29 - The Identification of Sin, Part 2

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30 - The Initiation of Sin - Satan's Fall, Part 1

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. That is where we sit in ivory towers and, oh no, that's not what we do, sorry.

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But it is where we get into looking at what is the study of God.

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That's really what theology is. It is the study, that's your ology, and God is theos.

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So it's the study of God and what we've done is actually systematized, gone through the Bible, taken all the different categories and systematized them into what is called a systematic theology.

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And I should hope that if you've been paying attention since the beginning of class, this would be lesson number 29 for you, and I sure hope you knew that by now.

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Yikes, if not. But if you are a enrolled student, you can grab your syllabus and that's the thing that's over there that you can just grab.

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And we are in lesson number three of book number two. We're going to continue where we left off last week.

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We had started, we were in book number two. In book number two, we are looking at the doctrine of sin.

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The doctrine of sin. And this specific lesson that we are looking at is the identification of sin.

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The identification of sin. And as we looked at that, we had mentioned to you that this is something that we first wanted to look at to understand a wrong understanding or to get a biblical understanding of it.

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And we first looked, when we looked at that, we looked at first the biblical understanding of sin.

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With that, we took a look at the incorrect views of sin.

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And I just want to do this as kind of a reminder of where we were. So, where we had been was we had looked at in the incorrect views that sin is not salaciousness.

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So, an incorrect view of it actually is that sin is salaciousness. In other words, it applies only to the physical aspects of sin, the things you do that are wrong.

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Sin is more than just salaciousness. That would be an incorrect view. A second incorrect view that we talked about in last class was that sin is an illusion.

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That it's the failure for someone to realize their full potential. And that was yet another misunderstanding.

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Another one was that it's a lack of God consciousness. And the fourth one that we went over was that sin is a social problem.

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That it's just the result of social disadvantages. And we then looked from there to the correct understanding of sin.

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And when we looked at the correct understanding, we looked at it that sin is fundamentally an attitude of unbelief.

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It's an attitude of unbelief. And that sin involves activities of lawlessness.

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Activities of lawlessness. And now, I was told that I may not have given these blanks last week.

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So, let me give you the blanks that you have in your syllabus that I may have missed last week. But thus, sin is the lack of conformity to the moral law of God either in word, thought, or deed.

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That's your blanks there. The word, thought, or deed. So, let me read that definition again.

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This is the correct view of sin. Okay? It is, sin is defined this way.

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That sin is a lack of conformity to the moral law of God either in word, in thought, and in deed.

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So, the reality is, is that it's not just what you do that's sin, but it's also what you say that could be sin and even what you think that is sin.

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Do we have some examples in Scripture to support that? Of course we do. I mean, we would easily see when people do something that God says is wrong, we say, okay, that's a sin.

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Okay? God would say something that's clear, okay, the action, we usually don't question that.

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What about the words? What is it that Matthew said that we would be judged on every idle word that we speak?

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Yikes. You ever think about that? Every idle word that you speak? I don't know about you, but some of us have a few more idle words than others.

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Yikes. What about your thoughts? Well, Matthew also tells us that if, where he's giving the

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Sermon on the Mount, that if you're angry with your brother, you're going to be judged as if you've committed murder. And if you lust after someone, you've committed adultery in your heart already.

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So, it's not the act that made it wrong, it was the thought that started it. So, that's what we had given.

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So, let me give you that definition one more time. Sin can be defined as a lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in word, in thought, or in deed.

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Any one of those three. Now, from there, last week, we started looking at the biblical terms for sin.

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And looking at these, we started to look at several of them. We started by looking at the terms in the

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Old Testament. And when we did that, we started, that's really kind of where we just started.

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We didn't get very far. So, we're going to kind of continue. But just to kind of recap, we mentioned

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Chata, which is the term to miss the mark. We won't look at the passages for that, but sin is missing the right mark, missing the right mark and hitting the wrong mark.

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We're going to look at that one again in a few moments. But it is used as a reference to evil, idolatry, or ceremonial sin.

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Now, we also looked at Ra or Rasha, which is to break up or to destroy.

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And this is a word often that is often referred to as a calamity or injurious things or something that's morally wrong.

