Well, open your Bibles to Revelation 16, though we will spend but a short time there. And as you turn, by way of introduction, When you're called by God as a teacher, whether it's me in a pulpit, or it's my wife in her Sunday school classroom, or it's just you sitting down with another person in your home to talk about the Bible, there's always going to end up being a challenge because you have to teach hard things and you have to give bad news. It's just the nature of being faithful in teaching the Bible. Now, everybody in every walk of life have to give bad news and teach hard things, but the Bible makes it uniquely Difficult because the Bible talks about things in a very eternal way So these are not just you know, you're gonna lose your job. Well, I can always get another job You know when you hear well you you're gonna lose your soul You know, you don't get a second soul so how do you deal with that? How do you speak to a person who is who is? literally on the verge of death having shaken his fist and at God, but he is your best friend, and he's looking at you with scared eyes, and he doesn't know what to do, and you are in that room in that moment, and you have that choice, right? You have that choice to just kind of hold his hand and pat it and say, it'll all be all right, and lie to him. Or you can look at him and hold his hand, and with tears in your eyes, you can look at him and say, we need to talk. I remember being called into a hospital room of a man I didn't know, I literally did not know, a former member said, hey, my buddy, he was another truck driver, he says, he's got cancer everywhere. He says he went in for a stomachache and they looked at him and throughout his whole body, he's got days. So it goes from, I've got a stomachache to you're gonna be dead that quick. No family member had told him And they claimed that the doctor had not yet told them. I couldn't believe that, but whatever. So this guy said, would you go and talk to him? Would you try to share gospel with him? And I'm like, sure. Well, I don't know the guy at all. So it's already awkward. You knock. Hi, I'm Pastor Henry. Why are you here? Well, Your friend asked me to come speak to you, why? And he was all defensive, and you're like, oh, it's gonna be fun. And so I sit down with him, I say, so how are you feeling? You know, the perfunctory comments, and he's like, I'm not feeling very good. I said, have you talked to the doctor? Surprisingly enough, he hadn't. He was still waiting for that, the doctor was gonna come in and give him the bad news. But the doctor had talked to everyone else, so I knew it was true. So I looked at him, I said, how do you think you're doing? And his eyes got all guarded and kind of careful, right? You know what I'm talking about? And he said, well, I don't know. I said, do you know you're dying? He's like, I do. I said, nobody's told you. He says, yeah, I know. Everyone's not telling me. He says, tells me all I need to know. Everyone is trying to avoid that. He says, I know I'm dying. I says, you are. And he says, do you know how long? I said, from what I've been told, you have maybe a week. He just looks at me, just, he's like, oh, there's so many people I need to talk to. Now, see, time's all done, right? all those relationships that you played loose and light with and said all those words you shouldn't have said, but now you have said. All of a sudden, you don't have time. How do I fix this?" And I looked at him and I said, you're going to die. He said, that's just the reality. I said, so I'm here because I want to talk to you about hope. I want to talk to you about The fact that when you die, you're gonna stand before God. Oh, I don't believe in God. And that conversation went from there. It was a unpleasant talk. It was a hard talk. It was not fun in any way, shape, or form. And when I walked away, I didn't walk away with joy. It wasn't one of those storybook endings where the guy tears up and says, tell me, how might I be saved? He shook his fist and says, if this is what God does to people, then I hate him. And that was about it. When I was a chaplain in the Supermax facility for the LA County Jail System, I had the unpleasant task of having to go tell people who were looking at life in prison that their mom died. and you wanna watch a hardcore banger who would take your life without one thought, break down and become a sniveling little thing of jello in two seconds, all you gotta do is find him and look at him and say, come with me and I need you to come to my office. Picture what they're thinking. I walk up to these pods, 150 hardcore guys all there. They're all posturing, it's loud, it's profane. I yell out with a loud voice, I need so-and-so. He comes walking up, he's looking, he's like, who is this guy and what does he want with me? I said, are you this one? I said, let me see your bracelet, all right, I need you to come with me. He's like, why? I didn't call for you. I know you didn't. I need you to come with me. Then the deputy behind me saying, shut your face and go with him, unlocks the door. He has to walk a quarter of a mile. It's a quarter mile walk from my office to any one of the pods. He has to walk with his right arm against the wall on the yellow line. He's not allowed to talk. His hands must be in his pocket. I must walk down the middle of the hallway. The whole time, he's trying to talk, but he's not allowed to talk. And I'm telling him, just be quiet and wait, and we'll do it when I get to my office. Well, he don't want to go to my office. Nobody wants to go to the chaplain's office if they haven't asked for the chaplain. Nothing good goes on in a chaplain's office. And so his mind, just picture this mind, and it's just ramping up and ramping up. Many times, by the time I got them into my office, they were visibly having physical shakes, because the tension of, what are you going to tell me? And if you think that doesn't affect the guy who's going to tell, you're crazy. Sit down. I have things to ask. Are you this person? Do you know this person? She's my mom. Okay, well, I have the unfortunate duty of telling you that she died last night and watch him just lose it. How do you tell a man who's looking at life imprisonment that the mom that he loves is dead? There's no easy way. I mean, come up, you tell me if you think you have it, the perfect line that takes away the horror of what you just said, that mom's dead. And you'll never see her. I gotta get out. I gotta be able to see her at her funeral. No, you're not authorized. Your crime prevents you. No, I've got to. I've been threatened. Everything. Why? Because they're horrified. Mom's dead. I gotta see her. You can't. When I