Have you ever had a situation in the
office or in school out of which you
could just see no escape, no way?
And you know your thoughts just go round
and round and round and round and you
get caught up in your little claustrophobic mind
and you can't see any way out.
And it's almost as if you're thinking it's
just bound with iron bands.
You think round in your circle and right
round again and right round again.
And whether it's physical weakness through a cold
or whether it's kind of emotional tightness through
an emotional situation at school or whether it's
just a kind of mental block that you
have in an office job, it seems that
we're just tied up in our own little
circle of thinking.
And really you just wonder how to escape.
And the psychologists or the dramatists, the Christian
theatre class meets on Thursday and we're trying
to find a production that we can do.
And it doesn't matter which of them you
look through, you know, Camus, Miller, Pinter, Williams,
it doesn't matter who it is.
All the dramatists do the same thing, they
describe the hopelessness and the futile little circle
that most people live in today.
And if you go to the philosophers or
the psychologists, they're in the same trip, you
know.
They're all following more or less old Skinner's
implication that we're little rundown machines that are
driven by deterministic and fatalistic kind of powers
and we can't escape from our karma existence.
And brothers and sisters, really that's one of
the exciting things, you know, about this book.
It's one of the real exhilarating things about
it that we really believe it here on
Sundays because Jesus is the best empirical evidence
of who the creator is that we've got.
But the book itself is exciting and exhilarating
because it does really seem to give you
authentic expressions of a great magnanimous mind that
is bigger than our own, you know.
And it's good when we get caught up
in our own little claustrophobic circles of thinking,
it's good to come into the old theater
on Sundays and get a glimpse of a
bigger view of it all, you know, and
be blasted out of our little circles, our
little vicious circles that we go round and
round in.
And really, loved ones, some of us just
go round and round in those circles for
life, and we just instantly becoming greater and
bigger and bigger so that at the last
day, you know, the old spiritual body transfigures
the physical body and we just blast up
into God's space.
Instead of that, many of us become wizened
and withered and weakened and smaller and smaller
as our life goes on.
And really, it's God's will that we should
begin to see things the way he sees
them.
And that's why the book is kind of
exciting.
And really what we need here on Sunday
mornings is what I think Scott prayed for,
a spirit of revelation that would break through
the little vicious circles that we get into,
you know, would split the old atom of
our own thoughts and would get us out
into a place where there is tremendous energy
released when you begin to think and feel
the way the Creator does.
And that's really what we're trying to do
here on Sunday mornings.
And you remember that last Sunday, we began
to see that God made us and put
us here really because he wanted our company.
He really put us here so that we'd
become like him and so that we'd be
his friends forever.
That's the real reason.
It's just so good, you know, to get
out of that circle where they're treasuring you
because of the A grade or the B
grade or the C grade, or they're treasuring
you because you can move these books from
this spot to that spot, or because you
can type so many words a minute.
It's so good to get outside that little
circle and see, look, it's not even because
my husband likes me or my father loves
me or because my roommate can tolerate me.
I'm here for a bigger reason than all
those things.
The Creator of the world has made me
because he wants me to become like him
and he wants me to be his friend
forever.
And it's really good to see that.
You remember we saw that that was why
God made us with certain capacities such as
he had himself.
He made us, you know, with a spirit
like his.
He made us with a mind like his
and emotions like his and a will like
his and a body, a physical body, just
as he has a spiritual body and as
we will have a spiritual body when this
body dies.
And it's good to see that God governed
everything to enable this plan to come about,
that we would live with him forever as
his dear friends.
Do you remember the one vital thing that
would make us exactly like himself?
He left to our personal choice.
The life, the very life that runs through
the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the
very life that makes the Trinity family unique,
that makes it eternal, that makes it able
to fly through millions of miles of space
in a second, the life that enables it
to have continual forgiveness and continual gentleness and
peace running through it, that life we had
to choose for ourselves.
You remember it was talked about in Genesis
as a tree of life and God's plan
was we'd have all the capacities to be
like him but we ourselves would have to
opt into his Trinity family by our own
free choice.
And really it was up to us to
be born of his spirit or of his
life by our own will and our own
choice.
You remember we saw that the first man
didn't do it at all.
He decided he'd live by his own wits
about what was good and what was evil.
He decided what was right and wrong for
himself and he'd do without this unique uncreated
life that God offered him.
And when he decided to do that, God
withdrew that life from him, withdrew the offer
of that uncreated Holy Spirit from him.
And immediately you remember the whole natural environment
and man's own personality deteriorated and declined into
death.
