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The Results of the Fall
BD18-02© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)
We are considering the work of Satan, and this morning we
are going to look at the results of man’s fall into sin. Now I don’t know why you’re this morning, but
I trust that you’re hear in order to learn what God thinks. And if you’re going to learn what God thinks,
then you’re going to have to learn Bible doctrine. That is the thing in which this church majors
in every activity in which it is engaged in one way or another. It is the pastor’s responsibility to study
the Word of God, to find out what it says, and to share it with the
flock—that is feeding God’s people. In the process of doing this, his heart is blessed, and he finds himself in state of
considerable enthusiasm over what God has given, and he stands up before the
congregation and he tends to have the feeling that the congregation shares his
enthusiasm and blessing for what God has brought into his heart through a study of
the Word.
However, the old sin nature lies within each believer,
coiled like a snake, ready and waiting for an opportunity to strike. So
there are certain types, a pastor learns,
who are in the congregation who are preoccupied with not simply
learning what God has to say to them, but they’re preoccupied with trying
to figure out who he has in mind with a particular line of instruction and a particular
line of application. There won’t be anybody here
this morning, as always, who will be the target of what we have to say. But
the Word of God does have a strange way
of being pertinent and current. It has a
strange way of coming up just when a certain situation to which it is
applicable exists maybe within the congregation, which of course is
what you would expect if God the Holy Spirit is directing in the preparation of
the Word of God.
If what is taught is legitimate, and (in the passage) if it
is in the genuine exposition of the Word, and if the application is in
keeping with that exposition with that interpretation, then it would behoove
the believer to receive this as something that God the Holy Spirit is bringing. But
the old sin nature tends to come up with a defense. One of the
favorite defenses is, “Oh, I don’t object to what you say. It’s
not what you say. It’s how you say it.” This means,
“You’ve said it
in such a way that you’ve stripped me psychologically naked,
and I see myself for the real thing that I am, and that makes me uncomfortable. And
I would prefer to be able to listen to
the Word of God and not be exposed in such an uncomfortable light to
myself.” I know exactly
what you mean when you say, “It’s
not what you say. It’s
how you say it.” And
I’ve had that type for many years.
Usually, I can assure you, I pay little attention to other
people’s business, or to their operating. As a matter of
fact, I couldn’t care less. So
there won’t be any conscious
application. You may sit back
at ease. If you hear anything that sounds
like you, take it from God the Holy Spirit.
Those of you who are visitors, of course, will be most at
ease here this morning because you know that nobody knows you so you
won’t be hung up on the speaker. You will be able
to receive anything that strikes your heart as coming from God the Holy
Spirit.
One of our Academy parents called me the other day and said,
“Can I come right over and get a couple of tapes on the
marriage series. Our pastor, here in one of the Lutheran
churches in town, wants the tapes and we’re going to use it
Sunday morning in
one of our ladies classes in starting a series.” Now
I know that all those ladies are going to
feel absolutely at ease because they know I’m not talking
about them. They’re
going to get mad maybe at what they
hear, and get uncomfortable. So, the best
way is to listen to the tapes and you won’t feel that anybody
is talking about you.
And if someone offers you an explanation of what we have in
mind behind the sermon, or who we have in mind, I suggest you cut him
down. I suggest that you don’t offer any
information to him if he inquires either. You’d
be surprised how people are eager to get to me after the
service. People come up to me and say, “Was
that so-and-so you were talking about?” That’s
the bolder and open type. I like them better. But I
won’t tell them anyhow, even if I did have anybody in mind, which I
don’t. But if I did, I wouldn’t tell them. But some people
just come right up.
Alright, we are here to learn the Word of God and I trust
that you will approach it in that way. We are
considering Satan, the enemy of our souls, and his demons. Satan
fell from his place of honor in the
third heaven in his rebellion against God through negative volition. Satan,
through deceit, led Eve into sin by
implanting false ideas in her mind, which was the only way he could get
to her. The only sin she could commit in
the Garden of Eden was the sin of going negative toward what God had
expressed as his will.