was a police officer, I would be sent on calls. where at 2 in the morning you're knocking on the door and nobody wants to be in LA. Nobody wants to be knocked on their door at 2. I don't want to hear, but much less there. Who is it? It's the police. Could you open up, please? How do I know you're the police? Look to the people, sir. Yeah, but that could be a costume. That's right. So how do I know? Call 911. Oh, that's a good point. Open up. Now they're like, what do you want? I'm Officer Henry, I just need to know a couple of questions before I say anything. All right, well, what do you need? You know Dan Broder? Yeah, he's my son. Does he live here? Yeah. Dan was in a back accident and unfortunately he didn't make it. Boom, mother screaming, father might fainted. It's weird what goes on. And you gotta tell him that. Or knock, knock, knock, two in the morning. Hi, is Jose there? Yeah? What do you want? Just answer the question. Is Jose there? Yeah? Can we come in? We need to talk with him. Why? What do you need to talk to my son about? We need to talk with him. I don't want you to talk. Well, you don't really have a freedom to do that. Move aside. We need to talk to him. Step aside. You step in. Sleep. Go into the bedroom. Shake him up. Hey, get up. Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Get up now. I'm getting up, then you grab him. You get him up, put handcuffs on him. He's like, what's going on? What's going on? Mom's freaking, dad's freaking. People are losing it. Relatives start coming out of the walls. It's all at two in the morning, right? And you're taking him away. And dad's like, what is going on? Your son's been arrested for rape. Who wants to tell that? Those are just cruddy things, right? How many times have I sat in my own office over the years and just listened to a man or a woman unload on me filthy, broken, hateful, hurtful things that happened that they did or were done to them. And then you have to speak. I'll never forget it. The man that I had to say, that's a crime that has no Statue of limitations. I'm sorry. Do you realize what you just confessed to me? Well, yeah, there's there's no statute of limitations, dude. You gotta go turn yourself in. the difficulty of having to take a guy that you care for and then drive him down to the police station and then say, just, I'll talk to him. And you get a captain and you say, I need to talk with you and pull him aside, explain to him what's going on. Meanwhile, the guy's out there and he's starting to shake as the enormity of what just is happening is going on. And you tell him, this is what, and then they say, well, come on back with him. He's sitting in the back room and you're going to wait for the interrogator. He keeps trying to talk. and you keep telling them, be quiet, you can't talk until they're ready to talk to you. And it just is an ugly, unpleasant, hard thing. Telling people and dealing with hard subjects is never fun. But over the years of doing it, I've learned two basic lessons. The ability to tell something hard and say something hard to a person, first of all, can only be learned through practice. It's the only way. And honestly, if you're not good at it as an adult and you have children, then I would say that you learn with your children. Don't ever lie to your children. Speak the truth to them and develop it right there so that as things get more complex as they get older, you can speak truth into their life. But one lesson I've learned is that there is never a nice or easy way to do it. You will never slip the knife in painlessly. It's impossible. So you can stand there with a person and waste their time and yours for about an hour as you talk about tulips growing and, man, it's been a weird winter, hasn't it? But you know that eventually you have to tell them that their wife has left them and we need to start talking. I mean, at some point, the knife goes in. So embrace that. It's not going to be pleasant. Second, To refuse to speak hard things when they need to be spoken is an act of cowardice. It is a lack of love. You can say it however you want. You can claim it, whatever is your rationale. Most commonly, it's like, I just can't do it. Yes, you can. You just don't want to do it because it's no fun. Embrace that it's no fun and just go do it. The passage I always refer people to is Proverbs 27.6, that faithful are the wounds, what? Of a friend and deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. And so I have said on far too many occasions, are you his friend? I am, then wound him. I just can't do it, so you're his enemy. No, I'm his friend, then wound him. But don't walk out of this room telling me you're not going to do what you know you have to do and also claim to love them because you don't. The wounding is part and parcel of true relationship. You wound each other if you love each other when you speak truth into the life. With that in mind, let's just read Revelation 16. because here is hard words. And I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into the earth. And the first angel went and poured out his bowl into the earth and it became a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image. And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it became blood like that of a dead man. And every living thing died in the sea. And the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the water saying, righteous are you who was or is and who was a holy one because thou didst judge these things. So the world is now, the waters is just this nasty blood and the angel doesn't say, why did you do it? He says, you were right to do it. Why, why was he righteous? Notice the four in verse six, for they poured out the blood of the saints and the prophets and now has given them blood to drink. They deserve it, hard words. And I heard the altar saying, yes, oh Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments. And then the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun and it was given it to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with fierce heat and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues. And they did not repent so as to give him glory. And a fifth angel poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became darkened. And they gnawed their tongues because of pain, and they blasphemed God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and they did not repent of their deeds. "'And the sixth angel poured out his bowl "'upon the great river, the Euphrates, "'and its water was dried up, "'that the way might be prepared for the kings from the east. "'And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, "'and out of the mouth of the beast, "'and out of the mouth of the false prophet, "'three unclean spirits like frogs, "'for they are spirits of demons. performing signs which go out to the kings of the whole world to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty. Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garment lest he walks about naked and men see his shame. And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon. And the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne saying, it is done. And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there was a great earthquake, which such as not had been done since men came upon the earth. So great an earthquake was it and so mighty was it. And the great city was split into three parts. And the cities of the nations fell. And Babylon the great was remembered before God to give her the cup of the wine of his fierce wrath. And every island fled away. And the mountains were not found. And huge hailstones, about 100 pounds each, came down from the heavens upon men. And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail and because the plague was extremely severe. Nothing pleasant in any of this. It's all hard. It's words, words that mean something, words that will come to pass. And judgment is always going to be hard, and there's no way you can get around it. We have in our society today a wrong understanding of the justice system, the purpose of the prisons, and the purpose of judges. Just the other day, you may have known about that young autistic teenager who had been kidnapped in Chicago and tied up and beaten and abused, made to drink out of the toilet, all kinds of things. Over a period of two days, and these four individuals were taunting him all on Facebook Live, and they were ultimately arrested. Well, a judge just gave one of the individuals in that, kidnapping and beating, gave her four months probation and so she'll be home for Christmas. That's a man who doesn't understand judgment and he doesn't understand his role. He is trying to somehow make judgment be redemptive when judgment is not redemptive. Judgment is punitive. Judgment is designed by God to punish, not redeem. And you should and ought to understand that, especially those of you who were raised up within the school system that's kind of twisting everything so that the words no longer mean what they mean. That's how I dig against public school. I'm just saying, you have been listening to this since kindergarten in one way or the other. And so you look and it's like, well, I guess that's right. No, it's not. Injustice was done there. The nature of judgment is not to be redemptive. It's simply the outworking of justice. Now, for several weeks, we've been working through the book of Revelation, and we've been dealing with the judgments of God, and they're hard, and they're unrelenting. And I'm kind of like Matt Miller. He's preaching through Ecclesiastes, and it's hard and unrelenting. There's not a lot of fun stuff in Ecclesiastes. And so as he said when he preached the other week, he's like, it's hard. It's hard to come here and come up with another passage or sermon because I'm going to tell you basically life stinks. Everything's broken. Nothing's good under the sun. Have fun while it lasts, because it won't last, and then you'll die. That's his message, right? Every single time. Because that's what Ecclesiastes says. We live in a broken world. I'm sitting here in Revelation, and I'm going chapter after chapter. God is filled with wrath. Man will not repent. God will pour his judgment. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like. Oh, you thought that was bad? It's going to get worse. Oh, you thought that was bad? It gets even worse. And that's where we're at. If you read this book with any shred of honesty, though, it rips away that false sugar sweet type of Christianity that fills our pulpits today. And that is my goal. If you can learn to spend a significant time thinking and learning about God's judgment as the Bible describes it, you will find it good for your soul. When the Bible talks about the idea of salvation, it doesn't talk about salvation in a vague way. And as I worked on my sermon this week, I kept on coming back to, I need to lay some framework before I deal with this last chapter of hard words. I wanna talk about judgment. I wanna talk about salvation. I wanna talk about why they are inseparable. And so we're gonna have this sermon. When we talk about judgment, we're talking about sin, and sin is a doctrine that is so important, and it cannot be lessened in any way in our mind, but we spend much of our life trying to lessen the reality of sin in our own hearts and around us. The greatest theologian ever produced in America was a man named Jonathan Edwards, a brilliant man, a godly man, and it was he who described sin as a doctrine. He says it is that great, important doctrine. It's not just important or great, it's both of those things. It's amazing, it's awesome, it's powerful. but it's also incredibly important, and there's an argument that he is making for that. Why does he say that this is the great and important doctrine? Well, the reason is because sin, we'll talk about what sin is in a moment, but sin is what captures the whole of our existence. It is our great enemy. We face it every day, we deal with it in our sleep, and when we get up, we deal with it from our first day of breath, all the way to the end. We deal with it in the womb. It is part and parcel of our existence as humans. So not only is it constantly haunting us and dwelling in us, but it also is what separates us, which makes it even worse, from one another. That's why divorces happen, why beatings happen, why murders happen, why rapes happen, and why you just don't want to talk to that person anymore. There are people in this room, perhaps, who you've decided you don't want to talk to that person. Well, why don't you want to talk to that person? And I will tell you the truth, it's simply because of sin. Sin is there, and it constantly is doing its evil, splitting people apart. But what's most horrible is sin separates us from God, who has made us. And so the Bible paints this picture from the beginning to the end of this constant destructive path that sin causes in the lives of peoples and nations and even in creation itself. Its fingerprints, if you will, are everywhere. You just have to have eyes that can see it. Did you have a fight with your wife this morning? Don't tell me. Did you have a fight with your husband? Did you have to deal harshly maybe with kids who were fighting back or being ungodly, unkind? How was your week last week? Did it go smoothly? Was it filled with perfect joy and