The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Proverbs chapter 6 from verse 16 to 19. Let us hear the word of God. These six things the Lord hates. Yes, seven are an abomination to him. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood. a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord amongst brethren. This is the Word of God. The Bible makes clear that God hates sin. The scripture says, I, the Lord, hate theft and robbery. What does God think of the scenes of recent weeks of masses of people, thousands, tens of thousands of people, looting entire stores and shopping centers, even schools, pharmacies, burning warehouses, causing massive destruction. The latest statistic I've seen is that the looting spree and arson spree in KwaZulu-Natal and Kharteng since the 9th of July has cost 50 billion rand. 50 billion rand. And counting, they're still counting the costs. And of course there's a lot of untold costs that you can't calculate, like loss of lives and loss of investor confidence. But what made it possible for tens of thousands of people, many of whom were probably brought up in Christian homes, were aware of the gospel, to think it was okay to go out and be involved in malicious destruction of property and of massive theft on untold level. Well, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is one of the most famous sermons ever preached. The great evangelical awakening in the 1700s was sparked by a sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, probably the most famous sermon ever preached. For most of the history of the church, preachers have thundered from the pulpit against the seven deadly sins of lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, envy and pride. But today, few people would be able to identify the seven deadly sins. Today, it's far more likely that you might hear a sermon on God in the hands of angry sinners than sinners in the hands of an angry God. Because the old doctrines of sin, redemption, and repentance are out of fashion. And modern therapeutic language of self-esteem and self-actualization and self-love, they're in vogue and super popular. The emphasis of the average church is no longer, what does God require of me? Today the emphasis is far more likely to be placed on, what can God do for me? Do not come to the church to see what you can do for God. Come to see what God can do for you. Is that not the emphasis in so many special messages that we get on the televangelist side? The word sin is rarely used in any serious context today. And for many, the very concept of sin has become a topic for jokes. We had an ice cream producer in South Africa who some years ago produced a series of ice creams that they named after seven deadly sins. Literally. They brought out lust, gluttony, greed, envy. I mean, can you imagine? These were the names of ice cream styles that were there, and they're making a joke of it. Vocabulary and ethics have changed dramatically, and that's what's behind the riots and looting sprees around the world. Churches have failed to preach of God's standards, God's holiness, God's character, God's law, and therefore the law of the Lord, which is perfect, which converts the soul, the law of the Lord, which is the schoolmaster that leads us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith, has not been proclaimed faithfully, effectively enough. And so we've got a population that is lawless, and there is no fear of God before their eyes. Drunkenness is now referred to as chemical dependency. And gossip is frequently referred to as sharing. Riots and looting are called protests. Sanctionship is called fact-checking. Pride has become a superiority complex, or an inflated ego. Corporate executives no longer steal, they commit fraud. People are no longer said to be living in sin, a term that was more common when I was growing up. Today they live together. Fornication has now become free love, and they're no longer adulterers, they're now having an affair. Perverts are described as preferring an alternative lifestyle. The Bible declares fools mock at sin, Proverbs 14 verse 9. Proverbs 14 verse 34 says, Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace, a reproach to any people. What God calls sin, men now call sickness. What the Bible describes as evil now has been redefined as error at worst. What God calls an abomination today is more likely to be called an alternative lifestyle. Sins against God now seem to be moral failures or mistakes that keep us from realizing our own individual potential and expectations. So in that sense, you could rewrite Psalm 51, David's great hymn of repentance, to now read, against me, myself, and I have I offended. Because, in fact, that's the whole Joel Osteen thing, that people don't really, he said 99% of people are good people. They're not bad people, they're good people, but they make bad choices. And so, basically, sin has been redefined by the Joel Osteen's world into harming your potential, failing to live up to your potential. What have happened to God? What happened to God's law? The historic Christian doctrines of original sin and actual sin, which look at our nature, who we are, and what we do has been replaced with the concept of the goodness of man and we are victims of circumstances. When you get down to it, nothing is my fault. It's one of the most frustrating aspects of undertaking evangelism these days is that most people seem to have no real concept of sin or personal responsibility or personal accountability. People know how to sin, they know how to sin very well, but they have no idea of what actually constitutes sin. The very concept of personal responsibility is even questioned, because if anything's wrong in me, it must be my parents' fault, or the teacher's fault, or somebody else's instructor's authority, but it can never be my responsibility, of course, because I'm a good person. I'm a very good person. The two World Wars left many questioning the worth of traditional values. When my own parents said to me, their experiences in the Second World War showed them that they couldn't be a god. and they were both as secular as could be, and I was raised without church, or Sunday school, or Bible reading, or prayer, or catechism, or anything like that, because my parents had been completely, thoroughly, and utterly secularized by the trauma of the Second World War. Praise God they did come to faith and repentance later in life, but they wasted a lot of their lives by following the secularism that followed after the Second World War. Before the First World War, 64% of Europe was in church every Sunday. Before the Second World War, 42% of Europe was in church, on average, every Sunday. After the Second World War, that plummeted to 4% in Britain, 5% in Germany. That's what happens when people are conned into fighting against fellow Christians. Today many justify hate and intolerance, hate and intolerance in the name of tolerance. The communist revolutions have rejected the concept of private ownership of property. Now they're telling you, they're trying to redefine us all, in the future you will own nothing and you will be happy. Well that's what communists have been telling us for over 200 years, since the French Revolution. The sexual revolution replaced the very biblical principle of marriage itself. What is sin? The Bible defines sin as lawlessness. 