Have you ever found your mental capacities or
your emotional capacities or your physical capacities just
suddenly failing you, you know?
So you're just in an exam and the
old mind just fails completely and you can't
remember the fact and it's vital to get
it if you're going to write anything.
Or you're at a time when you really
need absolute calmness and quietness and concentration and
the old emotions, you know, become ragged and
on edge and you can't do anything with
them.
Or you get up some morning and you've
had eight hours sleep and you ought to
feel great but the old body feels weary
and worn and you just feel you can't
make it.
Now, why is that?
Were you and I made like that?
Were we made with bodies that got weary
without any reason or with minds that couldn't
remember the fact at the right moment or
with emotions that just got ragged at any
time without our knowing it or being able
to control it?
And obviously we weren't, you know.
It says in Genesis at the beginning of
the creation of the world that God saw
everything that he had made and behold it
was very good.
And so brothers and sisters, God didn't make
us like that.
God didn't make us with ragged emotions.
He didn't make us with minds that couldn't
remember facts when we wanted them to remember
them.
He didn't make us with bodies that were
worn and weak physically.
God made us with beautiful, whole, complete bodies
and with good minds that were sharp and
alert and with emotions that were balanced absolutely.
And really what we found last Sunday, I
remember, was that the reason all this deterioration
took place was that the first man and
the first woman refused the one essential factor
that would make the mind and the emotions
and the body work perfectly.
And that one factor was God's own uncreated
life, the life of the Holy Spirit.
And immediately the first man and the first
woman rejected that life and rejected God's will
for them at that time and decided to
go it on their own.
Immediately there took place a great deterioration throughout
every part of their personality.
You remember we saw that the old mind
became impaired and the emotions became unbalanced and
ragged and on edge.
And the old body became weak and worn.
And without the Holy Spirit the whole world
began to be infested with evil spirits that
worked all kinds of lack of harmony in
the universe itself.
Earthquakes and volcanoes and brought about all kinds
of strange dreams and nightmares into us men
and us women.
And then that even as that took place
we began to live more and more for
ourselves and we found ourselves living in a
pro-self world, an anti-God world.
And really that kind of death spread throughout
the universe and that's why many of us
experience this kind of death in our minds
and emotions today.
I had an electric razor when I was
in Ireland that ran on 220 volt current
and all the current in Britain is 220
volts.
But if you go to Europe as I
did one summer on a motorbike, youth hustling,
you come to all kinds of 110 volt
outlets.
And I had my old 220 volt razor
and I didn't know anything about the 110
volt and I didn't think that anybody, a
whole nation would be stupid enough to run
on 110 volt.
I went to the, I think the first
youth hostel was in France.
Stopped in the morning, got up, plugged the
old Remington in and you should have heard
it.
It was miserable, you know, just a little
bit of a burr, you know, but nothing
else.
So I grew a beard that summer.
Now that's what it's like.
Without the Holy Spirit everything just runs, you
know, at half or a third speed.
The blood doesn't flow the way God meant
it to flow.
The mind doesn't work the way He meant
it to work.
The emotions aren't peaceful and at ease the
way He meant them to be.
And that's what we mean by death coming
into us, you see.
And that's really what it means when it
says, you remember, well maybe you'd like to
look at it in Romans 5 and 12.
It was the verse we studied last day.
Romans 5 and 12.
Yeah, that was the Sunday before.
Therefore as, it's 980, the one's page 980.
And Romans 5 and 12.
Therefore as sin came into the world through
one man and death through sin and through
death spread to all men because all men
sinned.
And it's that death that spread, you see.
And it spreads because of sin.
And many of us, of course, we saw
last Sunday tend to think of sin as
just disobedience to the Ten Commandments.
What we began to realize last day was
that sin is any resistance to God's will
for us at that time.
Because you remember Romans 5 and 13 says,
sin indeed was in the law before the
law was given.
Sin was in the world before the law
was given.
In other words, sin existed there whether the
Ten Commandments were there or not.
And so sin is not just immorality.
It is not disobedience to the Ten Commandments.