You remember we outlined what that death entailed
and I couldn't think of a high enough
pressure engine but I thought of a 289
which isn't the highest powered machine you could
think of, but I likened it to running
a high powered engine on regular gas.
And that's what it was like when the
Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the world because
man decided to go it alone.
It was like that.
Immediately our minds began to be impaired.
Our emotions began to be unbalanced.
The old body became weaker.
And then as we lived like that, we
began to spread that living for self throughout
the world and it became a pro-self
world living for itself all the time.
An anti-God world working against God.
And then eventually you the Holy Spirit was
withdrawn even from the spiritual world, a world
filled with evil spirits.
And that is what we mean when we
say death began to work in us personally
and in our environment.
And that was the kind of situation that
resulted at that time.
Now let's pray that God's Spirit would somehow
be able to give you and me insights
into that situation now, you know, just this
morning.
Let's trust Him that He'll be able to
do that and bring us into some new
insights.
Because brothers and sisters, I think a lot
of us are experiencing that death and we
don't know why we're experiencing it, you know.
The old mind is impaired.
The old emotions are unbalanced.
The old body is weak and sick and
deteriorating.
And we find ourselves fighting an uphill battle
against wrong dreams and against wrong thoughts day
after day after day.
And we don't know why it is.
We seem to be living in death in
the midst of life.
Now I think there are real reasons for
it.
And I think sometimes it's because we haven't
the same view of sin or of independence
of God as God Himself has.
Now would you share with me as we
just look a wee bit at that next
verse, you know.
It's the verse we study this morning.
It's Romans 5 and verse 13.
And you find it there on a page,
about page 980.
Romans 5 and 13.
Maybe we could just take that part A
of the verse first, that first half of
it.
Romans 5 and 13.
Sin indeed was in the world before the
law was given.
Sin indeed was in the world before the
law was given.
And that's pretty obvious, isn't it?
That's pretty obvious.
You read, you remember in Genesis chapter 3
and verse 6.
You read how Adam declared his independence of
God by going his own way.
Genesis 3 and verse 6.
And you can see, so when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food
and that it was a delight to the
eyes and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of
its fruit and ate.
And she also gave some to her husband
and he ate.
Now that was the sin.
Sin entered the world at that moment by
Adam declaring, I'd go it alone without your
Holy Spirit.
And then you see, look over to Exodus
20 and verse 1.
That's the moment that the law was given.
Exodus 20, it's about page 63 in that
black RSV.
Exodus 20 and verse 1.
And it's the first time that law came
into the world, you see.
Exodus 20 and verse 1.
And God spoke all these words saying, I
am the Lord your God.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a graven
image.
All right, so that's obvious.
Sin was in the world before the law
was given.
You can see that.
You know, that many pages between the time
sin entered the world and the time the
law was given.
And if you allow for a gap between
Genesis 1, you remember?
1, 2 and 1, 3.
If you allow for a gap there during
which the earth was without form and void,
that gap may be thousands of years.
And if you allow for the obvious gaps
that the Bible details clearly exist in the
genealogies, you can see that certainly thousands and
maybe millions, but certainly thousands of years existed
between the time that the first sin was
committed and the time the law entered the
world.
And certainly the creation research people would say
at least for 5,000 years, wouldn't they?
And some of us would say maybe even
more than that.
But certainly thousands of years at least existed
between the time that sin entered the world
and law came into the world.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you see what
that means?
That sin is not primarily something connected with
the breaking of a known law.
Sin itself is a resistance or a rejection
of God's spiritual life.
I think a lot of us, you see,
get little legalistic, moralistic minds.
And we say, oh yes, sin is if
I'm a, this is hard, I'm a Baptist.
I like being hard, I'm a Baptist.
If you're a Baptist brought up in the
right place, and I know all Baptists aren't
brought up like this, but if you're a
Baptist like that, or if you're a Methodist
as I was in Northern Ireland 12, 15
years ago, going to the theater, okay, that's
a sin.
Okay, don't do that.
Okay, smoking, that's a sin.
Okay, don't do that.
We are dancing too.
We have six of them, all of which
really, yeah, yeah.
I'm not supporting those, but I'm saying that
Arminians seem to make life as miserable as
we possibly could.
Some of those, it's good.
The doctors are catching up with the no
smoking now that God has given it to
us for so long.
But some of us, some of us tend,
you know, to think of sin as just
breaking one of the six cardinal commandments that
we have in the evangelical Christianity.
Or some of us think sin is just
breaking any one of the ten commandments.
And we get very moralistic and legalistic, as
long as we're not breaking any of those
things, as long as we're not doing any
of the no-no's, then we're okay, we're
not sinning.