1 John 3 verse 5. Sin is lawlessness. Every one of God's ten commandments are under relentless systematic attack in the secular humanist media. Much of Hollywood, most of the public universities, much of the news media attack, create a god, exalt idolatry, promote political idols, rock idols, film idols, sex idols, even have TV programs called idols. Blasphemy is promoted as entertainment. Sabbath desecration is considered an essential part of any week. The undermining of the authority of parents is incessant. Even in family-friendly movies from Disney, the father's, at best, a fool. And the dog has more insights and business acumen than the father, who runs a company. Taking Beethoven as just one example, where the stupidest person in the whole film is always the father. And that's family-friendly films. In many films, the father's actually evil, if he's around at all. The sanctity of life is undermined and abortion is promoted and so is euthanasia, even glamorized. A culture of death is celebrated in many blood-splattered horror slasher films. The sanctity of love and marriage is undermined at every side. The sanctity of private property is eroded and undermined. There's a relentless war against truth itself. and the sanctity of conscience is undermined as well. With every one of the Ten Commands under such ceaseless, relentless attack, it's no wonder that the very concept of sin has been questioned because the popular culture has been working hard at this for most of the last century. Contemporary culture is celebrating what was once condemned. Pride is now lifted up as self-esteem. Envy is the engine of the tabloid culture. Lust is an advertising strategy. Anger is an acceptable expression of those who've been aggrieved. Many pastors feel that they're competing in a biased market, that they cannot afford to alienate potential parishions. At church conferences organized by seeker-friendly churches, pastors are warned that people do not want to hear that they should cultivate humility. They mustn't preach on it. They don't want to hear about self-discipline, and they certainly don't want to hear about virtue. They don't want to hear that they must listen to their conscience and repent of their sins. As a result, a religious culture is promoted that defines God in purely selfish terms. What can God do for me? Church is no longer to be focused on God and what He requires, but on man and what will increase his self-esteem. People will embrace any religious faith just as long as it makes no real moral demands on them. Churches are encouraged to accept people for who they are, without making any moral demands on them. I've seen many examples of this. One time I was at a Summit Ministries evening where everyone was giving testimonies. That's about a three hour episode, and about 140 people taking part in the Summit. I sat at the back there and for three hours listened to testimonies, many of which was absolutely heartrending because the amount of youngsters that stood up there, remember these come from Christian homes and mostly homeschooling homes, so, you know, this is the best section of American society you'd expect. And most were, you know, I never knew my father, or I was abused by my father, or I hated my father, or my father hated me, and it was just terrible. I remember one girl standing up saying, I'm so sorry, yes, I had a loving father and a loving family, but that was rarity. Most of them were sad testimonies. But one testimony that just shocked me more than any other was somebody who said that she really disliked her parents because they were always judging her for things like getting tattoos and putting body piercings and she had some things on her face, metal, hanging around there and she said that her parents were judging her and for her blatant rebellion, I mean here she is plainly under 18 and she is having tattoos and body piercings against her parents' wishes while she's living in her parents' home and then she said, and then Jesus appeared to me and said to me Don't worry, I love you just the way you are. You don't need to change a thing. Now can you imagine, can you think of one example in the Bible where God appears to anybody and says, you don't need to change a thing. It's beyond ridiculous. It's balakalaka. I mean, where on earth could you have the concept of God who comes like the magic genie and says, what can I do for you? You don't need to change a thing. This God is not holy. This isn't the God who gave the Ten Commands. He's not the God who required blood sacrifice, where his son had to shed his own blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Redemption isn't costly. No, none of that. This girl says, Jesus appeared to her and said, you don't need to change a thing. I'll be just the way you are. Now that was shocking enough. What was more shocking is, all over the room I heard amens. I thought, these are Christians at a biblical worldview summit, and they come from mostly homeschooling Christian families, and they think that this is an amen? This lie, this false prophecy of this false vision of this false god, this unbiblical concept of God that God could actually say to someone, you don't need to change a thing. Unbelievable. Literally. People will embrace any religious faith as long as it makes no real moral demands on them. And so, churches are encouraged by the seeker-friendly cult to accept people for exactly the way they are and make no moral demands on them. Churches must console not judge. The style of praise and worship must be redesigned to please men rather than to please God. And so meaningless, mindless, repetitive choruses which focus on the feelings rather than the glory and the power of God have become more of the norm. And the pleasure of worship has been replaced with the worship of pleasure. The Apostle Paul warned of