The Way Of Sin

Introduction

I’m not exactly sure. Not exactly sure how one is to follow that, except to say, Amen. What a wonderful song. It’s one of the things that Lauren and I have really enjoyed about our time here at Decker Prairie so far is that we came from a congregation that was only about 50 strong, 50 to 75, and they only knew the oldest of the old songs out of the oldest of the old hymn books. And so I’m learning all kinds of new ones, and I’m glad because I’m leaving singing next Sunday morning, so I’m not going to try anything too daring, but it’s enjoyable to be able to worship with a group of people that really not only just sing, but sing with their hearts.

And you can hear the sincerity and the words that are being sung, and what a marvelous and wonderful thing it is. Want to say welcome to all our visitors. We’ve got we’ve got quite a few. As Ernie pointed out, our pews are quite full this morning. And if you came to hear Tony, I’m sorry. I’m not Tony. And if you really wanted to hear Tony, I’m really sorry because you’re really going to want to hear Tony after I get done this morning. I can almost assure you that. After my last stand up here, I did learn an important lesson. I’m not going to say anything too overly flattering of Woody. I have caught a lot of grief for that over the last few weeks.

I think Tony’s made mention of that three or four times since then. So I just want to say, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna contain my enthusiasm for Woody. But if you want to join the Woody Colette fan club, I’ve got t shirts in the back of the car. Open your Bibles, if you will, to the book of Romans. We’re going to be in the sixth chapter this morning. We’re actually going to be in a couple of different places, but our primary focus is going to be in Romans the sixth chapter. And let’s see if I can get this thing started up the way it’s supposed to be. Hey. One button, it was ready to go. Can’t argue with that. And I want to talk to you this morning about the wages of sin.

If you were to really look at society today, if you were really to look at, as we studied last quarter in the Wednesday night class, the Christian in culture. One of the things that’s becoming evident, I think, to anybody that is really looking is that our culture is really starting to rub off on us. And to the degree that we need to take a hard and fast look at how we’re dealing with the problem of sin. In fact, in fact, the lesson tonight is going to be on what constitutes sin. But I want to talk to you about the wages of sin. And for a moment before we get into that, I want to talk to you about this picture. I actually took this picture when Lauren and I went to Hawaii for our fifth wedding anniversary.

When we got married, I was poor. And I told her at five years, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go if you just let me take you to Austin for two days, you know, the day after we get married. She said yes, and then five years rolled around and she said, Hey, remember you said we could go anywhere I wanted to go? I said yes. She said, Hawaii. That’s not quite how it went down, but it’s a funnier way to tell it. But we took the trip and we went to the big island, which is Hawaii, the island that’s actually called Hawaii, and then we went to the Oahu, where Honolulu and all that is, and what we quickly found is that we got tired of the touristy things.

And we just started driving. And we had this book that was essentially just a map of Hawaii that on the different pages, you would see this, you know, turn in here, go here kind of thing. And as we were driving, we took a turn we’d never made before. We came to an intersection. We’d always gone right at this intersection, instead, we went left. And as we went left, we started going up into the mountains and we went through this fishing village, and at the end of the road where it dead ends, has anybody seen Jurassic Park, I’m assuming? The beginning shot of Jurassic Park, where the helicopter goes zooming over that green, lush valley was filmed right there. If they had pointed the lens out the other side of the helicopter, you’d have seen a fishing village with cars up on blocks.

And as we were walking around, we were walking on this cliff side and we were looking down, and you could go down to the beach that was down there, and it was beautiful black sand, and the path down there was a steep red rock, and we had they had these sticks that you had to carry to get down to the beach. In fact, we took one of the sticks home with us. We didn’t go down to the beach because it was getting late, but we took a walking stick. And we were just looking out of this, and it was absolutely beautiful. And I happened to notice this cobbled together cross behind the barbed wire over to the side. And I asked one of the locals who was standing there and making money selling walking sticks, I think.

That I asked him, I said, What’s the what’s the cross for? And he says, Well, it’s a it’s a warning to surfers. I said, it’s a warning to surfers. He says, he says, yes. I said, Well, why don’t you just put up a sign that says, don’t surf. He says, Well, we tried that, but they ignored it. And so every time that someone would die at the foot of this cliff from trying to surf this really dumb place to surf. He says, We put up one of these crosses. He said, Finally, so many people died there, we just left it. And I said, Well, what’s so dangerous about it? He says, it’s the way that the coral forms, and it’s the way that the water brings you in.

He says, if you get too far to the left, it’ll smash you right into the cliffside. And if you get too far to the right, it’s going to drag you across some really nasty coral and just rip you out to rip you to pieces and then take you back out to sea and do it all over again. He says, it’s just not smart to go down there.

