Our biggest problem

Mark 2:1-12

Mark 2:1-12, And again He entered Capernaum after some days, and it was heard that He was in the house. 2Immediately many gathered together, so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And He preached the word to them. 3 Then they came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. 4 And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” 6 And some of the scribes were sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, 7 “Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8 But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’? 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has [b]power on earth to forgive sins”—He

said to the paralytic, 11 “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” 12 Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

“Symptomatology” is a real word. A medical word. Defined as “treating symptoms instead of the real problem.” We rush to treat the symptoms. Guns are the problem. Video games are the problem. Schools are the problem. Mental illness is the problem.

As a result, we go searching for band-aids. There is an underlying cause behind the symptoms. Lose respect for God and you lose your conscience. Lose your conscience and you lose your compass. Lose your compass and you lose your way.

Lose your way and you lose your reason to live -or for anyone else to live.

1. What is sin?

1 John 3:4, Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. Sin is the transgression of the law. Sin is disobeying, ignoring God’s law. Sin is living as if there was no God and no law. Sin is godlessness, lawlessness.

1 John 5:17, All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death.

James 4:17, Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. So, sin is unrighteousness and sin is not doing the good you know you should do.

Romans 14:23, But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin. 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 dilemma. 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 of God’s law, and he lands in the muck of sin. God has given His law.

Romans 7:12, Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. In God’s law there is nothing impure, unfair, and nothing evil.

There is no sane reason to break it because it is the path of blessing. But man does it because man seeks to live apart from God’s law. Sin is breaking God’s law.

2. What is sin like?

• a) Sin 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 stain is to white silk cloth. It defiles.

Isaiah 30:22, You will also defile the covering of your images of silver, And the ornament of your moulded images of gold. You

will throw them away as an unclean thing; You will say to them, “Get away!” The term unclean cloth refers in the Hebrew to the cloth from a woman’s menstrual period. That’s how God sees sin.

1 Kings 8:38, whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward

this temple

Deadly plague.

Zechariah 3:3, Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel. Zechariah seeing sin as filthy garments on the high priest, Joshua. In Scripture that sin is seen as something vile, defiling, wretched, filthy that pollutes that which is pure.

Zechariah 11:8, I dismissed the three shepherds in one month. My soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me.

God so despises the defilement of sin that He loathes what it does to the sinner.

Ezekiel 20:43, And there you shall remember your ways and all your doings with which you were defiled; and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight because of all the evils that you have committed.

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.”

2 Corinthians 7:1, Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

• b) Sin is rebellion.

Leviticus 26:27, And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but 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.

Hebrews 10:29, Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? Sin is open flagrant rebellion.

The Hebrew word for sin, pasha signifies rebellion. There is the heart of a rebel in every man and every woman.

Jeremiah 44:17, But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble.

We will do exactly what we want. The rebelliousness of sin. Sin 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.

• c) Sin is ingratitude.

Acts 17:28, for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

Do you know the very fact that you live and exist you owe to God? Do you know that everybody who is 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.

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.

Man not only doesn’t want it, but spites the very One who offers it.

Matthew 5:45, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. If there is any joy in this life, it is because God gave it to you. If there is any sunshine in the life, it is because God put it there. If there is any rain to make your life fresh, it is because God rained it on you. Everything you are because of God’s graciousness. God’s marvellous love is poured out on all men.

God is not responsible for the evil. That is 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 colour and brightness.

 It is God who has made love and music and all 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 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. 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.

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. Walks into

the fold of the enemy, Satan, and sets his camp up in that place.

2 Samuel 16:17, So Absalom said to Hushai, “Is this your loyalty to your friend? Why did you not go with your friend?”

The same question that was posed to Judas. “Judas, are you betraying Me with a kiss?” God may ask the sinner, “Did I give your 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.

Sin is defiling, rebellion, and ingratitude.

• d) Sin is humanly incurable.

Jeremiah 13:23, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil. If a leopard can change his spots or an Ethiopian change his skin, then you can make good out of bad. But it cannot be done.

Sin is an incurable disease. Man does not have the resource to deal with it.

Isaiah 1:4-6, Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward. 5 Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faints. 6 From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, But wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; They have not been closed or bound up, Or soothed with ointment. Man has a horrible, incurable, pervasive disease that cannot be mitigated or dealt with on human terms.

Titus 1:15, To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. Conscience is given to man to control his behaviour. If that is defiled, the results will be defiled as well. Sin is incurable. There is no human cure. Not human will, not reformation, not education, not legislation, not talks, conversation, counselling, not self-righteousness.

Sin is a disease that is so deep that it can only be cured by the blood of the divine physician, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

• e) Sin is hated by God.

Sin is the only thing God hates. It is the only thing He has antagonism against.

• God does not resist a man because he is poor. He especially loves the poor.
• God does not resist a man because he is ignorant. He cares for those.
• God does not resist a person because he is crippled. He has made the blind and the deaf and the halt.
• God does not resist a man because he is ill.
• God does not resist a person because they are despised by the world.

God is antagonistic only to sin.

Habakkuk 1:13, You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who

deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he?

Jeremiah 44:4, However I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, “Oh, do not do this abominable thing that I hate!”

God hates sin. Because sin separates man from God. Sin breaks the very thing for which God made man, fellowship. So, sin is defiling, rebellion, ingratitude, incurable, and hated by God.

• f) Sin is wearying man.

Sin all it causes is pain, and yet it amazes me how busy people are doing it. All it does is bring them grief, and death, and hell, but they work at it.