Adam, when he discovered what his wife had done, knowingly,
willfully, and deliberately followed her into sin. For
this reason, he is the transmitter of the
sin nature. Adam and Eve died
spiritually instantly when they ate of that fruit, and they each
received an old sin nature which was now under Satan’s control. The
first thing that came from that old sin
nature under Satan’s inspiration was an act of human good in
the form of fig leaf loincloths that they wove for themselves in order to cover their
nakedness. This was an act of legalism. It was an attempt
to meet the sin problem and to appease God.
Satan wants to be like God, so immediately he moved these
two people into a relationship of trying to create some kind of perfect
environment. Socialism is an attempt to
get people to be related to one another on a peaceful basis in order to
create a perfect environment.
Now the scene in Eden is set. We are ready now for the appearance and the
entrance of Jehovah Elohim who is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. In
Genesis 3, beginning at verse 8, we have
the appearance of God in the garden. “And
they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool
of the day.” Adam and Eve heard Jehovah Elohim
in the garden later the same day on which they had sinned. It
was in the cool of the day which is the
evening when the breezes blow and the sun was setting. It
was probably the usual time of day when
God met with them to instruct them in His Word. This is when they
had their Bible classes.
Adam and Eve on this occasion, however, hid from God behind
the trees. Immediately their spiritual
disorientation was evident that they thought that they could hide from
the omniscience of God behind the trees. This did show
that their fellowship with God was gone, and the reason
for this was that their human spirits were dead. They
had no basis of contact as of this point
with God. And they couldn’t approach
God. All they had now was rationalism,
and they can’t find God through rationalism. They had
empiricism of their senses, and they can’t find God through
your senses, so they were helpless. When
God appeared on the scene, they didn’t want anything to do
with Him.
Something had obviously gone wrong on the inside of
them. The Bible says that the natural
man is called a “soulish” man
(“psuchikos”). This is because
he has a dead human spirit. All he has now is
a soul (1 Corinthians 2:14), so he’s called a “soulish” man. These two people
were now “soulish” beings.
So, let’s review for a moment here exactly what their status
was. Something had happened. They had a body. This
body had within it an immaterial
being. It had a soul and
it had a spirit. By the act of
sin, the spirit was dead. The soul
continued to live—the ego, the real
person. The soul had a
mind. Up to now their
mind had been on divine
viewpoint. Now their mind
had shifted to human viewpoint. The mind had in
it self-awareness. They had been up
to now preoccupied with Jehovah Elohim. Now
they were totally preoccupied with themselves. The mind had
conscience. Up to now their conscience had been on the absolute standards of
righteousness which God had given them. Now they were on
the relative standards of their human viewpoint. They had will. Their
will was now negative toward God where it had been completely positive to Him. They
also had emotion. Their emotion no longer appreciated God, and
consequently they no longer loved God. This
was immediately evident when He came into the garden and they wanted
nothing to do with Him.
The reason this condition has developed was because a new
factor had been introduced into the human being. Into
the nature of man comes a sin nature
which we call the old sin nature because it comes from the old Adam. The
old sin nature is a distorter of the
soul. It warps and it twists, and it is
driven by a pattern of lusts. The word
“lusts” has a bad connotation to us. It comes
from the Greek word which means simply intense desire. It
can be intense desire for good things or
it can be intense desire for bad things. So, the word lusts
in itself does not mean that it’s only bad things that
it desires, for the sin nature desires many good things in the form of
human good. But it is the force which drives
and motivates the sin nature. In each of
us this morning there is a pattern of desires which arises from our old
sin nature, all of which God condemns.
