SERMONS
REDISCOVERING THE KINGDOM OF GOD PART 4
God’s Judgment.
As it happened in Genesis Chapter 3, Man was tempted by Satan and did eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
With that disobedience came the big spiritual divide between God and Man. The spiritual innocence of Man living in the perfect state of bliss, happiness and delight of God is now plunged into darkness. The spiritual separation from God meant that Darkness (Sin = Satan) has now dominated the spirit of Man, and with that Death reigns from Adam to Moses till the Torah (the Law of Moses) was given (Romans 5:12-14).
Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrongdoing, it is wrong being; deliberate and strong independence of God. The disposition (strong fundamental nature) of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but of self realization – I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous (dignified) morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Jesus faced men with all the forces of evil in them and men who were clean living and morally right, He did not pay attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; Jesus looked at something we do not see, viz, the disposition.
Sin is something I am born with and I cannot touch it, least of all to deal with it. God touches sin in redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ, God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the hereditary of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the hereditary of sin.
The condemnation is not that I am born with a hereditary of sin, but if when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, and I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I began to get the seal of damnation – “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world and men love darkness rather than light.”
Just as the disposition of sin came into the human race by one man, so the Holy Spirit entered the human race by another Man.
The Law (Law of Moses) is from God. Exodus 20:1 “And God spake…” to Moses during the time “he was with the Lord forty days and nights” (Exodus 34:28). The purpose of the Law is to expose the sin disposition in Man for “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Galatians 3:23-25 says that “before faith came, we were kept under the Law… wherefore the Law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith, but after the faith is come, we
are no longer under a schoolmaster.”
“For the Law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy and moral. The Law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:9-11 NLT).
Be encouraged!
GBYAY