Man's Biggest Problem
Matthew 5:27-30
We're looking in our studies at the 5th chapter of Matthew, and tonight I want to use that as a beginning point, a starting point for what's on my heart to say to you.
Matthew chapter 5 and I want to read to you verses 27 through 30. Our Lord says, Matthew 5:27, "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Now we've been looking at this passage, tonight will really be the third message dealing with this general passage. Next Sunday night we're going to be sharing in the communion table and the following Sunday night we're going to begin a series on verses 31 and 32 on divorce and remarriage. But for tonight I want to share with you just one more message related to this particular theme.
Now you'll notice that in this passage our Lord is condemning not only the act of adultery but the very thought of evil, as in verses 21 and 22 of the same chapter where He condemned not only murder but even hatred and anger, dealing with the internal attitude as much as the external act. And in fact what our Lord is doing throughout this part of the Sermon on the Mount is giving us an insight into the definition of sin. Sin is not only a matter of what we do it is a matter of what we think. It is not only a matter of an action it is a matter of an attitude.
Now our Lord in the passage is speaking to the Jews of His day, who felt that they in themselves were righteous. They felt that they were good enough to be in God's kingdom without God's help. They felt that they didn't need a Messiah, they did not need a Savior, they did not need someone to die for their sins because they felt they had been able to handle that on their own. And the reason they were doing so well is because they really didn't understand the problem. They thought they were righteous but that was only because they had an inadequate view of sin. Had they known how deep sin really is, had they understood how pervasive sin is they would have known there was no possible way that they could have ever been made righteous on their own. And so the fact of their self‑righteousness really grew out of the fact that they had an inadequate doctrine of sin. And so in the Sermon on the Mount the Lord Jesus Christ gives us a comprehensive view of sin, so that we will understand the depths of the problem of man and we'll come in desperation to God's only cure, in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now most pointedly in verses 21 through 48 of Matthew 5, Jesus destroys their self‑righteousness. Jesus lets them see the truth about sin so there's no way for them to believe they're really righteous. They thought it was only externals but He shows them it's much deeper than that. And as we have been studying this I have been literally overwhelmed with the tremendous emphasis Jesus places on the sinfulness of sin, just how deep it is and how broad it is and how com...encompassing it is, and so I have decided tonight to share with you as best I can an overview of the whole problem of the sin of man.
Now as I mentioned this morning in this week's issue of Newsweek Magazine, President Carter said the greatest issue facing man today is the Salt Talks, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. But I think he's wrong. The greatest problem facing man today has nothing to do with weapons, it has nothing to do with war, it has nothing to do with nuclear factors--the greatest problem facing man today is the greatest problem facing man in all of his history, it is sin, that's the problem.
And in the text before us our Lord is giving us several perspectives on sin first of all in the very passage I just read we see the depth of sin. And that is, it, it is not only an act, it is an attitude. It is much deeper than just committing adultery; it is even looking on a woman to lust after her. And so our Lord shows us the depth of sin.
Also, I think we see here the deceit of sin, that it's never as simple as it looks. Sin would like to make us think that if we're highly respectable on the outside we're alright. Jesus shows us that you could be highly respectable on the outside and be rotten on the inside.
We see not only the depth and the deceit of sin but we see the destructiveness of sin. Our Lord is showing us that sin will cast someone into hell, at the end of verse 29 He says it and at the end of verse 30. Sin is so severe that the ultimate end of sin is to cast people into an eternal hell.
This is the destructiveness of sin, so serious is it that we would be better to maim ourselves if that would prevent it, we would be better to deal with ourselves in a very harsh and brutal way to prevent sin because of what sin can do. And so our Lord shows us the depth and the deceit and the destructiveness of sin. And really this is just one part of a broad picture in this passage where our Lord is showing how really sinful man is. And if I sound like I'm speaking a lot about this you'll have to pardon me because I'm picking my cues up from Christ.
Doctor J. Wilbur Chapman told of a distinguished minister from Australia who preached very strongly one day on the subject of sin. And after the service one of the church officers came to counsel with him in his study and he said, Doctor Howard, we don't want you to talk as openly as you do about man's corruption, because if our boys and girls hear you discussing the subject they'll more easily become sinners. Ah, call it a mistake or something if you will, but don't speak so plainly about sin. The minister took down a small bottle from the cabinet and showed it to the visitor and said do you see that label? The man said, yes. It says strychnine and underneath that in bold red letters is the word poison. Do you know man, what you are asking me to do? You're suggesting that I change the label. Suppose I do and paste over it the words, essence of peppermint. Do you see what might happen? Someone would use it not knowing the danger involved and would die, and so it is too with the matter of sin. The milder you make the label the more dangerous you make the poison. And so we cannot mitigate the danger of sin, we must speak of the issue.
