Sermon
The Origin Of Sin
August 11-12, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

We're studying together the prayer that David prayed, Psalm 51. In your pew Bible it's page 388. It is a mountain of theology, and we'll probably spend the rest of the month in this great prayer. But in the top of our Bibles as the Psalm begins it says, a Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone to Bathsheba. You remember he had sinned, despicably, the sin of adultery. Nathan the prophet confronts him, David confesses, and here's his prayer:

Have mercy upon me, 0 God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight--that you may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 0 God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it: You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, and a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise. Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion; build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering; then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.

Now the last number of weeks we've been considering this prayer and we're going to take just a few moments to work from our original notes. There are green notes in your bulletin, but if you don't have the notes from last week just raise your hand and the ushers will pass them to you. We're only going to read just a couple of paragraphs from our original notes. I'd like for you to go with me in those notes to page 10. We have observed that in this prayer David commences by saying, have mercy upon me, 0 God. He doesn't ask for justice. He needs mercy. He admits his sin, my transgressions, he said, and we've learned that transgression is a deliberate act against a known law; and thus, as Christians when we purposely, stubbornly violate the law of God that's called a transgression. We transgress the law.

Last Sunday we went to the verse which says I acknowledge my sin because it's always before me, and we came to the conclusion that to conceal sin is foolishness--just ask those who try. Confession always, in most cases, brings mercy and forgiveness. The wise person will quickly confess their transgression. David said, I acknowledge, I confess my transgression. Now today I want to move on and on page 10 down just a few lines, I note that verse 5 of our Psalm reads: "Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me." Now again, the reason for spending so much time in this Psalm is David has a deep understanding of the problem of sin, and he understands the joy of being forgiven. And thus, this particular prayer is so intense with great theology.

Now David is not trying to pass the blame of his sin onto his mother. This is not his point. In our day there is great effort made always to blame something else or someone else for our wrongdoing. It's either our upbringing or our parents or somebody else made me do it. But that's not what David is saying here. He is simply confirming the fact that all men are born sinners. The Bible says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And thus in this phrase David is admitting to a fact. He's simply saying, God, I'm not using this matter of sin and the fact that I was born a sinner to excuse my sin, but I'm acknowledging that I was born in sin, and that being born in sin I came into this world polluted.

Paul writes in Romans 3:9, he says, "What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Ladies and gentlemen here is the description of all of us as sinners.

David is just confirming his sinful nature and he's acknowledging that his birth into this world brought him in a sinner with a sinful nature. And this is what he is saying, the fountain of my life is polluted as well as all of its streams. My birth tendencies are out of the square of equity. I naturally lean to the forbidden things. Mine is a constitutional disease, rendering my very person obnoxious to God's wrath. In sin my mother conceived me. And David goes back to the earliest moment of his being, not to traduce his mother, but to acknowledge the deep tap-roots of his sin. David's mother was the Lord's handmaid, he was born in chaste wedlock, of a good father, and he himself "the man after God's own heart," and yet his nature was as fallen as that of any other son of Adam and there only needed the occasion for the manifesting of that sad fact.

Now David says something deeply important, God, I sin because I'm a sinner. Now I want you to pick up your new notes, and what I decided to do today is to take our sermon time and have a teaching. I want you to put on your thinking cap because we're going to deal in some of the most difficult areas of theology. I want to talk about where did sin come from. Now in our lesson today I've started this page by saying--The problem of the origin of the evil that is in the world has always been considered as one of the profoundest problems of philosophy and theology. I said that because it's true.

One of the great quandaries of human thought, you go back into the philosophies of the ancients, you go into the works of the theologians, you ask the question, where did this sin come from? And here's the shocking first answer...it seems like a came from heaven. Now that really is startling because we learned in the book of Revelation there is no sin in heaven. But something happened in heaven in the cosmic past where it says Lucifer, we'll get to that, decided he wanted to take over the throne. Why did sin start in heaven? Why did sin start there? Why did rebellion start there against God? I don't know, and no theologian if they'll be honest with you has an answer. But let's take our time today and let's study what the Bible has to say about sin, and the reason why I'm doing this, because I feel that in evangelical preaching today so little is said about sin. There is that lack of appreciation for the great redemption that we enjoy, because if I do not know what I have been saved from then how can I appreciate what I have been saved to.

