The Sin We Rationalize Part 1

Raising his voice looking to Jesus phone number when you read the Bible you find that God is not tolerant of something called sin means missing the mark. God has set for our behavior. Sin is so serious that God sent his only son to die as a sacrifice to pay the penalty ultimate justice demand from the Moody Church in Chicago this morning to win with Sir, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Estimates are people these days don't take sin very seriously. Dave, we sure don't take sin very seriously and that of course harms our relationships.

Sometimes the place that we see sin. The most clearly is in marriages and at the end of this broadcast. I'm going to tell you how God in his grace brought Rebecca and me together despite her struggles and recently we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. It's entitled the story of our marriage. 50 years of God's faithfulness for a gift of any amount.

It can be yours. Go to RTW offer.com RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 now as you listen to this message. Think about sin and think about your marriage and how the two of them sometimes go together. We have lots to learn. Let's open our Bibles. Let's be honest. Let's listen to God's word. Well, perhaps you have noticed that the word to sin has basically dropped from our vocabulary. All I know eating chocolate is still sand, but lying isn't many years ago as psychiatrist wrote a book entitled whatever happened to sin and I read it many years ago and that it's just as relevant today.

Perhaps more relevant than it was when it was written some time ago.

Whatever happened to sin, but me tell you today that your view of sin. If you have a wrong view of sin.

Let me put it that way.

If you have a wrong view of sin, you will be wrong about everything in the world that really matters your understanding of sin determines who you are as a person in your understanding of God's grace.

The doctrine of sin. The sin we rationalize, think of what happens if you have a naïve view of sin like Karl Marx, for example, who believed in a utopia that people if given a chance are going to live together be happy to work for the state and to be really content with the equality of all people, naïveté, and he almost ruined the world proving how foolish that was. And if you have a wrong view of sin, you'll think to yourself, you know my sins aren't really that big a deal. God is something like I am except a little bigger and a little higher and that I can maybe get him to to accept me and if he doesn't accept me. I woman said on a plane to a friend of mine who is witnessing to her. If he doesn't accept me then I'm going to tell him to lighten up.

Another words that my sins aren't that great. Furthermore, I can manage them. I can live with the consequences they are within my control. If you don't understand sin, you might be rationalizing it that way you don't understand sin, you might not get the help that God is able to give you today. Nobody has sins and addictions addictions have become sicknesses and the reason for that is because we want people to come for help. Nobody should be embarrassed because of sickness, but were embarrassed because of our sins so we call sins sicknesses problem with that is, God is not promised to heal all of our sicknesses, but he has promised to deliver us from our sins if we meet the condition. So you see if you have a wrong diagnosis, you might end up with the wrong cure of what is really needed. There was a time when the word sin was a strong word.

And when somebody said sin. We knew what they meant. Not today. Nobody sends everybody makes unwise choices.

I was reminded of that and somewhat amused by this, I was walking three blocks from here talking to the church from the loop or the purpose of exercise along Clark Street and I was met by a whole host of little schoolchildren all dressed in uniforms look very very beautiful and that they were maybe what shall I say, seven, eight years old and one of the kids bless him. He was walking with 1 foot on the sidewalk and the other foot on the street and the teacher said to him. Now Matt, you're making an unwise safety decision.

All right, I'm not saying that Matt was sending but I do know this, but when I was that old in the school our teachers would've spoken to as much more plainly much more plainly than making an unwise safety decision.

So there are people today who use language to tone down what they've done. Someone who has bilked retirees from all of their money.

He hasn't really send her committed a crime. It was just a lapse in judgment.

Jay Leno calls it no-fault syntax, nobody's guilty of anything anymore that the Bible has a different picture of us as human beings and is not a pretty picture.

Some of you are going to sit through this message and say wow.

All of this on a Sunday morning we came to be happy happy happy what happiness is going to come because you cannot really understand who we are and what grace is, unless you understand the sin and today were going to look at it and as I mentioned, it's not very beautiful. Somebody asked what's the difference between a psychiatrist and a coal miner and the answer is that the psychiatrist goes down deeper stays down longer and comes up dirtier.

That's what it's like to look into the human heart and today were going to begin only a little bit of that picture.

Not everything because the Bible says we can't comprehend everything, but we are going to take a look at it and the text is Ephesians chapter 2 Ephesians chapter 2. Remember, the purpose of this series of messages on Bible doctrine is that you might understand the Bible doctrine that you might know it and be able to defend it.

That's why this is one in a series of messages on what we believe in. The difference, it should make Ephesians chapter 2 is a very familiar passage to us. It begins by saying you were dead. Now if I can just find it. I thought I had it here but evidently I didn't.

But I know that it's in the New Testament. I know where it is Ephesians chapter 2 and you word dead in your trespasses and sins.