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It's often translated wicked. The third one we looked at last week was

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Pasha. Pasha means to rebel. And what we said last week was that while this is the basic meaning, it is often translated transgression, which indicates a willing crossing of a boundary, which is kind of, as we said last week, what we think of,

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I think, when I think of rebellion, it's that willingness, that willing rebellion, that mindful transgression of the law or crossing of a boundary.

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Now, we want to get into some new terms. And I'm hoping that as we go through these, you're getting an idea for how sin is identified and described in the words, in the definitions of words.

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And you're realizing it's something we really shouldn't play with. Okay. That's what

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I hope you're getting out of this, that you realize that sin is not a game. It's not something that we can see how close we can come to it and still get away.

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And maybe we can enjoy a little bit of it. In my devotions, I was reading this morning how the, you know, the bread, stolen bread is a delight to the, you know, to the taste.

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And then you feel the guilt afterwards. And that's really what we, you know, we think sin is this, oh, it's going to give me this great feeling.

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And there is an aspect of sin that we enjoy for that fleeting moment. But when

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I used to work at an addiction recovery center as a counselor there, I used to volunteer time there.

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And one of the things that they would always tell the guys that were in the live -in addiction recovery center there was that sin will always take you further than you want to go.

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It'll hold you longer than you want to be there. Okay.

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So, and it always looks better than it really is.

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So, in other words, sin is this deceptive thing that always looks good and you really want it. But once it gets a hold of you, it keeps you longer and takes you further than you really want to be.

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So, let us look at awah. Awah is the idea of to be bent or crooked, to be bent or crooked.

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That's your blanks there if you have a syllabus. If you don't have a syllabus, go to the website right there, get online to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy and order one, please. But, and that's a yearly thing.

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I should actually mention that. That's, thank you. It's yearly. If you didn't pay for this year, you could help us out.

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You don't have to wait until the next syllabus is out. Just saying. But, so we want to note in Isaiah 21 verse 3 when it comes to this, because here the significance, let's deal with the significance.

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That passage gives us a literal usage of it, but the term sees sin as perversiveness.

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It's often translated the word wrong, not right, wrong. So, let's take a passage.

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Do we have the numbers 15? Yeah? Okay. So, numbers 15 verses 30 and 31.

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But the person who does anything with a high hand, whether he is naive or a sojourner reviles the

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Lord and that person shall be cut off from among his people because he has despised the word of the

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Lord and has broken his commandment. That person shall be utterly cut off.

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His iniquity, there we go, iniquity shall be with him. And so, this is the idea.

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It's the idea of being just wrong. Okay? Being bent or broken.

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I like what a friend of mine, Cy, says is that God can straighten a broken stick.

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It's good that you and I, this is the state that we start in. We're broken. We're crooked.

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We're bent toward sin. Actually, it's even worse than that. We're enslaved to sin.

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But isn't it so good to know that God can straighten us out? God can take a sinful heart that we have and put within us a desire for himself and put within us a righteous heart.

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And so, that's a thing that, you know, we have to remember. God can straighten a bent stick.

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But let's go on because I want to make sure we finish this lesson up this week. So, the next one that we have is shagag.

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This is the term to go astray. That's your blank there. To go astray.

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And the significance is that this word indicates going away from what you know to be right.

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In other words, God's moral law. That thing that's written in our hearts. Every one of us knows what's right because God wrote his law into our hearts.

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And so, we know right from wrong. I mean, we never had to, if you're a parent, you never had to teach your children to lie to you, did you?

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I mean, it wasn't like, okay, junior, I want you to sit down and I want to explain some things to you. I'm going to ask you if you stuck your fingers into the cookie jar and stole a cookie that mommy told you not to do.

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And when I ask you that, I want you to say, no daddy. And give me that big smile like you really didn't do anything wrong.

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And be like, no daddy, I didn't eat any cookies. Oh, don't mind that chocolate.

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Did you do that? I know that no one had to teach me to lie. You see, we know it's a lie from a very, very young age.

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You see that with children that are just one and two years old and they look at their parents as they're doing what they were just told not to do and to give them the look like, oh, look,

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I'm going to do it. I'm going to touch what you told me not to touch. I'm going to go do whatever you told me not to do. And they know it's wrong from a young age because God wrote his law into our hearts.

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And when we go astray from that, that is this term here.

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So, let us take a look at Numbers 15.

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We looked at Numbers 15. So, then let's look at Leviticus 4 .2.

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Leviticus 4 .2 says, speak to the people of Israel saying, if anyone sins unintentionally in any of the

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Lord's commandments about the things not to be done and does any of them.

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So, what he's saying here, if you look at this, this word sins unintentionally. It's still a sin.

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Even if you do it unintentionally and you break

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God's law, it's a sin. Let's look at Numbers 15 and verse 22 this time.

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But if you sin unintentionally and do not observe all these commandments that the

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Lord has spoken to Moses. Now, we're not going to read on from there. But the idea there is that we have this notion that God expects that you and I know right from wrong.

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Yeah, God's not going to judge us for things we don't know. He's going to judge us for that which we do know.

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And that's the thing. What we have is we have the reality that because we know right from wrong, we stray from doing what we know to be right, then we're in sin, even if it's unintentional.

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You know, this always, these two verses in this word actually reminds me of an individual.

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I'm curious if you could think of that individual. So, I'll give you a second. No, okay.

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The book of Job. What was it at the very beginning? Job chapter 1. What is it Job did? Job would offer a sacrifice on behalf of his children in case they sinned and didn't know it and didn't offer a sacrifice.

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That's how upright Job was. He was so concerned, not just for the sins he knew about and the sins of his children, but even the ones that he didn't, the unintentional ones.

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I'm sure that you've read the passage in 1 John where it says if we confess our sins to the

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Lord, He's quick to forgive us. And we appreciate that. But have you ever prayed for forgiveness of those things that you may have been unaware of?

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I mean, you may have gone through your day and you were like, Lord, I know I shouldn't have been gossiping.

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I know I was really angry at my coworker. I shouldn't have cheated on that test. I shouldn't have stole that pen from work.

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You know those things. And you know they're wrong and you say, Lord, would you forgive me for lusting and stealing and gossiping and backbiting?

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But if you ask God for forgiveness for those things that you do so often that you become desensitized to them and you're not even aware that you do them anymore?

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I mean, do you ask God to reveal to you those sins that you commit unintentionally without even being aware of them, without knowledge?

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Maybe because you do them so often, it's like second nature to you. You know, when

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I used to train martial arts, one of the things that they would always do, you'd keep, you know, it got so repetitive.

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You'd have to do kicks and punches. I mean, every single day you did the same routine, same set of kicks and same set of punches and same set of katas and over and over and over.

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You know why? Well, you were to do it until it became muscle memory, until you did it without even thinking.

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And if you were fortunate, you never really knew if it was without thinking. Because usually when you're training in a dojo, you'd have a time where you're sparring and you're planning to fight.

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So you're kind of thinking about it. The times when you know if it's second nature is like the time when

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I was in New York and some guy thought that I parked in his parking spot. I didn't know his name was on it, but he felt it was right in front of his store and that was his spot.

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I was supposed to know that somehow. But he double parked and he followed me into the restaurant that I was going in.

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He grabbed me from the shoulder and swung me around. You know, I didn't even think.

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I went right into a fighting stance without even thinking about it because it was second nature.

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It became a muscle memory. It became something I just did without thinking. I got news for you.

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You and I can do the same thing with sin. It can almost be muscle memory.

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It can be something that we do without even thinking about it because we do it so often.

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That's that idea of sin and it's something we should be avoiding. I encourage you to spend some time in prayer asking the

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Lord to reveal those sins that you commit that are unintentional. Those sins that you're not even aware of because you do them so often.

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A lot of people do things with the tongue. They use their tongue to tear people down and don't even realize it.

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Some people have pride and it blinds them. Ask the Lord about these unintentional sins that we all commit.

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Ask Him to reveal these things to you and ask Him to help you to put those sins aside for they are sins even though you may commit them unintentionally.

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Look what my first pastor used to say. He'd ask the question, how fast do you have to go over the speed limit to break the law?

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Think about it. You just have to go one mile over the speed limit. He says, but what if there's no police officer to catch you?

