Transcript

If you would, take one of these outlines that might be helpful as we move along. I want to do something of a preamble to our topic, “The Doctrine of Sin.” As I was just doing reading and preparing for the conference, I began to take down notes that I really didn’t have a place to do this overview and when Brother David Miller called and said he couldn’t be here, I thought, “That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna do this overview, brief exhortation, if you will, on the doctrine of sin,” and hopefully this forms somethings of a foundation and the other brothers will come and give more intensive expositions of certain areas that the Scripture talks about. But I wonder, do any of you know in your seminary training, those of you who have had some of that, are you aware, have you ever seen an elective, a class on the doctrine of sin? A whole class? A whole elective? You have? Okay, where was it? Mid America’s got one on the doctrine of sin? They need one on the doctrine of sin, by the way. Make sure you tell Tim Seal I said that when you go back up there. Anybody else? I didn’t, there wasn’t one when I was there and I wasn’t aware of one. Brother Frank, you just came back from Southern, got your degree there, do they have one on that elective as far as you know, the doctrine of sin, a class? As far as you know they don’t. Anyway, it’s one of those things that I don’t know, I’ve never thought about just studying the doctrine of sin and the Bible has so very much to say about it and we must, as faithful Bible preachers and Gospel preachers, say much about it.

Let me, I’m not going to read the text. I’ll be a lot of places. You’re familiar with Genesis 3 and the story of original sin and let me say a couple of things. 1. If you get the early chapters of Genesis wrong, you get everything wrong. Everything wrong and no wonder liberals have attacked this part of the Scriptures concerning its authority and its historicity. It’s just unbelievable how continual that attack is so we’ll camp there first. On your outline you’ll see I. Four presuppositions concerning Original Sin. 1. or a: the original perfection of man. You say, well, we kind of know that but do we really know it in our preaching? Man was created perfect by God to fulfill that purpose for which God made him. Listen, man was not originally sinful. I think sometimes, I think I’m guilty of perhaps falling into theology idolatry where we have our systems of theology which need a depraved and fallen sinner so God might glorify himself through showing his grace and love to save those kind of sinners. So if we’re not careful, we can downplay the seriousness of the corruption and the invasion of sin into the human race as if God kind of needed that anyway. Now, I know you don’t believe that but sometimes in our preaching we can fall into that without maybe thinking about it. Sin is not an original part of the essence of humanness. I want that to sink in: sin is not a part of the original essential humanness of mankind.

2. or b.: the pre-Adamic fall of Satan. We know that Satan came into the garden. He tempts Eve who then, of course, tempts Adam and sin enters the human race. I do hold to our guilt in Adam and Brother Miller was going to preach on that so you’ll not hear a sermon on that this session but I do hold to that.

C. Conditional prosperity given to man. God said to man in Genesis 2:17, ” but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” And in my studies, I lean toward this conclusion that many scholars that I think are trustworthy hold that this was a probationary period. Man is put in the garden and there is a probation, as such, and if man is successful, he would at once have inherited eternal life and the victory would have been won and nothing would have had the possibility of separating God from his child. But, of course, man failed. He didn’t fulfill the obligation that God had placed upon him.

Next, D: man chose to sin. As we know that Adam, or rather Satan comes to Eve in Genesis 3:4 and says, “Eve, you surely shall not die. God said not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and has God indeed said that?” Then Satan comes along and says, “And if you do eat of it, you surely shall not die,” tempting her with unbelief and that’s what happens always first; first there is unbelief, a questioning of the word of God. Then following unbelief comes sinful ambition and sinful pride, Genesis 3:6: she saw that the tree was good for food; she saw that it was a delight to the eyes; she saw that it was desirable to make one wise.

Now, I know there’s a lot, let me go ahead and say this at this point, the doctrine of sin and particularly in the Old Testament is complex and it is, to a degree, difficult. There are many things we can understand but there’s a lot there and I’m going to miss a lot of stuff and skim over a lot of things because a whole conference wouldn’t allow a thorough teaching on all of it and certainly one session does not, so if I miss your favorite thing, I’m sorry but we’ll just try to give an overview and pick the things that I felt were important and essential for this preamble and understand that there’s just so much that we can’t get to.