such a time. In 2 Timothy 4, verses 3-4 we read, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, they will turn the ears away from the truth, and they will be turned aside to fable. That is the word of God. You know, it's not the God of the Bible when you hear, I love you just the way you are, you don't need to change a thing. Remember they had a friends don't let friends drive drunk campaign? Well, that's true. Friends don't let friends drive drunk. The vast majority of vehicle accidents and fatalities come from drunkenness. In fact, the vast majority of almost every fatality comes from drunkenness. The police statistics show, whether it's drownings, bicycle accidents, falls, abuse, domestic violence, all these, drunkenness is the common denominator for most of them. And so, it's not loving to encourage people to continue on a self-destructive path, whatever that self-destructive path is. But frequently we see the truth that we are our own worst enemies. It is self-deception to assume that the creator of the universe, the eternal judge, the holy God, has no higher standards than we have. that he doesn't call us to repent, to renew our minds, to be transformed in every part of our attitudes and actions. Worse than self-deception, it is actually idolatrous and it is blasphemous. People who claim that God spoke to them and told them that they don't need to change are guilty of having created a false god, an idol, in the castle of their minds. Such a god doesn't exist. It is blasphemous to claim that God has spoken to us when we are plainly just listening either to our feelings, or we're listening to a world in rebellion to God that's presenting a culture of, God spoke to me. Yea, verily, versooth, behold, yea, the Lord said to me, last night the fullness of the Godhead body appeared to me and said, and I said to him, and he said to me, and I said to him. These liars, these absolute false prophets, and it is all over the place, and they get amens. Many churches seem to become therapeutic, pragmatic, utilitarian, narcissistic, it's all about me. And the gospel's been left out. In the early 1980s, there was a prominent news report in the Sunday Times, which somebody showed me, concerning the Miss South Africa of that time. She said that she is a born-again Christian, and that she liked her church, which was Raymond, because they don't teach any doctrine, and they don't judge her for living with her boyfriend. What a testimony. This is early 1980s. I belong to this church because they don't teach doctrine and they don't judge me for living with my boyfriend. This is a Christian testimony of a born-again Miss Sadarka. Proverbs 28 verse 13 says, He who covers the sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. In Matthew 5 verse 17, our Lord Jesus Christ said, do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle will by any means pass in law until all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." The Bible emphasizes the depravity of man. We are sinful and we are personally responsible for our attitudes and for our actions. However, modern antinomian egalitarian society emphasizes the goodness of man. And frequently when we witness him on the streets, we hear people saying, I'm a good person. I'm a very good person. And yet, when you question a person, the same people who are so adamant that they're a very good person admit to, yes, I've lied and stolen and blasphemed and lusted and hated my heart, but I'm a good person. God looks at the heart. Yes, he's the only one who does, and that should put fear in us. When a person says, God sees my heart, does he think this somehow justifies or puts things in a better light? That makes it worse. We can only see the output. And if the output's bad, you can be sure the inward is much worse. To a large extent, this can be attributed to the entertainment industry, which has popularized and justified and glamorized lust and pride and greed and so many attractive heroes and heroines that many have come to accept what they would have previously condemned. I mean, you ask the average Christian, do you support perversion? Do you support murder? Do you support lust? Do you support adultery? And the average Christian would say no. And yet they idolize people who not only Epitomize that in your private lives, but glamorize it on the screen. Compounding the problem, many religious messages are passing over the uncomfortable realities of sin and focusing on feel-good themes. As a result, conviction of sin is rare. Religious leaders who excuse sin, deny the existence of sin, and tickle ears of their hearers by telling them what they want to hear instead of what the Bible proclaims are actually doing their people a grave disservice. The holiness of God, the law of God, the sinfulness of man, the sacrifice of Christ, the need for repentance and faith, these are central to the gospel, not incidental. A sick man cannot prove that he has no fever by breaking the thermometer. Similarly, rejecting the law of God and ignoring so much of what the Bible says in the subject of sin will not solve the problem. A biblical picture of sin is leprosy. Leprosy destroys the nervous system and disfigures the body. It is ugly and it is loathsome. The Bible says the wage of sin is death. Leprosy is so bad that they lose sense so that they can actually burn their hands by holding on to a boiling hot something without realizing it's hot. They can sleep while a rat nibbles their fingers or toes off, and so on. Seen this happen in Sudan. That's a picture of sin. Leprosy desensitizes, so one cannot even feel. A sick man cannot prove that he is well by destroying the thermometer or shooting the doctor or anything like that. Isaiah 59 verse 1 to 3 puts it so well. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God, so that he will not hear. For your hands are the fowl of blood, and your fingers of iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue has muttered perversity. Christ taught us that he is the vine and we are the branches. He that abides in Christ will bring forth much fruit, but those who do not abide in him will wither up and die and be cast into the fire. Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tested me, tried me, therefore I was angry with that generation. Hebrews 3, 7-10. Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. When we look at the world today, we see how dark the world is spiritually. You just need to follow Romans 1.21. Foolish hearts are darkened. Why? Because they become futile in their thoughts. Why have their thoughts become futile? Because they were not thankful. