©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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1/9/00
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Why God Fights Against Sin
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1/9/00 Why God Fights Against Sin
The farther we progress in this study
of the way in which our Lord
brings His people freedom from sin
the more I realize how many underlying
issues there are
that have the power to affect what we
hear.
We jumped into this part of our study
focusing on the HOW's
when it might have been better for us
to begin with the WHY's.
Why does God fight against sin
in the lives of His people?
I think possibly the first response
many of us would offer to that question
is that God fights against sin
because He is Holy
and sin offends Him.
In other words,
we see His goal in this whole sin thing
as being the elimination of sin - He fights
against sin because He hates sin
and He wants to get rid of as much of it as
possible.
Or we may find ourselves
seeing God fighting against sin
not simply because it offends Him,
but because it is a threat to Him
and to what He is seeking to
accomplish on this earth.
We may see Him battling against sin
much as we would see
the general of a great nation
going to war against some evil empire
that threatens His own Kingdom.
Or we may feel that God fights against sin in our
lives
so that He can form us into usable vessels
through whom He can then express Himself
and accomplish His work.
If we believe any of those ideas,
and if those ideas form the basis upon which we
then hear what God is saying to us about sin in our
lives,
it will be a major hinderance
in His efforts to bring about
the kind of freedom He seeks to
bring into our lives.
The truth is
sin never has been
and never will be a threat to God.
Sin has no power to defeat Him.
Evil has no ability to win against Him.
God cannot be conquered by evil,
He cannot be threatened by it,
and He is certainly not engaged
in a massive battle against evil on this
earth.
God did not do what He did through Christ
because He hated evil
and hated sin
and wanted to somehow bring a
decisive blow against it.
John 3:16 does not say,
"For God so hated evil that He gave His only
Son..."
It says, "John 3:16 ¶ "For God so loved US
that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him shall not perish,
but have eternal life.
God fights against sin in our lives
not because He is fighting against sin
but because He is fighting for us.
It is not His hatred of sin
that motivates Christ to fight for our freedom
from sin,
it is His love for us.
Maybe an illustration would help.
EX. You are a parent.
You notice that your ten year old child
is not feeling well.
His energy level is way down,
he's sleeping a lot more,
he's not eating properly.
You take him to the doctor
assuming that the boy is just fighting one of the
viruses floating around.
The doctor runs a bunch of tests
and then gives you the terrifying news
that your son is in the early stages
of a potentially deadly cancer
that only affects children in their
preadolescent years.
He tells you that there is
a highly effective treatment program,
with a strong possibility of defeating the
cancer,
but it will not be quick,
it will not be easy,
and it will not be cheap.
And so, for the next eighteen months of your life
you invest all of your resources,
and all of your time,
and all of your energy into helping your
boy fight this disease that threatens him.
Why?
Do you fight against the cancer
because you have a philosophical bias
against foreign growths in the human body?
Do you fight against it
because you are afraid the cancer
will attack and destroy you next?
Of course not.
You fight against the cancer
for only one reason -
because you love your son
and you will fight against anything
that fights against him.
And as long as I've gotten into this illustration,
let me take it a step farther.
In order for you and your son
to make it through the year and a half battle
in a way that strengthens your relationship
with one another
it would be essential that your son
correctly understand your motives.
Picture for a moment
how it would affect your son
if in the course of his treatment
you were to go into his hospital room
to assist the physician in administering
an especially painful part of the
medical treatment.
As the process begins
your son says to you, "Why are you doing this
to me? Why are you making me hurt like this?"
And you respond, "I'm doing this because I HATE
CANCER!! I've always hated cancer
and because I hate cancer
I'm going to do to you whatever I have to
do in order to destroy the cancer inside you."
Q. How do you think that would affect your boy?
Would he draw strength from it?
Would he be able to draw strength from you
and from your presence with him?
Or would it drive him away from you,
making him feel as though you viewed him as
the enemy,
and you were furious with him
because something you hated
was inside him?
And yet, if we do not understand
what God is saying about sin
and why He says it,
we can find ourselves mentally
in a similar situation with our God.
We look at our own lives
and see ongoing battles
with areas of as yet unresolved sin in our
lives.
And then we think we hear our God saying,
"Because I hate sin so much,
and because I see it as such a threat to My
world,
I'm going to do whatever I have to do to you
to make sure this sin is destroyed."