But brothers and sisters, do you see, sin
was in the world before there was any
law.
Sin is something that is broader than just
the breaking of laws that you and I
line up and list.
You can see that sin for Adam was
rejecting God's offer of spiritual life.
I think maybe, you know, in our own
lives we need to see that sin can
be that too for us.
I think there are times when we're actually
sinning and we don't really realize it.
And death works as a result of that
in our lives, but we don't realize that
we've sinned.
We say, well, we haven't broken one of
the ten commandments today, we haven't broken any
of the commandments on the Sermon on the
Mount today, no, we haven't sinned.
But brothers and sisters, do you see that
Adam sinned by resisting God's Holy Spirit?
God said, look, receive my life into you
today, and Adam said, no, I don't want
it.
Now, that is sin.
Sin is just rejecting God's offer of life
through His Holy Spirit.
And really, it happens in us again and
again, because do you see, since Jesus died,
God has been able to replace the Holy
Spirit among us in this world.
And so the Holy Spirit is all around
us and about us.
And He's offering Himself to us again and
again every morning and every evening.
And if we're resisting that offer, that little
movement within us of God's Spirit, that is
sin.
That is sin for us.
And it will bring about death.
Now, if you wanted to look at details,
let's take two or three examples.
Some of us get into a disagreement with
our roommate or with a friend, and we
really do feel that they have not treated
us fairly.
We find that they've criticized us to somebody
else, or they've talked about us behind our
back.
And the old resentment comes up in our
hearts, and we just feel the resentment against
them.
And every time we meet them, there's that
resentment in the back of our eyes, and
you know, they're trying to be open with
us and all that, and we're trying to
run a little sensitivity tea group with them.
But really, at the back of our eyes
is the old defeat and the old gray
suspicion and the old resentment.
And God's Spirit comes into us.
Maybe He doesn't use these words, but He
brings home this truth to us.
Maybe you'd look at Romans 12 and 19.
You see, the Holy Spirit is always involved,
day by day and moment by moment, in
trying to bring to us God's own attitude.
And in a situation like this, He'll bring
home to us this truth.
It's about page 987.
Romans 12 and 19.
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to
the wrath of God, for it is written,
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the
Lord.
And the Holy Spirit will come into us,
just a little impression deep down inside of
us, a little tiny impression, cut the resentment.
Just let it be.
Just forgive the person as you want God
to forgive you.
And brothers and sisters, if we would bow
to that movement of God's Spirit within us
about the resentment, you'd find that Jesus would
flood us with a Holy Spirit of love
for that person.
But so often instead, we do what Adam
did.
We resist that movement of the Holy Spirit
within us.
Nobody can hit us, you know, with a
law.
Nobody can say, that's the fifth commandment, you're
broke.
Nobody can hit us with a law.
But yet, we know we've resisted God's generous
Spirit.
And to that extent, we grow smaller.
And death begins to work in our relationship
with that person, doesn't it?
You know, how many of us have death?
Life is an interaction with your environment.
Death is a lack of that interaction with
your environment.
How many of us have ceased to have
any interaction with certain friends that we have
because we've allowed death to seep in through
the resentment, through resenting and rejecting the working
of God's generous Spirit in us?
So, you see, that's what I mean.
That some of us find death coming in
different relationships, and we wonder why.
Why is there death here?
Why is death working in me?
Why can I not be open and loving
to this person?
And so often it's because we've resisted the
offer of the Holy Spirit that has come
to us.
Dear ones, do you see this morning, the
Holy Spirit is working on each one of
you and on me to make us more
like Jesus.
God's Holy Spirit is flooding throughout the whole
world.
You remember old manly Hopkins said, the earth
is filled with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out like shining feng shui
foil.
It gathers like the ooze of oil crushed.
But all is smeared with clay and wears
man's smudge and bears man's toil.
And you know, that's it.
The whole world is filled with the Holy
Spirit and the Holy Spirit of Jesus is
approaching each one of us and trying to
get us to respond to him.
And again and again, you know, you have
the same choice as Adam had in the
Garden of Eden.
You can respond and go this generous way
that is in line with the picture of
Jesus that you get in the New Testament
or you can resist it and go your
own miserable, mean, little way.
And so many of us, you see, have
death working in us because we've resisted this
life that God is offering to us.
You know, it comes in different situations.
I can think of another one, you know,
you have a situation in the office and
it's just chaos and the whole thing has
got utterly complex.
She took your typewriter or she didn't send
it for repair or he is really leaning
on you.