1. The Wages of Sin Is Death

Brothers and sisters, it’s just not smart to mess around with sin. Open your Bibles, as I said, to Romans chapter 6. We’re going to begin reading and start in the first verse. It says, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For with if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection.

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now, if we die, if we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with him. We shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Pause right there for a second. I want you to really look at verse 11.

Do you see what he said there? Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That word reckon is not one that we use much anymore. My grandmother still says, You reckon? For the longest time it took me to it took me the longest time to figure out what she was talking about. The word reckon means to reconcile. He says, look at yourself and convince yourself, you know, prove to yourself that you are dead to sin, but alive to God.

Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in its lust. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

I speak in human terms, because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit do you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. Doesn’t get a whole lot clearer than that, does it? But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. If you don’t have this next verse, double triple star, underlined, circled in your Bible, please do it if you’re the kind of person that writes in your Bible.

For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Shall we continue in sin, he asks. Do we continue down this path of sin? If there’s grace, what’s the harm in sin? Won’t grace just cover? Well, grace will certainly remove sin. But you see, the problem is. Look at verse 16. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey? You are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience, leading to righteousness. And in case that’s not clear enough, look at what he says in verse 23. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You know, there aren’t a lot of declarative statements that are just that clear. You ever tried to read the terms of a contract? All over the place, right? Trying to decipher what the terms of a credit card statement are or what I’m signing when I’m purchasing a house can be as confusing as anything else. This is not a confusing statement. He says, if you commit sin, if sin were a job and you were to take sin on as a job, this is what you’re going to get paid. Who would sign up for that? Who would take on that responsibility, that role? If you were to go to work tomorrow and the boss says, hey, I want to pay you in death, see ya. I don’t think so.

He says, we’re making ourselves, we’re putting ourselves under the employee, under the ownership. We’re making ourselves slaves to sin, and the wage that we’re going to be paid for that work is death. Now, if that didn’t make the blood run a little bit cold, maybe something wrong with your blood.

2. Mr. Yuck: Calling Sin What It Is

Anyone remember this guy? It was long about 1982, 1983. He came out, his name is Mr. Yuck. And Mr. Yuck was affixed to all the poison bottles under the counter. Bleach, Mr. Yuck. Pine saw, Mr. Yuck. Listerine, not Mr. Yuck. Deserved a Mr. Yuck for the taste, but not a Mr. Yuck. But mom and dad had these green stickers on everything in the house that there was even a sheet of them in the drawer for a while. And Mr. Yuck was the symbol to somebody who couldn’t read, don’t drink. It might look like lemonade, but it’s not. It might smell good, but it’s not.

It might look like it will quench your thirst, but it won’t. This is dangerous. This will harm you. The apostle Paul just took all of the sin that you can imagine. Any sin that you could comprehend yourself, maybe becoming entangled in one day, and he just put a big green on it. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You know, this isn’t the only time that we’re told about sin and death. Look at Ezekiel 18 and 20. The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

The soul that sinneth will die.

This is the spiritual equivalent of comic cleanser. This isn’t something to monkey around with and try to taste.

Every person has tried to steer you into unrighteousness. Every roadside temptation to some kind of illicit behavior. You notice the signs up on the road. I just absolutely cannot stand driving north on 45 once you get past 6’10. That someone told me the other day that Houston has more gentlemen’s clubs per capita than any other city in the U.S., and that just is a sickening thought. Don’t know if it’s true, don’t care. Because it’s just disgusting. But the billboards are all over the place to the point where you just have to look at the car right in front of you so you don’t see anything that you don’t want to see. Now imagine if every time you did that, you had that big green yuck face in your head.

Imagine the time, young people that when somebody comes walking down the hallway in school and they’ve got an invitation for you to engage in some kind of unrighteousness that you just saw a big green Mr. Yuck flashing on their forehead. It sounds funny. But that’s exactly what we ought to be doing. It sounds humorous, but that’s exactly what we ought to be doing. We need to be calling sin what it is. It will pay us in death. It will kill the soul. It was so stern a warning, with so stern of consequence, with so dire of circumstance. Why do we continue to sin?

If I handed you a bottle of bleach, you wouldn’t drink it, would you?

3. Why Do We Sin?

So why do we sin? Well, let’s be honest. We sin because we want to. We sin because we want to. I’m going to say something, young people, that might shock you, particularly coming from somebody standing up here. Sin is fun. Absolutely is. The devil knew what he was doing when he cobbled it. The devil knew what he was doing when he laid the trap because he’s been laying that trap since he laid it for Eve in the garden. Sin is entertainment. Sin is enjoyable. And sin glosses over the fact that you and I have no business participating in it. It lies about what its end result is. There’s another sermon that I have, maybe I’ll have a chance to preach it for you one day. It’s called the three things sin will always do.