And if we see our God doing what He's doing in
our lives
because of His ongoing wrath against sin
the effect on our ability to hear His love
and respond to that love
will be devastating.
But let's go back to that hospital room again,
and let's respond once again
to that boy's question,
"Why are you doing this to me? Why are you
making me hurt like this?"
Only this time when the question is asked
you respond by saying,
"My son, there is only one reason I could ever put
you through this pain,
and that's because I love you more than my own
life.
The cancer you have inside you
will take you away from me forever
unless we destroy it.
I never want to loose you,
and I love you far too much ever to let this
cancer win.
This isn't going to be easy,
but you and I are in this battle together,
and together we're going to win.
I love you son. And because I love you
I will fight against anything
that fights against you."
It is not God's hatred of our sin
that causes Him to fight against it in our lives,
it is His love for us.
But how about that business
of His fighting against sin in our lives
so that He can then form us into usable
vessels
through whom He can express Himself
and accomplish His work.
Before I respond to that
I'd like to share with you a tool
that I have found to be of tremendous value
in my own life
in helping me to recognize truth and error
in my own thinking.
It's not very complicated.
I simply take the idea I'm looking at
and then ask myself,
"If I accept this as true,
what does it tell me about my God,
and about myself,
and about my relationship with Him?"
And if the conclusions I reach about God
and about my relationship with Him
based on the idea I'm looking at are true,
then the idea I'm looking at is probably true as
well.
But if the conclusions I would logically reach about
God and my relationship with Him by accepting the
idea are NOT true,
then the idea has to be rejected as well.
Let me show you what I mean
by applying it to this idea that
God fights against sin in our lives
so that He can form us into usable vessels
through whom He can then express Himself
and accomplish His work.
If I accept that as true
it means:
#1. that God's ability to work through me
is directly dependent upon my performance.
The better I am
the more God can use me,
and if I can get to the point of becoming a really
good person
I can even become a Pastor!
and #2. if I accept as true the idea that
God fights against sin in our lives
so that He can form us into usable vessels
through whom He can then express Himself
and accomplish His work,
it strongly suggests
that one of God's primary purposes
in doing what He has done for us through
Christ
is because He wants or needs to use me
to accomplish His work on the earth.
In other words,
it is a sort of bargain He works out
between us and Himself.
He will save us
and pay the penalty for our sins through Christ,
and we in turn sort of pay Him back in installments
through the things we do for Him.
Both of those conclusions are lies,
so I know the idea that supports them is a lie as
well.
And let me show you why we know they are lies.
I'll start with #2 first - believing that
God's primary purpose
in doing what He has done for us through
Christ
is because He wants or needs to use us to
accomplish His work on the earth.
There are obvious reasons why we are drawn to a
belief like this.
For one thing,
God obviously does accomplish His work
through His people.
He tells us clearly
that He equips each of us with gifts and abilities
that enable us to serve as His ambassadors in
this world.
He calls us His priests,
and talks about the good works that He has
prepared for each of us to walk in,
and most of the New Testament writers talk
about themselves as being "the bond servants of the
Lord".
And given the obvious truth
that God does work through us,
our human logic just naturally moves one step farther
into the assumption that He calls us to
Himself so that He CAN work through us.
We believe it helps us answer a deeply troubling
question in our lives - the question of why God
loves us.
EX. I'm a Fraiser fan.
I like the TV sitcom Fraiser.
It's always dangerous for me to say things like that
because I then run the risk
of some of you going home
and gathering your young families
around the TV,
turning on Fraiser,
and telling your children that "this is a really
good show because Larry said he likes it."
The truth is
the basic philosophies promoted by Fraiser are
pagan to the core.
His attitudes toward dating,
and sex,
and women in general are hideous.
But having protected myself by saying that,
I enjoy the show.
If you know the show
you know that for most of the show's history
Fraiser's brother, Niles,
was married to Marris.
Marris has never appeared on the show,
and she never will.
But through the comments made about her by the
other actors
everyone who watches the show
knows exactly what she's like.
She is a very rich,
very thin,
very selfish,
very controlling,
very pale,
very self-centered,
very strange person whom no one has ever really
liked or been drawn to.