So, here’s the condition of these two people on this day on
which they sinned, at the close of the day when God comes into the
garden. Since the old sin nature has come into the
human race, nobody has escaped being born with it. Genesis
5:3 tells us that Adam reproduced in
his own image and consequently passed on this sin nature to all of his
posterity. Genesis 5:3 says, “And Adam
lived 130 years and begot a son in his own likeness after his image and
called his name Seth.” So, this child is
born and the father passes on this old sin nature to him. Romans
3:10-12 tells us the same thing as well as Psalm 58:3. Since this time
only one man has been born without a sin nature and that was the Lord Jesus
Christ. He escaped it because He did not have a human father. For this reason,
Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “For we have not a high priest who
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tested like
as we, yet without sin (that is without a sin nature.” His virgin birth
protected Him from the sin nature.
Here is what happened. This is what they received. Just
to review, the old sin nature can be viewed in a diagram in the shape
of a diamond. It is important to understand
what follows now in human history in Satan’s relationship and
manipulation of human beings through the demon host as we’re going to look at
on these Sunday mornings. It is important to understand what
has happened within the being of man that gives Satan his contact
point, the sin nature.
As you read through the Bible you’ll discover, that out of
unregenerate man there obviously come evils. The Bible makes
it clear that from the nature of man there springs
sins. So, we say that the sin nature has
an area of weakness and it produces sins. Mark 7:21 says,
“For within out of the heart of man (referring to the
old sin nature) proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications,
murders, theft, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, and evil eye,
blasphemy, foolish. All these things
come from within and defile the man.” Where
do they come from within the man? Right
here, they come from the old sin nature.
But there is another thing we discover as we read through Scripture. We
find that the Bible also indicates that
man is productive of good things. So,
we call this human good. Man has a
righteousness and the Bible recognizes that he does. In
Isaiah 64:6, we’re told, “But we are all
as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags.” God recognizes
that there is human
righteousness—human good. The
Lord told the disciples that unless their righteousness exceed that of the
Pharisees they would be doomed. They had a
righteousness in the form of human good.
So, as we read through the Scriptures we discover a strange
thing about this old sin nature. It
not only produces sinful things, but it produces things that are good. The
things of human good, are they sin? No,
these are not sin. There is no moral
issue in human good. These are simply
good things that people do. But God rejects
this just as he rejects sins. Sins have been
dealt with by being borne on the cross of Jesus Christ, and human good was
rejected at the cross, and it will yet be judged.
There is something else about this old sin nature. That
is that it has trends. Our old sin natures are not all the
same. We tend to have a trend toward one
direction or another, generally in two directions. One
is toward legalism, or asceticism, and we
put on a good front. You may compare
this to your personality. All of us have a
temperament which the old sin nature expresses, but we don’t
show our temperament. When we deal with
people, most of us put on a good front. On the
other hand, some people don’t mind putting on a wicked image. That’s
how their old sin nature expresses
itself, through the tendency toward license, or lasciviousness. God
rejects everything that comes from the
old sin nature, both good and bad. He
considers it incorrigible (Jeremiah 13:23).
So, some people have an old sin nature which has a trend
toward evil, and they act wild and mean and sinful. They’re
the criminals, the drunks, and the violent people. On the other
hand, some people have a tendency toward a good image, so they’re the
beautiful people, the sociable, and the generous people. But both of them,
in God’s eyes, have nothing that is good. 1
Samuel 16:7 reminds us that man looks on
the outward but man looks on the inward. When God looks on
the inward, that’s what he sees.
When He comes into the garden, He’s looking at these two
people that He made. They have just
sinned, and into their lives has come this quality of the old sin
nature, and this is what God sees. Unless you look
at it and see this from God’s point of view, what follows
will not make much sense.