Last Sunday in one of our services a lovely lady came and she sat and wept through most of the service. And I observe my congregation very closely, and I observed that, after the service she came up to me and she said, Pastor, I sat here and cried today. She said, I went to my church at 9:00 this morning, and she said as I sat there I realize that very seldom is never was the Bible referred to. If someone was there searching for Christ they would not have heard the message. And she said, I began to think, months if not years have gone by and I have never heard a message on sin. We are only told how good we are, and we are never told we are sinners. And she said I sat here today crying to know that I could at least hear the word of God, and she said, Pastor, don't ever stop preaching Scriptures.

Now I know I am talking about a subject that is really not popular. We have a stream running through our evangelical pulpits that take the position and let's not offend the sinner, and we call it seeker-sensitive. And people will go to those churches month after month, year after year, and never hear the Bible teaching on the fact of sin. And I want us as a congregation, when we realize what sin has done to us and made of us, only then can we really appreciate the wonder of our redemption.

So let's start. Let's take first of all the definition of sin. It's any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, attitude, or nature. Now sin, said the old Puritan divines, is a want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God. Let's stop there. Now if sin is the transgression of, or the lack of conformity to, the law of God, what is the law of God? Well, first of all, it implies that there is a lawgiver, who is God. And that there are subjects upon whom it terminates. That's us. A positive command written in the moral constitution of man, that's our conscience. Then the power to enforce, that's God's power. The command, duty, or obligation to obey, that's my responsibility. And the sanctions for disobedience, that's the punishment and that's the penalty.

So what I'm suggesting here is that God writes upon the human fabric, called the conscience, a moral law, and even though sinners commit those laws those transgressions something inside tells them, I did it wrong--I did something wrong. They don't even have to be believers in Christ, because God has written into the very fabric of our human being, called a conscience, a moral law. Let's go on.

What's the purpose of that law? It was not given as a means whereby man might be saved. Paul says; if there had been any law given which could make alive, that is, sin has made us dead in our trespasses in sin. And he is saying if there was any law that had the power to bring us back spiritual life then we would have been saved by that law. But notice sin always has relation to God and His will or Law. Since man is hopelessly enslaved to self he cannot keep God's law and consequently neither life nor righteousness are possible by the law. What does the law do? It simply tells us how big a sinner we are.

Now sin always has relation to God and He is will or Law. Sin includes both guilt and pollution. Now I'll enlarge upon that in just a moment. The Law of God was given to intensify man's knowledge of sin, to reveal the holiness of God, and to lead the sinner to Christ. Man knows that he is a sinner by the testimony of his conscience; but by the published law of God he has an intensified knowledge of sin. What I'm saying is this, God writes His moral law deep within us in our conscience. Now He's provided for us His word, and in His word, in the Scriptures, we have a greater knowledge of what we feel inside. We understand God's attitude toward sin and what sin really is. And thus, the written law of God intensifies our knowledge of God's moral law.

Let's go on. Now if you and I could read the original languages of the Scripture which are Hebrew, the Old Testament, and Greek in the New Testament, there are eight words that are used. I haven't given you the original words, but here's the meaning of those words, and they're used to describe what sin is. This is what God says sin is. Sin is missing the mark or the aim. What's the mark? God's righteousness. We miss that. All of us did this week. Secondly, the overpassing or the transgressing of a line. That is, we did things we knew were wrong, but we stubbornly did them anyway. That's sin. Sin is the disobedience of a voice. God speaks--we disobey or ignore Him. Fourth, the falling where one should have stood upright. Fifth, the ignorance of what one ought to have known. Sixth, the diminishing of that which should have been rendered in full measure. Seventh, the non-observance of a law, and eighthly, discord in the harmonies of God's universe. Now all those words God uses in the Scriptures to describe sin.

Let's go on. There are since of omission as well as commission. Failure to do what the law of God enjoins us is as much sin as doing what is forbidden. James says: "Therefore, to him who knows to do good, and does not do it, to him it is sin." That's the sin of omission. And there's another interesting thing about this law of God. The Bible tells us that to fail in one point is to make us guilty of all. Look at what James says. "For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. For He who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law."

Go to the next page. Ignorance of the law of God does not excuse a man. That's interesting. It's what the Bible says. Luke 12:47-48, "That servant, who knew his Lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required: and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more." Now the next line is a tremendous line of theology, and I'll explain. Ignorance of the law of God lessens the penalty as to degree, but not as to duration. Now think with me just for moment. What I'm suggesting is that the criterion for sin will differ as God passes judgment upon the human race.

