What’s the Matter With People?
Tom Shrader walks through ten biblical questions about sin, answering each from Scripture to establish that all people are sinners separated from God, enslaved to sin, and unable to remedy their condition on their own. Drawing from Romans, Ephesians, James, and other passages, he demonstrates that sin's consequences extend beyond this life into eternal judgment, making the need for a Savior both urgent and universal. The message is framed as the first installment of a four-week evangelistic series, setting up the following weeks to present Jesus Christ as the only solution to the problem of sin.
“You have to deal with this first. Why would you need a Savior until you understand that you're lost?”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Know (2006)
Recorded: 2006 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 49 min
Themes: sin, salvation, judgment, lostness, human nature, guilt, eternity, need for a savior, feeling empty, searching for meaning, non-believer, spiritually lost, skeptic, young adult, new believer, questioning faith
Scripture: James 4:17, Romans 5:12, Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 3:10-12, Romans 6:6, James 2:10, Ephesians 2:1-3, Romans 2:5, Romans 1:18-20
Theological Themes: hamartiology, total depravity, original sin, sin nature, eternal judgment, soteriology, need for redemption, separation from god
Full Transcript
Part 1 of 8
Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this is the most important series we could ever do. There is nothing we have ever done, nothing we will do, that is more important than this, because this addresses the most important issue you will ever face. If you want to think about who you are, why you are here, and where you are going — those are legitimate questions, and there are legitimate answers to them.
In the past I have sometimes said you need to go and find answers to those questions yourself. But I have learned that is not good advice, because oftentimes people come back with the wrong answers. So I want to encourage you: if you are here and you are asking those questions — if you are feeling your way through life, confused, with a sense of emptiness, feeling empty when you succeed and worse when you fail — you have come to the right place.
Five or six years ago, when Jimmy Buffett released the CD titled *Banana Winds*, he wrote this on the liner notes: "This collection of songs is just a continuation of my story — stories of ships and sailors, life and death, women and children, seaplanes and paradoxes. Who I am, how I got here, and where I'm going are questions whose answers are yet to be written." Those are legitimate questions, but there are also legitimate answers. Those answers have been written and given, and we are going to take these next four weeks to work through them.
What the Culture Is Searching For
As a culture, we tend to speculate. If you go to a bookstore — and I am in a bookstore at least once a week, spending a couple of hours working my way through it — you will notice that certain sections have expanded dramatically over the years. The reason a bookstore exists is to sell books. They buy low and sell high, so they stock what people are buying. And what you see expanding is the spirituality section. One store I visit has a section simply called "Speculation" — not stocks and bonds, but the question of what is out there.
One of the great ways to get your finger on the pulse of the culture is to go to Costco. Costco exists to sell, and they do not want product sitting around long. If you go to their book section, you will see exactly what people are buying at the speed of light. You will see Bibles right next to New Age material, right next to speculation, right next to all sorts of confusion. They do not care about the content — they sell what you buy. And right now, that idea of speculating about life and the future is very much in demand.
The Plan for These Four Weeks
I hope that many of you are here because of a residue from Easter — because you heard a challenge that said, come back for four weeks. It does not really make sense to come only on Christmas and Easter. It is good that you are here, something is bringing you here, but I want to talk to you more in depth and answer legitimate questions. That is what these four weeks are for.
Here is the sequence. Today, we are going to expose the need that you have. Next week, we are going to present a solution. The following week, we will explain that solution. And the week after that, we will attempt to move toward a response. We do not have to wait four weeks to respond — you can respond anywhere along the way — but that is the structure. Next week we will talk about what is so important about Jesus. The following week, what was behind the death of Jesus. Then, on the fourteenth, we will talk about how you can know God. That is an extraordinary thought: the Creator God of the universe — you can know Him, not merely know about Him, but know Him in a personal relationship. Today, though, we are asking the question: what is the matter with people?
The Younger Generation and the Culture
I was talking to someone this week who was saying some rather unkind things about teenagers. My experience is actually the opposite. The teenagers I am around — especially those who have come to faith — give me great hope. I find that they have a much more complete and holistic view of God than my generation did. When I first came to faith, my attitude was: open the book, teach me, and get the songs out of the way. What I discovered over time is that worship through song is not in the way — it is part of a full expression of who God is and how He is to be worshipped. I am genuinely encouraged by the younger generation because I believe they have a more complete sense of who God is.
