Sermon
The Biblical Doctrine Of Sin
August 18-19, 2001
Pastor Donald Sheley

Father in heaven we thank you for this beautiful time that You've allowed us to be together as family and friends. The great hymns of the church have expressed our faith. We have the joy of kneeling together around Your table and honoring You and worshiping You. Now we come to the moment when we ask that Your precious Holy Spirit will teach us, because it's our desire to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of You, dear Christ. Our hearts are open; our minds are anxious; we're ready to be taught, and Holy Spirit of God come teach us now. In Christ's name, amen.

I'm asking you to take your Bible and join with me. If you'd like to take the pew Bible it's page 388, and throughout the summer months our theme has been 'The Summer In The Psalms'. We're at Psalms 51 and we've been here now two or three weeks. It's the prayer that David prayed once he has been confronted by Nathan the prophet concerning his sin of adultery with Bathsheba. And not only adultery, but David was guilty of murder. And after he knows that his sin now is public knowledge, he prays this prayer -- Psalm 51:

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.

We're spending considerable time in this particular Psalm because it's a prayer that's intense with great theology. For David understood the depths of sin. He's an adulterer and he's a murderer, and he has tried to hide that for a number of months. And after maybe 11, 12, 13 months Nathan the prophet comes and says, David, you've sinned. David admits his sin and then he prays. And he has this wonderful understanding of the grace of God and the pardon that he received from God. Now in our analysis, or in our study of this particular psalm, we've arrived at verse 5. It says: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. We suggested last Sunday that David is not blaming his sin, not trying to pass it on to his mother. What he's really saying is, I sinned because I am a sinner. Now this doesn't excuse my sin. I knew the commands of God; thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill. I knew that, but we've learned that a transgression is a willful, deliberate, stubborn rejection of the law of God and to act to violate that law. David said I have transgressed You, dear God. I am a sinner.

We've also learned in the last week or so that sin is rebellion against God. It is any failure to conform to the moral law of God in act, in attitude, or in nature. We've also learned that sin as a transgression of the law always carries with it guilt. We talked about that last week. We also said that because sin is a principle it is corrupted and polluted our human nature. It's Jeremiah said, the heart is deceitful above all things and exceedingly corrupt and who can know it. That's the description of us as sinners.

Now today, I would like to dig deeper into this whole thought of sin because I believe it's imperative that we understand what the Bible has to say about sin. I know that it's not popular message, and I know that to take time to study what the Bible has to say about the doctrine of sin doesn't occur very frequently in most pulpits. But asking you today to put on your thinking cap with me and I'm going to talk, ask questions, of which there is no answer. But they're questions that have plagued the mind and the heart of human beings down through time. Now the study of doctrine, again I say, is not popular. Most times when you go to church today the pastor will either be a thematic preacher; he selects a theme and then he collects a number of verses around that particular theme, and we call that thematic preaching or maybe a topic, topical preaching. But to dig deep into doctrine is really not the popular thing. In fact, I picked up a book this week written in 1909, and here's what the theologian wrote: Everyone must be aware that there is at present time a great prejudice against doctrine, or as it is often called 'dogma' in religion; great distrust and dislike of clear and systematic thinking about divine things. Men prefer, one cannot help seeing, to live in a region of haze and indefiniteness in regards to these eternal matters. They want their thinking to be fluid and indefinite, something that can be changed with the times.

And thus, a book written nearly 100 years ago the attitude was the same. Just don't make it too deep. Do make me have to think. Just give it to me lightly and let me keep up with life. Today we're going to have a lesson in the doctrine of sin, and we're going to dig deep. I'm not trying to be intellectual, but I think it's imperative that we understand what the Bible says. Doctrine, when we use that term, speaks of a systematic, in-depth study of the great truths of our Christian faith. There's the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the cross, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the Scriptures; today, our thought is the doctrine of sin.

So let's go to our notes. Would you take them and join with me. If you don't have notes just raise your hand. I want everyone to have notes because we're going to get into some very interesting subjects today. I begin with the same sentence that we started last week: 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. The question that has baffled the searching mind is: What is the origin of sin? Where did sin come from? How did it come into the universe? Why did God allow sin to devastate the human race? First, we must clearly affirm that God Himself did not sin, and God is not to be blamed for sin. It was man who sinned, and it was the angels who sinned, but in both cases they did so willfully and by a voluntary choice.

Now after two of the services last Sunday when I made that statement I had people come to me and say, Pastor, have you not read the verse in Isaiah; Isaiah 45. So I said, well if you'll give me one more week I'll explain it. So here in the notes on it today. We find a verse in Isaiah 45, and it's verse 7, that seems to indicate that God created evil and it is understood by some that this has reference to sin. Now in our King James text it reads like this, "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." Now we take another translation the New King James which we use here in the auditorium, and this is the way it's written, "I form the light and create darkness, I make peace, and create calamity: I, the Lord, do all these things."