I grant you that you can educate the old sin nature. You
can train this thing to behave itself. Of course,
that’s part of what morality does. The point of
morality is to impose certain restrictions upon it. But never forget
that the old sin nature produces human good. And
God calls our human good dead works in
Hebrews 6:1. God condemns anything that
comes from the old sin nature, good or bad (Romans 8:8, 1 Corinthians
3:13-15, Isaiah 64:6). There are other
terms in the Bible for the old sin nature. It
is sometimes called “the old man.” We
use this term because the sin nature originated with Adam (Romans 5:12,
Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:9). Sometimes it is
called “the flesh” (Romans 7:18, Ephesians 2:3,
Galatians 5:16). It’s called the flesh because it resides
inside of our human bodies. It’s
part of the soul structure. It’s
also sometimes called “the heart” (Jeremiah 17:9, Matthew 15:19,
Matthew 12:34, Mark 7:21).
In the book of Romans, it is pretty regularly identified by
the word “sin” in the singular—not sins,
but sin. When the book of Romans uses the word “sin,”
it’s referring to the old sin nature. Now the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ has borne all of the sin of the
old sin nature that it inspires. So
as we saw many months ago, sin is no longer an issue. The
wall that has divided man from God has
been removed. 2 Peter 2:24 tells us that
He bore our sins in his own body, and so the sin problem has been paid
and removed. Human good, however, has not been
judged. There is a time coming when your
human good will be judged. The issue
will be dealt with for the Christian at the Judgment Seat of Christ. For
the unsaved person it will be at the
Great White Throne judgment. The issue
is not only between good and evil, but between good and
good—God’s good and
Satan’s good. People are doing
things that are good in order to go to heaven. That’s
why it’s important to understand how the old sin nature
works, because people are being deceived that they’re on their way
to heaven because they’re doing good works. They
give money to the church. They do deeds of
kindness. They’re church members.
Luke 18:9-12 identifies this as a false hope. Jesus
speaks the parable about the two men,
the Publican and the Pharisee. He lists
all the things that he does. He says,
“I’m not an extortionist, I’m not unjust, I’m not an
adulterer, I’m not a tax
collector, I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all I possess. And
the Pharisee considered this human good
acceptable to God for his sins.
Now was there anything with what the Pharisee was claiming
as good. Not in the world. Those
were good things, but they stemmed from
his old sin nature and God rejected them. They
didn’t mean a thing. Titus
3:5 says, “Not be our works of righteousness but by His mercy
He has saved us.” Salvation,
therefore, is accepting the divine
good of Jesus Christ in place of your own. That’s
what Ephesians 2:8-9 means. Galatians 3:26
says that we’re saved by grace. It’s
accepting His divine good.
Someday the unbelievers are going to have their human good
paraded before them. Since the issue
of the cross is settled, nobody will ever be faced with any single
sin—saved or unsaved. The only thing
that they will face will be their good (2 Corinthians 5:21). The cross has
settled the sin issue. Revelation 20:12-15 tell us about a Great White Throne judgment to take
place at the end of the thousand-year reign of Christ upon the earth. In
that passage, we read that all those who are unbelievers stand before God. “I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened. And
another book was opened which is the Book of Life. And the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their
works.”
Now this passage is generally misconstrued by people to
thinking that what God is doing is opening up a book in which all of
your evil works and sins are listed. But
obviously, if Jesus Christ has performed a complete work of salvation
on the cross, then all sin has been paid for, and God cannot face you with a
single sin even if He wanted to. His Son has
provided a perfect salvation. So, there
is no record kept of your sins. God does
not expose your sins to the world. God
does not expose your sin. He covers it. He removes it,
and it’s done for. Nobody is seeing
it in heaven, nor will they ever in eternity.
But these people are going to stand before God. These
are the people who have once rejected
the cross. These are the
people who maybe, like yourself, have come up, and God says,
“I’ve got some divine good to
bring you into heaven.” And
you said, “Forget
it, God. I’ve
got something just as
good. Here are all my
good works.” And you lay them
out and you pile them
up. And now God says,
“Alright, let’s
judge your good works. Let’s
evaluate what you’ve done.”
