Three Letter Word Called Sin
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 635 aired on October 29, 2017
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, please stay with me. The FLOT Line is designed to remind you of Biblical truths and
introduce you to a different way of studying, an in-depth way of learning God’s Word. It’s all
done with no manipulation, no solicitation, simply 30 minutes of education, some motivation,
some inspiration. My job is to verify and simply identify God’s plan for you and hopefully you
will orient and adjust to this plan. The plan starts with the good news that Jesus Christ, the
anointed Son of God, redeemed us out of the slave market of sin. Thus our debt to God has been
paid and we are now free of the penalty of death and the power of sin in our life. When you
receive Christ as your Savior you are in effect accepting the offering that He made on your
behalf, a free gift complements of the grace of God. That’s why the Bible says,
“For by grace
are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God and not of works lest
any man should boast”
(Ephesians 2:8). Titus 3:5-7 says,
“Not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the
renewing of the Holy Spirit, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord that
being justified by His grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
That’s what The FLOT Line is about, giving you the Word of God, not preaching, not yelling, not
jumping up and down, not begging you for money, not trying to sell you something, simply
giving you some information. Today we want to talk about a little three letter word called sin. Sin
is that three letter word none of us like to talk about. Many today don’t believe in this word
anymore. It seems that everything that use to be evil has now become good and all that use to be
good is now evil. I think it’s because arrogance has a way of doing this. Arrogance has a way of
twisting and distorting and justifying actions to meet our emotional needs.
In God’s eyes, let’s
get this straight, sin is anything contrary to His character or even acting independently of
Him and His provisions.
God’s character is sovereignty and righteousness and justice always
surrounded in love. His motivation for us is always love and His character cannot be
compromised. The justice of God is always the guardian of the righteousness of God. Thus what
the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God has to judge. The Bible tells us in Romans
3:23 that all of us, me, you, everybody,
“We’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
It
didn’t catch God by surprise since He knew all about sin in eternity past. That’s because He’s
omniscient meaning He’s all-knowing and it allows Him to know every sin that would ever be
committed by any member of the human race. He’s God. Not all sin is the same. Does God know
everything? Yes. Does God know every sin I would ever commit? Yes. Well, is all sin the same?
The answer is no, it is not all the same,
but fortunately the solution for sin is the same.
We
will get into different sins here in a minute but the solution to any sin is the same. Every sin that
was ever committed by any human being in eternity past or eternity future as long as we’ve been
here, it was all judged by God on the cross where the justice of God sacrificed His own Son to
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satisfy the penalty of sin.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, accepted the imputation of our sins
because He loved us.
He tells us this in John 3:16,
“God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
That’s the operative word, loved, and that’s what I never had in my life. As a young man growing
up I didn’t think anybody loved me. I never knew my father, never met him. Still to this day I
don’t know who he is or was. I knew my mom loved me but she had a hard time raising me, not
that I was a troublemaker, but I was just a teenage boy. I wanted somebody to love me. I never
knew God loved me. Wherever you are right now, let me emphasize this to you. I don’t care what
you’ve done, where you’ve been, who you are, God loves you. He gave His Son for you. You
should thank Him for this because He alone loves you more than your wife, more than your
husband, more than your children. I know you’ve never seen Him but He loves you and this verse
tells us this. Then listen to John 3:17,
“God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
That’s why Christ came, to deliver
you from the penalty and the power of sin in your life.
Now the Bible talks about different
types of sin. Let me identify this for you, okay?
The entire human race has imputed sin.
We
were all counted guilty when Adam committed that first sin in the Garden of Eden. Romans 5:12
says,
“Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death has
now passed upon all men, for all have sinned.”
When Adam sinned he received a sin nature and
every child that’s born has a sin nature as a result of Adam. Nobody sat you down and taught you
anger or how to be jealous, these are inherent in your soul. Arrogance is an inherent attitude of
the sin nature. We all have a sin nature. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:22,
“For in Adam all
die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
All die refers to spiritual death.
We are born
physically alive but we are born spiritually dead. Thus the need to be born again, not
physically we can’t be born again physically, but the need to be born again spiritually.