sunshine every waking moment or was it filled with ups and downs and where you had to talk to yourself and calm yourself down? How many times in the midst of that did you stop and just say, the fingerprints of sin is present right now? It's not my wife, she's not my problem, but sin is. Sin in my wife and sin in me. It's that simple. It's just everywhere. And it's constantly spreading. If the Bible is true about our situation and our state of being, then if we are sinners, then ultimately everything is in ruin. If a foundation is rotten, then the building will never stand for long because it can't. There's this song that really was, it's just a great little line, a song by Cageman's Call, it's called Love Along. And it has a line in it that says this, now you think about this. The line says, no one would love me if they knew all the things I hide. I'm gonna be brutal here, that is you. If any one of us could strip you away from all of your hidings and your lies and everything else, they got to what goes on when you're alone and you're thinking or you're tired or whatever is the thing that you say, no one would like you. No one. Sin does things in our hearts that are frightening, even as a Christian. Sin sets into motion actions that at first seem so simple and clean and proper because sin has lied to you and you bought into the lie. And so you say, it's okay. Every one of you knows at least to a degree what lurks just beneath the surface of your outward life. Sin often is likened like a disease in the Old Testament leprosy is is kind of the outward manifestation of what sin is in our hearts It moves through the innermost of our beings, beneath the surface, working its ill and producing its noxious fruits so that the Bible says that even the intents of our thoughts, of our heart, the heart being that which is the essence of you, the intent, not the actual thought, the intent before it's a thought, is only evil continually. That powerful, Genesis 6-5, it's the most brutal passage in all of the Bible about how we are broken in our sins. The book of James says this regarding it, our own desires, our lusts, because sin is resident within us. It's not this external force, it's in us. that produces these desires that will give birth to sin. And when the sin has worked its full course, it always brings forth death. How many of you think of some sins as little sins? Let me say it this way. You could be born with no sin and commit just one little sin, what we would call a little sin, and it would send you to hell for eternity. It cannot produce good. Will not produce it because it is against its very nature. So we're gonna break from the book of Revelation. We're gonna lay out a very broad, very broad theology about what sin and salvation is. Because the wrath of God and the judgment of God is not just something he made up because he had nothing to do. It's because of sin. And then salvation is the answer. Now I am very, there are very few things that I'm really convinced of in life, and the older I get, I get more crotch. One of those is that what Matt Miller has been teaching us about Havel, that word that's so important in the book of Ecclesiastes, that it's vanity, it's broken, it's twisted, it's crooked, it's absurd. It fails, that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we do to try to make things work, relationships, money, time, reputation, it always becomes sand and it runs out of our fingers. I am convinced of it. I have lived now X number of years, what, 57 years, and it's always turned out vain, everything. When a man or a woman on their deathbed says, what would you change? I'd change nothing. He's a liar. And we all know it because right now every one of you has something you would change because it's vanity. That's one thing I'm sure of. Second thing that I am convinced of is that sin is far more toxic and far more destructive than any of you and I realize. It is our great enemy and we treat it like a second cousin maybe. The third thing I'm convinced is that salvation given to us through Jesus Christ is greater than all other things. And though it is too often unappreciated by it, it stands tall above sin and death. That Christ's salvation and offer of salvation through his death and resurrection is the only hope to deal with this issue of sin. And then the fourth thing I'm convinced of is this, you only learn to weep and rejoice at the same time when you're thinking about the holy judgment of God, when you understand properly both sin and salvation. I'm gonna say that one again, because I wanna explain it briefly. You can only learn to weep and rejoice at the same time when considering God's holy judgment, when you first understand both sin and salvation. Extreme example. Recently, there's been a spat of arrests by both Mount Pleasant Racine and Kenosha of individuals with child pornography and child molestations. It's just been happening. And it gets posted. And then I always look at the comments and the sheer fury and the hatred of how dare they, how dare they. And it is, it's a vile, vile, vile, wicked thing. I hope they rot in hell. I hope this I doubt I hope that but what you don't get is a sense of first Rejoice that you've been saved and that this is not you and that same time weep weep for those children who were sinned against but Have can you learn to also weep for that man? Who became so entrapped in his sin that that he did these things. If you're only gonna look at him and say, off with his head, without some tears in your eyes and you don't grasp it in yet, that's all I'm saying, you really don't understand it. You don't understand how insidious it is, how powerful it is, how pervasive it is in your own heart. So before we look in detail at these seven plagues poured out on humanity, which is such a nice word, right? Poured out on humanity, meaning your aunt, your grandma, if she didn't know Christ, your grandma, she's alive at that point, she'll receive these things on her person. You'll see your grandma with oozing, pulsing boils on her skin as she's in agony. So I want to try to make this personal. I want you to grasp. We're not talking about things in vagaries We're talking about people human beings people you love Before we look at that Let's get this foundation the first thing we have to have is a strong foundation of sin and again the doctrine is of the greatest of importance because it controls everything else that in our lives. If we are little sinners, in reality we're not, but if we are convinced that we're just little sinners, then small sins matter only a little. We don't have to really be that afraid. God would not punish me for that. I mean, come on. And He wouldn't