Now, when man chose to sin, there were several distinct consequences and I’ve arranged these into seven things. I don’t think these are on your sheet. If you want these, you’ll have to write these in. Seven distinct consequences.

1. Bondage to Satan. In Adam and Eve’s sin and rebellion, in there unbelief against God’s command, they in effect exalted themselves against God and aligned themselves to Satan. Man is not just a little fallen away. Man is not just slightly delineated from God. Man has become aligned with Satan and aligned against God. Does this come out in your preaching? Do you charge men with passion and conviction about their woeful, desperately depraved state before a holy God?

2. Connected to this one: man became the enemies of God. Genesis 3:24, “So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” Probably a lot of things we could say here but whatever else this text means, it means God and man are now at enmity; the sword, the flame all speak of judgment and the Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, and that’s where men now finds himself as the enemy of God. Before the sin, man knew only good. Now man knows evil and experientially so, and from this point onward, good is only a distant memory in his mind. You’ve got to get that. He’s not mostly evil and a little good. No, good is gone. He became evil. He knew good, now that’s over. Good to him now is but a distant memory.

3. In the consequences and it has several sub points, I don’t think they’re on your outline either but all of man’s relationships are affected. All of man’s relationships are now corrupted by this sin and evil that he has become and that he knows. The relationship with himself has been adversely affected. It’s interesting in the text how that man all of a sudden is aware that he is naked and he is ashamed. Interesting. His innocence is lost. He lost the self beauty and wholesomeness that he knew before and now he knows self- loathing and embarrassment. All of this stuff we say, why do you think it is that there is all that goes on in the realms of culture today about self-worth and self-esteem? It never ends. It’s all because of sin. We are fallen. Man’s at odds with himself. Corruption has entered the picture, if you will, and man’s view of himself is now affected. God told man that, “You’re going to live by the sweat of your brow and distress. You’re going to work to provide for yourselves,” and to the woman he says, “In distress you will now have childbirth.”

Another relationship affected, of course, the enmity between man and woman. He says to the woman in verse 16 of chapter 3, “Your desire will be for your husband and yet he will rule over you.” A lot could be said there. I know there are differing views of interpretation but whatever it means, because of the fall into sin, the beautiful blessed complementing harmony God intended has been corrupted. It has been corrupted.

Man has an averse relationship now with the environment. The environment is affected because of man’s sin. Genesis 3:17, “Cursed is the ground because of you.” So man now works not in the perfections and blessings of the original Eden, he now has to provide his sustenance by toil and by the sweat of his brow. Everything has gone averse. Everything is out of joint.

Then, of course, his relationship with his fellow man is greatly affected. Violence and wickedness follow the sin of Adam. Lamech in Genesis 4:23 says, it’s a piercing statement, “For I have killed a man for wounding me and a boy for striking me.” And that kind of thing begins to accelerate as the pages of history unfold.

So, as man’s relationships are affected, he’s become the enemy of God, he’s now in bondage to Satan, a fourth thing that I would say under these consequences would be physical death. Man, of course, was created to be eternal but now he’s subject to the laws of corruption and of death. He will now return to his constituent element. God says, “To the dust you will return.” That needs to grab you. Man made in the image of God will now go to dust. We’ve got to fill our pulpits with a fiery passion that men grasp the greatness of the fallenness of their souls so they might glory in the greatness of the sufficiency of their Savior. Dust. You were made an eternal being, a spiritual nature, a soul unlike the animal kingdom or like the plant kingdom that don’t have souls, but you have fallen to return to the dust God tells Adam in Genesis 3. Physical death.

Fifth of the seven: certain judgment. Time unfolds. Genesis 6 through 9 with a global flood, God declares the universality of man’s sin and wickedness and God declares emphatically his holy retaliation against sin. Brothers and sisters, God is against sin so God is against sinners. I’m even careful and I know you may say it as a figure of speech and I don’t mean just categorically condemn this in a sense, but God doesn’t just hate the sin and love the sinner. Sinners will be in hell, not just their sin, and the problem is we’ve devalued, if you will, deemphasized the holiness of God and you need both of these. On Sunday morning, I’m going to preach on the holiness of God because I think it balances where we are coming from this week. So when God sends this global flood, he makes a great statement about how he feels about man’s sin.

