the throne, but I think I need to be there right now.
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And we do that.
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We sit on the throne, we invite God to move, and we don't ask Him to share the seat with us.
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We ask Him to get up and get out of the way.
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Again, what did Satan tempt Eve with? You will be like God.
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And every generation, that is the temptation.
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I would say that's the root of all sin.
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Every generation, you will be like God is the temptation.
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Not in a godly way either.
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Men are in a continual race for their own autonomy.
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Autonomy means freedom.
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They want their freedom.
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They want their demand.
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They want their kingdom.
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They want their will to be done.
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Why do you think Jesus taught us to pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
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Thy kingdom come.
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Thy will be done.
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Because it's something we don't normally and naturally want.
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I mean, the prayer of the modern man is not Thy will be done, it's my will be done.
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Did you know there exists a church of Satan? There is a church of Satan.
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It was established in 1966 by Anton LaVey.
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And I want you to listen to how their website describes their belief.
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They don't believe in a personal Satan, by the way.
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This is an interesting thing.
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The church of Satan doesn't believe in Satan.
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What they believe in is the idea that Satan represents.
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So listen to what they describe.
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Quote, To us, Satan is the symbol that best suits the nature of we who are carnal by birth, people who feel no battles raging between our thoughts and feelings, we who do not embrace the concept of a soul imprisoned in a body.
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He represents pride, liberty, and individualism, qualities often defined as evil by those who worship external deities, who feel there is a war between their minds and emotions.
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We Satanists are thus our own gods, and as beneficent deities, we can offer love to those who deserve it and deliver our wrath upon those who seek to cause us harm.
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We are our own gods.
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That is Satan's promise.
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Eat of the tree, and you'll be like God.
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And so the church of Satan says we're not following a deity called Satan.
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We're following the idea that Satan teaches and that is that I am God.
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What a life.
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And yet many people wouldn't call themselves Satanists and yet follow the same pattern of life.
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In his systematic theology, Theeson says this, he said, What makes man sin? Is it pride, unbelief, disobedience, or selfishness? Scripture teaches that the essence of godliness is love of God.
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It's not the essence of sin, the love of self.
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Each of us has turned to his own way.
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Isaiah 53.6 Godliness is the love of God.
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Sin is the love of self.
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With every sin we commit, we are saying God, I love myself more than you.
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I love my desires more than your desires.
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My will be done, not thy will be done.
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It's a desire to overthrow God.
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So, I want to move now to part three, the harder part of this.
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We've seen that all human sin began with Adam and Eve in the garden.
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All sin originates from the desire to overthrow God.
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But here's the hard part.
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When they ask the question, Well, why does sin exist? God is all good.
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Why does sin exist? All sin is part of God's sovereign plan.
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Now, if you want to take your pen and circle that word plan and make a little note, you can also write decree.
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I didn't choose to use the word decree because people hear the word decree and there's often some confusion about the word decree.
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I want to read to you from James Boyce.
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This is James Pettigrew Boyce, not James Montgomery Boyce for those who care.
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Most of you probably don't know those men.
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But James Pettigrew Boyce was one of the first Southern Baptists in the United States and he was responsible for founding the, I think he was the first president of the Southern Baptist Seminary.
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So, just to give you an idea of who he is.
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And when he talks about the word decree, he says this, the term decree is liable to some misapprehension and objection because it conveys the idea of an edict or some compulsory determination.
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Purpose has been suggested as a better word.
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Plan will sometimes still be more suitable.
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The mere use of these words will remove from many some difficulties and prejudices which make them unwilling to accept this doctrine.
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They perceive that in the creation, preservation and government of the world, God must have a plan and that plan must have been just, wise, holy, tending both to his own glory and the happiness of his creatures.
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They recognize that a man who has no purpose, no aim, especially in important matters and who cannot or does not devise the means by which to carry out his purpose is without wisdom and capacity and unworthy of his nature.
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Consequently, they readily believe and admit that the more comprehensive and at the same time the more definite is the plan of God, the more worthy it is of infinite wisdom.
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Indeed, they are compelled to the conclusion that God cannot be what he is without forming such a purpose or a plan.
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So that was a long quote, Pastor.
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What's he getting at? What's he driving at? Well, he's driving at this.
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God had a plan from the very beginning and he knew exactly what was going to happen from the very beginning.
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This is why Jesus is called the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
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This is why it says in Acts chapter 4 that when Christ was put on the cross, it was by the very predestination of Almighty God.
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Now we don't like that word, that big P word.
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That's a dirty word.
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But the word is there.
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It's not as if it's imposed by Calvinists or introduced by reformed people.
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It's simply in the text.
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It tells us God had a plan from the beginning.
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But that does not mean that God caused the evil in the world.
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I want to read from the London Confession.
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It says this, God hath decreed in himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever that come to pass, yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second clauses taken away, but rather established, in which appears his wisdom in disposing all things in power and faithfulness, and accomplishing his decree.
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Yeah, that's not easy to understand.
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So let me try to make it a little simpler.
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God is the one who decrees all things, and yet we are still moral agents responsible for the decisions that we make.
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And that's why we are subject to judgment, because we do make real decisions, even though God is sovereign over our lives.
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You say, how do I comprehend how those two work together? Well, it is a difficult thing, but yet at the same time, it is clearly taught both in Scripture and in our experience.