When I look at the broader culture, however, I am not as encouraged. And it is not difficult to understand why. These young people are taught in school, on television, on public radio, on PBS — over and over again — that everything is...
What We Believe Shapes How We Live
If your belief is that you are here by accident, going nowhere, then that is going to affect the way you live. I talked to a young man not long ago who said he did not buy any of the stuff I teach. I asked him what he believed, and he said he believed life was an accident. I asked where we go after life, and he said worm food, dust.
I then asked what we should do while we are here, and he said we should love one another, care for one another, and esteem one another. I asked him why, and he said because we are valuable. My response was: what accident has value? We have value because God created us. He made us in His image.
Ten Questions, God's Answers
Here is what we need to do this morning. We are going to ask ten questions, and we need to get God's answer to each one. Many of you could answer these questions right now as fast as I could put them on the screen, and for you I hope this is an encouragement. I hope you are reminded of that day and time when you did not know the answers.
Some of you have been around long enough to answer these questions but have never applied them in your life. Some of you are here for whom this will be brand new. In preparing this, I tried again and again to take myself back to when all of this was new to me. If you are here today and people around you seem to be nodding along while you are struggling, I feel your pain, and I understand how you feel.
What we are going to do is get you out of the habit of saying, "This is what I think," or "This is what I feel," or "I was talking to a group of people and here is what we concluded." It does not matter. I love you, but I do not care what you think. It does not matter what you think any more than it matters what I think. It matters what God says, and that is a very important thing for us.
We have to get out of our finite thoughts and minds and get into the infinite mind of God. In the book of Isaiah, God says this: "My ways are not your ways. My ways are higher than your ways, says the Lord. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, says the Lord." So we are going to ask ten questions, and we are going to go to the Scriptures to get the answers.
The Authority of Scripture
At the core of all of this is something that could easily be missed: we believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God. We believe that God has spoken, that God created us, and that He did not leave us alone but communicated with us. As you look around this room, you will see many men, women, and students who have a Bible on their lap because they believe it is God's Word speaking to us.
All the answers to all the questions that God wants us to have are in this book. There may be some things where we have to say we do not know, but what we do not want to do is go beyond or around this book.
Question One: What Does God Call It When We Break His Rules?
Sin. James chapter 4, verse 17: "The one who knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it, to him it is sin." We have learned to dress that up. We may call it mistakes, miscalculations, bad judgment, errors in judgment, or simply say we messed up. But God calls it sin.
It is important for us to be able to name our behavior, when we violate God's law, for what it is. We must not make excuses or try to explain it away. We must call it sin.
I was listening to a radio talk show a few years ago when a woman called in and said she had a real problem. The host asked what it was, and she said her husband was a sex addict. The host said no, he was not. She insisted he was. The host asked a few questions: Do you like sex? Yes. Do you enjoy sex? Yes. When do you have sex? When I want to. The host said that is exactly how it is with your husband. He is a sinner, not an addict. We do not need to explain this away. There may be reasons behind why he behaves this way, but it is sin.
I watched an episode of Oprah where a man was introduced with the headline: "My addiction to chocolate nearly cost me my life." No. He likes chocolate. Right behind me here are peanut M&Ms. I can show you where they are. It is not impossible for me to walk by them, but once I eat one, as I did between services this morning, I end up eating a handful. Why? Because I like chocolate. I like the way it tastes. When you and I act contrary to what God says, we sin.
The Church Is Not Immune
Here is what is alarming. It is not just the culture making excuses; even the church is doing it — not all churches, but a great many. I was in a church service one day, obviously somewhere other than here, and they announced they would be singing hymn 305. I opened to the hymn and they began. It was Amazing Grace. I thought, well, I do not need that. Amazing Grace —
What's the Matter With People? (Part 3)
"Amazing Grace" and the Word "Wretch"
"How sweet the sound that saved a…" That's what I thought too, but that's not what they sang. They changed it to "that saved a soul like mine." They had just taken out "wretch," because, you know, that's so degrading. That's so insulting. No — that's what God says you are. You've sinned.
How Did Sin Begin?