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Are you still breaking the law? Yeah. You see, we often think like as long as we don't get caught, that's not what makes it a sin.

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It's not when we get caught that makes it a sin. It's when we break the law that it's a sin.

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So let us put aside the Old Testament. No, but we want to take a look at some terms in the

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New Testament. Terms in the New Testament. All right. So let us now get into some Greek terms.

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And I do hope that as you're going through this, you're seeing that this is more than just terms and just looking at definitions of words, but you're getting a picture of what sin is, how it's identified in the

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Scriptures. Let's look at karagos, and that is a badness either morally or physically.

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Either morally or physically. Those are your blanks there. It's a badness. This is a general term in the

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New Testament. Just any kind of badness. We see this in Romans 12 in verse 17, where it says,

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Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

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Don't return evil for evil. Ouch. Doesn't that hurt? I mean, isn't that what so many people do?

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It's amazing how quick when someone does evil to us, we justify doing evil back to them.

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But they did it to me. I had the privilege of being able to be with my niece and my nephews this past weekend, and my niece and I were building a snow fort.

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That's what you do when it snows. For those down south, you don't understand that. Although this year with the snow, you probably do know what snow is.

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But we built the snow fort, and my one nephew was just throwing snowballs at us.

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So, what I decided to do was come up with a treaty. We made a treaty. We're not going to throw snowballs at each other until the forts are complete.

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So, one of the nephews decided to break the treaty. It's amazing how quick my other nephew and niece wanted to just throw snowballs right back.

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And I said, no, no, no. We don't return evil for evil. Just because someone does wrong to us doesn't justify us doing wrong back to them.

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But you ever notice how quick we are to try to say, yes, we can? We shouldn't return evil for evil.

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But many seem to think that we should. Let's take another passage, and that's 1

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Timothy 6 .10. It uses this term. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

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All kinds of evils. Now, notice here, it's not, I'm not going to read the whole thing. We'll just focus on the first part where it's used.

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But notice that it's not that money is the root of all kinds of evils, but it is the love of money that is the heart, that is, excuse me, is the heart of all kinds of evils.

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So, it's the love of money. But the evil is just a badness. Just a general badness.

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Next is purnos, which just means evil. Okay? The significance of this term is that almost exclusively it has the meaning of a moral evil in terms of, the term is often used with Satan and demons.

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So, that is used in John 17 .15. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

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And that's where we see this word used. Okay? So, it's the idea of evil. Let's get to the next one.

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We're going to have a little fun with this. This is actually really the word most often used,

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I think, for evil. It is harmatera. I'm going to butcher this one.

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Sorry. But harmatera, which is actually when they talk of the doctrine of sin, they use this word to be the study of sin.

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But it means to miss the mark, to miss the mark. Corresponding to the

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Hebrew word chata, this word is used most often in the New Testament.

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It's actually used about 227 times. Now, let's look at the passage and then

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I'm going to describe something with this. But let's look at Acts 2 .38.

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Acts 2 .38. And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. That's the term there.

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Alright? We also see this in Romans 5 and verse 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world, though through one man and death through sin, and death spread to all men because all have sinned.

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So, that is the general term, the one used most often. And it means to miss the mark.

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Now, we looked at the word chata last class and some people were questioning, because I mentioned this is an archery term.

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It means to miss the mark. And people were questioning my archery abilities. People were actually saying that I took a hammer and put two arrows together and knocked them into one another or that I shot the arrows in my backyard.

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Now, I do have a target in my backyard. But just because some of you were claiming that I did it, that I forced an arrow down the center of another arrow,

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I wanted to prove that that wasn't the case. And some of you thought that I was bragging last week. That wasn't bragging.

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But this is. That's right. Those are the trophies that I have gotten for all my archery.

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I never did an archery league that I didn't get a trophy. Now, I know some of you mischievous students are going to say, no, he just grabbed the picture off of somewhere and put it up.

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He faked it. Actually, there we go. Someone just, they just posted, he faked it. I knew we'd have students like that.

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So, here you go. There's a trophy. I don't know. Can you see my name? I don't know.

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It's right there. Let me get the dust off there. So, there's one. Oh, look.

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Here's another. See? You guys think that I don't have here? Here. Here's another.