Our
human spirit is dead, spiritually dead. When we believe in Jesus Christ and receive Him as our
Savior the Bible says,
“If any man is in Christ, he is a new species. Old things are passed away
and all things become new”
(2 Corinthians 5:17). When we believe in Jesus Christ we are born
again spiritually and that’s when the journey begins for you and me. The imputed sin is still there
because we are related to Adam and we also have inherent sin, we inherited the sin nature.
Adam’s original sin was imputed to me. I also received the sin nature, Psalm 51:5 tells me this,
“Behold, I was shaped in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
By having that sin
nature I’m able to commit personal sins. Some of them I’m aware of, some of these I know are
sin and some are unknown sin. Known sin, things you do that you know are sin and unknown
sin, things you do that you don’t realize are sins. Sometimes if I’m listening to sports talk radio
and I enjoy this, keeping up with the football scores this time each year, there’s an awful lot of
slander. There’s an awful lot of gossip, maligning and criticizing. These are all sins. That’s what
sports talk radio shows are all about. You ought to hear the people call in to criticize the coaches,
malign the coaches, run the coaches down, criticize the players, run them down, and the radio
host feeds this emotion. Maybe people don’t realize they’re sinning when they slander or judge or
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malign another person. The greatest sin ever known to man, what is that one?
The greatest sin
ever known to man is to reject Jesus Christ as your Savior.
John 3:18 says,
“He that believeth
on Him is not condemned but He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
If you’re listening to me today and you’ve
never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are already condemned. You don’t have to wait
until you die to receive condemnation, you are living condemned and if you do pass away
unfortunately you will wake up in hell. That’s just the way it is because the justice of God cannot
allow you into the presence of God because you haven’t been redeemed, you haven’t accepted
Jesus Christ as your Savior, thus you will force the justice of God to condemn you. That’s not His
plan. That’s not what He wants to do. That’s why He sent His Son for you, so you wouldn’t have
to go through this. That’s why Christ died on the cross. That’s why
“He who knew no sin was
made sin for us”
(2 Corinthians 5:21), so you do not ever have to experience hell or the Lake of
Fire. How are we going to defeat sin in our lives? Back up just a minute, before we go any
further let me repeat this point. The greatest sin known to man is rejection of Christ as Savior,
John 3:18, I wasn’t sure I gave you this verse, but let me make sure I do.
“He that believeth in
Him is not condemned but He that believeth not is condemned already because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Have you personally received Jesus
Christ as your Savior? Have you ever personally told God the Father that you are believing in
Jesus Christ and you are willing to accept Him as your Savior? That’s a point of volitional
decision you must make. At some time in your life you and God must settle this. Is He your
Savior? Have you accepted Him? You don’t have to join the church to do it. You don’t have to
jump in the river to do it. You just have to pray. The Bible says,
“Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved.”
In the privacy of your car, in the privacy of your home, you
can accept Christ as your Savior. You can deal with God yourself and you can ask Him to save
you and He will. He’s not a liar, He’ll do this. Now, how do we defeat sin in our life? If you’re not
a Christian this is not even of interest to you. If you’re not a Christian, you’ve never accepted
Jesus Christ, you’re already condemned regardless of what you do. You could live the nicest
lifestyle in the world, you could be the sweetest, purest, most wonderful person, never cheat on
your wife, never cheat on your taxes, never run a red light, never break the speed limit, and still
die and go to hell because you haven’t accepted Christ as your Savior. You see, deliverance is not
based on what you do or don’t do. Deliverance is based on what Christ did for you and whether
you believe or don’t believe this, whether you accept this or don’t accept this
. If you have
accepted this and you have accepted Christ as your Savior, then how are you suppose to
defeat the sin that comes into your life?
Colossians 3:5-10 tells us.
“Therefore, begin to put to
death the members of your earthly body
[and then we have a list of sins]
immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desires, greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is on account of these things that
the wrath of God will come and in them you also once walked when you were living in them. But
now you also
[this is the Christian, you put these things aside]
put aside anger and wrath and
malice and slander and abusive speech from your mouth and do not lie to one another since
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you’ve laid aside the old self with its evil practices, being renewed to a true knowledge according
to the image of the One who created Him.”
Put on the new self. The new self is
“Being renewed
to the true knowledge according to the image of One who created Him.”
That’s you living in the
image of Christ. That’s you becoming Christ-like. Now when the Bible tells you to
“Put to
death”
that’s a volitional decision on your part. Colossians 3:5,
“Put to death the members of
your earthly body.”