And the book is open and there you are. You
look it over and you say, “Yeah, that’s a
good record. That’s an accurate
record. I see all those things I did, every
year. I see you’ve got a good record of
what I did.” And so they weigh
up all of your righteousnesses. There’s
nothing wrong with them. But when it
matches against the infinite demand of the perfection of God: Do
you know what the glory of God is? It’s
that we fall short of the essence of
God. Now, my dear friend, how are you
going to stand before God and meet the essence of God? The
essence of God says that God is
sovereign, He’s got absolute kingly control, He is absolute
perfect righteousness, there is no evil, no wrongdoing, He is absolute justice,
He’s absolutely fair, He’s love, He’s eternal life,
He’s omniscient, He’s omnipotent, He’s omnipresent, He’s immutable, and
He’s absolutely true. How are you going
to meet that with your human good? You
can’t. You’re dead.
And so, God has no alternative but to say, “I’m sorry. Your
human was not enough. You’re
condemned to the lake of fire and
brimstone.” Remember,
everybody who is in Hades at this moment, waiting for the transfer into hell, made this
choice. God gives everybody who has ever
lived an opportunity to come to consciousness of Himself, and an
opportunity of salvation. Everybody who is
waiting to be moved into hell, and who will enter hell, is doing it because they
said, “I’ll take my human good over God’s divine good.”
Well, the books are opened, and it’s not enough. Death
and Hades, in verse 14, cast into the lake of fire (the second death). Verse
15 says, “Whosoever was not written in the book of
life…” And they could not be in the book of life
because their good works were not adequate. Whosoever was not
found in the book of life was cast into the lake of
fire. How are you going to get sufficient good? You receive that
by accepting God in Jesus Christ (Romans 4:3-5).
Ah, but you’re a Christian. You say, “I’m past that. I’m
not worried about that. I’m not going to
play the fool and try to face God on my human good.” But
you, as a Christian, are still confronted
with this old sin nature, because within you, when you came into the
Christian life, came this old sin nature, with your salvation. Now
somebody rules. There is in your life a throne. It is your
volition and your choice and your decision as to who is on the throne that runs your life. At
any single moment, one or the other does so. Everybody in this
room at this moment has either God the Holy Spirit on the throne of his life, or the
old sin nature.
If God the Holy Spirit is on the throne of your life, you’re
open, you’re receptive, you’re going positive
toward the Word of God, and God
is going to bless you. If you sit here,
and the old sin nature, because of some unconfessed sin, is on the throne,
you’re going to understand very little and you’re going to be more
negative than when you walked in. While the old sin
nature is on the throne, you produce human good. While God the
Holy Spirit is on the throne, you provide divine good.
Someday
we Christians will face what the Bible calls the
Judgment Seat of Christ. 1 Corinthians
3:11-15 describes to us how our works as Christians will be taken, they
will be evaluated, they will be tested by the fire of God’s judgment,
and what is human good will be burned. At that point,
God is going to judge the human good of believers. He
didn’t judge it at the cross. He just rejected
it at the cross, and He would have nothing to do with
it when it came to salvation. But all
the human good we crank out has yet to be judged, and it will be judged
there at the Judgment Seat of Christ. All of
the human good of the unbeliever will be judged at the Great White
Throne, and it’s going to be condemned.
I want to warn you about something, as to what is human good
and what is divine good. There’s
a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of glow on the part of Christians concerning
things that can be done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ—things
that churches do, things that religious organizations do that are lauded as great works
of God. One of the signs that God is working is how big the pile is. The
bigger the pile, the more confidence people have that God is in it. So
it’s the old numbers racket that Satan has
instilled into the human heart. Satan came along and he started whispering. He
said, “Listen. The more floor space you
have, the more chairs you have, and the more people sitting in it, the
more spiritual is your operation, and the more God is blessing, and the more
God is prospering you. This is the numbers racket.
This is akin to this: Did you ever have
somebody come to you and say, “Oh, the Lord has
certainly been good to me.” They
mean that they needed a loan to buy a car, and they tricked the banker into
making the loan, and they said, “Oh, the Lord has certainly been
good to me.” It’s
hard for me not to say, “Was He bad to
you last week?” When is God ever
not good to you? When is He ever
productive of anything but what is good? But it is
not a numbers statistical basis of evaluation.