He's having trouble at home and he's your
boss and he's really leaning on you, just
leaning into the ground, you know, or they're
on your back all the time or the
school situation and you've had a cross up
with the professor and it seems you can't
get the line straight again and everything's complicated.
And do you see at that moment that
the Holy Spirit comes down to you again
in a hideous, impossible, difficult, domestic or professional
situation and he brings home a truth?
And you can see it is Ephesians 2
and 6.
Ephesians 2 and 6.
And it's page 1017.
Ephesians 2 and 6.
And God raised us up with him, with
God, and made us sit with him in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And then Ephesians 1 and 21, where that
position is, far above all rule and authority
and power and dominion and above every name
that is named, not only in this age
but also in that which is to come.
And you know the old mind is tossing
at night and worrying about the situation in
the office or the school the next day
and the Holy Spirit comes down to us
and says, look, you're in Jesus, above all
these things, at the Father's right hand.
Now just thank God that he's going to
sort this thing out.
And your job is just to take your
position in Jesus and love and be like
Jesus and let him take care of the
thing.
And Satan gets in and says nothing is
solved by that kind of unearthly behavior.
You get down there and you fight it
out and you slog it out and you
worry it out.
Loved ones, do you see there are two
ways to go?
You can either receive the life of the
Holy Spirit and say, all right, it doesn't
make too much sense to me that it'll
sort out that way, but I'll receive you
and accept you.
And if you do that, you release through
Jesus a flood of the Holy Spirit to
go out and repair the situation in the
office or in the school.
But again, there are two ways to go.
And if you resist the Holy Spirit, then
death begins to work in your mind at
night.
You lose the night's sleep.
The next day you're less able to deal
with the situation.
But it's again a resistance of the Holy
Spirit that brings death.
In other words, really, sin is resisting God's
will for you at that moment.
See, the Father hasn't put us all here
to kind of weave in and out each
other's lives, whatever way we want to go.
The Father hasn't just set us all here
and said, okay, you three and a half
billion, go, you know, and we just go.
The Father has it organized.
He has plans for each of us.
He has a beautiful harmony.
You remember in classical literature how they used
to talk about the music of the spheres?
And how even they, you know, in their
old pagan minds, had the image way back
that God had put inside them.
And they knew that there should be a
harmony in the universe.
Brothers and sisters, God has plans for each
one of our lives.
He knows what he wants you to do
tomorrow.
He knows what he wants you to do
on Tuesday evening.
He has plans for us.
He has a certain will for each of
us at each moment.
It was the same with Adam.
There would come a time when it was
God's will for him to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Otherwise, why put it there?
But he wanted him to eat of that
tree after he had received of the tree
of life.
Then he'd be able to know good by
experiencing good, and evil just by seeing and
understanding what it was.
So it was God's will at that moment
for Adam to receive of the tree of
life, the Holy Spirit.
Sin is resisting God's will for you at
that moment.
And that's really what you and I often
do, you see.
And when we do that, death immediately sets
into our lives, you know.
An easy instance, you know, that that many
of us really face.
You come home at night.
The highway was packed.
It was just, it was nose to tail
all the way.
And people screaming to stop, and they were
oversleeping, and all that kind of thing.
And you just get home, and you're worn
out, and the Holy Spirit comes through to
you.
And, well, you can see it.
He may not put it in the words
of the Bible, but it's there, Psalm 46
and 10.
Psalm 46 and 10.
The only reason I'm quoting God's word, brothers
and sisters, is that that's the way you
tell whether it is the Holy Spirit speaking
to you or not, you see.
You just check, what did the Holy Spirit
write in the Bible?
Is this in consistency with what He wrote?
And that's the way to keep yourself clear
from deceptive spirits.
Psalm 46 and 10.
It's page 490.
Psalm 46 and 10.
And that moment, you know, you come home,
you're worn out, and the Holy Spirit comes
through.
Be still, and know that I am God.
And the Holy Spirit just says to you,
sit down, be quiet, just rest.
Just know that I am God.
Just receive my life into you.
And the old mind works.
The assignments to do tonight, I have to
get some food, I have to do this,
I have to iron some clothes, I have
to wash some clothes, and we don't sit.
We resist the Holy Spirit, saying, be still
and know that I am God.
One gurgle from the old stomach, you know,
and we decide, no, no, no, that's not
spiritual food we need.
We need real food.
And we get up, and we hit the
old kitchen, and you know, the sparks are
flying, we're getting this thing in, and out
come the TV dinners, and into the oven,
and everything.