Here's the second question: How did sin begin? Romans chapter 5, verse 12: "Therefore, just as through one man" — that's Adam — "sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned." Sin began in Adam.
Now, some of you — and there's a real target group today — are saying, "Adam? You're telling me you're buying this Adam and Eve thing?" I feel your pain. I was there.
One day in March of 1980, I walked into Phoenix Country Club to a Bible study. About 40 people were in the room, and a man by the name of Larry Wright was teaching. I walked in — I was not invited. I knew it was there and did ask permission to come, but no one extended an invitation to me. They gave me a Bible when I came in.
Here's what I had said for years: "Bible? I don't need a Bible. Why would I read it? It's filled with contradictions. It's filled with errors." And of course I had that moment, like many of you, where somebody said, "That's really cool — here's a Bible. Show me the errors. Show me the contradictions." And I had to say, "Well, I never really read it. I just heard that. Somebody said that, and it sounded good to me. It fed me. It's what I wanted to believe."
A Meeting That Changed Everything
So I sat there, and Larry began to teach. After just a few moments, it was as though there were just the two of us in the room. It was as if my wife Susan had called him and said, "Say this — he'll be there." I went back to my office, opened the phone book, looked under Wright — W-R-I-G-H-T — and there were a billion of them. Plenty of Larrys and Lawrences, all over the place. I was confused, shaking. I just pointed, went boom, called that Larry Wright — and it was him.
That was on a Thursday. The following Tuesday, I met with him at the Humpty Dumpty on Central, just north of Camelback. I said, "Let me ask you some questions. You're a really good speaker, an effective communicator — but you're telling me you believe in Adam and Eve? You believe in a great flood? You believe Jonah was actually swallowed in the belly of a fish? You believe this book?" He said, "Absolutely I do, because it's the Word of God. I'll give you a bunch of material to read if you want to look into it."
And you know what happened? It was pretty simple at that point. I did just a little bit of reading, and what I discovered is that the Bible is the Word of God. Once I understood that, all of life changed — because I didn't have to guess anymore. I could now know.
Adam, Imputation, and Why It Matters
Here's what the Bible says: when Adam sinned, he brought us in there with him. That's what it says. Through one man, sin entered the world, and death too. How do we know we were all attached to Adam? It's really simple — we all die. The wage of sin is death. That's how we know.
Now, you might say, "That's not fair. I don't like that. Why would he do that, and then I get pulled in? It doesn't seem right that what one man does gets credited or blamed on another man." Here's a tip: you don't want to go down that road. Because when you get to the crucifixion, you're going to have a problem.
The whole idea here is called imputation. Adam's sin is imputed to us — credited to us. But when Jesus dies on the cross, His righteousness is credited to us. He died in our place. That's the same principle, working in our favor.
The Virgin Birth and the Foundation That Must Not Change
That's also why the virgin birth is so important. An angel appears to Joseph and says, "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." The virgin birth is essential to our faith.
I was thinking about this because next week I'm teaching here in the morning, then driving out to West Valley Bible Church to teach, then driving back to teach Sunday night. It's going to be a busy day. They're in a new building, and it's a celebratory time, and I thought about what they most need to hear. Over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years, everything in that place is going to change. People are going to change. The leaders now are going to leave. People are going to get angry — complain the room's too hot, the room's too cold. They don't like you. You mistreated them. You mistreated their kids. The band is going to change. Everything is going to change. So why not take a few minutes to look at the things that better never change, and go back to the basics? The virgin birth is one of those foundations.
I was in college — and I was in college for a while. Three terms: Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy. Took a while. Didn't exactly zip right through. I'd still be there if they hadn't said, "You've got to go." College life is a pretty good life. I went to a small liberal arts Catholic college in the Midwest called St. Ambrose. We were the St. Ambrose College Bees — doesn't quite have the sting you'd like. I repent. The student union, logically, was called the Beehive. So I'm in the Beehive one night, and one of the leading Catholic theologians in the world is there speaking to a room of students, and —
Introduction: The Virgin Birth Matters
Could you speak about the virgin birth? And he said, what's important, the birth or the product of the birth? I thought that was heavy stuff. But it is actually a foolish answer, because the question is essential. If Jesus is the product of a relationship between a human man and a human woman, then He has a sin nature like you or me. To put it graphically: if Joseph was His father, then I might as well die on the cross for you.