It will always take you further than you intended to go. It will always cost you more than you intended to pay. You don’t have to look any further than David about Shiva to see that. And it will always keep you longer than you thought it would.

We sin because we convince ourselves that it’s just not that serious.

Old people talk about sin. You ever notice that? We don’t talk about sin anymore. We talk about being inclusive. We talk about being more sensitive. We talk about being more culturally aware. We don’t call things sin anymore.

We’ve taken the sin of abortion and we’ve called it a choice. We’ve taken the sin of homosexuality and we’ve called it a lifestyle. We’ve taken the sin of adultery and we’ve called it love. And the sin of fornication and done the same thing. We convince ourselves that it’s just not that serious. We’ve replaced the ugly words that are in the Bible like adultery and fornication and homosexuality with kinder and more gentler words. Notice we don’t talk about killing babies anymore when we when we talk about abortion. We talk about a choice. Because who can be against choice?

4. Let's Look at These Lies

You know. Whether we’re sinning because we want to, or we’re sinning because we’re just not convinced that it’s all that serious. We’ve been deceived. Romans 6 still says what it says in verse 23. The wages of sin is death. It’s an unequivocal, it’s an unquestioning kind of unquestioning kind of statement. It doesn’t make any vacillation. It’s not trying to qualify itself in any kind of way. The wages of sin is death. It doesn’t say it almost always is death. It’s always going to be death. Ezekiel the 18th chapter didn’t say the soul that sinneth might die or could die or shall probably die. It says the soul that sinneth will die. So let’s look at these lies for a second. I think that probably the most pernicious one in our day and age is that God doesn’t really care about sin unless somebody gets hurt.

You ever notice that? The reasoning, the thought process that says, you know what, this can’t be wrong because I’m not hurting anybody but me. It’s used for everything from sexual immorality to drinking to just kind of situational ethics that say, I’ll cheat on this report and just not tell anybody about it.

If nobody gets hurt, what does God really care? How can it be wrong if it makes me happy? It can’t be bad, right? It makes me smile, it makes me laugh, I enjoy it. It can’t be wrong because I’m a good person. We first convince ourselves of that one. Oh, I’m a good person. If this makes me, if this makes me happy, it can’t be all that bad.

Aha. The mothers everywhere have a response to this one. It’s not sin if everyone else is doing it. And what did your mama say? If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump off that bridge. I knew a kid once that asked his mama, if every mother was using that analogy, would you use that analogy? I don’t think he said anything for about a week after that. It can’t be sin if everyone else is doing it. The numbers are on our side. Because we’re in a spiritual democracy, right? That’s how this works. We all raise our hands and vote on everything. We’re in a spiritual democracy. Numbers are on our side. No, that’s not how this works. I can always repent of it tomorrow. We’re going to talk about this one at length.

5. All Sin Is Lawlessness

But before we get down to there, let’s begin with this: that all sin is lawlessness. First John chapter 3. The text reads, Whoever commits sin commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin. Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning for the for this purpose, the Son of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. Brothers and sisters, sin isn’t fun, although it is.

Sin isn’t entertainment, although the devil makes it entertaining. Sin isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s not a progressive movement. Sin is lawlessness. And we had better get that through our heads. All sin is transgression. All sin is breaking the covenant with God. All sin, no matter how small we might try to convince ourselves the infraction is lawlessness. Let’s go back to Genesis chapter 3 for a second. And let’s look at these three lives. I say go back for a second. We haven’t been there yet, but it is before where you were in the Bible, so hey. And let’s take a look at the very first sin. You know, it’s hard to sometimes pinpoint the first of something. There’s a lot of a lot of debate over who made the first automobile, or a lot of, you know, whether it was, you know, over here or over in Germany, and there’s all kinds of all kinds of first that are debated.

But I can say to you with absolute certainty, this is the first sin. In Genesis the third chapter, beginning in verse 1, it says, Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, has gone, and he said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed thig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

They hear the voice of the Lord walking in the garden, calling out to them, and they hide themselves, and then the discourse happens that you know, why did you hide yourself? Well, we were naked and we were ashamed. Who told you were naked? Did you eat of the tree? Yeah, we ate of the tree because the woman you gave me gave me the fruit. And the woman says, Well, that serpent you made gave me the fruit.

Do you see the unraveling that happened in that short span of verses? Do you see what transpired there? The devil came to her with promises. He says, First of all, you know, you see that tree? Didn’t God tell you could eat of any tree? Well, yeah. Except you know, that woman.

He said, We shouldn’t even touch it or we’ll die. He says, You’re not going to die. He just knows on the day that you eat of that tree that you’re going to be wise. And you’re going to know good and evil, and you’re going to be like God. And so the woman begins to reason within herself, and she says, Well, you know, it’s good for food. It looks good. There’s a shine on that come quat. Thought I was going to say apple, didn’t you? There’s a shine on that piece of fruit. And it would be, it would be, what would it be like to know what God knows and be wise? Now, what were those three? Well, God doesn’t care unless someone is harmed. You know, the only person that Eve harmed in her fall was herself and her husband.