Now let's take another text, the Amplified, and this is what it says, "I form the light and create darkness, I make peace [national well-being] and I create [physical evil, calamity]: I am the Lord, Who does all these things." Most versions use the word calamity so the obvious meaning of this verse is that God does create all, His dominion is over all, and the evil He creates is the evil of punishment for sin; the calamity that follows our transgressions. God is not the author of sin, and to blame God for sin would be blasphemy against the very character of God. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, "His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is He," Job 34:10 says, "Far be it from God that He should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that He should do wrong."

James 1:13-14: "Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed." Psalm 18:30 "As for God, His way is perfect, the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in Him." And Ecclesiastes 3:14, "I know that everything God does will endure forever, nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere Him."

Page 2. Now there is an error that many make which we must guard ourselves from accepting, and that is, it would be wrong for us to say there is an eternally existing power in the universe similar to or equal to God Himself in power. To say this would be to affirm what is called without ultimate "dualism" in the universe, that is, the existence of two equally ultimate powers, one good and the other evil. Now that's the teaching of philosophers and that's the teaching as Eastern religion, but it's not biblical.

Also, we must never think that sin surprised God or challenged or overcame His omnipotence or His providential control over the universe. Therefore even though we must never say that God Himself sinned or He is to be blamed for sin, yet we must also affirm that God who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of His will, the God who does according to His will in the host of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand or say to Him, 'What are You doing?' Our God did ordain that sin would come into the world, even though He does not delight in it and even though He ordained that it would come about through the voluntary choices of moral creatures. Now that's based upon the statement where we said Jesus Christ was the lamb slain before the foundations of the world.

So God knew that men would need a lamb slain, a sacrifice, even before the worlds began. He allowed it, ordained it, but He does not take delight in it. Now we get deeper. The bible seems to indicate that sin originated in heaven with the angels. Now when we speak of the fall of the angels, we're entering one of the deep mysteries of theology. Now if we start, and we must because Psalm 148 says that the angels were created beings, we start from the premise that all angels were created perfect, which seems to be the implication in Genesis that everything that God created was perfect, then the great question is: What caused the angels to sin? How could the first unholy affection arise in such a heart and how could the will get its first impulse to turn away from God?

Now in the following passage of Scripture, the cause seems to be attributed to selfishness, discontentment with what they had and the craving to get all that anyone else had. And here are those very interesting verses. Jude 6, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of that great day. Now we do not know when that happened. We cannot go back into the cosmic eternal. It just simply says there was a day in heaven where the angels made a choice that caused them to leave their domain, and today they are chained in darkness. They are the fallen angels. I don't know. There's no place that gives us any indication what caused that. It just seems to indicate.

Now let's go on. Now when this passage was written two thousand years ago, we must remember that the Jews had a very highly developed doctrine of angels, which they referred to as the servants of God. They believed that every nation had its presiding angel. In the Septuagint, that's the Greek version of the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures, in Deuteronomy 32:8 it reads like this. Now this is in the Septuagint not in our King James. It's a different. When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. That is to say, to each nation there was assigned an angel.

Now the Jews believed in a fall of the angels and much is said about this in the Book Enoch, a book which never got into the Bible, which is so often behind the thought of Jude. In regard to this there were two lines of tradition. The first saw the fall of the angels as due to pride and rebelliousness. We find that in Isaiah 14, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart; I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying; Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?

Now the sin of pride seems to be the cause, for Jude 6 tells us that the fallen angels kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation. It seems that they were not satisfied with their lot, with the government and the power entrusted to them by God--that's their reason. If the desire then to be like God was their peculiar temptation to them, that would explain why they tempted man at this particular point. Look at what it says in Genesis 3:4, "Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Now there's a second stream of tradition which finds its scriptural echo in Genesis 6:1-4. And folks, I'm telling you now, this is probably some of the most mysterious Scripture in all of our Bible, but let me try "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said. My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." Verse 4, "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."

Now here you'll find that in many of your Bibles it makes reference, and you've probably heard ministers explain, that the sons of God and the daughters of men refer to fallen angels who came to earth to bare children with mortal women. Some scholars believe that this describes angels who were attracted by the beauty of mortal women, left heaven to seduce them and so sinned. Now in the first case, the fall of the angels was due to pride, in the second, lust. The reasons seem to be implied in the Isaiah passage.