I remind you that in the analogy of what is human good is
compared to what? Hay, wood, and stubble. But what is
divine good compared to? Gold, silver, and
gems. Now, pound for pound, what makes
the bigger pile? Hay, wood, and
stubble, or gold, silver, and precious gems. And
I think the analogy is with merit. The
numbers racket is a satanic delusion that the bigger the pile, the more
God’s blessing is there. That’s
what human good does. Human good looks
so impressive. It looks so numerically impressive
that people think this must be of God.
Well, the believer is going to be judged. He’s
going to discover that all that he
created that was human good is burned, and it’s destroyed,
and it’s removed. And God rewards
him in eternity for only that which came through the motivation of God the Holy Spirit. I
remind you again that human good is not
sin. The Bible distinguishes between
personal sins and these works of human righteousness, though both are
rejected by God. Human good does
not involve a moral issue. Is it a moral
issue when you walk up to that offering box, having sat here this morning in
carnality, with the old sin nature dominating your life, resistance to the will
and the plan of God in your heart, sin that you have refused to confess, and
you go to that offering box and you put in $100, is that an act of immorality. No. There is no moral
issue involved. You just lost $100 to human good. I don’t
want to discourage you this morning, but I’d like to see you
get your money’s worth, so to speak.
It’s not a moral issue because you’re a church member. It’s
not a moral issue because you do an act
of kindness. But human good is doing it
under the inspiration of the old sin nature. You do such a
simple thing like give a glass of cold water to a person
who needs it, and you do it under the direction of the Spirit of God,
and it’s rewarded. God doesn’t forget it. Human good is
from our carnal condition. Divine good is from our spiritual condition.
Now how do you handle human good in your life? Well,
first of all, you try to avoid it by
being filled with the Spirit. You see
that known sin is confessed. You cannot
sin when you are controlled by God the Holy Spirit. You
have to be tempted to sin, and then you
have to respond positively. It is not a
sin to be tempted. It is only a sin
when you respond. When you succumb,
the Holy Spirit is grieved, and the old sin nature moves over and takes the
throne. Thereafter, all of your non-moral acts become
human good. You confess your sin, the
Holy Spirit moves back on the throne, and the same non-moral act
becomes divine good, and God reward you for it. The
evidence of the old sin nature controlling your life is the outward
sins which we perform.
Where did this idea come from? Well, immediately
when Adam and Eve sinned, they moved to an act of human good. Who
do you think moved them to that? This old sin nature within them was being manipulated by Satan. He
said, “Here we go. We’re going to get ourselves organized with a
little bit of good.” So, he was the first
sinner through negative volition, and he brought human good into the
hearts of these people. It is a mistake to think
that only what society views as evil is what originates with Satan,
because Satan is trying to create a perfect environment. So, there is not
only this evil, but there is this conflict of good against good.
There is an interesting quote out of Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s
systematic theology, in the book on angelology. Dr.
Chafer says, “Next to the lie itself, the
greatest illusion Satan imposes, reaching to all unsaved and to a large
proportion of Christians, is the supposition that only such things that
society considers evil could originate with the devil, if indeed there be any
devil to originate anything. It is not the
reason of man, but the revelation of God which points out that governments,
morals, education, art, commercialism, vast enterprises and organizations, and
much of religious activity are included in the Cosmos Diabolicus. That
is, the system which Satan has
constructed includes all the good which he can incorporate into it and
be consistent in the thing he aims to accomplish. A serious
question arises whether the presence of gross evil in the
world is due to Satan’s intention to have it so, or whether
it indicates Satan’s inability to execute all he has designed. The probability
is great that Satan’s ambition has led him to undertake
more than any creature could ever administer. Revelation
declares that the whole cosmos system must be annihilated—not
its evil alone, but all that is in it, both good and bad. God
will incorporate nothing of Satan’s
failure into that kingdom which He will set up in the earth.”