do it for that. He wouldn't do this. We have created in our mind that sins can be little sins and they don't mean a whole lot. But if we're truly great sinners, who are veritable factory making sinners, then there's much to fear. And in that fear, we begin to look away from ourselves to a salvation that must be outside of us. Once you see that your heart cranks in out with the greatest of ease, and every time you think you've killed that sin, it pops out a different way, and you just keep seeing sin. Then and only then, if your eyes are open to that, will you begin to realize, I can't fix this, and you have to look outside of yourself. Or as Ecclesiastes says, you have to look outside of the sun. Everything under the sun is broken. So something outside the sun is the answer. The presence of sin is not something God did. Scripture says that He cannot sin. Not only does He not sin, but He's not even tempted by sin. He stands outside of it in every way, and He is, in fact, our only hope and answer for our sin. But sin is not something that surprises God either. So let's not fall into that error. Sin is not some power that is eternal. It's not something that is present in all places. It's certainly not an equal and opposite force of God. So we don't have a yin-yang kind of thing going on where he's just pushing back against the forces of evil and maybe he wins for a while, but then it will eventually gather and come back. Rather, sin is still under the sovereign control of God. like everything else, and it doesn't surprise Him, it doesn't trick Him, and it doesn't confuse Him. As Paul writes in Ephesians 1, God has accomplished all things according to the counsel of His will. All things, including sin. So sin, even as it runs rampant through humanity, doing its ill, it is still accomplishing God's sovereign purposes. Now when we talk about sin, the easiest way to do a quick, broad discussion of it is to talk about the vocabulary of sin. How does the Bible talk about sin? So I'm going to go quickly through these various terms. The way the writers of the Bible write about this enemy is very helpful because it describes how it works. It's seen commonly. One of the most common ways that sin is talked about in the Bible and in your life is it's something that fails to reach its proper goal. For all have sinned and fallen short of what? the glory of God. That was the goal. God's glory. Love it. Honor it. Manifest it in my life. But all have sinned and we fall short of that. We just keep doing something else. Giving glory everywhere but to God. It falls short, it misses a mark. Sin is why you said sometime in the last month something to someone you cared about, cared for. You tried to say something and it came short and all you ended up doing is getting yourself into deeper trouble when you were trying to say the right thing, but it fell short. It's because sin and your lips and your tongue and your brain just don't work right and you say it wrong. You failed to achieve your goal. Sin is why you have to remind yourself and others of what is right to do. That's why I had all of our grandchildren at our house yesterday and there was never a moment where usually one of them was being corrected in some way. No big, oh, Catherine, you can't hit Nolan. Come on, that's not right. Go give Nolan a hug. Henry, stop hitting grandpa on the head. You know, why? They're falling short. They're children, but they're sinful children. They're just falling or failing. And we're having to tell them that's not, you're not achieving what you're supposed to be. And you're correcting them and working with them. It's also described though, not just falling short, but of wandering or going astray. So in Psalm 58, he says that all who are sinners go astray from birth. which is why you've never had to teach your child to disobey. And any of you who have ever put your child in the crib and watched them rage cry, you know what I mean. But before you try to use this to your advantage, understanding that wandering is not by mistake. This term to wander or go astray is not by accident, but it's done out of your will. It's done on purpose. You go a different path. In other words, we don't even enter into this world on the right path. Have you ever just realized the horror of that simple thing? You have your baby and you're like, it's gonna be different now with my baby. We're gonna do it. Well, the problem is apart from Jesus Christ, you're on the wrong path. And that baby most surely is on the wrong path because he or she had just got born and they are born in sin already wondering. That's why the Bible often calls a person who's not a Christian as lost, because they're not on the right path. Then the Bible will tell us that when we sin, it's because we transgress, step over a line. We overstep ourselves, and we've all been there too with our mouth. At least I do. My mouth, because it's what I make my living with, gets me into more trouble than I can shake a stick at. And you start talking, and all of a sudden you realize, ooh, I went further than I was supposed to. It is this idea of us going and knowing where the line is and wanting to do it. When we were teaching our little ones that they were not allowed to go into the kitchen where mom was, because it was a bad kitchen. Let's just leave it there. And it had a linoleum, and we had carpet. And we actually taught our children, stay out of the kitchen when mommy's in the kitchen. You're not allowed in. and we would train them. But you would watch them when they're in the process of training. You set them down and they start crawling toward the kitchen where mom is, because they want to be with mom. That's normal and natural. And you say, this is no touch. And you touch the linoleum. No touch. And they look at you, they look at mom, they look at that. And then I would always just walk away a few steps, so they're not real bright at that age. And I just walk away kind of like I'm doing something else. And the little cretins, all four of them, they look at you, look, and the finger goes out, right? And I just wait. It's like the moment it touches, whoop, and, well, we're going to discuss this. And they would be disciplined, but we would train them. What is that? We're all laughing because it is cute as a button, right? But it's actually a description of the evil that is in their heart. And they're going to keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that, just like you keep doing it. You'll find this idea of overstepping ourselves. Go to 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel and just look at what goes on there and think about in the current state in America and our sense of what's