It is a refusal of that spirit of
life.
And brothers and sisters, every time we refuse
that spirit of life today in our lives,
we experience death.
You remember we saw that last day that
you don't have to be disobeying one of
the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not steal or
thou shalt not kill in order to experience
death.
Sin is not just immorality.
It is not just disobedience to the Ten
Commandments.
Sin is any resistance to the movement of
God's Holy Spirit inside us.
And do you see that in a thousand
ways this morning in the theater, the Holy
Spirit is trying to bring life to each
one of you.
See, the Holy Spirit is alive in the
world today.
God made it available to us again because
of the death of Jesus.
And so the Holy Spirit of God is
moving in you in a thousand different ways.
And when you resist it, you experience more
and more of the death that sin brings.
So really this morning, we are either responding
to life and we are developing the inner
spiritual body that will at the last day
break through this physical body and transform it
and take us up to the Father's right
hand.
Or today we are responding to death inside
us and we are accelerating the death that
is already taking place in our mind and
emotions and our bodies.
So brothers and sisters, that's really where we
got to last day.
That sin is resisting God's will for you
at this moment.
Sin is resisting the moving of God's Holy
Spirit inside you at this moment.
An example of it is this.
You get up in the morning.
The Holy Spirit comes to you and applies
the truth that you know is written in
the Bible.
Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,
if there be any virtue, if there be
any praise, think on those things.
And the Holy Spirit is in all of
us reinforcing that will of God for us.
That first moment when we reach out, hit
the alarm, it falls down to the floor
and we're away.
At that moment, the Holy Spirit in all
of us is saying whatsoever things are lovely
and of good report, think on those things.
Now brothers and sisters, at that moment, you
can resist the Holy Spirit, in which case
you move into death.
Or you can respond to the Holy Spirit,
in which case you move into life.
And you know that.
You can either accept His prompting at that
moment, or you can go on and think
the day ahead, three assignments not done, and
I have to get them done before 10
o'clock.
And what am I going to do tonight?
I'm not ready for tonight.
And what about tomorrow?
Because Satan never leaves them one by one.
He throws the whole lot at you.
And before you know it, you're thinking about
a month hence and two months hence, and
who will I marry?
But dear ones, do you see the Holy
Spirit does not prompt you that way.
The Holy Spirit is prompting you whatsoever things
are lovely and of good report, think on
these things.
This is the day that the Lord hath
made, let us rejoice and be glad in
it.
This is a good day.
This is your Father's world.
He knows what you're going to do today,
and He has His arms right under you
now.
Bless Him and praise Him and thank Him.
But do you see, you can go either
way.
Or you know it, so many of us
know it.
You can go into the depths of self
and of degradation, and before you know it,
the emotions are unbalanced, the body is being
abused, everything is going apart.
Now dear ones, do you see that's what
we mean by sin being in the before
even the law was given.
Sin is resistance to God's will for us
at this moment, whether it's written in the
Ten Commandments or not.
Whether it actually says it or not, if
you're resisting God's Spirit within you, then that's
sin, and sin brings death more into your
personality.
Now that's one way in which many of
us fall into death.
Many of us fall into death because we
have too narrow a view of sin.
We think that sin is just immorality, or
sin is just disobeying the Ten Commandments, but
we can disobey that secret voice within without
incurring any death.
Now you can't.
So many of us fall into death because
we have too narrow a view of sin.
Now here's the strange thing.
The opposite is true.
Many of us fall into death because we
have too broad a view of sin.
That's true.
Many of us fall into death because we
have too broad a view of sin.
Many of us define sin like this.
Sin is any lack of conformity to absolute
perfection.
Many of us have that definition of sin.
Sin is any lack of conformity to absolute
perfection.
Sin is any deviation at all from the
absolute mental and emotional and spiritual perfection of
the one God of the whole universe.
And so, dear ones, many of us move
in continual sense of condemnation by God because
of that definition.
Because we all know we're imperfect in many
ways.
There are many ways in which our mind
makes mistakes.
There are many ways in which our emotions
are an edge.