And the thing is noisy, then we decide,
well, we turn the TV on while we're
waiting, you know, and the TV goes on,
and you hit all the mess that is
in our world.
And before you know it, all death settles
in on you, you know.
And the old spirit becomes utterly dissipated, and
you find that the evening is just lost
and wasted, because there's no sitting still, and
knowing that He is God.
Everything, everything is taking control of you from
that moment on.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you see, that
is rejecting God's will for you at that
moment.
The Holy Spirit is good to us.
The Holy Spirit will keep us in psychological,
and spiritual, and physical balance if we will
listen to Him.
But sin is resisting the Holy Spirit's will
for you at that moment.
And all loved ones, you remember, those of
you, you know, who are away from home
now, you remember home situations, where you got
into ridiculous tangles because you spoke just what
you thought.
You resisted the Holy Spirit saying, shut up.
And you're just out, and you wanted to
lay the whole thing out and clear it.
Now, loved ones, do you see, that's what
we're doing.
And many of us are experiencing death in
ourselves, because we're really sinning.
Sin always brings death.
But just it isn't a sin that can
be lined up on the one or ten
commandments, but it is sin that is resistance
to God's Spirit.
That's the heart of sin.
It's independence of God.
It's a resistance to His Spirit's will for
you at that moment.
I get it in the mornings, you know.
You get it again and again in the
mornings.
We're waking up.
The Holy Spirit comes right through.
Whatsoever things are lovely, and true, and of
good report, think on these things.
The Holy Spirit comes through and says, this
is the day that the Lord hath made.
We will rejoice and be glad in it.
And we don't go with Him.
We resist Him.
And we sink back into our own indolence
and our own lethargy, and we sink back
into our own emotional and physical depression.
And before your fifteen minutes have passed, we're
in the depths of degradation, you know.
Either in depression, or in just a physical
degradation, or we're in an intellectual depression of
some kind.
But brothers and sisters, do you see, the
Holy Spirit will always come to you at
the right moment.
And if you'll accept Him, and receive His
life, He will take you up the way
He's going.
The Holy Spirit is only going one way,
always only one way.
He's going up to the Father, you see.
The Father is there, and Jesus is there,
and the Holy Spirit comes through Jesus and
goes back up to the Father.
And that's what's happening all the time.
And all we need to do is ride
Him right up to the Father.
But instead of that, you know, so often
we let the without Him, and with death
working in us.
Now brothers and sisters, do you see a
wee bit what death is, you know.
And what sin is.
Sin is resisting God's Spirit as He comes
down to you at a certain moment.
Now, you don't need to get all shook
up, you know.
You don't need to walk so tentatively.
Am I hearing the Holy Spirit?
Am I not?
Am I hearing?
No.
Just walk.
Believe that the Father is your loving Father,
that He loves you with all His heart,
that you can trust Him, and that He'll
tell you what to do when you need
to do it, and respond to Him immediately.
Don't wait for the thing to outwork itself
into some sinful act or thought or word.
You see, sin is not basically an act
or thought or word.
Sin is resisting God's Spirit when His Spirit
first comes to you.
Then as a result of that, you eventually
move into actual sinful thoughts and words.
But dear ones, I think really, brother, will
you wait till I finish, and then I
can share with you.
I think really, a lot of us would
escape death if we would really treat the
Spirit as our guide.
And not so much, you know, by all
means look at the laws as a guide
to what the Holy Spirit has written in
the past, but look to the Holy Spirit
as He witnesses God's will to us, and
respond to that.
So, you know, would you pray that God
would give you insight into it?
And that He would really, maybe some of
the things that I shared are some of
the things that you have trouble with.
But you see, that isn't important.
It's that the Holy Spirit could show you
why you're experiencing death in your life.
And He could show you why you are
experiencing an emotional death, or a mental death,
or a spiritual death.
By pointing out as clearly as He pointed
out to Ananias and Sapphira, look, this is
the point.
Will you stop resisting here?
Now brother, I'd love to talk with you
okay?
Shall we pray?
Dear Father, we thank you for your goodness.
We thank you for your kindness.
We thank you, Father, that you are a
God of order, and a God of harmony.
And we thank you that you have a
definite plan for our own lives.
Father, we trust you now to find a
ready heart, and a sensitive spirit that is
anxious to go your way.
So, Holy Spirit, when you point out things
to us in these coming days of this
week, we will tell you we want to
respond on the first second.
We want to respond to you immediately, and
receive you.
We want to walk clear of sin and
clear.
So, we trust you, Father, for revelation during
this week, so that you'll be glorified in
us, and love, and death will be driven
out.
God bless you.