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Look at that. These are big trophies. They don't even fit on the screen. You want more? OK. You think that I made them up there.

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Look at that guy. This one was for most points won in the archery league.

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And then we had here the most improved. Got that one too. But, because you guys are thinking that those arrows were made up, you see these guys right here?

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Look at this. Got each one of those for those arrows you said I was faking.

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I didn't miss the mark. I hit those arrows. So, that is what the archery term is.

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It is to hit the target exactly where you want to hit it. Kind of like I can do with an arrow.

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And if you want to really see, I'll give you an apple. We could play William Tell. But, uh, this is the term most generally used.

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And like I said last class, you know, people often think, hey, if I miss the mark just by a little, it's not a big deal.

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But you play William Tell. Stick an apple on your head. Let me take a shot at it with my nice big broad head that's like, bores a hole like that big.

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And then we'll see if you want to keep that apple on your head. We'll see how trusting you are. Because, see, if I miss just by a little, it's not a good thing, is it?

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No. Missing by a little is not good. So, okay, enough bragging.

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We'll go on. So, the, oh, someone is asking me to bring the, really?

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We're going to be going to a compelled conference later in March. And someone's asking me to bring the trophies to compelled.

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I guess they're not believing me. Okay. I guess they're not believing that they're really mine and they want to see them.

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Okay. Maybe I'll do that. We'll see. We'll find out who that is that's asking so I know who to show them to.

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All right. So, now I will mention if you want to come and meet, actually meeting me is not that thrilling.

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But if you come to compelled, you get to meet my wife. That's cool. But, so, we'll be, you can go to,

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I forget, I forget the website, but you can always go to, you can go to heartsforthelost .com,

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heartsforthelost .com, and you can find out about their compelled conference. Or you can go to strivingforeternity .org,

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like right down there, look up the events and find out more there. So, where were we?

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Okay. So, adica is the next term, which is the opposite of righteousness.

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So, if you think righteousness, this is the opposite. All right. So, your blank there is the opposite of righteousness.

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This is used in reference to unrighteousness of any kind. It refers to the unsaved.

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It refers to money. It refers to actions, things like that. So, let's take a look at Romans 118.

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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against, what's that?

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Oh, all unrighteousness and godliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

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That is the reality of what we said earlier. We all know the truth. We all know God's Word. And this is now we see that we suppress that truth, that knowledge we know to be true, we suppress it, and that is this term here.

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It's unrighteousness. It's the opposite of being righteous. Next is omnimos, which is the opposite of lawful.

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Opposite of lawful. Often translated iniquity, the term describes sin as lawlessness.

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Describes it as lawlessness, being without law. Okay, let's take a look at Matthew 13 and verse 41.

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And it says here, the Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers.

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That's this idea of lawbreakers, lawlessness. Okay, and so that's the idea of the opposite of lawful is lawlessness.

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Parabates is the next one, and that is to transgress against.

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Your blank there is to transgress against. And the significance of this term is that this term usually is associated with specific violations of the law, some specific violations of the law.

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So let's look at Galatians 319. Why then the law?

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It was added because of the transgressions, that's the term, until the offspring could come to whom the promise had been made.

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And it was put in place through the angels by the intermediary. So this is the idea that we have transgressed or gone over the law.

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Okay, violated it. This is what you get when you've went over that speeding limit by one mile per hour.

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You transgressed the law. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the police officer is going to give you a 10 mile per hour leeway.

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He's going to show mercy, and after you go over 10 miles, then he's going to give you a ticket. Doesn't mean you can go up to 10 miles. It means you go up to a speed limit.

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Or if you're like me, you drive your family nuts and stay like five to 10 miles under the speed limit and take forever to get somewhere.

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Yeah. But I don't have to worry looking in my back window when the police come.

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And when I drive past the police officer, I'm like, oh, I see red and blue lights in my back window.

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I'm not worried. Just saying. All right. So next one is plano.

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Plano is to be deceiving. To be deceiving. This can include either deceiving others or deceiving oneself.

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And that's something that we have to be aware of, is that we can deceive even ourselves. Let's take a look at Matthew 24 in verses 5 and 6, where it says,

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For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray.

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And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place.

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But the end is not yet. Let's take a look at one more. First John 1 .8.

