The Benefits of Suffering #3 The Origin, Nature & Consequence of Sin October 25, 2009 Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Genesis 3:1-20 John 8:42-47

For several weeks now, I have been giving a series of sermons on the Benefits of Suffering. This morning's sermon is on The Origin, Nature and Consequence of Sin. We live in a fallen world. We see this daily. We find lonely people. We find persons in unhappy employment. We see people with handicaps and disabilities. We see people with poor living conditions. We know people who have experienced difficult marriages. We find persons with chronic illnesses and recently we've experienced people having difficult money matters because of the economy. In fact, I visited one of our shut-ins this past week where the person had all of her money in virtually one stock and that stock had dropped dramatically cutting her income to practically nothing. So these are signs of a fallen world. Suffering is involved in each of these cases. These are signs of the consequence of sin. So how did sin, evil and suffering enter the world? What is its origin?

The first thing we have to consider is what went on in heaven with the angels of God. God created angels and they were all created good. Lucifer and his cohorts were blameless but later they rebelled against God. In doing so, they became Satan and the demons, for God cast them out of the heavens and sent them to earth and to hell. Listen to how Isaiah described this fall. He was speaking of evil kings but metaphorically kings stood for the fallen angels.

Isaiah 14:12 ff  “How you have fallen from heaven, oh morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of the assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit.”

Then we find the prophet Ezekiel saying these things. Again he was talking about the enemy kings of Israel but metaphorically, again his words describe the fallen angels. We find in Ezekiel 28:12  (God speaking)

“You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty& You were anointed as a guardian angel, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.”

So what was the sin of Lucifer? Lucifer was the main angel. He was an archangel, the equivalent to Michael. In fact, Lucifer is not the opposite of God. Lucifer is the opposite of Michael. God is limitless  Lucifer is limited. Both were archangels. God created the angels. As such, they were very good. Scripture addresses when evil comes into being by describing the sin as arrogance. Lucifer and his followers wanted equality with God. Their punishment was to be called Satan and be condemned to hell and here on earth as I Peter says “seeking who he can devour like a lion roaming about.” Then we have to go to the first chapter in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible where we have the description of the first parents of the human race, named Adam and Eve. They ate of forbidden fruit and as a result of this act of disobedience, their pain increased, the earth became a world of hurt and they forfeited Paradise. It may have been the same sin as the angels who fell to earth and hell, the sin of arrogance, attempting to put themselves as an equal with God. Harvey Cox, the theologian said that he believed that the sin was sloth, the sin of laziness, the sin of unwillingness to take responsibility for one's self. This continues even today. We would describe it in psychology terms as the Blaming Game. The psychological game would be “If it weren't for&.” Then fill in the blank. “If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have eaten this apple.” “If it weren't for the devil, I wouldn't have disobeyed.” “If it weren't for the woman, Eve, I wouldn't&” And in our day, it becomes, “If it weren't for you, I could be rich.” “If it weren't for you, I could be educated.” “If it weren't for our children, I'd have money.” “If it weren't for where we live, we would be happy.” “If I wasn't married to you, I could have gone for&” And so on. So it is a dishonest refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions and one's self. The Fall, the first human tragedy, became the mother of all subsequent tragedies. God hates evil but permits it so He can carry out His redemptive plan in Christ.

There is a possibility of sin being passed down in our DNA. We refer to Adam and Eve's sin as the original sin. We can see original sin as the predisposition to commit certain sins. Alcoholics frequently produce alcoholics. Child abusers frequently produce child abusers. Divorcees frequently have children who divorce. Liars produce liars. In our DNA imprinting, there is a tendency to choose evil. We have free will so we don't have to choose evil but the tendency is there. That is the result of the original sin of Adam and Eve. So when temptation arises, it is very difficult to refuse it. Everyone here in the church has probably fallen to temptation in some form or another at some time. In the book of Romans, Paul writes that no one is free from sin, that everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. So the original introduction of sin by the first human parents could only be resolved by an act of God to reverse it which was the coming of Christ into the world as a human. God became man to reverse the effects of the Fall, the curse of sin.

Today is Reformation Sunday. We “celebrate”, if that is the right term, the origins of Protestantism, where Protestants protested abuses found in the church in the 16th century and began through Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and others, a branch of Christianity which was to reform the Church. It gave birth to the counter revolution where the original church attempted to correct itself as a response to Protestantism. And now today, we are keenly aware that all churches are made up of sinners and all churches have their weaknesses, all denominations have their problems and sin can be found in all of them. There is a part of human nature that we all share that because of the Fall pulls not only individuals but also organizations toward sin. Accordingly, we always have to be reforming; we always have to be changing the way the church operates and correcting it because the church is the body of Christ and it needs to stand in the world pure and spotless as Christ did. But this then is an act of the will, an act of choosing.

To summarize, suffering was introduced into the world as a result of evil. Evil was introduced into the world by the Fall of Lucifer and the other angels. It is estimated that probably one third of the heavenly chorus of angels fell with Lucifer and now, demons roam the world. They introduced evil to Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve fell to the temptation. As a result, humanity has fallen and has had a predilection towards evil ever since.

The world has gone terribly wrong. We see it all around us. I began with the idea of this but it doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps you remember the story of John Newton. He was a slave trader, the captain of a British ship. He went to Africa, captured Africans, took them into the hold of his ship and locked them in irons. He put them in pens no taller than two feet so they laid in the hold of the ship like logs. Therefore they couldn't commit suicide because they could barely move, laying in their vomit and laying in their excrement. He would take them to the new world, the Caribbean, where he sold them for rum and molasses, a pitiful practice. One time while he was on his way to the Caribbean, a horrible storm arose, apparently with hurricane force. In the midst of this, he thought that his ship would go down and that they would all perish. As a result of that, in desperation he turned to Christ, calling out for help in prayer and had a great conversion experience. He was convicted of the evil that he had done, turned his life around and become a pastor in England. There he influenced a parishioner, William Wilberforce, who helped change the British laws to forbid the slave trade. This in turn, influenced a person in the United States called Abraham Lincoln who created the Emancipation Proclamation outlawing slavery once and for all in America. You are probably familiar with John Newton because he wrote the song Amazing Grace. The words ring in our ears&

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.

This one man dramatically illustrates the process of being infected by the evil in the world, original sin, creating massive suffering, through his own free will. Then meeting Christ through prayer and having a conversion experience. After his conversion, he returned to England and worked as a new creation for good, something that all of us can do. At some time in our life, we all are contaminated by the evil that was injected into society into the world by Satan and our first parents. And yet, because of Jesus Christ, when we meet Him, when we are baptized, when we repent, we become a new creation capable of bringing good into the world. We are given the task of removing evil and bringing about the establishment of the kingdom of God. This task won't be completed until the final times when Jesus has His final victory over Satan as described in the book of Revelation. The reality is& the world now exists in a terrible state. There is loneliness, unhappy employment, handicaps and disability, horrible living conditions, broken marriages, chronic illness, and economic suffering. All of these are a result of sin that was introduced into the world and in which we participate. We don't have to be willing participants. We can do something about that. Ultimately, we can know that God is going to fix it - first for His eternal glory and secondly for our eternal good and we can be part of that solution by choosing to allow Christ to live in and through us.