Building on the Right Foundation
We have to understand how it all began, with Adam. Missing this is like saying you are going to take algebra but you do not know what two plus two is. Two plus two is four, and all of mathematics is built on that foundation. If you miss this, you will end up way off course later on.
Are All People Sinners?
Here is the next question: are all people sinners? Yes. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Seven billion people on this planet, and every one of us has sinned. It has become just a part of our vocabulary. I sometimes start a phrase and let people finish it: nobody's perfect. And everybody knows that. But what we call imperfection, God calls sin.
We also have empirical data on this point, because the wage of sin is death. It is spiritual death, but it is also physical death, and everybody dies. Everyone is a sinner.
A Conversation About Reincarnation
I used to work for a man, and I had not been around very long. He was a manager, so I had to listen to him, and I had just gotten saved — God had saved me, spared me, redeemed me, made me a Christian. One day I was in his office, and he was a very spiritual man, talking to me about his philosophy. It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a concoction of many things.
As he talked, I was doing what our first dog Rudy used to do when I spoke to him — just tilting my head as if to say, what? Then he said, "I believe in reincarnation." I asked him to explain. He said we all live a life, and if we live a good life we come back as a higher form, and if we live a bad life we come back as a lower form. You keep going through this cycle until you are perfect.
So I asked him: have you ever met a perfect person? It seems like a fair question. There ought to be one somewhere. He had been around fifty years and should have stumbled into one by now. He said no. I asked why not, and he said he did not know. I told him I knew why — because there are not any. That is the whole point. We are all sinners, and it seems to me we have plenty of empirical data to support that.
How Great Is Sin's Impact?
Here is the next question: how great is sin's impact in your life? Romans chapter 6, verse 6 says this: "that our old self was crucified with Christ in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." We are enslaved to sin.
We need to understand what we mean by natural man — a man, woman, boy, or girl who is born into this world and has not come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. That person is enslaved to sin. He can only sin. Jesus said you cannot serve two masters. It will either be God or the world system. Jesus never said you would be a master in either case — you are always enslaved. What the Bible teaches is that natural man is enslaved to sin.
Man will always do what he wants to do most. That is a fundamental principle. Even if I am walking down the street and someone puts a gun to my head and says, your money or your life, I am still going to hand over my money. You might say I did not want to do that. But given the choice between being shot or giving up my wallet, I always do what I want most. What the Bible teaches is that natural man always wants sin. He can never pursue God. He has no heart for God, no compassion for God, no desire for God. Even though he may talk about God, it is a small-g god — not the God of the Bible. A man can be deeply spiritual without being converted.
Are There Degrees of Sinners?
Here is the next question: are there degrees of sinners? Are some people more lost than others? The Bible teaches no. We have all sinned. We are all lost. We all need a Redeemer. We all need to be saved. We are all storing up God's wrath that will be poured out against us.
There is a tendency, humanly speaking, to look around and say, well, here is Billy Graham, and here is Saddam Hussein, and I am somewhere in between — I am not Billy Graham, but I am certainly not Saddam Hussein, so I must not be quite so bad. But it took just as much grace for God to save Billy Graham as it would to save you, or as it would to save Saddam Hussein. That is a really important truth for us to get our arms around.
The Depth of Human Depravity
There is a man named Jeffrey Dahmer. Some of you know exactly who he is, though younger people may not. I went to the website and began to print off what he did, intending to read it aloud. Then I thought better of it, because it is so grotesque. But it is important that you have at least some sense of the depth of his depravity. He preyed on young men, usually gay young men, subjected them to forced sexual relations, and then Jeffrey Dahmer would kill his victims. He would perform all sorts of experiments on their brains and their skulls, some while they were still alive. Then he would cut them up, and over a period of time he would eat them. That's a lost man. He ultimately went to prison, and the stories go — with all sorts of confirmation — that three months before he was beaten to death by another inmate, he gave his life to Christ and was baptized in prison.
Max Lucado writes about this. He says, in paraphrase, that there are some things that bother him about Jeffrey Dahmer. It's not that he raped innocent boys and young men. It's not that he killed them. It's not that he cut them up. It's not that he ate them. What troubles him is that if the reports are true, three months before he died, Dahmer came to Christ. Lucado goes on quickly to dispel that reaction — that is not his final impression — but what he is saying is that it doesn't seem right.