And in effect, Jude takes the two ideas and he puts them together. He says that the angels left their own rank; that is to say, they aimed at an office which was not for them. He also says that they left their own proper habitation; that is to say, they came to earth to live with the daughters of men. All this seems strange to us; it moves in a world of thought and traditions from which we have moved away. But Jude's warning is clear. Two things brought ruin to the angels, pride and lust. Even although they were angels and heaven had been their dwelling place, they nonetheless sinned and for their sin they were reserved for judgment.

Now I know that is a common interpretation, and I would like to differ with that because when you study theology you'll find that many of the great theologians would not in any way accept the idea that these angels decided to come to earth and create families. You see it would be in violation to what Jesus said. Do you remember the day when the Pharisees came to Jesus and they were trying to tempt Him and corner Him? And they said, Jesus, please explain to us: it's our tradition that when a man dies if he has a brother his brother takes that wife to himself and cares for her. That was the tradition. Now they said, this one lady she passed one husband after another to seven brothers -- seven brothers, she was the wife to seven brothers. Now when she gets to heaven whose wife will she be? Every time I read that I say, poor lady. (Congregation chuckles)

But Jesus says, He comes back with the answer, you don't know the Scriptures because in the resurrection we shall be like angels, and angels don't marry. Angels are not a race. They are created beings, and as such, angels cannot procreate. So to take and say that Genesis 6 speaks of angels who came to this earth to procreate would be a violation of what Jesus said was the nature of the angels. Then you say, what is then the explanation that many great theologians give? Let's take our Bible and I'm going to show you something extremely interesting. Go with me to Genesis chapter 4, and here I believe could be a better explanation of this very intriguing passage. Because here's the question, who were the sons of God and who were the daughters of men? What made the designation different? Sons of God -- daughters of men, and they married and the result of this marriage brought such a corruption in the earth that it ended in the flood.

Well, in Genesis 4:25 here's the passage that may explain. Now remember, Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Abel. These boys are out in the field one day. They run into a theological disagreement. Cain doesn't agree with Abel's sacrifice. The result is that Cain kills Abel, and now the blood of Abel is crying from the ground. Think of that just for a moment. The very first parents; two children, one kills the other. Can you imagine the pain in that home of Adam and Eve that night when they know one of their boys now lies beneath sod? So now we come to first 25, And Adam knew his wife again. That is, they came together as husband and wife, probably after a long time of weeping and mourning, and it says she bore a son and named him Seth, "For God has appointed another seed for me." She said this is God's son that He sent to me. This is a son of God that was sent to replace my boy, Abel.

Now look at the next verse, And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord. What's it saying? Along comes Seth. He is a gift from God and he has a heart for God. His descendants begin to worship God and so the Sethites were known as the godly ones in the antediluvian times. And so the sons of God could have been the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of men could have been the descendants of Cain, who was known for his sin, and now you have the intermarriage between the godly and the ungodly. And it says that in time, in verse 12 in chapter 6 of Genesis, the whole earth became corrupted. And as the result, God brought about the flood.

So what I'm suggesting to you, I find great difficulty making chapter 6 explain the fall of the angels. I would prefer setting that aside and say, I think the Scriptures really are saying here--is that here are the Sethites, sons of God, marrying sinners, the result, the earth became corrupted and God had to destroy the human race and all that's left are eight after the flood.

Now back to our notes. I have to end all of this by saying, done at the bottom of page 3, we have gone as far as our understanding can take us. And I assure you in this matter I have tried to give you the broad scope of what is taught in theology. But we conclude that the secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do the words of the law one of my suggesting? There are some of these great theological questions there are no answers for. And we can contemplate, we can meditate, we can go down the streams of human thinking, but you're going to come to a point where to go on further would become ridiculous and foolish; because we're dealing in a world, and a time, and a place we know nothing of. And one of these days God, when we are in His presence, will reveal the great secrets.

Now we can come to a very, very acceptable conclusion--we don't know when it happened, we don't know how it happened, but God allowed angels' hearts to be filled with the desire to take over His throne. Now I've got an answer, not theological, but philosophical; if I'm a philosopher and I'm standing here talking to you today as a philosopher this is what I would say, not as a theologian. It's acceptable that God would create in the universe a moral tension, because without moral tension the universe would be static. And in His creation, if angels were created beings, then surely they had the choice of moral choice. Because it seems that moral tension brought about their wrong decision. And thus, He created us. If we were just simply robots and puppets on a string without an ability to make choice, we would live in a static universe. But He created us with moral tensions--right and wrong. We can choose to do either. That was God's divine plan, because when He created us His purpose was to create us for friendship and fellowship.

