Sermon: "God's Cure For Sin"
As you think back through the history of mankind, which infectious diseases do you think were the most devastating and deadly? Of course in Bible times there was …
Leprosy
Leprosy, also know as Hansen’s Disease, is still a major problem in some countries of the world. As late as the year 2000 over 700,000 cases of leprosy were reported worldwide. Only 91 of those cases were in the United States. Thankfully, using a combination of drugs, people can now be cured of leprosy.
Some of you who are a little older might think of …
Polio
Polio was a very crippling and deadly disease until a vaccine was developed in the 1950’s. The vaccine has been so effective that less than 2,000 cases of polio were reported in 2006.
One of the deadliest diseases mankind ever encountered was the …
Bubonic or Black Plague
The Black Plague started in China’s Gobi Desert some time around 1330. Spread by flea-infested rats, it spread quickly to Europe. By 1353 it had killed 25 million people … one third of Europe’s population.
The Black Plague is characterized by chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and the formation of black boils in the armpits, neck, and groin. Though the disease was originally called the “Great Mortality” and the “Great Pestilence,” the name “Black Death” or “Black Plague” was eventually adopted because of these black boils, which derive their color from dried blood under the skin caused by internal bleeding.
Today, the Black Plague can be treated with various antibiotics.
Of course today, when we think about deadly infectious diseases we immediately think of …
HIV and AIDS
AIDS has killed millions of people. Just last year it is estimated that over 3 million people died of AIDS. While the treatment for AIDS has improved, no cure has yet been found. It is estimated that there are approximately 40 million people worldwide now living with HIV/AIDS.
This morning we are going to look at something more deadly and devastating then Leprosy, Polio, the Black Plague, and AIDS combined. It infects every culture, every nation and every person. It is called SIN. If it is not treated, it is indeed deadly. Thankfully, God has given us a cure for sin.
You can be saved from eternal death by accepting God’s cure for sin.
Most of us have some idea of what Leprosy, Polio, the Black Plague and AIDS can do to our bodies before they finally take our lives. So let’s take a moment and look at …
I. THE RESULTS OF SIN
First, we see that sin causes us to …
A. FORGET GOD
It all began when Adam and Eve acted as if they had no Creator. They ignored his command. They forgot he was God.
Sin causes us to see the world absent of God. The sinful mind dismisses God.
Sin causes us to not consider God’s teaching, wisdom, power or plan.
Listen to how Isaiah describes mankind.
ISAIAH 53:6a -- We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.
Max Lucado wrote – “Sin causes us to grant God the same respect middle-schoolers give a substitute teacher … acknowledged, but not taken seriously.”
Sin not only causes us to forget God it also causes …
B. SELF-CENTEREDNESS
If God is not at the center of your life “self” will gladly fill the void. When self rules your life you quickly end up on a downhill slide.
- God says forgive – self says … get even
- God says be kind – self says … I don’t care if I hurt you
- God says help the poor – self says …I have needs of my own
- God says he hates divorce – self says … I want to be happy. I’m getting out of this marriage.
- God says obey your parents – self says … they are holding me back. I know what’s best for me.
Sin causes us to forget God and become self-centered. That in turn leads us into …
C. IMPURITY
The Bible says …
ROMANS 8:5 - Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
The sinful nature is the home of self. What is it that the sinful nature desires? The Bible gives us the answer.
GALATIANS 5:19-21a – 19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
Sin leads people into all kinds of impure actions, such as …spouses ignoring their responsibilities, dictator’s murdering their people, women aborting their children, adults seducing children, many people viewing pornography, and thousands entering into a homosexual life-style.
This should not shock us because it is exactly what the Bible says will happen when we forget God and give in to self.
ROMANS 1:24-32 – 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecentacts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
A Puritan pastor wrote, “O, miserable man, what a deformed monster has sin made you! God made you ‘a little lower than the angels’; sin has made you little better than the demons.”
Do you see why sin is so deadly, but believe it or not it continues to get worse. Another result of sin is that it causes people to be ….
D. LOCKED OUT OF HEAVEN
God has made it very clear that sin will not remain in his presence. People infected with sin must be cured before they can enter heaven. Ungodly people who live as if God does not exist will not be a part of his kingdom. People who use and abuse others, people who use and abuse sex, do not qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom. The Bible says …
I CORINTHIANS 6:9-10 – 9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders. 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
The final result of sin is …
E. AN ETERNITY OF MISERY
Here is what Max Lucado wrote about this in his book, Come Thirsty.
“Lead a godless life, expect a godless eternity. Spend a life telling God to leave you alone, and he will. He will grant you an eternal existence without God and without hope.”
Jesus spoke very freely about an eternity of misery. Listen to some of his descriptions of what it will be like.