Grace We Don't Understand
Now consider Gandhi. Here is Jeffrey Dahmer on one side, and here is the Mahatma on the other — a man with much to be admired in his life. And here is Gandhi's own testimony: "Here is what I do. I read the Gospels every day. I believe the teaching of Jesus Christ. But I refuse to believe that Jesus or any other man could die in my place for my sin." If Gandhi maintained that belief all through his life, where is he today? Hell. And if the other side is true — if Jeffrey Dahmer legitimately came to Christ months before he died — where is Jeffrey Dahmer today?
That will unsettle the minds of people around you when you say it out loud, because we don't understand grace. We simply do not understand grace. I am not more lost than Jeffrey Dahmer, and I am not better than him in the eyes of God.
Released Hostages
I came across a report studying hostages who are released from captivity, and it was quite interesting. Regardless of the situation, they found two common traits among them. Number one, these were men and women who were extraordinarily gracious. Number two, they were exceedingly thankful.
Now, we have been talking about those who don't know Christ, but I want to hit the pause button for a moment. For those of us in here who are followers of Christ — who took communion, who are legitimately converted — you are a hostage who has been released. There should be extraordinary graciousness and exceeding thankfulness in your life, because you have been bought out of slavery. You were bought at a price, so don't enslave yourself to men. It took no more grace to save you than it did to save Jeffrey Dahmer.
You see why I started by saying we have to begin by seeing this as God's season. If I look at this as man's season — weighing Jeffrey Dahmer against the Mahatma — I cannot begin to get my arms around it. That is because man is incurably religious. We love to say, "I got myself into this, I'll get myself out of this."
How Many Sins Does It Take?
Here is the next question, and notice the progression — it is simple, logical, and biblical. How many sins does it take to separate us from God? Technically none, but we will settle on one for certain. "Whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at one point, he is guilty of it all." We studied this in the book of James. If I break a law, I have broken the law.
I love this illustration. Suppose I am playing golf on a little dogleg left, with some houses on the left side. I line up, take it back, put a nice swing on it — but I snap it a little and hook the ball. All of a sudden I hear a crack. As I get closer I see a man standing there holding a Titleist III, and behind him is his big picture window. I walk up and say, "Hey, how are you doing?" He says, "Fine. Is this your ball?" I check the mark on it and confirm it is mine. He says, "You owe me for the window."
I look at the window and at first it doesn't seem broken, so I am not sure what he means. Then I get close enough to see that the ball was hit with such velocity that it didn't shatter the window — it went through like a dart, leaving a clean hole in the lower left-hand corner. I ask what a picture window costs, and he tells me he just put it in that week: two thousand dollars. I think to myself, I am an honest man, I want to pay what I owe. Looking at that hole, I estimate about a hundred dollars worth of damage. But he says, "No. You could take that five iron and knock out all the remaining glass, because when you put that hole in there, you broke the entire window. You owe me for the entire window." When I break a law, I break the law.
So Jeffrey Dahmer, Tom Schrader, Mother Teresa, the Mahatma, Roy Orbison — we are all standing before God, and we are all lost. That is the point. How many sins does it take to separate me from God? One.
The Sovereignty of God
At the core of everything we do is the sovereignty of God, and everything we face is the sovereignty of God. At the core of the message is the sovereignty of God. God is in control. God sets the rules. God is God. And He says this: when you sin, you are separated from Him.
Consequences of Sin in This Life
What are the consequences for sin in this life? Paul writes this, speaking to people who have been saved, in Ephesians 2: "You were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you formally walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of air, of the spirit that's now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formally lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature children of wrath." That is what I am. What is the result? What is the consequence for sin in my life now? I am a child of wrath. I am a son of disobedience. That is what I am if I am not a follower of Christ.
When I was in college, there was a bumper sticker on the back of every Volkswagen bus, every Volkswagen Beetle, every beat-up old station wagon. It was a two-word bumper sticker that simply said: Question Authority. Question authority, because nobody is going to tell me what to do. That is the sign of an unrepentant, proud, arrogant heart. Now, are we saying just be a stupid idiot and accept everything? No. I am suggesting to you that there is an authority, and to question the authority of God is stupid. He is God. He created you. It is dumb to question His authority. I might struggle with what He says, but I do not question His right to say it.