6. Some controversy here but I love what this one, Ian Campbell, who I used a lot in preparing this outline, what he said about Genesis 6:2, “that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.” Now, a lot of different interpretations here. I respect yours, I just don’t want to hear about it during the conference. You can talk about it among yourselves and disprove me, I won’t be affected. I’m fine with that. But I don’t have time to talk to you about it today, but I like what Ian Campbell says. He says what jumps out here is that this verse speaks of sin’s unremitting nature. This speaks that sin knows no bounds so what he’s saying here is this verse shows that the lines of separation between man and perverse Satanic spirits are now removed. There is now the allowance of these vile and wicked spirits to intermingle with and become part of the reality of mankind. The lines of demarcation between the two are blurred. Man has now fallen to the lowest possible level, wicked and vile perversions. I don’t think any of us would deny that when a culture like ours begins to glory in the sin of sodomy, brother, I’m not talking about tolerating it, I’m talking about celebrating it, that is a Satanic influence. There was a time when God would not allow that to happen. Because of man’s sin, the door is opened for the vile perversions that come along with Satanic influence, spiritual Satanic influence in the human race.

7. A governing provision. Grace always begins to pop out and in grace, God gives a provision whereby there is some restraint and some governance over the behavior of fallen man so that he doesn’t completely consume himself. In Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.” Then, of course, we have Romans 13 that elaborates a little further on the fact that God gave the governing authorities so that there might be the blessing of good and the punishing of evil on the earth and we should honor and respect those governing authorities.

And just as a side note, I don’t know where you are on it, I don’t mean to chase this rabbit very far but when we are dealing with things like the immigration issue, good brothers can be on different sides of the fence but the government does have a biblical obligation to protect its people and so we have to give some respect to that view. In this present debate with Donald Trump and the Pope, is this not a carnival that we are seeing in this world when Donald Trump and the Pope are bickering back and forth? They’re both going the same place, as far as I can tell, so they might as well get used to each other. But I just mean that I don’t see the fruits, biblical fruits of regeneration in either one of their lives. I forgot where I was going. Let me go on to my next point. I really did, I totally forgot.

But as we look at these consequences, I want to conclude this section with this thought: a Victor is promised. A Victor is promised. Genesis 3:15, God speaking to Satan about his evil of tempting man and woman and God says to Satan, “I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” Whatever else this teaches, it teaches that a Victor from the woman’s seed will bring a complete reversal of Satan’s coup. The ultimate defeat of the serpent is clearly announced and so here we have in this whole statement on Original Sin, the true story of true individuals who truly fell into sin. We have, sin had a beginning point, God didn’t make man sinful, and sin is not an original part of the human condition, nor is sin a permanent part of the human condition. Sin had a beginning and sin will have an end so be careful in our preaching that we preach it as, “Oh, we’re just all human.” Not in the true biblical sense. We’re all fallen, warped, sinful, corrupt humans. It’s not equal to humanity to be sinful, not in the original intent and that, as a matter of fact, God’s viewpoint should be our viewpoint.

Alright, number 2, II. that’s something of a foundation from Genesis 3, now a jet overview of the balance of biblical teaching concerning sin, so I want to cover the whole rest of what the Bible says about sin in 10 minutes. That’s why I call it a jet overview. Under the law, the law would teach us that sin is a failure to measure up. God gave 10 Commandments to Israel, speaking of sin’s multiformity, that is sin dresses itself in many garbs. The 10 Commandments teach us that God has rule over every area of life and every area of life is affected by sin. It teaches us of the universality of sin and the invasiveness of sin. Let’s remind ourselves over and over again that God gave the laws personally. They are objective and they are absolute. Nothing about virtue, nothing about sin, nothing about right, nothing about wrong, nothing about evil, is ever subjective, it comes from the definition of a holy personal objective Being who is sovereign and Almighty and absolute and his name is God. He personally gave these things and when man breaks God’s commandments, man is guilty, the law will teach us. He has culpability. He has blameworthiness. He deserves his guilt. Preach it that way. Don’t preach it like, “Well, something’s come upon you. It came from father Adam. It’s just what you are.” No, you are culpable. You are blameworthy. Preach it that way. But wonderfully under the law, there is the sacrificial system. So God in his grace begins to give us the types of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and he gives a system whereby sin and guilt can be dealt with.