There are thousands of ways in which we're
not like God.
And so we know we're imperfect, so we
come into this terrible bondage where we say,
oh well, I sin and act inward and
thought every day in life because I'm imperfect
in many ways.
And the result of all this is twofold.
One, there comes a dreadful lack of any
motivation to be like God.
All motivation to be like Jesus is drained
from us because we reckon to ourselves, I'm
imperfect, I'm not sin, so I'm sinning every
day, so I can't do anything about it.
If God holds me responsible even for instances
when I fall short of him that I
don't know about, if he holds me responsible
for those things that I don't know about,
then I have no hope.
And so we just fall into a pattern
of well doing our best.
The second result is that we fall into
such hypocritical lives that the only difference between
Christians and non-Christians is that Christians think
they can continue to sin with impunity because
of Jesus' death, whereas non-Christians think every
time they sin they feel real guilt.
Now loved ones, you see, those two results
come about if you ever fall into the
unscriptural trap of defining sin as any deviation
from absolute perfection or any lack of conformity
to the absolute perfection of God.
Now loved ones, that is not sin, that
is just creatureliness.
There are many ways.
You can't fly up to that roof, God
can.
You can't go to Mars this second, God
can.
You can't do a mathematical complicated sum with
being sure that you won't make a mistake,
God can.
You can't judge everybody in this theater perfectly,
God can.
You and I will make a thousand different
mistakes.
We will again and again fall short of
God in many ways that we don't know
about, but that is not sin.
Sin is knowingly, consciously disobeying God's will for
you at that moment.
Now that's why it's important to look at
the second half of that verse from last
day.
See verse 13, Romans 5 and 13.
Sin indeed was in the world before the
law was given.
So Paul says that.
Sin, resistance to God's will and refusal of
his spirit existed in the world before the
Ten Commandments were given.
But sin is not counted where there is
no law.
Now do you see that?
Unless a person knows they have disobeyed God,
God does not count that as sin.
Now that's what that means, you see.
Sin is not counted where there is no
law.
In other words, if you don't know that
you have disobeyed God, then God does not
count that as sin for you.
Now you remember that's stated very plainly and
maybe it would be good to look at
it because I think a lot of us
have labored under this false condemnation in our
lives.
If you look at it, it's very plainly
put in James 4, you remember, in verse
17.
James 4 and 17.
The fact that alright, sin is resistance to
God's spirit, but it is knowing resistance to
a spirit.
It is conscious resisting to a spirit.
James 4 and 17.
It's page 1056.
James 4 and 17.
Whoever knows what is right to do and
fails to do it, for him it is
sin.
Now do you see that?
Whoever knows what is right to do and
fails to do it, for him it is
sin.
But God will never witness guilt to your
heart through the Holy Spirit, unless you know
that he has willed something for you and
you have resisted that will.
The only one that will witness guilt to
you in that situation is Satan, who will
impart to you all vague senses of guilt.
And you'll get up and you'll feel, ah,
I have a vague sense of guilt.
I don't know what I've done wrong, but
I know I'm wrong.
Now brothers and sisters, that is of Satan.
It is not of God.
When God witnesses a sense of conviction to
your conscience, it is definite and plain.
He says, that is wrong, or that is
wrong.
And the guilt brought by the Holy Spirit
always leads us to life.
The guilt brought by false condemnation on Satan
always brings more death.
Now do you see that many of us
experience death in our own Christian lives, because
many of us have too narrow a view
of sin, in that we think sin is
just disobedience to the Ten Commandments, that it
is not also resistance to God's Spirit inside
us.
But many of us also live in death
because we think God has condemned us when
he hasn't, because we have too broad a
view of sin.
And we think, oh, I have a false,
I have a vague sense of guilt, so
God must have condemned me.
Now brothers and sisters, there are all kinds
of false guilt that will come upon you.
But the guilt that the Holy Spirit brings
is always about something definite.
It is always a conscious disobedience to God
that the Holy Spirit brings to your mind.
