When a sinner sees his sin, he sees it as defiling. He sees it for what it is. Ezekiel 20 Verse 43 says: “And there you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things you have done.” When you really look at yourself, you see the defiling sin and you loathe yourself. Sin pollutes. Sin defiles. Sin corrupts. Paul calls it in 2nd Corinthians 7: “The filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan wrote: “Sin is called poison, sinners serpents; sin is called vomit, sinners dogs; sin is called the stench of graves, sinners rotten sepulchers; sin is called mire, sinners pigs. It is defiling, degrading. It stamps the devil’s image on the human soul.
2. Sin is, secondly, rebellion. It is not only defiling, it is rebellion. It establishes not only a defilement and a filth and a pollution and a corruption, but it establishes a life of rebellion. It is, by its own nature, as Leviticus 26:27 says, walking “contrary” to God. It is just walking in constant opposition, in constant rebellion. The sinner tramples on God’s law, tramples on God’s character, willfully crosses God’s will, affronts God, spites God, mocks God. And the Hebrew word for sin, one of the Hebrew words “payshah,” signifies rebellion. It is, at its core, rebellion. That’s what it was for Lucifer; it’s what it was for Eve; it’s what it was for Adam. It’s what it is for all of us. Perhaps a good definition, Jeremiah 44:17: “But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goes forth out of our own mouth.” That’s it. God, we will do exactly what we want to do. Sin is God’s would-be murderer. Sin would not only unthrone God, but ungod God, and replace him with us. If the sinner had his way, God would cease to be God, and the sinner is the only God in his world. So sin is defiling, and sin is open, incessant rebellion.
3. Let me give you a third one. We’ll pick up here next time. Sin is ingratitude. I mean everything we have, everything we are, is from God. We “live and move and have our being” in God, Acts 17:28 says. “He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, sends rain on the just and the unjust.” He — He’s given us everything. In Romans 1, Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, because: “When they knew God, they didn’t glorify Him as God, neither were thankful,” Verse 21. Sin is just ungrateful. All the food the sinner ever eats, God gave him. All the air the sinner ever breathes, God gave him. All the joys the sinner ever experienced, God provided. All the love he ever experienced in the human world, everything, all of his senses are from God. All of the pleasures of life to meet those senses are from God. Every beauty of life is from God. It is God who has given wisdom to us. He has given wisdom to the mind of every human being to think and feel and work and play and rest; that life might be full and useful. And it’s God who made us love and made us laugh and made us cry. And it’s God who gave us special skills and abilities to excel in some areas, and to know some measure of self-respect and value. It’s God who gave us the capacity to care for each other and have relationships. And it’s God who providentially preserves us from getting every disease and dying every death. God literally surrounds the sinners with mercy. They abuse them. Like Absalom, you know, as soon as David, his father, had kissed him and embraced him, he went out and plotted treason against his father. So the sinner eagerly takes the kiss of God that God provides in the created world, and embraces God’s graces and God’s mercy, and then betrays Him by being the friend of God’s enemy, Satan.
Sin is serious ingratitude; it’s damning ingratitude. And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against that ingratitude. Sin is defiling. It is rebellion. It is ingratitude. Well, a few more, a few more questions next time, and then we’ll start to look at the text.
Father, tonight we have just really begun our study in what is such an unhappy subject to be considering and, yet, so necessary. We have to understand the heart of man; we have to understand our own hearts. We have to understand our sin, its severity, its incurable power from the human perspective. We have to understand its pervasiveness, its deadliness. We have to understand sin because it’s the defining element in our universe. It’s why things are the way they are. It’s why the creation is no longer “very good,” but very bad. It’s why everything dies. Father, we have to understand sin because, most of all, it’s why we need a Savior. You have sent him, even the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that sin is humanly incurable. But you have sent Jesus to save his people from their sins. And you save sinners who repent and ask you for forgiveness. What an amazing reality! That as bad as sin is — as defiling, corrupting as it is, as openly rebellious as it is, as ungrateful as it is — you still forgive it when the sinner comes and asks, even as we heard given testimony to in baptism tonight. We want to understand the world and we want to understand it the way it needs to be understood, and that’s the way You see it. And we are able to if we follow Your word. And we know what’s wrong in our world. We know what’s wrong in the lives of people. We know what it is. It’s sin. And there isn’t any human solution, but there is a divine one. May you bring many, many sinners to repentance and salvation. Use us to that end, we pray, in the name of your Son and our dear Savior. Amen
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