Under the prophets, the prophets build off of the truth of Genesis 3 and, of course, the law given in Exodus, because of those standards, those absolutes, the prophets have something to preach to the people about and so the prophets preach to individuals and to nations based on how they stand against the foundations laid in Genesis 3 and in the law. The prophets would teach us about sin being the slighting of God’s authority; that sin is the rebelling against his absolute right to command us. Sin is also seen as suspending the covenant but not ultimately breaking the covenant due to the supremacy of God’s grace. Notice how the Gospel and grace keeps coming up over and over.

The historical narratives, the emphasis there is on sin being a violation of divine decree. Sin is a personal attack against God. And then, once again, in the historical narrative, there is a strong emphasis on the redemptive plan of God and the great power of God to forgive sin.

Then in the poetic literature, now again, there is much, much, much more that could be said but I’m just trying to hit some things that will just help maybe glean us some nuggets that will enrich the weightiness and the scriptural soundness of our preaching when we deal with sin which should be all the time. In the poetic literature, we see the personal and intimate character of sin. I mean, it just comes flying off the pages, especially in Psalms. The personal and intimate character. We see both the corrupt nature of sin and the acts of sin being deeply lamented. David speaks of his own personal wickedness both of his condition and of his behavior, so we see a strong teaching in the poetic literature on the doctrine of inborn depravity. But also, there again, there is a remedy presented, and all hope of remedy of this condition is thrown on God alone. There is a strong emphasis in the poetic writings on full and free grace.

Then we zoom over to the Gospels and in the Gospels all are sinful. Sin is viewed as gravely serious and Jesus has all authority and all power to forgive sin and the means of his forgiveness is based on his vicarious and substitutionary death. Jesus is the fulfillment of all that is promised about the cure or remedy for sin that we saw in all the Old Testament text. And also the Gospels teach us that forgiveness and overcoming sin is a accomplished in people’s lives here and now. Did you hear that? It’s accomplished here and now. You don’t just get on the course and hope one day when you see St. Peter that it’s all going to be worked out. The Gospel says, no, you can have overcoming victory and forgiveness now, of course, through faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul’s writings, Paul would tell us sin is a debt that you cannot pay. Paul tells us sin is a deviation from the divine standard. The law identifies the transgression, Paul would say, but the law cannot remove sin, curb sin or remedy sin’s consequences. Paul would teach us sin is both what we are internally and what we do externally. Paul calls sin a taskmaster and Paul says sin brings God’s wrath. And, of course, wonderfully more so probably than any other single biblical author, he shows us that sin is overcome through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and that alone.

In the rest of the New Testament, Hebrews,, for example, Christ is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament types. Christ is better than the Old Testament religion of the Jews, and he has once for all as the one true sacrifice and the one true great high priest, redeemed God’s people and in the New American Standard translation, he has made the old covenant and the old system obsolete. Hebrews is about the final cure from sin and all of its consequences through the mighty power of Jesus Christ.

James, a local church pastor, he shows the connection of the practical outworking of how sin occurs. He said, “There is lust in your heart, it gives birth to sin and then sin produces death.” He tells us about a personal devil, and James tells us that our sin is willful and it’s deliberate. It’s not due to ignorance, but due to contempt. We…why do people not come to Christ? One simple reason, they love sin. They love sin. Tell them they do. Preach the riches of the truth of the doctrine of sin or you cannot rightfully preach the Gospel, and if you’ll get something of a systematic grasp of this doctrine, it will enrich all of your specific expositions and, I think, give them more power.

Peter’s writings, Peter gives us some of the eschatological implications for sin and one of the things Peter talks about is how the sins of unbelievers are going to be laid bare and exposed in the day of reckoning.

In John’s writing, he tells us as sinners we prove ourselves to be the devil’s children. He talks about the sin of false teachers and false teaching. He talks to us about how to overcome sin but, as all the New Testament, he says when you do sin there is a provision through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Then, of course, Revelation gives us the clearest eschatology of sin. Revelation sees sin as a power that comes ultimately from Satan through people and it affects and troubles the church in various ways but Christ will return in wrath to punish sin and bring final absolute judgment on sin and sinners and, of course, including Satan, and then he will establish the eternal state where sin is banished and where righteousness dwells.