right and wrong and you shouldn't do that. The outrage when you see one of those videos of maybe, maybe you saw the video of that girl who was drunk at the football game and she was asked to leave and she refused and she wrapped herself around the hand railing and finally four big officers picked her up and had her. She leans up and smacks this one officer twice and he just goes boom and knocks her off, almost out. The outrage, oh you can't do that, it's like, Actually, they can, and actually they should. But in our world, we can't stand this. This is why we're having this sermon. You ask yourself if God was fair, honestly, in your heart. In verse 1 of chapter 15, Samuel said to Saul, the Lord sent me to anoint you as king over his people. He's making you king over the people of Israel. So now, therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Yahweh of hosts, I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all he has and do not spare him, but put to death both man, woman, child, and infant. Get your head around that. ox, sheep, camel, donkey. What did a donkey do? No donkey did anything wrong. Donkey just eats. What did a little baby do? And God says, kill them all. And then Saul summoned the people, numbered them in Telaim, 200,000 foot soldiers, 10,000 men of Judah. Saul came to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the valley. Saul said to the Kenites, go, depart, go down from among the Amalekites lest I destroy you with them for you showed kindness to all the sons of Israel when they came up from Egypt. And so the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And so Saul defeated the Malachites from Havilah as you go to Shur, which is east of Egypt. And he captured Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, and utterly destroyed all the peoples with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the ox and the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were not willing to destroy them utterly, but everything despised and worthless they utterly destroyed. He did pretty good. Every single Amalekite was killed, right? except for one, but every other one was killed. So, I mean, if you judge this in American parenting style, you got a great kid. He's great, he's doing good. You judge this in your own personal standard in the workplace, that you did 98% of what God commanded. Now we have God speaking to Samuel in verse 10. The word of the Lord came to Samuel saying, I regret that I made Saul king. Why? For he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my command. And Samuel was distressed and cried out to the Lord all night. And so Samuel rose in the early morning to meet Saul and was told Saul saying, Saul came to Carmel and behold, he set up a monument for himself and then turned and proceeded on down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul and Saul said to him, blessed are you of the Lord. So Saul's in a happy mood. I've carried out the command of the Lord. But the Samuel said, what then is this bleeding of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And he says, now, Perky, well, they brought them, they, not him, they brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and oxen. Why? Well, we are going to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we have utterly destroyed. And then Samuel said to Saul, wait, let me tell you what the Lord has said to me last night. And he said, speak. And Samuel said, it is not true. Though you were little in your own eye, or is it not true that though you were little in your own eyes, that you were made the head of the tribes of Israel and the Lord appointed you king over Israel. The Lord sent you on a mission and said, go utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites and fight against them until they're exterminated. Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord, but rushed upon the spoil and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord? And Saul said to Samuel, I did obey the voice of the Lord. And I went on the mission which the Lord sent me and have brought back Agag, the king of Amalekites, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took some of the spoils, sheep and oxen, the choices of the things devoted to destruction, but they did it to sacrifice to the Lord your God at Gilgal. Samuel says, has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams. And then he says this interesting phrase, for rebellion is as the sin of divination or witchcraft and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. "'cause you have rejected the word of the Lord, "'he has also rejected you from being king.'" And Saul says to Samuel, "'I have sinned. "'I have indeed transgressed the command of the Lord, "'and your words, which I feared, "'because I feared the people and listened to their voice.'" So he's already blaming who? Everyone else, not his fault. So he says, please pardon my sin. Return with me so that I may worship the Lord. Now let's stop for a second again. He saved the king, but his purpose was to execute the king later. He saved some of the animals, but his purpose was to offer them as worship to God. God did say, destroy them all. ultimately they're going to be destroyed, right? Can you not picture yourself making that same rationale in your mind? They're going to get destroyed. Some will be on the altar because I want to give them as an offering. And the king, yeah, I kept him, but not forever. I mean, he's going to die. All of the rationale that you and I do every single day as we work our way to get into sin is present in this passage. And he's confronted by Samuel, and Samuel is not letting him off the ground, but notice how he'll give an apology or he'll confess, but he also shifts it a little bit, just like you and I. So it was, I feared the people. And so I listened, yeah, my bad. Oh, I was this, oh, I did that. And this is how it is. Now he says, will you come? I want to go, I want to worship the Lord. Can't you hear your child saying that? I'll be good, mommy, I'll be good as they're heading to the bathroom. I just want to, no, it's too late. And Samuel said to Saul in verse 26, I will not return with you. For you have rejected the word of the Lord and the Lord has rejected you. Damn. Saul gives confession, but he doesn't confess. What's the cost? The cost is he loses the entire kingdom. The cost is a life in which he is haunted and tormented by demonic spirits the rest of his life. A man filled with rage and jealousy and pettiness because he did not obey. Why? Because God said, here's the line. And Saul put just one toe over the line. Just one toe. And he lost it. And when you take that idea of transgressing