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| Rev. Brian Wilkie |
By Rev.
Brian Wilkie
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA
broadcast - Sunday, November 22nd, 2015:
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Broadcast Notes:
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Welcome to Good News In the Morning a program of
words and music bringing a Christian message of hope and encouragement to those
who are looking for intelligent meaningful and spirited approach to faith and
to life.
This program is sponsored by Good News Christian
Ministries PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host today, Brian
Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian Church in Rockland. As always I want to start
by thanking you our listeners. We are so grateful for your encouragement and
support. Please remember that you can always visit our website for materials to
encourage and support you in your Christian walk.
If you miss an episode of the show you can go to
our website and download the podcast or the MP3 of our broadcast. That's at
GNCM.ca GoodNewsChristianMinistries.ca
Today we are especially thankful to an anonymous donor who has made a
donation in memory of Bill Harrison, in order to support this program. Thank you so much for
that donation.
'The Sin of Humanity'
Our theme today is to take a look at one of the basic facts of our
existence in one of the basic doctrines of the church. That's the sin of
humanity, the fact that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of
God. That's precisely what Scripture says in the book of Romans chapter 3
verses 19 to 26. Paul writes these
words:
What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at
all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under
sin.
10 As it is written:
“There is no
one righteous, not even one; (Psalm 14)
11 there is no one who understands,
no one who
seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have
together become worthless;
there is no
one who does good,
not even
one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their
tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison
of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and
bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their
eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to
those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole
world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared
righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become
conscious of sin.
Righteousness
Through Faith
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has
been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This
righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the
redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a
sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate
his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed
beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at
the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have
faith in Jesus.
This Scripture from Romans is a core piece of understanding of what it
is that God has done for us given our situation. For we have to understand our
need before we can fully understand all the Christ has done for us and while
today's message will focus on the sin that has plagued humanity, it is a
message of good news and hope because of what God has done to redeem us from sin.
We'll get a chance take a look at all of that in a few moments, but
first let's listen to this song written by a redeemed sinner. This was written
by John Newton and the song is Amazing Grace. John Newton was a slave trader
who turned from his wickedness because of faith in Jesus Christ. The song is
sung today by George Beverly Shea a Winchester native who made great
contribution to the gospel of Christ, singing the gospel especially while
working together with Billy Graham. So this is from George Beverly Shea's Album, I'd Rather Have Jesus; here's Amazing Grace
There is something wrong the
world. That's one idea that doesn't need any defending. Everybody everywhere
sees that there are problems in the world. The problem of evil, of suffering,
of difficulty; the problem that people experience in their own personal lives:
the problems of loneliness, disenchantment, disillusionment; the problems of
anger and violence; the problems of feeling unworthy and not belonging. We can
go through list after list of negative experiences, negative feelings and
negative events in the world. Whether one is a Christian or belongs to another
world religion or is a secularist there is no doubt that there are things about
the world that just aren't going right. The question becomes, "Why?"
Now the answer to that question according to the Scriptures is that we
have sinned. We see the Scriptures teach that God made the world and the world
was right on track up until our first parents Adam and Eve disobeyed God. So began
a long road of decline and destruction in an otherwise perfect creation. That's
not the way everybody sees the problem. Although we all agreed there is a
problem, different worldviews look at it quite differently. I think we need to
understand today that we are facing a number of different viewpoints on how
this problem exists.
For instance, in some world religions, this world isn't seen as a
reality it seen as an illusion or a dream. All this suffering and all this
disenchantment is just a problem of our imaginations. Well whatever the case
may be it still says there's a problem and that is a problem in our thinking. In
that viewpoint that's the primary problem: that our problems are our thinking.
In Christianity we definitely understand that our sin affects the way we think
about things. Sometimes people are more negative than they need to be. Sometimes
people are blind to problems, sometimes are our whole mental health is upset by
changes in our biology, changes in our way of thinking, in our patterns of
thought. Damage is done through injury, through pollution, through other
sources. So thinking is a very real part of the problem in Christian belief,
but that thinking is affected by a real world of actions and reactions; of what the psychologist would say is stimulus
and response.
There are people who look at the world today and say, "Well the
world is broken but it's always been broken it never really worked that well."
there is a whole, very strong and pervasive and persuasive worldview that says
that human beings exist as a result of an evolutionary process. Some people
believe that this process had nothing to do with God that we simply started the
billions of years ago as a blast of energy that eventually consolidated into
particles and then atoms and molecules and eventually into living beings
through a long process of random acts. In this view the universe never really
was perfect, it was always developing towards perfection. The optimists among
that crowd say that someday evolution will bring us to perfection and all this
suffering will be done with. I laud them for their optimism, but the
indications of our world around us are that if we're left to our own devices
and evolution is left to its own devices, that we are far more likely to end up
a pile of radioactive dust than we are going to end up as some kind of the
perfect energy beings like so many science-fiction shows want to present. No, the
difference between the Christian worldview and that secular worldview is in two
places: one, in the belief that there actually is a 'track' and we have fallen
off that track; the other is the belief that somehow or other this will all
just work out on its own. We as Christians believe that we need help. We are in
serious trouble and we need to swallow our pride and accept the help that God
gives us.
You see the Bible teaches that the universe was on track, that however
long the process was, God saw the whole process as good. When there was still
just light and dark and that was all that there was to speak of in the universe,
then God said, "that's good." Everything's going along according to
plan. Understand that throughout the story of creation, along the six days that
are described there, at every point God says, "you know, this is going
exactly like I wanted it to." When there's land and water but no trees, or
green things on the land and no fish or creatures in the water, God still says,
"That's okay! it's still on track." When there are all kinds of
animals filling the earth and the air and, you know, I can't help but notice that
some of those animals and some of those plants would have been subject to death.