So that’s the two points that I want to give you and then I want to conclude, III. with confronting and correcting and it should say, a present error concerning the doctrine of sin. There is a lot of error, I suppose you could talk about, but a present error. And when I say a present one, actually this thing has tentacles that probably goes back 150 years, probably more than 150 years. I’m not a great theologian or a great historian though I like to read and study these things, but there is an insidious error that just keeps lingering around and it wells up in many different ways.

What is my time like, Brother Steve? 15 minutes? Alright, I’d rather leave a little than take too much.

Classic liberals believe that truth arrived on the scene when they exercised their “scientific observation skills” on the study of religion. So we’re going to study religion and just find out where everything came from. How did religion evolve? And in studying ancient peoples, liberals discover that ancient tribes, generally speaking, viewed sin as that which led to the harm and not the well-being of the tribe. So sin is that which in man, at least in man’s subjective opinion, is that which he deems not best for society. Sin is that which is antisocial behavior. So they would basically say, liberal pastors and theologians today coming from that foundation, would say that the Bible more or less is really just saying that, that sin is when something is not good for the individual or not good for the society at whole. Now, we reject that notion completely. While it is true sin is bad for individuals and bad for society, that’s not where you start with sin. You start with sin with God who defines what it is. Sin is never defined subjectively, it’s always defined objectively. You look to the objective truth of God and what he has revealed in his word to figure it out. Psalm 51:4, for example, “Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You,” God, “are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge.” So man may subjectively come up with untold numbers of things where, “This is best for everybody,” and they look to God and God says, “I don’t feel that way. That’s not what I think about it.” Then, God, what you think is right and all of our presuppositions and subjective conclusions are wrong.

Altruism is something that I think keeps coming out in our political system and in our pulpits. Altruism says that we should have self-denial for the betterment of the whole. I mean, we’ve got a man running for office in our country who may get, be the Democratic nominee who is an unabashed socialist and that’s just really an extension of altruism. “We’re going to figure out what’s best for everybody and we’re going to ask those people, especially those wicked wealthy people, they’ve got to deny their stuff and their rights so we can make it best for everybody.” Here’s what happens, and if you’re against that, then obviously you’re sinning. That’s where this thing goes. If you’re against what helps and is best for everybody so that everybody can be equal and everybody can have a fair share, then you must be sinful.

Utilitarianism, first kin, first cousin to altruism, says that virtue is when we are useful to ourselves and to society, so conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. So this means you’re sinning when you’re not spending your energies on conduct that leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. I don’t know about you but I’m hearing this in pulpits. “Let’s all do what makes us most happy.” What actually happens is self-appointed liberal elitists tell us what is best for us and for everybody else. They become really the final authority in this thing, men do. Of course, this whole approach turns the doctrine of sin upside down. For example, if the elites deem that, “The best we can discern, it’s best for most people and it’s best for the society, that women should be allowed to legally kill their unborn children, then that’s what we’ll do.” And if you try to deny that thing that’s best for them and best for society in general, then you are a sinner. You’re sexist. You’re judgmental. You’re robbing her of her rights. You’re keeping her from having an equal playing field with men who don’t have to carry babies.

Euthanasia, the killing of the elderly or the sick and infirm, they look at it with no objective standard to look to, “Well, we think that this could be best for everybody,” so it becomes okay. Homosexuality, gay marriage, this seems to be the right thing for the society and so what you have and I believe Francis Schaeffer was the first one ever who I heard wrote this, you have sociological law; you have laws that just change a society, changes in the whims, change here and there and yonder.

But true Christianity comes from an entirely different perspective. We look to the absolute objective truth of God’s word and not the subjective, ever-changing whims of men. For us, morality is not the accumulated self-interest of society and sin is not merely conduct that is opposed to such self-interest. Did you get that? For us, righteousness is something quite distinct from happiness. What’s virtue and right may not make you happy, at least on the short term. For us, sin is quite distinct from that which hinders happiness. We’ve just killed Joel Osteen’s whole approach to preaching. I mean, have we not? But here’s what troubles me, I mean, if you’ve got half a brain and a little understanding of the Scriptures, you know Joel is off, but there is a lot of so-called conservative evangelical pulpits that are all over this. If you really get down, and I think there’s some good brothers who have been kind of drifted into it and they need to be shocked back out of it. You preach the truth of the word of God with God being the only authority on everything including the nature of man, the fallenness of man, and the sinfulness of man, and the absolute transcended holiness of God.