You don't force anybody to be your friend. You don't walk up to somebody and say, you will be my friend whether you like it or not. (Congregation chuckles) You don't ever do that, and God would not create a universe and say you're going to be My friends whether you like it or not. That's the way it is. No choice. God said, no. In His divine plan he wanted to people who would love Him out of choice. So when we talk about the origin of sin, we've got to leave. We've ended it. We can't go any further. That's as far as we can search with our human minds.

We know one thing though. Now we turn to the next page and with this I must hurry to a conclusion. Page 4: With respect to the origin of sin in the history of mankind, the Bible teaches that it began with the transgression of Adam. And as a result, because of his voluntary act and because I'm a part of the lineage, the descendants of Adam, I am a sinner because Adam sinned. It's in my blood.

Dropping down in that page I say that sin originated in man's free act of revolt from God--the act of a will which, though inclined toward God, was not yet confirmed in virtue and was still capable of a contrary choice. And by that first sin, Adam became the bond-servant of sin. That sin carried permanent pollution with it, and a pollution which, because of the solidarity of the human race, would effect not only Adam, but all his descendants as well. And from that unholy source, sin flows on as an impure stream to all the generations of men, polluting everyone and everything with which it comes in contact. It is exactly this state of things that made the question of Job so pertinent, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one! And it's the same argument of David: God I sinned because I'm a sinner.

Not quickly go with me to Page 6. I want to finish today. I have six minutes. What where the consequences of that sin? And this is absolutely I think the heart of it. First of all it had its effect on their relationship to God. Before the fall, God and Adam were in fellowship with each other. After the fall, the fellowship is broken. Instead of seeking His fellowship they now try to flee from Him. Why do I hate sin? Because it robs a man us His fellowship with his maker. That's why I hate sin.

Secondly, its effect on our nature. First they came from the hand of the Creator. They were not only innocent, but they were holy. Then sin came and with it came shame, degradation, and pollution. And they hide in shame.

Thirdly, its effect on their bodies. When God said that for disobedience man would "surely die" He meant also the body. Immediately after the trespass God said to Adam, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Down at the bottom I'm making a suggestion. I say that all physical illness is due to sin. I'm not saying people are sick because they are sinners. I'm saying because we are a sinful race sickness just flows in our bloodstream. In fact, look at what it says in the original Hebrew in Genesis 2:17, dying thou shalt die. As soon as we come out of the womb we are headed for the casket. In other words, we're dying. We are born...sin has that destructive power in our bodies.

I'm on page 7. Its effect on their environment. We read that the serpent was cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. It is evident that the animal creation has suffered as a result of Adam's sin. And it speaks of that day when everything is made right, that the animals will lie down with the other. I think when man sinned what came into the animal kingdom was this animosity and hatred for each other, and the killing of each other. That's a product of sin. It's devastating. It caused animals to turn against each other.

Look at what it did. And again, cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground. And here nature itself has suffered because of sin. Look at what Paul says in Romans. He says the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

What did sin do to this beautiful creation? The Scripture says that the whole creation is groaning and travailing, and when I see all the great crises that happen across the world in floods and hurricanes and all the rest, I see a world just walking in travail until it be released from the curse of sin. And this old world shall be done away, and there will be a new heavens and a new earth. Why do I hate sin? Because it destroys a man's fellowship with God. It corrupts his nature. It brings sickness and finally death, and it takes this beautiful world that God created for me and turns it for many people into a place of pain and hurt. I hate sin.

And what it does finally, if I don't turn from it, it will take me to hell. That's the doctrine of sin, and alongside is the doctrine of grace where God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son; that He sent Jesus to remedy this whole problem of sin, and He died on that cross, He shed His precious blood. And when we come to Him and say, Jesus, I'm a sinner. He forgives us and we stand before Him just as if we had never sinned. He wipes out the whole problem.

I love You Jesus for that. And the reason why I've centered on this today is because if we do not understand the awfulness of sin we will never be able to appreciate the wonder of our salvation. I pray that when you walk out of this chapel today may your heart be saying, God, thank you for that redemption You brought to me through Jesus. You save me from this problem of sin. Amen?

Father in heaven, we agree that we can't answer all the questions. We agree that Your thoughts are far different than our thoughts--so far above. But it really doesn't matter. We don't get frustrated over the fact that we don't have all the answers. We just trust You, dear God. You do all things well. But what we are grateful for today is that You took this problem of sin and You came as the Savior of the world. And for us sin has lost its power. We've been set free. Your grace has made us whole, and redemption has redeemed us and we are now Your children. And we love You for that today. Thank you for the cross, and thank you for our redemption. And everybody said...amen. God bless you. God bless you.