Now, you'll find that, you know, clearly if
you look at just a couple of instances
in the New Testament there, in Acts 5
and verse 3.
You remember we read it last Sunday.
Acts 5 and verse 3.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled
your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit
and to keep back part of the proceeds
of the land?
Now that's pretty definite.
It's 951, the page.
Acts 5 and verse 3.
Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to
lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep
back part of the proceeds of the land?
Now loved ones, that is sin.
Sin is knowing conscious resistance to God's will.
It's something you know you've done, you see.
It's not that the Holy Spirit comes and
says, no, you've done something wrong.
I want you to try to guess.
I'll give you three guesses what it was.
I used to teach in a kind of
a goodbye Mr. Chips school, you know, kind
of public school in Ireland.
We wore robes and gowns and it was
a boarding school, you know, and all we
members of the faculty sat at a big
dining table in front of a massive dining
hall, that kind of place.
And we used to have one master who
had great trouble with discipline with the boys
because he never tied them down.
He would catch them running in the corridor
and that was a heinous sin in that
school to run in the corridor.
And he would catch them running the corridor
and he said, you did something wrong.
What did you do?
And of course they would never confess what
they did.
So we never got anywhere with discipline.
Now brothers and sisters, God's Spirit does not
feel that way with us.
Do you see that?
The Holy Spirit doesn't play games.
When you have a vague sense of guilt,
what you need to do is say, Holy
Spirit, is there some way in which I've
resisted you and I haven't known about it?
If there is, will you show me?
And he will show you and expect you
to apologize or to repent or to make
restitution and to receive him again to command
your life.
But sin, real sin, is resistance to God's
will inside you and it is a knowing
resistance.
Now loved ones, would you look with me
at an empirical fact that is stated in
the verse that we're studying today that brings
up a problem in the light of what
we've shared.
Now the empirical fact is this one stated
in Romans 5 and 14.
You remember that Paul has just said, sin
existed in the world before the law was
given, before the ten commandments were given, but
sin is not counted where there is no
law.
So look at verse 14.
Here's a problem.
Yet, death reigned from Adam to Moses.
You see, that was the time during which
there was no law.
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even
over those whose sins were not like the
transgression of Adam, who was a type of
the one who was to come.
And so that you don't get lost in
it all, I'd better try to make the
point clearly so that we can all see
it.
Do you see that Paul has just said
that okay, sin was in the world before
the law was given, but sin is not
counted where there is no law.
And yet he says, during that time when
there was no law and when sin was
not counted, death reigned from Adam to Moses.
Now how can that be?
If God did not count their sin as
sin in those days because there was no
law, how then could death ever reign from
Adam to Moses?
You remember, death did reign, you know, increasingly
as the years went by.
Death spread throughout the world and it became
more and more chaotic as we read in
the lesson earlier on in the service.
Now how does death reign from Adam to
Moses if sin is not counted when there
is no law and there was no law
in those days?
Well, there are two ways, brothers and sisters.
One is that death is passed on from
father to son even if the son does
not sin.
There's a sense in which the effects of
death are passed on to us even if
we haven't sinned.
Now you may say that's utterly unfair.
But let's take an instance of it.
Old Adam, you remember, set simply a poor
example to his son Cain.
He lived a life independent of God.
Cain began to live the same kind of
life and you remember you find the result
there in Genesis chapter 4 and verses 8
through 9.
You find that the death that existed in
Adam was passed on to Cain just through
the simple fact of a father's example.
Genesis 4 and verses 8 and 9.
It's page 3.
Cain said to Abel, his brother, let us
go out to the field and when they
were in the field Cain rose up against
his brother Abel and killed him.
Now you get the same death being passed
on in Genesis 6 and verse 5.
It's a summary of the way the effects
of the father's sin were passed on to
the children even though they themselves had not
sinned.
Genesis 6 and 5.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
Now loved ones, do you see that there
are three deaths?
There is a physical death that we are
even now experiencing today.
There is an eternal death that is a
forever separation from God and there is a
second death that is being cast into that
lake of fire where we burn in our
own selfish lusts.