Now that’s a very excellent summary of a point that seems to
elude people. So, Satan promotes these
schemes of social gospel, socialism, world peace movements,
internationalism, economic assistance schemes, and humanitarian
“do-goodism.” All of these unrelated to God and the movement
of the spirit of God. He has great power
and his greatest power is in the field of thought. So
he expresses this in religion with the
doctrine of demons (1 Timothy 4:1), and the only defense we Christians
have against this is the doctrine of the Word of God. Satan
therefore tries to bring good through politics. He has grasped
control of the world from Adam. He’s
trying to beat God to an international world peace organization. That’s
where the United Nations comes in. That’s
where the World Council of Churches
comes in. That’s where all of the
movements toward world organization come in.
Satan has the power of love. This is another
human good. It’s a pseudo love. It’s
“love everybody.” It’s
a matter of sweet words. People who
don’t run around feeling like they
love everybody have guilt complexes. God
says that love is a mental attitude. Now
there are people that you can’t stand. You meet people
and you talk to them a few minutes and you’ve had
it. But I have to remind you that God
loves them just as much as He loves you.
So, God has a plan for our lives. It’s
never arrived at without an
understanding of the Word of God. That’s
why the spiritual maturity structure is so vital to our being.
Now what’s happening here? How are we going
to handle this thing? There’s
a remedy for the old sin nature. For those of you
who are unbelievers, the remedy is receiving Jesus
Christ as your Savior. For Romans 6:11
tells us we can neutralize the old sin nature through redemption in
Christ Jesus. There are three things that will
keep the old sin nature off the throne of your life. The
first thing is to know something. That
is to know that Jesus Christ has
destroyed the power of your old sin nature. Romans
6:6-7 tells us that the power of the
old sin nature is broken. It can no
longer control you. The second thing
is that it tells you to believe something, and that is to believe that it
has no power over you. Romans 6:11-13 says, “Reckon,”
or accept the fact that the old sin nature has had its back broken. The
third thing, in order to keep the old sin
nature off the throne is to use 1 John 1:9 in the regular confession of sin.
If you are an unbeliever, the remedy is salvation through
Christ. Satan gives unbelievers the idea
that their human good will somehow save them. But human good is
part of religion, and religion is a system of doing
good things from the old sin nature in order, somehow, to gain the
favor of God and thus to go to heaven. So, we have
multitudes in churches who are offering God the human good stemming
from their old sin nature for salvation, and it will never never work. The
sin nature produces good works, but these will not save. When you come
into the Christian life, the sin nature comes with you, and it’s still
the same old rotten thing in the Christian life as it was before. Therefore,
it can never meet God’s standard.
Romans chapter 8, beginning in verse 7 says, “Because the
carnal mind (that is, the mind dominated by the old sin nature) is
enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be. So, that they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.” They that are
operating in the old sin nature cannot please God. There
is no way to secure eternal life
through the old sin nature. No amount of
culture, education, or restraint will change the old sin nature. It
will bring some controls so you can live
with it, but that’s just disguising it. It’s
hopeless, and it separates us from God.
1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “But the natural man receiveth not
the things of the spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him. Neither
can he know them because they are
spiritually discerned.” You
can’t disguise a pig’s nature with a lamb’s coat. But faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ as Savior makes new creatures of us
on the inside so the pig nature of the old sin nature is defeated. Acts
16:31 says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved.” 1
John 5:12 says, “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath
not the Son of God hath not life.”
So, as we look back at Genesis 3 where we started this
morning, this is what has happened. These people are
now moved with an old sin nature. It
is cranking out human good, and the scene
is set for the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
enters the garden. There is total
silence. They hid from God. They
hear Him walking. They hear Him
calling, and they do not answer
because the old sin nature within them now is dominating. They
are spiritually dead, and they have no
ground of response of the Lord. They
have clothed themselves with fig leaf aprons, and they’re
respectable now, aren’t they?