I'm gonna stop there. The Bible is talking about us before we received Christ before Jesus connected us to God, we were dead in trespasses and sins not physically dead.

Look at Adam after he and his wife send.

They woke up in the sky was blue and the grass was green and later on they discovered that the weeds were powerful and he went along and lived, and they bore children and everything spiritually dead. Now God made provision to connect them.

Back then, knowing that Jesus would eventually come, but left to themselves dead in trespasses and sins. That's who you are without Jesus Christ. Now think about it.

Obviously you may be listening to this message, you may enjoy opera you've got your friends. You may be attending University you're going to school, but if you don't know Christ and of never trusted him you were dead in trespasses and sins now for a few months. Let's think of dad nest. Let's think of a corpse. One of the things that we learn is that that dad's dad, there's not degrees of deadness. There's only degrees of decay. We go down to skid Row and we need to derelict there who's wandering along hasn't showered for two weeks is asking people for money for another drink and we can see him there, and the decay is quite evident. And then we look at someone else who was involved in the social work and raising funds for the poor, but they don't know Christ as Savior either. Both are dead, but both are not equal in the decay. That's the only difference, but both are dead in trespasses and sins, cut off from God. Dad's dad and also of the dead person has no spiritual appetite. Now they may be interested in God, but they'll always want to come to God in their own way and in accordance with their own convictions and for their own benefit, but they aren't necessarily interested in a life of holiness. They do not thirst after righteousness they want to use God and to try to find the God that is within them. I say to you with a smile in your face look very carefully and see if you can find that God within, and they will not submit to the God without to the holy God because they have no spiritual appetite. Another characteristic is they can't raise themselves. You can't go to a funeral home and say to the courts. Now if you would just wiggle your finger, God would do the rest.

But at least let's show some interest in coming alive. A corpse can't do that. I know that it seems as if I tell the story every year at Moody church, and I suppose I'll continue to tell it every year because it certainly fits here when I teach preaching at Trinity International University. I always take the students on a beautiful fall day to a cemetery and we gather around the tombstone and this is the passage that I read that we are dead in trespasses and sins. When you preach the gospel to the unsaved are talking to the dance, I say to the students. This is a good place for you to practice preaching to the dead. I say find the tombstone and preach and tell them that the day of resurrection is here. The color drains from their faces so that I say if you won't. I will and I go over to a tombstone. Let's suppose it's Jonathan dad died 1912. I showed Jonathan stand up. It's the day of resurrection, and I always wait for resurrection. Fortunately, none has ever happened. I say the to the students how do you think that made me feel and they always say pretty stupid. Yeah sure did. Then I say that's how stupid you are.

Every time you preach the gospel except for verse four. In this passage, but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith the flood dust even when we were dead in the sins raised us up.

Praise God I tell the students that when you preach the gospel, you're expecting the dead to rise the blind to see in the deaf to hear how many of those miracles. Can you do that. I go over to the book of Ezekiel where Ezekiel was asked to preach to dry bones and with a smile on my space.

I say every pastor can relate to that to drive bone. What a silly thing to do. Preach to dry bones, but Wiley is preaching flesh comes on the bones while he is preaching. Life is breathed into those bones and those bones live by God's sovereign power.

And that's why we witness and that's why we preach and that's why we proclaim because God is able to raise the dead, and after 15 minutes of this exposition we get on our knees in the cemetery and we dedicate ourselves to unrelenting hopeless dependence upon God and the proclamation of the gospel because we're preaching to the dead, not the Grateful Dead but the walking dead and there is a difference. The whole world is a cemetery spiritually speaking pulses were dead in our trespasses and sins. And in verse two, he goes on to say in effect that were deceived, he says, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now is at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind just that far. Leave the last phrase for a moment to notice. The pulses were basically deceived. It says that we are following the God of this world that Satan now you and I very probably have never met Satan directly just like that in World War II soldiers for the most part never had any direct contact with Hitler but you see, Satan has all of his associates and their cold demons and apparently there are tens of thousands of demons, and so we are up against his army and we are deceived because we are following his way and what is his primary characteristic. It is lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies lies and we believe them and we think were doing ourselves a favor. The first lie that we believe is that we can manage our own affairs that we can be king of our own lives and we don't need God to interfere with our morality and with our sin will handle it. Thank you very, very, much well that's what the devil said, and look what happened to him vanished from God forever. He will be so we tend to believe those lies. We then say that we can manage our sin on our own. We can manage it. We can live with the consequences like one man said to me I'll get what I want today and I'll deal with the devil tomorrow.

So we believe the lies. We also believe that we are rationally driven.