God resists the proud. There is an arrogance there, a pride there. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
Consequences of Sin After This Life
If those are the consequences in this life, here is the next question: What are the consequences for sin after this life? Romans 2:5 says we are storing up the wrath of God.
When I die — heaven or hell? I was talking to a man who had just come away from a funeral for a young woman in her early thirties who had died of cancer after a long struggle. At the funeral, the pastor conducted the service as you would expect, and then it came time for his message. He paused and said, "I need to speak to Judy's parents. I want to deliver to you right now, Judy's mom, Judy's dad, a message from your daughter. I know it is from your daughter because over the months that she was ill, we had many conversations, and she made me promise that at this point I would deliver this message to you." He continued: "She knows you love her, and she loves you. But you have said to her many times that no matter what happens, sweetie, though we may be separated in this world, we will be joined in the next. Your daughter wanted me to tell you that that is not going to happen, because you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and as your Savior."
That is significant. Death tends to crystallize all of this. If I am faltering and figuring things out in ordinary life, when someone dies, that weakness is suddenly exposed.
What a Child Understood
This is one of my favorite illustrations on this point. I was talking to a man, and he mentioned that his mother had recently died and they had been taking care of arrangements. He said it was a striking experience because his five-year-old son was with him. On the drive back from the funeral, the five-year-old said, "Hey, Dad, Grandma never went to church, did she?" No. "Grandma never read a Bible, did she?" No. "Grandma really didn't care about any of this stuff, did she?" No. "Grandma didn't know Jesus, did she?" No. The man said his son paused, as if taking in all that information and trying to digest it and put it together. Then the five-year-old looked at him and said, "Dad, Grandma's in hell."
That is the stakes. You come into this world as a sinner, separated from God, and if you continue on that way — in spite of your best efforts — when you die, you will spend eternity in hell. That is why I think it is so important for us, even those of us who are Christians, to keep the reality of death in front of us.
Keeping Death in View
There is a story of a group of monks who, every day, go to the backyard of their monastery, which contains a cemetery with an open grave. They keep an open grave there, and every morning they have their time of prayer and meditation around it. When one of the monks dies, they bury him in that grave, then go and dig another one, and continue their daily prayer and meditation around the new grave — to keep that reality fresh in their minds.
I do not care how old you are, you cannot escape this reality. You are going to die. What happens then? The world has all sorts of answers. I was listening to the radio one night — there was a program where someone claims to speak to people from the other side. Every week the message is the same: your friends who have gone are fine, it is all going to be all right, you will be together again. Here is how I know that program is false: no one who ever dies in that economy is in hell. The Bible says that naturally we are storing up the wrath of God against us. I know that sounds old-fashioned, but it is biblical, and therefore it is timeless. God is angry. God is a God of love — we know that God is a God of love — and yet He is also a God of wrath.
God's Love and Wrath
We are so grateful for God's love. But because He loves us, He must also hate. He loves righteousness, He hates sin, and He must judge sin. That is the wrath that God poured out upon Jesus on the cross.
Are You Still a Sinner If You've Never Heard of God?
Two more questions. Are you still a sinner if you've never heard about God? The answer is yes. We could go to several different passages of Scripture, but in Romans chapter 1, Paul is talking about the wrath of God as revealed from heaven. Romans 1:18 speaks against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men: "For what can be known about God is plain to them. God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse."
Now, that might not sound right. You may be thinking: are you telling me that God will send someone to hell for rejecting a Jesus they never knew or never heard of? No. God will judge sin. He will send them to hell based on their failure to live up to the light that they had. Everybody has sinned.
If we do not believe this, I have no idea why we would invest in missions at all. This makes no sense if the bushman can get to heaven without Jesus. Why would we spend a dime or one ounce of energy going to Kashmir, China, Morocco, Malaysia, Hungary, Uzbekistan, New Guinea, Mexico, and even here? Why would we go and take the gospel message to somebody who has never heard, if they can get to heaven apart from Jesus?