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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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So the idea there is that we can deceive even ourselves. And that's this idea here. Deceiving others or deceiving ourselves.

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We can convince ourselves that wrong is right by doing it over and over again. Self -deception is really hard because by definition, self -deception means you can't recognize it in yourself.

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Others have to tell you about it. And so this is a good thing to ask people.

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If they start saying to you, hey buddy, you're not seeing some sin in your life. Don't justify it and go, oh no, you're wrong.

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You may be deceived. Pride is going to be deceptive. Pride is going to tell you you're right, even when you're wrong.

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Let's look at the last two here. Parapatama, which is to fall away.

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To fall away. That's your blank there. To fall away. Sin is a deliberate falling away from truth.

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A deliberate falling away from truth. And Galatians 6 .1 is going to tell us about that.

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Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself, you be tempted. Okay, so that's the idea.

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To be tempted. So the thing here is if you're caught in any transgression, to fall away.

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But you know what's interesting about that passage? How does it say that we should approach someone? A gentleness, a spirit of gentleness.

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You know, I don't know how many times I've been corrected by people and my gut reaction is to blow it off only because of the way someone approached it.

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It wasn't with gentleness. It was with anger or, you know, I mean, they may be completely right, but they came about it a wrong way.

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And sometimes people, really what it is, is they're projecting what they see in themselves on other people.

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And they come to you and they see something in you, but really it's what they think, you know, with how they think.

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They're really revealing their own thinking. And so in cases like that, you see it when they come and start accusing you of things and they have got like no love in their heart for you.

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I mean, they just want to pound you. That's not gentle. We want to show when we do have to go correct, to correct someone, when we do have to bear someone's burdens with them, we want to do it in gentleness.

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All right? And keeping, and that's why it says, throw that up there again because it's good to go.

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What does it say at the end? Keep watch on yourself, least you be tempted. What can you be tempted with?

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You could be tempted at being prideful that this guy is wrong and I'm right, or I'm more spiritual because they've fallen in this sin.

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It could be a lot of things. Let's take a look at one more. Hypocris, which maybe sounds familiar to something, but it is to pretend or to be an actor.

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To pretend or to be an actor. We get an English word from this, hypocrite.

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The significance of this word is used in a deceitful nature of sin, being a false teacher.

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Let's take a look at an example of that in 1 Timothy 4 .2. We see there, though the insincerity of liars whose consciousness is seared, and so their insincerity is seen.

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So what you have there, they're a hypocrite. This term actually is an interesting term.

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The word for hypocrite is the idea of being an actor. We get a term that some people know as two -faced.

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That comes from this word because what they would do is they'd have a mask. You'd have one actor that would play two different roles and they'd hold up a mask.

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So they'd put a mask on and they'd turn and put another mask on. So they're pretending to be one character and then they're pretending to be another character in a play.

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That is where we get this term two -faced. In other words, they have two faces, two masks, and you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

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In other words, you're pretending to be something you're not. You're being a hypocrite.

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That's this word, pretending to be someone you're not. Now, I'll say this because, you know, this is something that you hear a lot.

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People say, well, I don't go to church because it's filled with hypocrites. Actually, no. Church is filled with a bunch of people that say, we are sinners saved by grace.

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You know where the hypocrites are? They're at work and they're at the malls and they're at the ballgames and they're in the parks because those are the people that say,

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I'm a really good person when they're not. That's the hypocrite, not the church.

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Church is filled with people that say they're bad people, okay? It's all those other places.

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So, if you don't want to go, I did this with someone I used to know and she says, well,

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I would never go to church because I had a bunch of hypocrites. And she used to give me news articles of anytime there was, you know, some pastor that, you know, embezzled money or whatever, you know, whatever it was, anything that made the church look bad, she'd give me the news article.

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And I said, you know, if you really don't like hypocrites, she's like, I don't. I said, you should stop going to the mall, stop going to work, stop going to work, stop going to all these places where people like you say you're good when you break

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God's law. She didn't like that. But she did stop cutting out articles and sending them to me.

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I will say that. But the term here is hypocrite, where we get hypocrite from.

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So, what you see from this is we have here an idea or a picture of what sin is in an identity.