This doesn’t mean kill yourself. That’s not what it means. This is imagery
here. This is saying you must put to death the lust of the flesh. In other words, don’t let it
continue to control you. Ephesians 4:22 tells us the same thing.
“Put off concerning the former
manner of life that old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust.”
How exactly am I
suppose to do this? How am I to put to death my flesh that creates the sins in my life even when I
don’t want to do them sometimes? How am I suppose to control him? How am I suppose to put
off this old man which is corrupt? I mean, how do I get rid of him? You will never get rid of him.
As long as you’re here you’ll always have a sinful nature. You always have the ability to commit
sin in your life but you can control it. How you do it?
Number one, when you know you’ve
sinned use rebound very quickly.
Rebound is problem-solving device #1 in the FLOT line of
your soul. Remember, the FLOT line is made up of 10 unique problem-solving devices given by
God in His Word to sustain you while you’re in the devil’s world. The very first one is the
problem of sin. How do I handle sin in my life? 1 John 1:9 tells us,
“If we will confess our sin,
then He is faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all of our wrongdoing.”
Any time we
commit a sin we must go to the Father and admit the sin.
Before I started doing this radio
show today I had silent prayer and I said, “Father, if there’s any sin in my life right now show
me” because I don’t want to get on the radio and teach a class with known sin in my life. I always
ask God to examine me, to show me my heart. Let me see myself. If there’s sin in your life, and
we’ll deal with the different types of sin, you must confess it, not to the priest but to God because
you are a priest. You are a believer priest. The Bible says this. You don’t need to go to someone
else, you can go right to the throne room of God yourself and you can admit your sin to God.
Now, does this guarantee you won’t do it again? No. What it does is it gets you back in
fellowship with God. See, when you sin your momentum in your spiritual life is halted. You’re
not advancing. You’ve quenched the Holy Spirit. You’ve grieved the Holy Spirit. You’ve stepped
out of the spiritual life by allowing the flesh to take over. But when you go to the Father and
confess your sin, then you recover your momentum. You get back under the fellowship of God
the Holy Spirit and then you can continue. You know, sometimes to be honest, you may have to
confess your sin 10 to 15 times a day. It depends on the kind of day you’re having. The objective
is to grow to where you avoid sin so you don’t have to keep confessing sin, to recognize it, know
how to avoid it, and quit doing it. The first way that we get victory over the old man, the first
way we get victory over the flesh is to rebound or confess our sin when we know we’ve done it.
If we rebound, it says
He is faithful,
He does this every time.
He’s just,
He doesn’t compromise
His righteousness to do this.
“He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.”
The second step is grow.
If you’re going to defeat the old man, if you’re
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going to keep him in check and under control,
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of your
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,”
as per 2 Peter 3:18 so that you’re not controlled by arrogance or
preoccupation with yourself. You have to know yourself. The arrogant person doesn’t see himself
as he really is.
He sees himself as he thinks he is. The Word of God is a mirror, it’ll show you
what you really are. So if you can grow in grace and knowledge, it means you submit to the
authority of the pastor. You listen to God’s Word taught to you on a consistent basis and you
apply what you learn into your life.
Then the third step is to submit to the filling of the Holy
Spirit.
This is Ephesians 5:18 which actually takes place as soon as you rebound. As soon as you
confess your sin to God, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. You cannot live as a believer in the
devil’s world in the energy of the flesh. You can’t do it, you won’t ever succeed. You must live
under the filling of the Holy Spirit which is the promise that the Lord Jesus Christ gave you. He
said, “I’m going to go away but I’m going to send a coach,” a
paraclete
is the Greek word, the
comforter.
“I’m going to send Him to you and He will be in you and guide you and lead you into
all truth”
(John 16:13). If you don’t allow the Holy Spirit to control your life, then you’re never
going to be able to get victory over the flesh. That doesn’t even count the world or the devil
because there are three enemies. The sin that I’m talking about right now would be the sin of the
flesh.
There are three areas of sin in your life you have to deal with including mental
attitude sins, Galatians 6:3.