that we do every day and we try to rationalize it, and then we connect it to other terms that mean to turn aside and leaving the proper path, and to act in a manner that's treacherous, to become a traitor, and to make friends with the enemy, and all of this is adding to the horror of what sin is that's resident in every person. It's not by accident, it's by desire and plan that you do these treacherous workings. You do it when you're sitting over coffee as you think about what that person said to you. You do it when you're sitting at the keyboard or with your phone and you decide now, now is God's ordained time for me to speak into this man or woman's life with this text. They need to know. And off you go with your little flamer. I'm gonna share this and it's like, oh, I wish I could break your thumbs. Just stop But we've all done it. We plan it we think about we gotta get our pound of flesh We got to let people know what we've been through. We don't want to suffer in silence We want we want people to know that Injustice has been done to us though in all of creation. There's only one man Who was treated in justly and that is Jesus. I When we step into the realm of acting treacherously and making friends with the enemy, we call this apostasy. The prophet Jeremiah uses this term when he declares on behalf of God, cursed, sent to hell, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That man is cursed. We had a man apostatized. Some of you remember that a while back. And when I, me and John were there with him and he blatantly and willfully and openly and freely denied everything he had claimed. And I looked at him and I said, I don't see you as my enemy. But I want you to understand that from this day forward, I will always see you as an enemy of the gospel. You're cursed, you're cursed. You have willfully turned aside from the Lord and put your hope in mankind. What a fool, what a fool. And we watch people do it time and time and time again. What makes us so powerful and confrontational, each person is that speaks to spiritual adultery, that we were made to love God, to enjoy God, to worship Him, but because we're sinners, we keep turning away to anything and anyone but Him. And so when you think of God's wrath and God's judgment, and you think about, it just seems a little extreme, God, I want you to just think about what it would mean for you to walk in and find your spouse willingly and openly involved with another. And understand that when we turn our hearts aside, that is exactly what we are doing. Add to all of this the terms that used to describe us as rebels. We're stubborn of heart. Again, you can relate whether you wish to admit it. It's very easy in the privacy of our thoughts to resent something, right? To fight against this. In fact, you are your most wise when you're talking to yourself, right? You never lose that argument. You always sound so righteous. The other one sounds so weak. And so in the shower or in the car, the grand wisdom of your spiel comes pouring forth. But in reality, all it really does is set you up for judgment. for your lips condemn you. Without God changing your heart, all of us are rebels in every way. We shake our fist at God when he holds us accountable for it. One that I refer to frequently is a term that speaks of being twisted or crooked. And as I continue to watch and live, I see it work out over and over in people's lives. You give something good to a person and give them time and they will screw it up. They just will. Paul says in Romans 7, that the most good thing God has given was the law. His law was good and perfect. And it still becomes a victim of the power of sin. so that when you apply God's law, let's just say the Ten Commandments, we're gonna live these Ten Commandments. The only thing that will really happen in your life is not obedience, but that the sin in you will take the Ten Commandments and work them so that it can make more sin. It is so powerful that even the law of God cannot make you holy and right. It cannot fix the sin problem. Sin beats everything that ever existed in this creation. It's the most powerful thing there is. You will never avoid it. You will never fix it. You will never suppress it in any real way. You and I, apart from Christ, are slaves. to sin, we are dead to sin. And so the result of that is the Bible says, guilty, that the mass of humanity suffering under the hand of God in revelation is not innocent people, but guilty people in every way. And I will tell you right now, if you are here and you don't have Christ, and you cannot claim with absolute assurance that Christ is yours, then you're guilty. You are simply described properly by God as a rebel transgressing God's will and committing spiritual adultery every day. But just because I know how people are, let me just talk about one more term. Let me talk about something, because I know how you and I think. I know how we're wigglers, and we're always figuring out a way to get it. And you say, well, I don't think I'm willfully transgressing God's law, and I don't think I'm doing this. And no, I've got religious thoughts, and I want to continue to improve myself, and this and that, whatever it might be. All right, well, there's another term. There's so many, but I'm just picking the key ones. There's another term that the Bible uses of humanity, and that is ungodly. The word in the original language that it comes from, the word at its root is to worship. And then it puts an A or an alpha in front of it. So it's the absence of worship. And all it just simply means is this. We don't care about God. We don't think about God. We ignore God. So you might be saying that you reject that you are an active rebel against God. You say, I'm sorry, I don't agree. I'm not saying I'm not a sinner, but I'm not actively rebelling against God. Well, then this is a term that captures you in a snare. The term is used at the core of worship or the lack of worship. It simply means this, that you don't give God any of your thoughts or he is not at the core of your thinking. You have essentially removed him from your picture. So here's how it will happen a lot of times when I talk to people and they're filled with anxious thoughts and this and that, and they're telling me, I don't know what to do with this. And afterward, I say, so have you prayed about this? Have you just prayed? And it's amazing how many times they kind of look all guilty. Well, no. So you're acting in an ungodly manner. That's what you're doing. Pray. Why don't you? I mean, the worst you do is he says no. But why don't you let your father in heaven know your burden? Why don't you just lay it out? You know, how often are your thoughts