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Can we not say in our experience there are things in our life that have happened, that when we look back at them, we say they were bad at the time, but we can look back and see how God was working through those things, even the most difficult things, to bring us to where we are today? I've used the example of my parents' divorce many times.
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It was the worst time in my life, and I would have done anything in the world to have kept my parents from being divorced, and yet I am here in this church because my stepmother brought me to church.
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This church.
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Twenty...
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well, thirty-four years ago.
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Thirty-four years ago.
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By the way, I'm not quite a charter member, but I'm close.
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I'd say everybody was here when we changed to Sovereign Grace.
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We can call them new charter members.
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But you understand what I'm saying.
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You can see the decree of God working out even in your own life.
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You can see the plan of God working out even in your own life.
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And when you go back to passages like Genesis chapter 50 and verse 20, one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament.
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It's probably going to take me three years to get there, but when I get there, I'm going to really preach it up because I'm preaching through Genesis.
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But in Genesis 50, verse 20, the brothers of Joseph say to him...
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You know, they're afraid that He's going to kill them and they're begging for mercy.
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And Joseph says, What you meant for evil, God meant for good to save many people alive this day.
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And what's interesting about that Hebrew word is that it's the same word.
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It's the same verb.
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What the men did willfully and because they wanted to and because they desired to, which was evil, God did for good.
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Not because God can take and make lemonade out of lemons.
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That's not what it's saying.
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It's saying God had a plan even in the evil action of those men.
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And He brought about His plan through it.
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That's the sovereignty of God on display.
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And it shows us that there is no such thing...
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Listen to this.
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If you take nothing else home with you tonight, take this home with you.
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There is no such thing as purposeless evil.
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God will always have a purpose for everything that happens, even the most evil things.
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If you ever have something bad happen and somebody comes to you and says, God didn't have any control over that, you tell them they're a liar and they can come call me and I'll tell them myself.
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Hurricane hits and people say, Oh, God didn't have anything to do with that.
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Really? God's not sovereign over the wind and the rain? God's not the one who stores up the storm, as it were, like in a silo waiting to let it fall? Is He not in control of that? And that doesn't mean that every bad thing that happens to you happens as a result of something bad that you did.
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Jesus teaches us that in Luke 13 when the men come to Him and said, Jesus, there's a tower that fell on someone.
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Was that because they were evil? And Jesus said, Do you think they were more evil than you? Unless you repent, you will likewise perish.
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And when those men saw that blind man and they said to Jesus, Who sinned, Him or His parents, that He would be born blind? And Jesus said, It wasn't that His parents sinned in any extraordinary way, but that the glory of God might be shown in His life on this day.
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You see, beloved, God has a plan.
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Even in the midst of a sin-torn world, God has a plan.
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He had a purpose for His plan.
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He had a purpose for His decree.
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So I want to return as I draw to a close to the first thing that we looked at.
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If God is all-powerful, He could stop all evil.
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If He's all good, He would stop all evil.
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Since evil exists, God doesn't.
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That assumption is wrong.
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Because it assumes a couple of things.
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Number one, it assumes you can prove good without God and you can't.
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Tell me something is good without a standard of goodness.
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How do you prove anything is good without a standard of goodness? The very syllogism itself is based on the idea that you can have good without God and you can't.
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I've told this story before.
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I'll make it very quick.
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But years ago, back in the 80's, Gordon Stein was debating.
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He is an atheist.
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And he was debating Greg Bonson, who was a Christian.
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Greg Bonson was a brilliant man.
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Died a young man.
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And in the debate, Greg Bonson asked Gordon Stein, what was it about what Hitler did that made it evil? If you don't believe in God, then you have no standard for righteousness and unrighteousness.
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You have no standard for good and bad.
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You have no standard for evil.
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Except for your own moral judgments, which are seriously flawed.
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You have no standard.
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Gordon Stein started trying to argue that what made Hitler's acts of murder evil was because the world has a morality that it has agreed on.
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Hitler went outside of the world's agreed upon morality.
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And that's what made it evil.
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And Bonson then replied something to this effect.
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So what you're saying is, if the world agreed it was okay to murder the Jews, then it would be okay.
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Apart from God, you have no standard for good and evil.
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What is evil? What did we learn last week? Evil is that which denies or does not live up to the standard of God.
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And without God, you have no standard.
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So, human sin comes into the world because of Adam and Eve.
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It originated from their desire to overthrow God, but it was not outside of the decree of God.
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Because God from all eternity has known for certain and has planned for good all that has and will ever come to pass.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank You for this time of study.
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I pray that it's been fruitful for Your people and an encouragement to help them understand more about the origin and the problem of sin and how we might be able to respond to that problem by understanding that You, O God, are sovereign and You are good.
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Sin is a willful act of man, a hatred against You.
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And yet, Lord God, You have a plan and purpose for it.
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One day, You will take Your people to Yourself.
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You will live with them forever.
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You will grant them the gift of a new body.
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And this eternal life will take hold in the new heavens and the new earth.
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And for those who have continued in their waywardness, who have continued to reject You and who have willfully hated You, will be cast into the lake of fire.
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Thank You, God.
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Thank You, God, for saving us.
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We didn't deserve it.
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We don't deserve it now.
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Our whole of salvation is because Christ was good for us.
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And we thank You for our Savior.
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In His name we pray.
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Amen.