Friday, January 8, 2010

January 8, 2010

"The Lord saw how bad the sins of man had become on the earth. All of the thoughts in his heart were always directed only toward what was evil. The Lord was very sad that he had made man on the earth. His heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I created man on the earth. But I will wipe them out. I will destroy people and animals alike. I will also destroy the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air. I am very sad that I have made man." Genesis 6:5-7
Another problem with sin is illustrated in these verses. Sin degenerates.
Once a person or a group of people are contaminated by sin, unless they aggressively address the problem, repent of the sin and turn from it, their situation will degenerate. Sinful behavior never makes things better but is extremely destructive.
This 6th Chapter of Genesis illustrates how badly the culture had degenerated. People had become so confirmed in their sinfulness that God was grieved that He had ever created them.
That is bad!
The same creatures and creation that He had once pronounced "very good" had now become "very bad". What a shame! Sin had degenerated God's Creation to the point that some divine intervention was going to be necessary.
I have never known anyone who ever sinned their way into a better life. They may have gained power, prestige, position, or possessions as a result of their sinful behavior, but at the expense of their soul.
Sin can't be managed. Sin can't be controlled. Sin can't be tolerated because sin corrupts, destroys and dehumanizes.
No doubt you know someone who has spent a lifetime trapped in sinful behavior. Is that person a better person than they were several years ago when they began living sinfully? Is their character stronger? Are their attitudes more positive? Do they have more spiritual virtues? I'll bet your answers are emphatic, "no's"! That is because sin degenerates.
What began several generations earlier with just two people in a small act of disobedience had now degenerated to the point where God was offended by the rampant wide-spread evil that now infected the human race. God could no longer abide their evil and was about to destroy everything He had made.
God takes sin seriously because He understands the degenerative nature of sin. It was killing Him to see such sinfulness and it would literally kill His Son. He hates sin because He loves people and sin degenerates people's spiritual nature, their character, their judgment, their health, their morality and their happiness.
Sin separates, sin alienates, sin complicates, sin contaminates, and sin degenerates. Deal with sin before it does you in.

January 7, 2010

"So the Lord God drove the man out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground he had been made out of." Genesis 3:23
Sin separates, sin alienates, sin complicates, and sin contaminates. These are a few of the ways that Adam's sin destroyed Paradise.
Another consequence of sin that is fairly obvious is that sin devaluates.
Look how far Adam and Eve fell once they sinned. Observe all that they lost! In trying to elevate their status to become "like God", they seriously devaluated their situation.
Once they had unlimited personal access to God. They walked and talked with Him face to face. Now, they had to hide from Him and flee from Him and lie to Him. What a tragic demotion!
Once they had the rule of Eden. God gave them authority to name the animals and the plants and go where they wanted, when they wanted to do what they wanted. He trusted them and gave them freedom to do anything except eat from one tree. They were honored as the crowning achievement of God's creation second in authority only to Him. Now they were banned from the Garden.
Once they had a heart and mind like God's, pure, loving and sinless. Now they were fearful, suspicious, calculating, self-centered, and - well, sinful.
Can we just state the obious? Apart from God we have no worth or value. We are valuable only because He created us and placed His image within us. Our worth is tied into His unbelievable unconditional love toward us!
The sin nature deceives into believing that we can add value to ourselves apart from God. Humanism says that if we just get the right environment and the right education and the right position and the right possessions we will be more valuable.
You have to look no further than the first few Chapters of Genesis to understand the source of our value and how sin devalues you! The more you sin the more separated, alienated, complicated and contaminated your life becomes - the more devalued your life becomes.
There is only one way to add value to your life - declare spiritual bankruptcy and value God above all else!