Mental attitude sins, these are sins you can do seated in your chair,
not even opening your mouth or driving down the road honking the horn. Mental attitude sins
include hatred and arrogance. Fear is a mental attitude sin. Worry is a mental attitude sin. These
sins quench the Holy Spirit. They grieve the Holy Spirit. You have to be aware that when you sin
it’s not just necessarily overt sins. You can sin in your mind and never open your mouth.
Another
type of sin is called the sin of the tongue and this is when you slander, malign, gossip,
criticize, backbite or vilify someone.
Ephesians 4:30-32 tells you don’t do this. It says you have
to
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other even as God in Christ forgave
you.”
You can commit a mental attitude sin, something you think. You can commit a sin of the
tongue, something you say.
You can commit overt sins by something that you do.
It could be a
sexually overt sin such as Romans 1:26-27. You can read this for yourself. You can see what God
mentions there concerning certain sexual sins, or you can read Ephesians 5:3-5 and again you
can see what God says about certain sexual sins. Overt sins are not just sexual sins. It could be
stealing. It could be murder. It could be some sort of overt action where you injure someone or
take someone’s property. It could be a lot of different things, but these are sins also. Mental
attitude sins, sins of the tongue, overt sins, and some people even say there are sins of omission
where maybe you know what you’re suppose to do and you don’t do it. Sometimes you get
behind God or sometimes you get ahead of God because you’re impetuous.
Let’s leave it with
these three categories of sin: what you think, what you say and what you do.
You see, the
more you know about sin, the closer accounts you can keep with God. I would hate to know that
I went through the day and I sinned at 8 o’clock that morning and I didn’t realize I sinned and at 9
o’clock that night I wake up and it dawns on me that I committed a sin that morning. Thus I have
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been out of fellowship with God all day. I know, it’s impossible to name every sin you do. That’s
why the Bible says,
“If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.”
That’s even the ones you don’t remember. So if you get up at 8 o’clock
in the morning and you get angry at your kids or you get angry at your wife or you get angry at
your husband or you get angry at your boss and you might not say it, but you start thinking some
mean, nasty thoughts on what you would like to do to this person, to kick this person you know
where. Well then you better go to God and admit it to God and He will be faithful and just to
forgive you. He’ll even forgive you of some things you forget because you do forget. Once you
start sinning, you start chain sinning, it’s worse than chain smoking. If you start chain sinning,
you’ll sin one right after another. The more you know about sin, the closer account you can keep
with God concerning your sins.
Let me say that temptation is not a sin.
It’s not a sin to be
tempted.
The source of sin is your human arrogance. That’s where we use our volition to go
negative to God and do what we want to do. We reject God’s Word, we reject His will, and we
say, “I’ve got a better way to do it God, see You later.” That’s where all human arrogance starts
and that’s the source of sin. That was Satan’s source of his sin in heaven when he assumed that he
was as good as God, and he wanted to rule the heavens, take over God’s throne.
Now there’s no
such thing as sinless perfection. 1 John 1:8-10 tells us this.
“If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
I’ve met a couple of people that thought they didn’t
commit sin and I made them mad enough to where they were sinning before we got through the
conversation. Until you know what sin actually is for sure, then you don’t even know whether or
not you’re really in fellowship, right?
What about discipline for sin? The Bible says in
Colossians 3:25,
“He that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he’s done and there
is no respecter of persons.”
In Hosea 8:7,
“For they have sown to the wind and they shall reap
the whirlwind,”
and that’s him talking about national discipline on the Northern Kingdom of
Israel for rejecting God’s plan for the nation. The process of discipline is seen in Hebrews
12:6-11.
“Those whom God loves, He chastens. He often scourges us, every son that He receives
and if we endure chastening, God deals with us as with a son. But if you’re without chastisement
where everyone has, well you are not really a child, you’re not really His son,”
and then it goes
on,
“We’ve had fathers of our flesh that corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not
much more respect God and live.”
Proverbs 15:10 says,
“Correction is grievous to the one that
forsakes the way and he that hates the reproof of God shall die.”
You can check yourself out
too early by not listening to God’s discipline, not rebounding, getting under discipline
continuously until you go out under the sin unto death. Divine discipline comes in three
stages: warning discipline, intense discipline and dying discipline.
I don’t know where you
are in the process but you might want to look at yourself. You might want to ask God where you
stand in regard to this. You might want to take a real close look at your life. Until next week, I’m
your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line.