Chrysostum, the early church father said, I fear nothing but sin. I understand that, because that's exactly how I feel. I don't fear anything in the world, anything in the church, anything at all but sin, that's all, just sin. Sin will destroy us, rob us of our power, confuse us, cast us upon the mercy of Satan, and ultimately sin damns the unregenerate to an eternal hell.
You don't have to really be very astute to figure out that the greatest problem facing man is not the arms race; the greatest problem facing man, the one great blight on human life, the great phenomena that curses us all is sin. It pervades the whole world, it is the blight of the universe, and by the way it is only when sin is removed that paradise can be regained. And that's why we find toward the end of the Book of Revelation and even in Second Peter chapter 3 that God has to do a of...a work of purging the whole universe of evil if ever there is to be paradise regained. Because of sin there are tears, because of sin there is pain, because of sin there is war, because of sin there is fighting, because of sin there is anxiety, because of sin there is discord and unrest and fear and worry and sickness and death and famine and earthquake and weeds and pollution, and every other bad thing.
Sin disturbs every relationship that exists in the human realm, and by the way there are only three, man and God, man and nature, and man and man, and all of them have been destroyed by sin. You read Genesis 3 and the curse came violating the relation between man and God, man and nature, and man and man. First of all man was separated from God, he died spiritually. Secondly man was separated in a sense from nature insofar as he had to toil by the sweat of his brow and he had to fight against a cursed earth. And man was separated from man as we see in the very curse upon Adam and Eve bringing conflict in their own marriage.
And sin has generated cosmic chaos from earth up into the heavens. We find there is even chaos going on between the holy angels and the fallen angels who are known as the demons. Sin waits in lurking to attack every baby born into the world, beginning at conception. David said, "In sin did my mother conceive me." Sin rules every heart, sin is the monarch of man, sin is the king of humanity, sin is the lord of the soul and nobody ever escapes. All who die in childbirth, all who die from heart disease, cancer, war, murder, accidents, old age or whatever die as a victim of sin. "For the wages of sin is" what? "death." Every person on the globe has been infected with the virus of sin, only one person ever entered this world and passed through it without the stain of sin and that was Jesus Christ. Every other human being is captured under the fearful power of sin, and sin is a destructive thing.
This is vividly illustrated in a story told many years ago about Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was painting his great masterpiece known as The Last Supper. He sought long for a model for Jesus Christ. At last he located a chorister in one of the churches of Rome who was lovely in life and lovely in features, a young man named Pietro Bandonelli. He used him for the portrait of Jesus Christ. Years passed, and as the painting was still unfinished, all the disciples had been portrayed except one, Judas Iscariot. And now after all of these years da Vinci began again the search for a face. He wanted a face that was hardened by sin, he want a face that was contorted by lust and evil desire, and at last he found a dissolute beggar on the streets of Rome with a face so villainous he shuddered when he looked at him. He hired the man to sit for him as he painted the face of Judas on his canvas and when he was about to dismiss the man he said, I have not yet found out your name, to which the man replied, I am Pietro Bandonelli. I also sat for you as your model of Jesus Christ. The sinful years had disfigured the face, and that's the way sin does it.
Sin attacks everyone at birth and before it's done it degrades, it debases, and it destroys in an eternal hell. Every broken marriage, every disrupted home, every shattered friendship, every argument, every disagreement, every pain, every tear can be attributed to sin. In fact the Bible in Joshua 7:13 calls it "the accursed thing." It is compared to the venom of snakes; it is compared to the stench of death. Anything that is sinister and powerful must be faced and dealt with and sin is such. We cannot ignore it, we cannot gloss it over, we cannot change the label. We must face the reality, and that is exactly what Jesus is saying.
Old Doctor Guthrie wrote, "Who is the hoary sexton that digs man a grave? Who is the painted temptress that steals his virtue? Who is the murderess that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns his soul? It is sin. Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth? Who breaks the hearts of a parent? Who brings old men's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave? It is sin. Who by a more hideous metamorphoses than Ovid even fancied changes gentle children into vipers, tender mothers into monsters and their fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocence? It is sin. Who casts the apple of discord on household hearts? Who lights the torch of war and bares it blazing over trembling lands? Who by division in the church rends Christ's seamless robe? It is sin. Who is the Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised? Who winning smiles on her face, honeyed flattery on her tongue stands in the door to offer the sacred rites of hospitality, and when suspicion sleeps treacherously pierces our temples with a nail? What fair siren is this who seated on a rock by a deadly pool smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray and flings her arms around our neck to leap with us into perdition? It is sin. Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone? Who hurls reason from her lofty throne, and impels sinners mad as gadarene swine down the precipice into a lake of fire? It is sin." All of this is true. If it is true we must understand sin.