You'll notice, the Bible says we aren't we fulfill the desires of the flesh and of the mind parenthesis. We as human beings Savior unsaved are basically desired. Driven we receive Christ as Savior.

He gives us different desires, but we aren't the rational creatures we pretend we are here is what we do we do what our heart wants to do in the immortal words of Woody Allen. The heart wants what it wants. So we do what the heart wants to do and then we recruited the mind to justify it so that we can live with ourselves and we got it all worked out. We tell ourselves these lies that we just love we love the lives that we tell her so, and then we begin to live our lives into compartments. We discovered that alive works course lies work that little boy in Sunday school had a point to lie is an abomination unto the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble. He said we discovered that lies get us out of difficult situations. So what happens to human nature as it progresses along is that a person may end up living in two worlds in world a is a Sunday school teacher. He's a deacon.

He's well respected in the community because to him the opinion of others is absolutely essential. It's not necessary for him to be good. It's very essential to appear good. That's world, a world be he may be beating his wife. He may be mistreating his children he may be a child molester and world a and world B are never allowed to come together. In fact, there's a wall between them. That is sound proof so that he can live with himself. Like one man told me there was a part in my mind were no one, not even God was allowed to enter and the whole life is built on deception and on lies and when sin is exposed. We as humans have a tendency.

First of all to deny it. Secondly, to minimize it. Thirdly, to compare it with someone else who is worse than we are. And so we go on our way managing through life thinking were doing the best that we can and there is no area in which we are more gladly and willingly deceived and that in the area of sexuality because it touches so deeply as to who we are as people.

So it is there that deceptions happen.

Examples are legion.

At this point, but I'm thinking of two lesbians, both brought up in Christian families living together and saying there's nothing that we are more sure of than this God approves of what were doing. Because our relationship is so beautiful. Now let's think about that for a moment no one can argue with them as to whether or not it's a beautiful relationship. I'm sure that it is. If they say that it is we have to accept that was Eve's argument in the garden.

She said the fruit of the tree is beautiful. It's the fruit of the tree to make one why she saw its beauty, but we look at the Scriptures and we discover that not everything that is beautiful is right and holy relationships, adulterous relationships. Well now I have found love who can who can object to love. Not all loving relationships are holy and beautiful.

It is in this area that we deceive ourselves most readily and we tell ourselves lies and we believe those lies and we convince ourselves of those lies and we are determined to live with those lies on till the undertaker takes us to the cemetery. We are people who are deceived and gladly deceived but deceived. Nonetheless, and Satan has misled us so first of all we find in the text that we are dead we are deceived and then we are depraved, what an awful word to use in a church in an era of time when everybody wants to hear. Happy happy happy Easter were defrayed no notice the text Paul says buying nature where the children of wrath, like the rest of mankind buying nature snatches the choices we make. But buying nature at baby is born as a child of wrath under condemnation, not innocent baby is not born innocent so I don't like the idea that were under Adam's sin will there are instances in which you could be born into a family that is in debt and I'm sorry but you inherit that debt and you have to manage that debt and the Bible would teach that because of Adam. We are all constituted sinners and were all born under condemnation, that sweet little baby is not innocent know my friend. That sweet little baby isn't innocent. Rebecca and I learned that through our marriage and God gave us three beautiful daughters.

They have married Christian men and we are so great, but when babies are born when you were born when I was born, we were not born innocent. We had a bent toward evil and even deception. Would you like to know more about our marriage. By the way we've done an interview entitled the story of our marriage. 50 years of God's faithfulness that I want you to visualize this, I was born on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada.

I was the last of five children, Rebecca was born in the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. She came from a home that was very difficult and she talks about it in this particular interview somewhat of her background, God brought us together and we are very different. You know sometimes I say that marriage is to people solving problems together that they'd have never had if only they'd stayed single. Hasn't that been your experience if you want to know more about our marriage and how God helped us to resolve these differences.

Here's what you can do good RTW offer.com's RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

It's entitled the story of our marriage. 50 years of God's faithfulness.

There you will learn that though we were very different and still are.

It is not necessary for a couple to see eye to eye about everything to have a happy marriage and I hope that as you listen to this interview or you view it you will be encouraged to know that God is faithful even in the midst of our struggles. The story of our marriage. 50 years of God's faithfulness. Let me give you the contact info again. RTW offer.com that's RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 let me thank you in advance for your prayers for your interest in our ministry and for your support because together we are making a difference. You can write to us running to win 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614 running to win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. There is a sickness inherent in the human race.

All prisons testify to the reality of sin. Prisons are full of people born in sin born with a propensity to do wrong, but as Paul says, were all by nature children of wrath. In our study of key doctrines. We're coming to grips with the sin we rationalize next time I'm running to win. Erwin looks or will finish this study, this is Dave McAllister running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church