Now do you see that the death that
we experience today can be passed on to
us even by our parents?
And the strange thing is that far from
God being unfair in that, he is actually
being fair.
In other words, if one of us is
promiscuous and we develop venereal disease, it is
a very strong chance that the child that
the mother bears will have deformities of some
kind.
Now the death is passed on.
The effects of the death are passed on
and do you see that God cannot step
in there without destroying our free will?
Do you see that?
That God cannot keep intervening every time one
of us goes wrong in order to prevent
the effects of that being passed on to
our children or to our friends.
If God did that, he would be a
God a deus ex machina, you know, just
a God who came down from the sky
every now and again to deliver us from
the consequences of our own free will.
Now do you see that in a real
way death has passed on even though the
children haven't sinned?
Now nevertheless it is true that the only
way we can experience the second death or
final death is by knowingly resisting God's will
ourselves.
Now how did the people from Adam to
Moses do that if there was no law?
How did they knowingly resist God's spirit and
his will if there was no law?
Well the answer, dear ones, is in Romans
and chapter 1 there.
It's Romans, I'm sorry, Romans 2.
Romans chapter 2, it's page 978 and verse
14.
Romans 2 and verse 14.
When Gentiles who have not the law do
by nature what the law requires, they are
a law to themselves.
Even though they do not have the law,
they show that what the law requires is
written on their hearts while their conscience also
bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or
perhaps excuse them on that day when according
to my gospel God judges the secrets of
men by Christ Jesus.
Really we're back to the first thing that
Jesus taught us, you know, last Sunday.
That even though there are not the Ten
Commandments available, men have within them the moral
law of conscience that is continually prompting them
to respond to God's spirit of life.
And the men from Adam to Moses and
the women from Adam to Moses had that
law.
They had a law written in their conscience,
as dear ones have every primitive tribe that
we have not even touched with our civilization.
They have a conscience inside them that is
continually reinforcing in them the ancient racial memory
that has been passed down through the years
of God's judgment through the flood and his
judgment through the catastrophe of the Tower of
Babel and all the other judgments that he
has brought about down through history.
The conscience of every man is reinforcing that
sense inside that he has that there's a
Creator who wants him to go a certain
way and that is ready to forgive him
if he will turn to him and come
to him.
Now loved ones, the people from Adam to
Moses had that kind of law inside them
and it was in resistance to that that
they brought death upon themselves.
And so even though there were no laws
in those days, the conscience inside was a
law that they could recognize.
And if they don't respond to it, then
death comes about.
Now you may say, you know, oh could
you prove that that law was there?
Yes, there were people who followed it, you
see.
Even though there were no laws, there were
people who followed it.
Genesis 4 and 26 outlines one of them.
Genesis 4 and 26.
In other words, there was life.
There was the life of the Holy Spirit
available even in those chaotic savage days.
And there were people that were responding to
that voice within.
Genesis 4 and 26.
To Seth also a son was born.
That's Seth, remember, Adam's son.
And he called his name Enosh.
At that time men began to call upon
the name of the Lord.
So there were men, you see, even in
those days who responded to that conscience within.
And chapter 6 and verse 8, you know,
talks about another of those men.
Genesis 6 and 8.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of
the Lord.
These are the generations of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his
generation.
Noah walked with God.
So there was the life of the Holy
Spirit available.
And you find it again in chapter 12
and verses 1 and 2.
Now the Lord said to Abram, go from
your country and your kindred and your father's
house to the land that I will show
you.
And I will make of you a great
nation.
And I will bless you and make your
name great, so that you will be a
blessing.
So there were men in those days that
were responding to the inward law in their
hearts.
Now, dear ones, do you see it gets
back to the central point.
That real sin is not, you know, disobeying
all the don'ts of evangelical Christianity.
Real sin is not just murdering.
It's not just killing.
It's not just committing adultery.
Real sin, the very heart of sin, is
resisting God's will for you at this moment
today.
And you see, it's because of the failure
to see that, that our churches are filled
with very respectable moral people who are very
unlike Jesus.