I want us to see the answer to five questions. Question number one, what is sin? What is it? Anything this severe needs a definition. We must understand it in order to avoid it. The definition is simple, First John 3:4 listen, "Sin is the transgression of the law." That is sin. Sin is the transgression of the law. Literally the Greek is everyone doing sin is doing lawlessness, anomos. Sin is disobeying, ignoring God's law. In fact the Greek construction of First John 3:4 makes sin and lawlessness identical. We might say sin is living as if there was no God and no law. Sin is Godlessness, lawlessness. It is not being bound by the standards of God; it is living on your own definition and by your own terms and according to your own whims. Now the Bible gives other definitions of sin. In First John 5:17 it says, "All unrighteousness is sin." In James 4:17, "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." So sin is unrighteousness and sin is not doing the good you know you should do.
In Romans 14:23 we have yet another definition of sin. The Apostle Paul says, "For whatever is not of faith is sin." A lack of faith, an unrighteous act, not doing what you know you ought to do. But it all can be summed up in this: sin is lawlessness, it is not responding to the law of God, it is going beyond the bounds that God has set.
Man is like a horse in a fat pasture who jumps the hedge and lands in a quagmire. Man lives within the place of God's green, rich pasture and he finds that he wants to get out of this and he leaps the wall as it were of God's law and he lands in the muck of sin. God has given His law, according to Romans 2 He's written it in the heart of man. He's revealed it in the scripture. And in Romans 7:12 Paul says, "The law is holy, just and good." Holy, just and good, in it there is nothing impure, that's holy, nothing unfair, that's just, nothing evil, that's good. And there is no sane reason to break it, because it is the path of blessing as we saw this morning. But man does it because man seeks to live apart from God's law. So though we could look at many Biblical verses on sin it's all summed up, sin is breaking God's law. There's a second question, what is sin like? What is it like? Here we go past the definition and I want to have you look for a minute at the nature of sin. What is it like?
Well we can best see what it's like by it's characteristics, number one, and I'll give you several. Sin is defiling, it is defiling. Sin is not only a defection or a disobedience from God's law, but sin is a pollution. It is to the soul what rust is to gold. It is to the soul what scars are to a lovely face. It is to the soul what stain is to white silk cloth. It is to the soul what smog is to a azure blue sky. It makes the soul red with guilt and black with sin. It defiles. In fact it is so said in the Old Testament in such graphic terms that we'll never forget them. Isaiah chapter 30 and verse 22, "You shall defile also the covering of your carved images of silver, the ornament of your melted images of gold; thou shalt cast them away like an unclean cloth." And listen, that is used by Isaiah to describe sin, and the term unclean cloth refers in the Hebrew to the bloody cloth from a woman's menstrual period. That's how God sees sin. It's a defiling thing.
In First Kings chapter 8 and verse 38 the writer compares the sin of mans heart with sores that come on the body from a deadly plague. In Zechariah 3:3 we find the prophet Zechariah seeing sin as filthy garments on the high priest, Joshua. And over and over again we find in scripture that sin is seen as something vile and something defiling and something wretched and something filthy that pollutes that which is pure.
And by the way it is so defiling that it even makes God loathe the sin. In Zechariah 11:8 it says, "My soul loathed them." Amazing that God should say that. God so despises the defilement of sin that He loathes what it does to the sinner. And you know something else? In Ezekiel chapter 20 and verse 43 it says, that when the sinners sees his sin, he loathes himself. It is so defiling God hates it and so does the sinner. So sin pollutes and defiles everything. The Apostle Paul calls it, Filthiness of the flesh and spirit," in Second Corinthians 7:1. So we find that sin is defiling, that's what it's like.
Secondly, sin is rebellion, it is rebellion. In Leviticus 26:27 God talks about those who walk contrary to Me. Sin is defying God, it is walking in opposition, walking in rebellion, walking in antagonism to God. It is a sinner trampling on God's law, a sinner affronting God, spiting God, slapping Him in the face, spitting on Jesus Christ. It is as Hebrews 10 says, "One who knowing the truth willfully tramples under foot the Son of God, counting the blood of the covenant, by which he was sanctified, an unholy thing." Sin is a flat out, open, flagrant, rebellion.