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Sin is going to be seen as something evil, as wrong, as unlawful, as hypocritical.

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It's not something that's good, something to be avoided. Now, next lesson, what we're going to do is we're going to look at the initiation of sin.

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When did sin enter the universe? How did sin enter the universe? Someone asked me that this past week. How did sin enter the universe?

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Did God cause it? Think about it. Did God bring sin into the universe?

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Is God sovereign? You see how as we start going through more and more of these lessons, you see how they start to interplay with one another.

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We're going to talk about that next lesson. If you have any questions about anything that we went over, you can email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org.

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Somebody, maybe even me, will respond to you. If it's a really, really, really good answer, it probably wasn't me that responded.

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If it sounds really dumb, yeah, it was probably mine. But you can email us and we will get in touch with you and answer your question to the best of our ability.

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Do you want to ask for prayer? I was on a radio program this past week, as some of you knew. I mentioned it last time, but we're talking about a church called the

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Church of Wells, which is a new, I would say cult. The discussion was, was it a cult?

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And some people didn't feel they could say it was. But I've been getting a lot of, ever since being on that show last night,

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I've been getting emails and people have been contacting me about different family members that are trapped in that cult that they've been trying to reach out to.

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So, be praying for those people. Now, one of the things that we always do, this may be a surprise to some and not a surprise to most of you who are regular attenders of our classes, but this is the period where we try to get you to encourage other people because, quite frankly, we all need encouragement.

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And it's really easy to encourage those people who everyone wants to be around. But, you know, we need to encourage people that we don't even know that well, but we need to get to know.

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And so, I want to ask you guys to encourage someone that you may not know, I happen to know, and want to ask you to encourage

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Brother Andy Smeltzer. Andy came out here with me when we went out to the

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U .S. Open for an outreach out there. Really, what we're doing was we're kind of scouting out

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New York and prep for the Super Bowl outreach. And that's where I really got to spend a lot of time with him. He came, he stayed in my home, and we were able to spend some time together.

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And it was at that time I really got to know Andy. He was just, you know, really a guy that's desiring to be putting it all out there for the

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Lord. He is giving up his work and, well,

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I mean his work actually is he's supported to do evangelism full -time. He travels around.

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I mean, I got to, he's on the West Coast, but he's just a guy that really just, really has a heart just to serve

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Christ, get to know Him better, doesn't really want to deal with, you know, some people that love to get into all the debates and things like that.

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He's not that kind of guy. He's a guy that just says, hey, let's get together, let's study the Scriptures, let's hit the street.

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Let's take what we learn and hit the street. And it's just, it's neat to be around a guy like him because he's just, he's an encouragement to me.

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And if you get to know him, he'll be an encouragement to you. I know if you're part of our Striving for Eternity group, he was just added tonight because we made sure he was in that group so that you can get to know him through there.

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You can tag him and post if you want to encourage him publicly. And if there's things you know about him that you want to encourage him publicly, it's an encouragement to all the rest of us to get to know something about him as well.

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But if you want to encourage him privately, I don't know what may be going on. Maybe there's things going on in his life where he actually needs the encouragement this week.

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Don't know. But just wanted to encourage you guys to encourage him because that's something that we need to be doing.

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And, you know, there's times where we need to just have brothers and sisters come around and say, hey, how's everything going this week?

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What can I be praying for you for this week? And if you don't know what to, how to encourage, you know,

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Andy, then ask him, hey, what can I be praying for you for this week? What's going on? Is there any way I can be an encouragement to you?

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I'm encouraged by the way some of you guys have been encouraging other people. I was really excited when

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I saw some people that were just like, hey, I want to just send a small gift to different people that, you know, on Facebook just to be an encouragement just randomly.

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And I was like, wow, you know what? It's really neat when people do that. And we don't do enough of that.

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But we as Christians should be doing that more than any others, shouldn't we? Yeah. So next week, we'll look at the initiation of sin.

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We'll look at where did it come from? Did God bring it into the world?

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Did He not? It'll be a fun discussion. Of course, it'll be a one -way discussion. Unless, of course, you're in the chat room and then someone will be over there.

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I'll be watching it. Maybe I'll get to hear what's going on. But until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.