When I was a little boy we used to have a lot of missionaries that would come to our church and it used to bother me when those missionaries would say, hurry, we've got to get out there and save all those heathens as fast as we can or they'll burn and hell just like the rest of the sinners. Now I know that Paul said that there is written in the heart of man a knowledge of God, but I jarred when I heard that. I'll tell you why. God is a just God and He's going to deal in justice, and that Scripture tells me much knowledge will require a different kind of judgment than less knowledge. And here was my quandary: God, here I'm living in the farthest place in the world and I've never heard the name of Jesus, and I've never heard the gospel, when I stand in Your presence will my judgment be the same as the man who lived in America and across the street from his house there was the Evangelical church that preached the gospel of Christ, and he refused the gospel? Will the judgment be the same? And according to that Scripture, of whom much is given much will be required.

And I wrestled that through in my spirit and I came to this conclusion, God, the duration is the same because eternity will be the same for all. The duration is the same, but the punishment will be lesser in degree. Now you say, what is that lesser degree? I don't know. I just know God being a just and righteous God; when that man from the darkest part of our world stands before Him, God will deal with the issue in perfect justice. And I don't know what that will be, but I've come to peace about that matter. So ignorance of the law doesn't change the duration, but it will affect the way God passes sentence. Okay?

Let's go back to our notes. Man's ability to fulfill the law is due to his own part in the sin of Adam, and is not an original condition. Since the law of God expresses the holiness of God as the only standard for the creature, ability to obey cannot be the measure of obligation or the test of sin. And, the feeling of guilt is not necessary to the fact of sin. Man's moral standard may be so low and his conscience may have been so often sinned against, that he has practically no sense of sin left. The feeling of guilt is not necessary to the fact of sin in a person's life. And the reason why I say that is, we can take and violate this conscience time and time, over the years, and so lessen man's reaction to sin, the conscience level is so low, what he does he feels no guilt, and because he says I feel no guilt then I'm not sinning. That's not true. What is true...sin is sin. And I may have such a low standard of morality that I cannot make the difference, yet that doesn't change the fact that sin is sin. And we all have met people who have wrestled and mocked their conscience and ignored it, and they've gone so far where their moral level is so low they can't know the difference. They don't know the difference because they have no guilt.

Paul speaks of it as searing the conscience with a hot iron. Let's go back to our notes. Now I earlier stated that sin includes guilt as well as pollution. The one expresses its relation to justice, the other to the holiness of God. These two elements of sin are revealed in the conscience of every sinner. In so far as sin is a transgression of the law, it is guilt; in so far as it is a principle, it is pollution. Now let me explain. Always when there's a violation of a known law, attached to it is the sense of guilt. Right?

You know, the other day I transgressed. I'm going to make confession. I was down in Pacific and I was driving my car without the seat belt. And is very sharp police officer, in fact, this was his first day out and his first ticket. It took him 20 minutes to write it. (Congregation laughs) He had to keep going back to the officer's car to tell him how to fill out this line and that line, but I'll tell you I'm sitting there in the church's car (Congregation laughs) and I'm just praying that nobody comes by and sees the preacher with those flashing red lights. (Congregation laughs) I was sitting there with guilt. I knew I had transgressed the law, and that guilt...I was so glad when that moment was over and I could drive away. Got the point?

Transgression always brings the sense of guilt, and that's what sin does. Some of us have lived with that guilt and it just weighs us down. The marvelous thing about salvation--when we are forgiven--the guilt is taken away and we're set free from that guilt. But when it comes to the transgression, there's always guilt involved. When it comes to the fact of sin there's pollution.

Let's go back to our notes. Look at what that pollution has done. Isaiah paints the picture of a polluted people and a polluted nation. He says, "Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; they have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment." The picture...a polluted people sinning.

Look at what Jeremiah says: the heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt. Whose heart? Your heart and mine, no one excluded. We don't like to admit it, but it's true. Jesus said, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." Now Paul understood this problem of sin's pollution. Here's what he says in Romans, now this is a fascinating passage because some theologians say this describes Paul before he became a Christian. No it doesn't. He's not going to have a spiritual struggle before he's a Christian. There are no moral poles to have the tension. Paul is dealing with the corruption of sin. Look at what he says, "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But, now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." That's the pollution ladies and gentlemen.