I bring all of this up
because of a comment Niles once made
about why he and Marris had no pets- no
cat, no dog, no bird.
Niles said, "Well, of course Marris has never been
able to have a pet
because she instinctively mistrusts anything that
loves her unconditionally."
Folks,
that is an excellent description of us
in our relationship with God.
I believe one of the major reasons
we tend to be comfortable with the idea
of God seeking to remove sin from our lives
so that He can than make us usable for
His work
is because we instinctively mistrust
a God who claims to love us
unconditionally.
Our minds search for some reason.
We don't love ourselves unconditionally.
We certainly don't love any other human
being unconditionally.
And we don't know how in the world to relate to a
God
who claims to love us unconditionally.
And so we are far more comfortable
providing ourselves with a reason.
But the truth is there is no reason
and He does love us unconditionally.
The New Testament writers come back to it again
and again:
Rom. 5:8 But God demonstrates His own
love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
Rom. 5:9 Much more then, having now
been justified by His blood, we shall be
saved from the wrath of God through Him.
Rom. 5:10 For if while we were enemies
we were reconciled to God through the
death of His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His
life....
Rom. 8:32 He who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how
will He not also with Him freely give us all
things?
Col. 2:13 When you were dead in your
transgressions and the uncircumcision of
your flesh, He made you alive together with
Him, having forgiven us all our
transgressions,
Col. 2:14 having canceled out the certificate
of debt consisting of decrees against us,
which was hostile to us; and He has taken it
out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross.
Not once is God's work for us
ever linked to what we can than do for Him.
In fact,
the only passage I know of
that even seems to approach the "why"
question
actually ends up making it more
confusing.
Eph. 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He
loved us,
Eph. 2:5 even when we were dead in our
transgressions, made us alive together
with Christ ( by grace you have been
saved),
Eph. 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and
seated us with Him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus,
Eph. 2:7 so that...
and with those two words, "so that"
we have a glimmer of hope -
here, at last God will explain to us
why He loves us the way He does
and what He gets out of it in return.
But then we go on to read what He says:
so that...
in the ages to come He might show the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus.
Do you know what that says?
It says the reason He poured out His kindness on
us through Christ
is so that He could gain the opportunity
to continue to pour out His surpassing
riches on us throughout all the endless ages to
come.
And then just to make sure we got the message
he goes on to say:
Eph. 2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God;
Eph. 2:9 not as a result of works, so that
no one may boast.
And all of that is to say simply,
that God does not work on our behalf
to remove sin from our lives
so that He can than use us for His
work.
He does it simply because He loves us too much
to allow us to continue suffering the torment
brought into our lives by our sin.
But surly that other point is true.
I mean, surely God's ability to work through me
is directly dependent upon my performance.
And surly the better I am
the more God can use me,
and if I can get to the point of becoming a really
good person
I can even find myself qualified to do great
things.
And that, my friends, is the great lie of religion -
that there is any level of performance
that I could ever offer my God
that would qualify me for acceptance in
His sight
or usability in His service.
I think I mentioned it to you last year,
but I was deeply impressed
with an answer Billy Graham gave
to an interviewer who asked him
what the first question he would like to ask God
would be.
He said, "I would like to ask Him 'Why me?' Why
did You choose to honor me with the work You gave
me to do?"
He knew there was nothing He ever could
or ever had offered God
that in any way qualified him
for the work God had chosen to do
through Him.
Isaiah says simply,
Is. 64:6 For all of us have become like one
who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds
are like a filthy garment; And all of us
wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like
the wind, take us away.
We are involved in a study
of the way in which our Lord Jesus Christ
brings us growing freedom from our sins.
And this morning,
with all these words
I have wanted to say just one thing.
Our God fights against sin in our lives
for just one reason -
not because the sin is any threat to Him,
and not because He wants to shape us up and
make us usable,
but simply because He loves us with an
everlasting love,
and He understands perfectly
the destructive power of that sin in our lives.
Is. 61:10-11
I will rejoice greatly in the Lord,
My soul will exult in my God;
For He has clothed me with garments of
salvation,
He has wrapped me with a robe of
righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with a
garland,
And as a bride adorns herself with her
jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
And as a garden causes the things sown in
it to spring up,
So the Lord God will cause righteousness
and praise
To spring up before all the nations.