And really, loved ones, the only hope for
you and me to avoid that kind of
hypocrisy ourselves, you know, is to really treasure
this little voice of the Holy Spirit within
us.
And though we may ask us to do
things that the Bible apparently does not ask
us to do, but that is in line
with the picture of Jesus that we get
there, it's up to us to respond to
that.
If you don't respond to it, death begins
to move and expand inside your own personality.
If you do respond to it, life begins
to glow and increase inside you.
So, brothers and sisters, it is really true
that all of us in the theater this
morning, we're moving one way or the other.
You know, you really are.
You're moving either into more of those old
wrinkles, because it all shows up in your
body.
God is so good, you know.
He shows.
He lets it show.
If the old worry, if you're not responding
to the Holy Spirit, and you're really not
trusting Jesus for the exams and for the
future, the old worry begins to show up
on the wrinkles in the forehead, you know.
And the body begins to weaken, and the
body begins to wear out.
On the other hand, if you move in
the other direction towards life, each time you
sense the movement of God's Spirit within you
to trust your dear Father in heaven, you'll
move towards life.
And, loved ones, it's not chance that some
of us can look young for many, many
years.
It isn't chance.
It isn't chance that some of us appear
to be always sick and always worn.
It isn't.
If you're moving towards life, there is a
life developing and growing inside you.
If you're moving towards death, there's a death
growing and developing inside you.
And a very down-to-earth one, you
know.
Not just the one of going to hell,
but the old mind becoming more and more
impaired, the emotions becoming more and more shattered,
the body becoming weaker and weaker.
Or is it the mind becoming renewed every
day, and the emotions experiencing the peace of
Christ ruling them, and the body being completely
transformed into his image?
Well, dear ones, I really trust Jesus will
show you the truth of it.
I think a lot of us are tied
up with cicatrice and the power of positive
thinking when we should just listen to the
voice inside, you know, and just listen to
the Holy Spirit's promptings, and begin to respond
to him.
So, would you think about it this week?
Especially at those crucial moments when you know
there are two ways to go, and Satan
gets in and says, well, there's nothing in
the Bible that says, don't take five minutes
more in the morning.
Or there's nothing in the Bible that says,
don't think another moment about that thing.
But reject that, and say, no, but the
Spirit of God within me is telling me
what to do.
And let's begin to move towards life.
If you have, you know, real problems with
some area in your own life, and would
like to talk, really do stay behind afterwards,
you know.
A number of us gather at the front
here.
It's really very easy.
You can talk to me, or there's some
other brothers and sisters who have at last
begun to move away from death, and move
towards life.
And some of them could probably help you.
So, you should, if you want to talk
about, don't go out, you know, and struggle
for another week.
You should just stay around.
We'll be around the front, and just talk
about it.
Or if you want to come during the
week and see me, or see some of
us, that would be good.
But it is God's will that we should
move in life, in the midst of life,
you know, and not in death.
Holy Spirit, we have often sensed the movements
that you have prompted inside us.
We have often sensed those little impressions that
you're making on us.
But we've grown so used to ignoring them
as old-fashioned inhibitions, or as remnants of
our past that we have had, that we
have not responded.
Now, Holy Spirit, we tell you, we want
to be people who walk sensitively with you.
We want to be people who do not
resist you, but respond to you.
Holy Spirit, we want to move into life.
So, we trust you now for this coming
week.
We tell you now, Holy Spirit, whether we're
Christians or not Christians, if you move inside
us, we're going to move with you.
We're going to respond to you.
Whatever it costs us, we're going to move
in your direction.
Now, Lord Jesus, we trust you that you'll
be able to transform our lives with your
life, that we will begin to be those
radiant people that walk as princes and princesses
on God's earth, and begin to have the
dignity and the beauty and the royalty of
the Son of God and the King of
Kings.
Dear Father, we know we weren't made to
crawl and to scrabble in the dust and
the dirt with Satan.
We know we were made to fly, and
we trust you to bring us into that
experience during this week in every area of
our lives.
We ask this for your glory, Lord Jesus.
Amen.