toward God and controlled by God? How often are you just parenting by the seat of your pants? How often are you going to work and spending money and planning for the future by the seat of your pants and you're not contemplating God? God, when He is not contemplated, calls that ungodliness. And that is what most people do. It's not that they're sitting there and saying, I hate God and I'm going to fight against God. They just don't care about God. It never enters their mind to think about God. It's that simple. So when we talk about sin, a working definition, having said all that, you should have one in your mind already, but let me kind of clean it up for you. Do not think of sin merely as an action that you do. You commit sin because you're a sinner. It always flows from your heart, never the other way around. Sin does not come in and then you become a sinner. Sinner is what you are and that's why you go outward in your sins. And so a simple way to see it is it's a personal lack of conformity to the moral character or desire of God. What does God desire of us? That we worship Him, do you? No, that's sin. God calls you to show kindness and mercy and love justice and all these other things and we don't. We don't. We don't practice these things as we ought. And so when we're thinking about sin, don't think it's doing this or this or this. It's anything that is not in absolute conformity to who God is as God and what he desires. It is what every person is, and therefore, it is what every person does. It's what you are at the heart level. It's the current state of every person apart from God and salvation. It involves your thoughts, your will, your intentions, your actions, your inactions. So what's the point? Well, the point about sin is this. Colossians 3 says that on account of these things, he lists several common sins. He says, on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. And when he says that the wrath of God is coming, he's not talking about being disciplined so that you can be trained and be a better person. When he says the wrath of God is coming, he is saying that wrath is that holy expression of God's reaction to rebellion. It's to be under the judgment of God in eternity. And it is something from which once you are experiencing it, it's too late. None of you have experienced the wrath of God. And when you experience it, it's too late. You cannot escape from it. For the true wrath of God is eternal damnation. Romans says in chapter 1 that God is currently revealing that wrath due to sin. And he allows that wrath to work itself in such a way that it brings consequences into our lives. So he talks about how it breaks down the fabric of society and people become involved in every sort of thing that's unnatural, inappropriate of any sort, ranging from homosexuality all the way down to being disobedient to mom and dad. It's all just an expression of God showing his wrath against sin. In Romans 2 then, he adds to that and he says that you and I, apart from Jesus, we are storing up the wrath of God for the day that will be poured out. It's like filling up the dam and eventually he'll release the dam and it'll just come washing down. because we think that we're not experiencing it now, we think we never will. So I'm talking to you moms and dads, I'm talking to you young ones, I'm talking to you older people, any of you who don't know Jesus Christ, if you're thinking you got tomorrow and then you can fiddle with this, you're a fool. No one promised you tomorrow. Do not think that the kindness of God means he's okay with you. He's not. In Romans 3, it says that God, it is God who will inflict himself. He will inflict the wrath upon all who are unbelievers. And Romans 4 then says that the presence of God's law brings out our sinfulness even more, which results in even greater wrath. So if you're running to the law and trying to fix yourself, you're just bringing more wrath into your life. So how do I end this today? In Romans 5, where it says, much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. In Romans 5, he then shows having spoken so much about this wrath, this wrath that is coming, that's wrath that will be upon all who do not know Jesus, he shows you Jesus. And he says that two things are true for those who believe in Jesus Christ, who is our sin bearer, who bore our sin on his body. He drank the cup of God's wrath that was yours. He died the death that you were to die. And then he destroys it by rising again. And he says, you believe that your hope is there. And he says, two things are true. First, you will have been justified, meaning God will declare you right then. Righteous not just not guilty but righteous. We're gonna baptize a young woman this next week and it's been joy to watch her here and I've had a great pleasure of meeting with a man And just going through the book of Colossians with him and talking to him and working through what it says a young Christian a But the wonderful thing is that as we talk about how he messed up here, he did that. If I was to talk to her, I would get the same thing, how this is this and this is that. We all know it because we're in that life. The thing that I can also know with absolute certainty is that because their hope is in Jesus Christ, right now, God has declared them to be righteous in Jesus Christ. that when God looks at them, even when they're doing the stupidest of things, He sees the righteousness of Christ alone. So because of Jesus having been justified already by His blood, and then it says, we shall in the future, not now, but in the future, we have this certain thing that every time we read about God's wrath, that person can say, thank you. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. Thank you, Jesus, for not sweeping me away in your great wrath. Thank you, Jesus, for bringing to me the righteousness I could never have. Thank you, Jesus, for being the source of the forgiveness your Father gives to me. Thank you, Jesus. So for all of you in Christ, don't be fools and forget your sinful condition from which you came. But understand that the power of sin is present with you, but the power has been broken in Jesus Christ. You have the spirit of God so you can battle it. But also might I ask you to look upon your friends and family with eyes that ache and filled with pity as you realize these are sinners. Just like I was a sinner, they need the grace of God. And what is the power of God unto salvation? You tell me, the gospel. Bring it to them. Bring it to them. Because there's nothing else that will work. Only the gospel of Christ's birth, death, burial, and resurrection. And what that means brings them out from that wrath.