In fact you might be interested to know that the Hebrew word for sin, pesha signifies rebellion, that's the Hebrew definition of sin. There is the heart of a rebel in every man and every woman. In Jeremiah 44:17 this is what the people said, "But we will certainly do whatsoever things go forth out of our own mouths." In other words, we'll do exactly what we want. The rebelliousness of sin. Sin if it had its way would murder God. Sin did have its way and murdered Jesus Christ. Sin would not only dethrone God but un‑God God because sin is rebellion. If the sinner had his way God would cease to be God. Christ would cease to be Christ. Sin is defiling and sin is rebellion.
Thirdly, sin is ingratitude. It is ingratitude. You know that Acts 17:28 says, "That in him we live, and move and have our being." Do you know the very fact that you live and exist you owe to God? Do you know that everybody who's existing in the world today is a creature made by God for a divine purpose and a divine end? God has so created you to show forth His praise, to grant glory to Himself. God has a purpose for you that is beyond anything you could imagine. And yet there are people who live in absolute ingratitude who spite the very face of Jesus Christ, who mock God, who turn their backs on God. Sin is flagrant, violent ingratitude. God has created you for His glory, God has created mankind to dwell in an eternal kingdom of bliss with Him, and man not only doesn't want it but spites the very one who offers it.
In Matthew 5:45 the Bible says, "God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, he sends rain on the just and the unjust." If there's any joy in this life it's because God gave it to you. If there's any sunshine in the life it's because God put it there. If there's any rain to make your life fresh it's because God rained it on you. Everything you are is because of God's graciousness. God's marvelous love is poured out on all men. God isn't responsible for the evil, that's man's rebellion; God is responsible for the good. It is God who has provided all the food the sinner eats. It is God who has provided the delicacies you taste. It is God who has made a world of color and brightness. It is God who has made love and music and all of the things that make life worth living. It is God who has given the senses that you can enjoy. It is God who has granted every beauty your eye ever beheld. It is God who gave wisdom to your body so that you could think and feel and work and play and rest and your life might be useful. It is God who made love and laughter. It is God who gave to every individual a special skill and ability to excel in some area. It is God who made man care for each other and enjoy the fellowship of his fellow man. It is God who providentially preserves us from getting every disease and dying every death. It is God who literally surrounds the sinner with mercy.
But it is the sinner who says no, and in flagrant open rebellion, in disobedience to the laws of God, he defiles himself and acts in an attitude of ingratitude. Like Absalom, Absalom the son of David, David his father had kissed him and David his father had wrapped his arms around him and taken him to his heart. And immediately from that place where his father had kissed him, and his father had embraced him, Absalom went out and plotted a rebellion against his own father--plotted the assassination of his own father. And so does the sinner indulge himself in God's grace and takes the best that the world has to offer and the best that life and love can bring to him and then turns his back on God and walks into the fold of the enemy, Satan, and sets his camp up in that place.
We might ask the same question that is asked in Second Samuel 16:17, "Is this your kindness to your friend?" The same question that was posed to Judas, "Judas, you... are you betraying Me with a kiss?" God may ask the sinner did I give you life to sin? Did I give you mercy to serve the devil? Sin is such gross ingratitude it seeks to dethrone and destroy the source of all that it has received. You know even the things the sinners pervert--money, comforts, sexual pleasures--all given by God, twisted, perverted, and they use them even to curse His holy name. The nature of sin? Sin is defiling, it is rebellion, it is ingratitude.
Number four, sin is humanly incurable--its nature is such that its incurable. Jeremiah 13:23 says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopards his...leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, that are accustomed to evil." If a leopard can change his spots or an Ethiopian change his skin then you can make good out of bad. But it can't be done. Sin is an incurable disease. Man does not have the resource to deal with it.
In Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 4, "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters; they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone way backward. Why should you be stricken any more? You will revolt more and more; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." In other words man has a horrible, incurable, pervasive disease that cannot be mitigated, or dealt with on human terms.
Titus 1:15 says about man, "his conscience is defiled." He's rotten on the inside. And the conscience is given to man to control his behavior, and if that is defiled the results will be defiled as well. John Flavel said, "All the tears of a penitent sinner should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain since creation, cannot wash away sin. The everlasting burnings in hell cannot purify the flaming conscience from the least sin." In other words he is saying sin is incurable. There is no human cure--not human will, not reformati