Even reading the story as literally as you can, there would have been plants
which were given for food to the animals. It's clear that plants live and die,
they blossom and flourish and wither away, and God doesn't say that there's
something wrong with that. He's happy to enjoy the lilies of the field for a
day and for them to be gone. But the death of a plant is certainly different
from that of an animal. We would also say the death of an animal is different
than that of a human being. The Scripture says that you and I were built for
eternity, that God intended us for us to live forever in fellowship with him. He
doesn't attach that kind of a promise to mayflies or mosquitoes, or even to
elephants or bears. There are different things that live and die in their time
and place, and then they are replaced by something else. We, in our
sentimentality, might say that's bad, and sometimes
those things might not happen at God's behest but because of human sin, yet God
is quite happy to have the seasons come and go, to have times change, and new things
take new places in his creation. All the way along he says that it is good,
that we were on track.
Even before humanity sins there is one place where God points to a
perfection that is still coming. When Adam is alone on the earth and he's
encountered the animals and the plants and all the features of this wonderful
good creation that God has made, Adam is still alone, and God says this one
thing is not good. That one thing that is not good merely points to further
perfection that will take place when Adam is joined in fellowship with his wife.
When that society of humanity begins to take shape and form, then God says, "Everything
is on track, this is just what I was looking for!" Here is a human
creature made in His own image, able to respond to him in love. The stars and
the galaxies all glorify God just by doing what they do by nature, but here are
some people who love God and praise and glorify God by choice! They are in a
living relationship with God and God says, "That's very good."
You probably are familiar with what happened to disturb that initial
condition, but we will look at that in just a few moments, after we listen to
Jimmy Needham sing about his great testimony that he is Forgiven And Loved.
In the story of creation we have Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil standing before them with one
command, one simple command, "don't eat of that tree." Somehow or
other Adam and Eve are tempted and drawn into doing the one thing they
shouldn't be doing. That tree says an awful lot about humanity. You see, God
knows what good and evil is. Sometimes we think that Adam and Eve couldn't have
known what good and evil was until they ate of that tree. But the tree was the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil before they ate. It was a tree in which
they had perfect knowledge of good and evil only when they knew enough not to
disobey God. I've had friends tell me, "Well, you know, you pretty much
have to know a good deal about sin to be able preach about it. How can you know
anything about it if you haven't tried it?" The irony of that statement is that it would
make one person in all of history to have really no knowledge of sin, but this
is the person who actually knows sin best: Jesus Christ our Lord. You see,
Jesus Christ never sinned, and in never sinning he shows a knowledge of sin
that all of us have never achieved. Because Jesus knew fully that sin is bad
and therefore he never engaged in it. Adam and Eve for a brief moment, under
the wiles of the serpent, they thought sin would be good! They thought there
was something to gain. Instead they lost so much, because they thought they
knew better than God. Jesus, our Lord and Savior, lived a sinless life
precisely because he knew sin better than any of us. He knew that he should
never choose it.
How well do we know sin? Unfortunately we have shown our foolishness by
doing things we shouldn't do, and either paying the consequences ourselves or
seeing the people we love hurt because of our choices. Ultimately sin is a
terrible thing that has thrown the world off. No amount of evolution, no amount of human
progress - nothing that we can do through strength of will is going to undo the
damage that has been done and set things back on track. Scripture tells us that
this can only be fixed by the mercy of God. Only, if God will take the
responsibility for fixing everything, for setting things right. Only if God
will change our hearts, only if God will work with us on our habits, only if
God decides to forgive and to repair, instead of to judge and destroy. The good
news we have in the gospel is- that's precisely what God has done. God in
Christ has decided to take upon himself the whole burden of sin, of setting
everything right, of forgiving us for our sins, of reaching out to those that
we have hurt with His healing and restoration. God has decided to bear in his
body our hurts and our weaknesses which come as a result of sin.
Many people are kept by pride from embracing the good news that God has
given. They think, "I'll get myself cleaned up. I'll work on it, I'll sort
it out!" I want to assure you that the problem is well beyond your
capacity. God has plenty for you to do in relationship with him, but it all
starts with that relationship being set right through you accepting that you
are helpless before your sin, and that you need Jesus to forgive you. It starts with you accepting that there is a God who loves
you - loves you just as you are, and is willing to work with you to bring you
to that fullness of life that you have longed for. Sin is not easily overcome. It's
not good news. But the good news is that the world was meant to be better, and
that through Jesus Christ it will be that the better place that God intended it
to be.
Will you be part of that kingdom? Will you be part of that repair? Jesus
invites us all to join him in his family, in his kingdom and his salvation.
Well, thank you so much for listening with me today and I want to thank
you for your ongoing encouragement and support. Please remember to support this
ministry financially if you can, for by your support we are able to reach other
people through this radio broadcast up and down the Ottawa Valley through CFRA
radio and also through our website and ministry which reaches people around the
world.
Perhaps you are someone who has been listening to us on the Internet, who
has been downloading our podcasts from the website. Perhaps you live far afield
and you are very glad to receive this good news. Would you consider making a
donation to Good News Christian Ministries through the website or by sending us
a cheque to PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. To Canadian residents we
can send you a receipt at income tax time. All of our donors have our thanks,
not only for your financial support but also for your prayers. Now please be
sure to worship in a church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived
out.
To conclude our program I'd like to have you listen to song that invites
Jesus to come. You may be inviting Jesus to come into your life, or you may be
inviting him to return to the world which he is going to restore. This is Steve
Bell singing Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.
I do pray that God will hold your heart and you would know Jesus
personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart. May
the heavenly father surround you with his constant, abiding and accompanying
love.
Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk Radio 580
CFRA.
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St.
Andrew's Christian Community,
Rockland, Ontario
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To listen to the
above broadcast, click on the following link:
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