Are you respectable this morning because of how you came
dressed? There was respectability for
Adam and Eve. Why? Because
they put on some clothes. You’d
be surprised how many people are running
around respectable because they’re stylish. They’re
really respectable. The
thing is, how long do you think those fig leaves are going to last? Can
you imagine those fig leaves drying out,
and you bump into somebody, and zap—there goes your whole
costume? And you go
tearing out to the woods to get
some more fig leaves. And
that’s just
about man’s level of covering—the anxiety, the
inanity of this this. And they
don’t have the nerve even to answer.
Finally, you have the first dramatic wonderful act of grace
because it is the Lord Jesus who calls them. Verse 9 says,
“And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) called unto Adam and
said, ‘Where art thou?’” Their
clothes were a covering for their old sin nature, and God rejected it. In
an act of grace, He broke the silence. He approached man
in his need, as Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us He does. There was no
merit in those aprons, as Titus 3:5 tells us (our human
righteousnesses). And the Lord God
called Adam. It was Adam that
He addressed because he was the responsible party.
In your translation, the word “art” (where
“art” thou) is in italics. It’s
not in the Hebrew. This is what’s called an elliptical
expression. They dropped the verb in order
to make the questions punchy. God simply
says, “Adam, where thou?” What
He was actually saying was (not that He didn’t know where he was),
“Adam, why are you where you are, hiding behind those trees?” Of course, God
knew that, but He was focusing attention on the
situation. This is compared to the day
before, when God walked in there and they ran out to meet Him. Now
He wants to know, “Now why are you hiding
behind those trees today?”
Adam’s explanation, in verse 10, is, “I heard thy voice in
the garden. I was afraid because I was naked.” And he makes it
punchy also. There is no verb, “I naked,” and “I
hid myself.” He declared that he was now
in fear of God. And yet 2 Timothy 1:7
tells us that we are not called to a pattern of fear. God
did not make us to be fearful. Basically, the
fear within us is the fear of
death. 2 Corinthians 5:8 tells us that
God has removed this fear. Only regeneration
removed this fear from our hearts. The
moment that sin came in, man was afraid. Adam is in fear
of God because he has lost his light covering and his
sin is exposed. He says, “I naked,” thus
reflecting his broken fellowship with God.
So, God focuses the issue a little more exactly, and says, in
verse 11, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of
the tree whereof I have commanded thee thou shouldst
not?” God is putting the question to Adam
like a judge, “Are you guilty or not guilty?” The issue was the
exercise of man’s volition. Has
he chosen another will besides God’s
will? And Adam says, “Guilty.”
But notice how he claims guilt. Verse 12 says,
“The man said, ‘the woman whom
thou gavest to be with me, she gave me the tree and I did
eat.” In effect, he
first blames God for giving him
the woman. Many a man has
done that. Then he blamed
Eve for offering the fruit to him. But she
didn’t shove it in his mouth. He reached out
and took it from her and ate it on his own volition. He accepted the
offer. The old sin nature, however, still wants to blame others for our own situation. The
man and the woman are rationalizing. They’re
justifying what they have done. That’s
how the old sin nature does.
So
people like to blame the poor preacher, who didn’t write
the book in the first place, for their trouble. Yet here they
are, blaming God, “… the woman you gave
me…” If you don’t have the doctrine inside, you’ll
have the trouble outside.
So, what does Eve say? God turns to Eve
and says, “Guilty or not guilty?” In
verse 13, “The Lord said unto the woman, ‘What
is this that thou hast done?’ The
woman said, ‘The serpent beguiled me and I did
eat.’” She passes the
buck down to the serpent, and it can’t get any lower, and
that’s where it stops. “He
beguiled me.” He tricked me. That’s
true. And she says, “I did eat.” This
now sets the scene for the pronouncement of the divine judgment which
we shall look at next time.
Dr. John E. Danish
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