It was still sin. How can it be wrong if it makes me happy? That sin gave her everything it promised it would give her. That fruit gave her everything. It gave her the knowledge. She understood. And boy, did she understand.

Because it also gave her exactly what God said it would, and that was the beginning of her own demise. And what was the third one? It’s not sin if everyone else is doing it. You know, this is the one time in human history where I can say absolutely without a shadow of a doubt that everyone on earth was doing the exact same thing. Because there’s only two of them. Everyone on the earth was entangled in the exact same sin. And guess what? It was still sin. It didn’t matter that the numbers were on their side. It didn’t matter that everybody said, you know what, we need to change how we feel about this. You know, God said, don’t do it, but I really want to be wise, and she really wants to be wise, and so we want to be wise.

And, you know, it’s just changed, God, since you gave us the rules. That’s how we talk today, isn’t it? You know, we reason about things like, particularly the sexual kinds of sins, the fornication and the homosexuality and the things like that. You hear that reasoning. Well, it was a different society then, and people were more prudish, and now we’re more open and we’re more understanding, and homosexuality is the attitudes toward it have changed. Doesn’t make it right.

It doesn’t make it right. Just because man moves further away from God doesn’t mean that God has become more permissive. Just because man moves further away from righteousness doesn’t mean that the things that used to be wrong are today right. But weren’t there four?

6. I Can Always Repent of It Tomorrow

Oh, yeah. I can always repent of it tomorrow. I call this the get out of hell free card. Because that’s how we abuse it. As a preacher, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard it said to me that I don’t, I want to have my fun today. I want to live my life today. Don’t bother me with morality. I’ll repent of it later. You’re hedging a lot on later. You’re hedging a lot on later. You’re hedging a lot on the fact that you’re still on the belief that you’re going to be living and breathing when later comes around. You’re hedging a lot on later that you’re not going to become so mired in sin that you can’t find your way back because you can’t imagine putting down all of the things that you’ve enjoyed so much for so long.

But more than anything, you are hedging against what God says in Hebrew, or what the Hebrew writer says in Hebrews 10 26 about the nature of God, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful expectation of the judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. If we are banking on repentance tomorrow and going willfully into sin today, we are playing with fire. And I don’t know how much how much more clear I can say that. Turn over to that passage in Hebrews. Hebrews the 10th chapter, beginning verse 26, for if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.

But a certain fearful expectation of the judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy? Who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace. For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That verse 31 may be one of the most poignant in that entire passage, if not the entire book of Hebrews.

It’s one that you really could double triple circle underline star if you wanted to, because we have lost sight of that. You know, I think that’s the most dangerous thing about our attitude towards sin today is that we have lost sight of what it really means to be afraid of God. What it really means to be afraid of eternal consequences. That we want to take the repentance card and we want to put it in our back pocket, and when we want to say, When I’m older and I’ve had my fun, then I’ll take it out. Then I’ll go and I’ll be this good person and I’ll do all of the things that I was supposed to do. But for right now, I want to be a sinner.

That’s how we say it, right? No? It’s not how we say it, but it’s how we live it. We’ll never vocalize that. We’ll go through the motions of being good people. We’ll go through the motions of saying the right things. We’ll go through the motions of doing all that we need to do. But all along, what we’re really trying to do is be a sinner for as long as we possibly can and hold on to repentance for later. And brothers and sisters, that is a fool’s walk.

And are again entangled in it and are overcome. They are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them, the proverbs are true. A dog returns to its vomit, and a sow that is washed returns to wallowing in her mud.

Conclusion

Do we still think sin is harmless? Do we still think that sin is something that we can just laugh at because it’s entertaining? That it’s something that doesn’t really affect me all that much. It’s something that’s just kind of overblown. It’s something that everybody’s doing. It’s something I can just repent of later. If that’s our attitude towards sin, I’m afraid we’re going to find ourselves on the wrong side of eternity come judgment.

Let’s review. Do you not know, Romans 6 16, that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? Or Romans 6 23. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ezekiel 18, the soul that sinneth it shall die.

Hebrews 10. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. And 2 Peter 2, which we just read. Brothers and sisters, we can’t afford to be dogs. We can’t afford to be like the sow. We can’t afford to be those who turn their backs on the sacred command and leave the righteousness that we were instructed in. We need to take seriously the wages of sin. If not, it may just be our spiritual undoing. Because the wages of sin is death. There’s anyone here this morning that owes some duty to God, if your soul is not right, there’ll not ever be a better opportunity to change that than right now. Won’t you come forward, confessing your sins to a standards of sins?