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me." In other words, I want to do good but how to do it, I don't find a way to do it. "For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." It's the same confession of David, isn't it? David said, God, I sin because I'm a sinner. I'm not using that as an excuse. I know the law and I know that to violate it is wrong, but by nature I've been corrupted with sin. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to my inward man. I want to serve God. I don't think any of us get up in the morning and say, boy I'm going to go out and sin today. We don't do that as Christians, but we do sin.

Paul said I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to my inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. I was born with it. And I'll live with it, and I'll carry on a civil war inside my breast till I go to my casket. I want to do good. I wrestle with the flesh that has its proneness to evil. That's what Paul is saying.

He said but O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin. Do you see the civil war? It's always there. You say, Pastor, when you get 70 years old like you are, how is the battle going? I wrestle with temptations just like you do. It will be with me till I go to my casket. David says, God, I'm not using this as an excuse, but you know me, you know that I was born a sinner. I have a proneness to sin.

Now look at what happens. Our human nature has been polluted by sin, and here are the results of the pollution. First of all, sin has darkened our understanding. Look at the Scripture verse. Paul says to the Ephesians, "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart." What has sin done to us? Closed our eyes to all spiritual truths. The natural man, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, the natural man understandeth not the things of God because they are spiritually understood. So sin has blinded us.

Secondly, let's turn to the next page, I'm hurrying along, it's created evil and vile affections, vain imaginations. Genesis 6 says, "Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth."

And not only that, look at the third thing. It's defiled our mind and our conscience. Paul writes to Titus, "To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled." What has sin done to us? Taken away spiritual understanding, polluted our affections, and defiled our mind and our conscience. Ladies and gentlemen when you realize what sin has done you can only wonder at the majesty and the greatness of a God who would love is so much to send Jesus.

Look at how deep He had to reach to get us, and He did it in love at the cross. That's the wonder of our redemption, and when we come to Him and say, Jesus, I am a sinner. I need You to cleanse me from all of my sin. He does that, and the wonderful thing about redemption is when we say, Jesus, I seek Your cleansing forgiveness and I claim You as my Savior. When I walk out that door I walk out just as if I had never sinned. That's the wonder of our redemption. Well, These are the symptoms of which the corrupt nature is the source. This lack of ability to please God is also spoken of as "death." Men are said to be "dead in their trespasses and sin", that is, they are totally destitute, totally, totally, of spiritual life.

That's what sin has done to us. Now I had put out on the marquee that today I was going to tell you the origin of sin. We just have introduced the subject, because look at the next...but here is the question that totally baffles the philosopher and the theologian, what is the origin of sin? Where did it come from? And how did it come into this universe? If sin is so damning, so corrupting, of us God's creatures, where did it come from? And how did it get here? And how does God handle it?

My time is gone and I apologize, but if you'll come back next Lord's Day. Bring your notes. It's 1:00 folks. (Congregation laughs) I really...but as a teacher, as you know my approach in teaching is I lay the foundation so that when we get to the point it's just as clear as crystal. And I've tried to lay the foundation, and I do invite you to come back. I have wrestled deeply in this area all my ministry, and much that we will learn comes from years and years of intense study. And I want to talk to you next week about probably the most profoundest question in the human mind: Why did God allow sin into His universe? I so appreciate you for coming.

Father, we realize the finiteness of our mind and its limited capacities to understand these great eternal truths. But we are slowly, as a congregation, seeking to understand what David knew very clearly, because he said it in his prayer. He said I sin because I'm a sinner. And all of us today can say the very same thing. But the wonder of it all, is that You do forgive. No matter whatever the sin is, You forgive, and You cleanse us, and You wash away that sin, and You take it off of the eternal records and it's never to be remembered against us again. And we are freed from sin's guilt, O wonder of wonders, thank you for coming to this earth dear Jesus, for leaving heaven's glory and coming to a world that mocked You and nailed You to a cross. But You did it because You love us. Thank you, thank you so much for loving us so much dear Jesus. And one of these days we who have wallered in the cesspools of sin and our lives have been besmirched and bespeckled, You have washed us and one of these days the wonder of it all we'll walk the streets of glory forever to be with You as a child of the King. That's a wonderful thing, and that's our hope as Christians. Thank you, and everybody said, amen. God bless you folks. God bless you.