In fact, if we really believe that not knowing about Jesus means you can get in, then our best evangelism strategy should be silence. Do not tell anybody. But forget the bushman — there are people right here who have never heard. When someone says, "I've never heard any of that," the answer is not to leave them alone. They are lost. Our evangelism and our witnessing is not silence, but proclamation of the simple truth: man has sinned, and God has sent His Savior, Jesus.
Is There Anything You Can Do to Solve Your Own Sin Problem?
Here is the last question. Is there anything you can do to solve your own sin problem? You know the answer, don't you? The answer is no. As we go through this list, there should be a sense in which you feel the weight building greater and greater. You have sinned. All of us have sinned. Sin has separated us from God. Hell is our future. This life will have its high points, but there will always be a sense of misery to it because we are enslaved to sin. The wage of sin is death. When you say you want what you have earned, what you have earned is death.
Paul writes it this way in Romans 3:10: "None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one person." You may want to argue with that. You may say you have seen people do good works. But Paul is expressing God's view — not as He looks at our actions, but as He looks at our hearts.
We see this exposed all the time. On the nightly news, someone will be interviewed walking for cancer in 110-degree heat, and they say, "You know what? It really makes me feel good about myself." Someone down at the Special Olympics on a Saturday is asked why they volunteer, and they say, "I get more out of it than they do. It makes me feel so good." Strip away the fancy talk, and here is what they are saying: I only care about these people because they are a vehicle for me feeling better about myself. It is the heart. God looks at the heart.
You can fool one another, but you cannot fool Him. He is never deceived. He is never thrown off track. He is not confused by the outward works He sees — the neighbor's grass you cut while they are on vacation. He is not fooled by that. Is there anything you can do to solve your own sin problem? No.
The Good News Requires the Bad News First
Now, some of you are fine with all of this. You knew all the answers. Even so, hopefully there is an expression of extraordinary graciousness and exceeding thankfulness — the kind a released hostage feels. Others of you came in after a tough week, wanting to be encouraged, and you feel worse. You wanted good news and instead feel weighed down. I understand that. But here is what I can tell you: God loves you and sent His Son to die for sinners like us. You are never going to receive the good news, however, until you hear the bad news. You have to deal with this first. Why would you need a Savior until you understand that you are lost?
If you are sitting there and this is starting to click — if you have a sense of hopelessness, a sense of despair, a sense of being surrounded by all of this with nothing you can do — I say to you, that is really good. There is nothing you can do, and there is nothing you need to do, because God died in the person of Jesus Christ so that you could have eternal life. All you need to do is come to Him.
What does that mean? Believe that He is who He said He was, that He would do what He said He would do, and that you are who He identifies you to be. Believe that Jesus died on the cross, that you are a sinner, and embrace Him and Him alone. You may be sitting there thinking of a friend you wish had been here to hear this. We hear that often.
Closing the Series
By Monday or Tuesday, this message should be on the website. Have Bob watching on the website, and bring old Bob or Betty or whoever it is back with you next week, because we are going to talk about what is so special about Jesus. If you are sitting there saying you cannot wait until next week, I want to encourage you to talk to the person who invited you, to talk to somebody at the front of the chapel or the conference center, or to call us here at the church, because we would love to sit down this week to talk to you about this.
Our prayer is that God continues to open eyes, and I would invite you to join with me. I have been praying for these four weeks for a long time. Join with me and pray over these next three or four weeks that God will continue to bring people whose eyes He will then open to hear this wonderful message of truth and hope and love.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You. Thank You for loving us enough to preserve this Word, which tells us that we are all sinners, that we all fall short of Your standard. God, for those of us who are here as released hostages, fill our hearts with graciousness, gratitude, and thanksgiving to You.
For those who are here who perhaps have heard these words a thousand times and they have never penetrated their heart, I pray that You would touch their heart and open their eyes yet this week. And God, for that group of people here listening who are saying, "This is so difficult — I have never heard anything like this, this is really tough, it makes sense but I am struggling" — would You let them experience the comfort and relief that comes from You and You alone? They will never experience real satisfaction and real love and real forgiveness until they encounter You, the living God, through Your Son, Jesus Christ.
And just to say that is mind-blowing — that I, a finite creature, can have an intimate relationship with You, the Creator God. Father, help us see that truth. Open our eyes. How are we going to see it? It is going to touch our heart. Let us fall in love with You. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great week. We will see you next week.