MATTHEW 13:40-42 – 40As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
MATTHEW 13:49-50 - 49This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous 50and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
A fiery furnace, weeping and gnashing teeth – all speak of misery. Another time Jesus said …
MARK 9:47-48 - 47And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”
Having a worm eat at you that does not die and being in a fire that never goes out is again a description of eternal misery.
You wouldn’t be in hell very long before you would want to cease to exist, but you can’t.
Do you see why sin is so deadly? The shame is that it has infected all of mankind. Every one of us here this morning has been infected by sin. The Bible says …
ROMANS 3:23 – For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Thankfully God didn’t forget us. There is a cure for sin. Since the results of sin are so deadly everyone should want to know about …
II. GOD’S CURE FOR SIN
The cure for sin is so simple that many people refuse to be cured. The cure for sin is …
A. JESUS
The Bible says …
ROMANS 10:9-11 – 9That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”
Listen to what Paul and Silas told the Philippian jailor when he asked what he needed to do to be saved from his sins.
ACTS 16:31a – “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”
Peter said something similar when he preached to a large crowd in Jerusalem. The people heard Peter’s sermon and said, “What shall we do?”
ACTS 2:38 – “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Another time Peter said …
ACTS 4:10-12 – 10Then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11He is “The stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.” 12Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.
Some of you may we wondering …
1. Why Jesus?
Our scripture text for this morning gives us the answer.
II CORINTHIANS 5:21 -- God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The answer is Jesus because Jesus is God, and thus, had no sin of his own.
Because of God’s love for the creatures he created in his own image, he developed a cure for sin. God does not want any human being to die not having been cured of sin.
II PETER 3:9b – He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
When Jesus walked here on earth he spoke about the deadly results of sin as well as the cure for sin.
JOHN 8:24 - I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.
In our lifetimes we see many human disasters, but the greatest disaster of all is seeing a human being carrying their sins with them to their grave. Listen again to God’s cure described.
I PETER 3:18a - For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
God’s cure for sin is truly amazing. He not only took your place on the cross and received your punishment …
2. He (Jesus) lives in you
The Apostle Paul wrote …
I CORINTHIANS 3:16 – Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
Do you truly understand the powerful implications of this verse. In salvation God comes to live in the minds and bodies of those who receive Jesus as their Lord. The Bible says …
ROMANS 8:11 – And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
That is promising you eternal life.
There is a cure for sin. You do not have to live your life forgetting God. You do not have to be a selfish, self-centered person. You do not have to live a life filled with impurity. You do not have to be locked out of heaven. You do not have to spend eternity in misery – because God has provided a cure for sin. So let’s look at …
B. ACCEPTING THE CURE
Earlier we said that there is now a cure for the Black Plague, but there was no cure for hundreds of years. Here is what happened to one little village in England.
It took three hundred years, but the Black Plague finally reached the quaint village of Eyam, England. George Viccars, a tailor, unpacked a parcel shipped from London. The cloth he’d ordered had arrived. But as he opened and shook it, he released plague-infected fleas. Within four days he was dead, and the village was doomed. The town unselfishly quarantined itself, seeking to protect the region. Other villages deposited food in an open field and left the people of Eyam to die alone. But to everyone’s amazement, many survived. A year later, when outsiders again visited the town, they found half the residents had resisted the disease. How so? They had touched it. Breathed it. One surviving mother had buried six children and her husband in one week. The grave digger had handled hundreds of diseased corpses yet hadn’t died. Why not? How did they survive?
No one knew until the advent of D.N.A. studies. Through D.N.A. studies on the descendants of people who had lived in that village, they discovered that those who had survived the Black Plague had a special gene that prevented the bacteria from killing them. So what was the only cure for the Black Plague for hundreds of years – pick the right parents so you inherited the life-saving gene.
Of course, they couldn’t do that. However, in some ways you have that opportunity – you can choose to have God be your Heavenly Father by receiving Jesus as your Lord. You can change your family tree. You can be grafted into God’s family.
Just as the people in the village of Eyam were touched by the Black Plague, so you have been touched by sin. But just as some of them survived, so you can live forever with God in heaven.
Once you receive Jesus as your Lord you no longer live under a death sentence. The Bible says …
ROMANS 8:1-2 -- 1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
CONCLUSION
You have been infected by sin. We have seen how devastating that can be. Here again are …
- THE RESULTS OF SIN
- Forgetting God – living as if God doesn’t exist
- Self-centeredness
- Impurity
- Locked out of Heaven
- An eternity of misery
Thankfully, God didn’t forget us. We saw that as we looked at …
- GOD’S CURE FOR SIN
- JESUS – the sinless one made sin for us
Jesus will come and live in us if we will receive him.
Will you receive Jesus as your Lord and receive God’s pardon for your sins? Will you pray – Lord, I receive your work. I believe in Jesus. I want my sins pardoned.
Will you, after you receive Jesus, trust in and rely on his presence in you? Will you remember that you are no longer fatally afflicted? Jesus took your place on the cross. Your mind and body is his home, and he is your Master.