Jeremiah 9:5, Everyone will deceive his neighbour, And will not speak the truth; They have taught their tongue to speak lies;

They weary themselves to commit iniquity. In Genesis chapter 19, we read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. A city full of those who were homosexuals. Two angels visited Lot. The men of the city saw those two angels, and they burned inside with lust for those two angels, and

they were in male bodies. They wanted to attack the angels. The angels came for lodging in Lot’s house. Lot thought he could solve the problem by sending his daughters out because the men were pounding and beating on the door and surrounding the house. He thought he could save the angels by giving up his daughters. He would certainly rather, in his own thinking, give up a couple of human beings than to sacrifice God’s holy angels. He was not ready for the consequence of that.

The angels said, “Don’t do it, Lot.” The angels stepped outside and struck the whole crowd stone blind.

Do you know what the Bible says? When they went stone blind, they wearied themselves to find the door.

Is that incredible? You would think after they were stone blind, they would go home and worry about their blindness, if they could find their way home. But instead of that, they were so dominated by the lust of homosexuality that in their blindness they had nothing to think

of but breaking the door down to attack those same two beings. That is how hard people work at their evil.

Psalm 7:14, Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity; Yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood.

The birth pains, the most severe kind of human pain known to them in that day. They will literally go through birth pains without an anaesthetic or anything, the most severe human pain. They would go through that to do their evil.

David’s enemy Cush, who was chasing David, and literally was in pain but wouldn’t stop with his evil deed.

Proverbs 4:16, For they do not sleep unless they have done evil; And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall.

They do not even go to bed unless they have gotten their evil done. They stay awake figuring out their evil.

Ezekiel 24:12, She has grown weary with lies, And her great scum has not gone from her. Let her scum be in the fire!

What is sin like? It is defiling, rebellion, ingratitude, incurable, hated by God, and wearying.

The evil of sin is wretched, so wretched is it that millions of people are damned by its power. So wretched is it that it took the very death of God Himself in Christ to remove it from the life of man.

3. How many people are affected by sin? The answer is all through the Bible.

Romans 5:12, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—

Romans 3:23, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 3:19, Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

Now sin entered the world through one man.

Gentiles don’t understand that too well, but the Jewish mind understands it. The Jewish mind understands it because Jewish people see themselves not as an individual, but always as a part of a tribe, or a family, or a nation, and apart from that identity they have no individual existence.

Joshua 7, when Achan sinned his whole family died and the whole nation of Israel failed in their next battle. In other words, he was acting for a family and even for a nation.

Hebrews 7:9-10, it says that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek in the loins of Abraham. Levi was not even alive or even near being alive at the time that Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek, but the Jews always see themselves bound up in their ancestry. Paul writes in this argument that when Adam sinned, everybody bound in the loins of Adam, that ever issued out of human life, became sinful. So, Adam’s sin is our sin by propagation.

Job 14:4, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!

You start out with an evil father and an evil mother then you are going to get an evil kid. It is that simple.

Psalm 58:3, The wicked are estranged from the womb; They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies.

Psalm 51:5, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. Not only is the guilt of Adam’s sin imputed to us, but the depravity and the corruption of its nature is transmitted to us.

The poison goes from the spring to the well to the people that drink. Now that is what theologians call original sin. You do not come into this world any other way than as a sinner. You come into this world as a sinner. We have all sinned in Adam.

We have all come short of the glory of God. We have all been born in corruption.

Romans 7:25, I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

Because it is in my nature. It is woven into the warp and the woof of my life, my existence. Adam’s sin clings to every man just like Naaman’s leprosy clung to Gehazi. 2 Kings chapter 5 and see how the leprosy of Naaman clung to Gehazi.

The leprosy of Adam clings to all those who have followed Adam. Nobody is left out!

4. What is the result of sin? Sin causes evil to overpower us.

Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? Sin overpowers the mind.

Ephesians 4:17-19, This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their

heart; 19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. They are dominated in their minds. Their whole mind is dominated by evil. Evil dominates the will.

Jeremiah 44:17, But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble.

We will certainly do that which is in our hearts to do, we will “do whatever comes out of our mouths.” Sin dominates not only how we think, but it dominates what triggers what we do. Sin even dominates our affections. Sin dominates the things we love.

John had to say, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” Because it is so easy for us to be dominated by sin.

John 3:19, And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. So, sin dominates the affections. Sin dominates the will. Sin dominates the mind. Ultimately, if your mind and your will and your affections are dominated by evil, your behaviour will be evil.

The Christian must realize, as well as the non-Christian, that sin is so deep in our nature it is like a sleeping lion and the least thing will awaken its rage. Our sin nature smoulders like a flaming fire ready to be ignited, and the slightest wind of temptation fans it into flame.

John 5:24, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

• If you are an unbeliever, you need to run to Jesus Christ to have it covered.
• If you are a Christian, you need to be sure you don’t do anything to induce it to wake from its sleep.

So, the first result of sin is that it overpowers us. And a power that can only be broken by Christ. The second result of sin in our lives is it brings us under the control of Satan.

Who wants to be dominated by Satan? Who would ever choose to be dominated by that evil being?

Ephesians 2:2, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, You do not know Jesus Christ then Satan is at work in your life. Jesus said to those religious people gathered around Him.

John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil.”

1 John 5:19, We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Romans 6:16, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

What is the effect of sin in our lives? It overpowers us so that our thinking, and our feelings, and our will, and our behaviour is dominated by it. It brings us under the dominion of the evil adversary, Satan. There is no freedom.

• Only slavery no liberty.
• Only bondage.
• Only Satan makes you think you are free.

When somebody comes to Jesus Christ, Jesus says, “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free.” Only the Lord Jesus Christ who can free us.

• Sin causes evil to empower us.
• Sin causes Satan to control us.
• Sin causes us to be objects of God’s wrath.
• Sin subjects us to the miseries of life.
• Sin finally damns the soul to hell.

Romans 6:23, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of

God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.