Sin

[Bro Tommy Baker]

"What is sin and why is it bad?"

 

Sin is the design of the Devil to keep us from finding God. Lucifer doesnt care what you do as long as it doesnt lead you to Jesus. He can use money, pride and power as well as family hardships, accidents and desease. When we hear the word sin most people think of the ten commandments. There is much more to sin than just breaking one of these laws. The short answer is; sin is anything not found in heaven. It is bad because it causes problems and difficulties for humanity and leads us away from God continually. Sin is eternal such as all influencing. The results of a sin does not stop with the person who commited the sin but affects everyone he influenced and on to the people they may have influenced and so on for ever.

 

 

 The first sin was nothing more than disobediance. When Adam and Eve partaked of the fruit of knowledge, they disobeyed God. This disobedience opened the world to all types of sin. In Gen 3:17 God said to Adam "because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded "Thou shall not eat of it", cursed is the ground for thy sake and in sorrow shalt thou eat of it (the fruit of knowledge) all the days of thy life"  This choice to eat the fruit of knowledge between good and evil was a choice to learn of good and evil. God tried to tell us what to do and even then we could not obey. Sin is not a punishment that God put on us but a reality that exists and we choose to find out for ourselves. To learn the difference we must experience the difference, even learning evil to know of it. God cursed the ground and the embalance of nature made life hard and dangerous just from the eliments alone.

 

 For 2000 years man experienced evil even to the enfluence of the devil and his followers. Gen. 6:2 The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took wives of all which they chose. Gen. 6:4  ...When the sons of God came unto the daughters of men and they bare them children, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. As the followers of God would not do such a thing, I believe these to be the fallen Angels who were kicked out with Lucifer.

 

 

 

There are 5 major types of sin.

 

The 1st would be Natural Sin

This is the basic reason bad things happen to good people. Natural sin is things like desease, earthquakes, hurricans, tornados, volcanos, sunamies, floods and other natural desasters and animal attacks. Yes animal attacks. Our original earth in its natural condition was calm, peaceful, bliss, soothing, friendly even with the animals. When we lose a loved one suddenly and unexpected, we wonder why? This type of sin is random and chooses who it wills for no obvious reason.  Obviously these have nothing to do with something you do, although they do have something to do with the first sin of man.

The second type of sin is Inherited sin.

 

Even at birth we inherit problems from our parents and our grandparents. This is in the area of health as well as characteristic traits, emotional and physical. Exodus 34:7  "Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”  Why is this? Does God hold the children responsible for the sins of their parents? Not exactly, but we do inherit problems from our parents. This is the cause of greater risks of disease in family traits. It has been shown that an alcoholic has changes in his gene makeup that may be passed on to his children, making them more accessable to alcoholism. The same is with cancer and many other diseases.

 

There is another type of sin we get from the sins of our parents. This is a 3rd type of sin called environmental sin.

There is a natural law that I am sure you realize. Likes attract likes, meaning you will be drawn to people like you, because of this natural law of attraction. The way we think causes what we do and that causes our surroundings and those surroundings are our realm of experiences. As a child you lived where you did because of the choices your parents made and they made those choices according to the way they think, causing their choices to the circumstances in their life. If your parents were alcohholics, they ran around with people that drank alcohol. The same is with drugs or even a financially lucritive position in that one could easily become addicted to money and live their life to make a dollar rather than to be in the will of God. What ever environment you grow up in you are likely to retain a lot of those qualities in yourself. A person who grows up in a gang area is likely to be a gang member because of the pier pressure from those in his neighborhood, not necessarily was he a bad person or even wanted to. Your surroundings highly influence the way you are.

 

The fourth type of sin is spiritual sin.

 

Spiritual sin includes the way one thinks, caused by the lessons he has learned from teachings and experiences. Jesus said in the sermon on the mount in the book of Matt ch5 that even if you think on sin you are in danger of the judgement. This includes being angry with someone, thinking on a woman with lustful thoughts, wishing someone harm and blasphemy against the presence and will of God. Spiritual sin is learned, either by experiences or teachings. Even things we are taught in school. If you think this way it is not profitable to you but will draw you to do the things you think of. If you think on something long enough your desire for it will grow stronger and stronger. What we think of we start to believe and it becomes our truth making us who we are. If you were in your righteous mind you would not have thought that way in the first place and this is a sign that you need to draw closer to God.

 

The fifth and final type of sin is the sin that one does.

 

These are the results of how we think. Such as: If I am not hurting someone else and all involved are in agreement with this sin, why is it bad, such as in sexual promiscuity between consenting adults or telling a small lie? As for sexual promiscuity, without doing a sermon on that alone, besides all the possible negative results such as disease, or having an unwanted child or even marrying the wrong person, it keeps us from finding true love. Causing us to settle for less resulting in all kinds of problems.

 

The bad things we do are bad is two reasons. (1) Those who are influenced by you sees it as OK and they learn to commit the same sin. (2) All sin causes problems not just for those involved but it is infinite in its influence.  Lets say that you tell a small lie and you get away with it and your younger brother found out and he tells a bigger lie because he seen that it worked for you. Lets say that his lie was about swiming in a quarry or pond that he was told not to do. After getting away with it several times, one day he goes swimming and gets bit by a moccosin snake with no one else around. Before he can swim to shore the venom takes over and he drowns. Your mother and father are so devestated over the loss of their youngest child that the mother gets deeply depressed and the father starts to drink. Then they fight with each other because they are miserable. After awhile because he is not happy at home, the father finds affection in another womans arms and cheats on his wife with a woman he does not love and she gets pregnant. His wife divorces him and he does not marry the other woman because he is not in love with her. Now what will your life be like? What will your mother and fathers life be like? The child of the woman, what will his life be like? How many people will this influence before it stops? You see where this goes. All of this is because you decided to lie. Everything you do effects someone, some how and the growth of the negative effects of sin is continual and infinite.

 

One might say; with all these effects of sin on us how can we possibly not sin. The answer is you can't. We can't help but be true to who we are and we are who we are because of the influences and teachings we have experienced in our lives. The only way to stop sin is to change the way you think. Rom 12:2 says Be transformed by the renewing of your mind and this is done thru Jesus by promise. Without Him, the whole truth is not out there and we are destined to destroy ourselves.