So what we need to do, well, let me give you this quote. It wasn’t just a little while after the Supreme Court under their altruistic, utilitarian, sociological, societal law view of things made gay marriage legal and this dear African American pastor said, he just said it with such conviction and clarity, he said, “It may be legal but it’s not righteous. It may be legal but it’s not holy.” What is he saying? There is someone else we should have consulted with other than the Supreme Court. Brothers, don’t drift. I’m telling you, don’t drift a centimeter in this direction in your preaching. If you want your church to be filled with loving, humbled, dedicated and joyous servants of Christ, they must understand the nature and the wealth and the weight of the doctrine of sin so they will hold to with great joy the greatness of their salvation and their Savior.

In conclusion, we understand the predominant word in the Old Testament, chata for sin means, it comes from the world of archery, missing the mark; hamartia, the dominant, predominate rather, word for sin in the New Testament comes from the world of archery, missing the mark, which means we all deviate from God’s standard, the standard of an objective, personal, holy God. He said, “I made you to be this way. You’ve all fallen short.” And then one little simple summary statement: sin is the lack of conformity or the transgression of the law of God and, of course, it is so vividly illustrated for us in Genesis 3. And I just, I really try to labor in my preaching to make my people feel how they fall short of this holy transcendent God. I fall short in doing it but I strive to do it.

When I picked up Art yesterday, I was going to do something nice, I was going to take him to lunch and try to be a blessing to my brother, so I picked Brother Art up and left the hotel and went to downtown Florence and parallel parked the car and went to a restaurant and had lunch. We had good fellowship. I got back out to my car and got in the car, my truck rather, began pulling my truck out and there was a white thing on my windshield wiper, a little white piece of paper, and I thought, “Art, I’ve gotten a ticket.” And it’s a five dollar ticket, a five dollar fee. Now, I wasn’t broken with weeping and tears that I must go kneel before the City Council of Florence and repent of my sin and pay the five dollars, but about 3 o’clock this morning I woke up wrestling with the reality that even as minor a thing as a five dollar parking ticket, I just keep falling short. I just fall short. I didn’t mean to, I just didn’t think about it. But, you see, we are made of fallen stuff. We don’t think about a lot of things and then we do think about a lot of things we shouldn’t think about, and we don’t do a lot of things we ought to do and then we do a lot of things we should not do. We just keep on falling short. I can’t even be right with the parking spot. It is humorous but in a way, folks, it’s weighty. It’s weighty. We just fall short and your people must feel that. Why do you think Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn”? Your people are only going to have a righteous mourning of sin if you preach and thunder the truth about it. Now, that’s always balanced with, “Rejoice in the Lord always and, again, I say rejoice.” Those go together hand-in-hand. Be balanced.

Lastly, let’s continue to strive that this is all for the glory of God. You see, in sinning, we deny the wisdom of God when we sin. We say, “God, I’m wiser than you. I know better than you.” We deny the goodness of God, “God, this isn’t best for me. You’re not thinking. You’re not good. You’re not thinking of what’s best for me.” We deny the power of God, we basically are saying, “God, we don’t have the power to not sin,” and we’re saying, “God, we don’t believe you have the power to make this thing you’re asking me to do that seems unpleasant work out for my good,” which he has promised to do, by the way. We deny the love of God because in denying his wisdom and goodness and power, we’re basically saying, “You don’t love us.” We deny the pleasures of God because when we sin we’re saying, “We choose the pleasures of sin and not the pleasures of God.” Something else you must preach strongly to your people is how pleasurable God is. And in all of this, by preventing the display of God’s wisdom and goodness and power and love and pleasures in our life, we keep God from getting the glory through our lives that he deserves and through our churches he deserves and that’s what it’s all about, the glory of God. But God has come to the rescue of his own glory and through the Gospel of his Son has rescued us from our sin and his own glory from being lost and through the person and work of Jesus Christ, we are redeemed and he is somehow in providence even more glorified. His greatest glory is seen in his redeeming work of sinners. Hallelujah. What a Savior.

Let’s pray together.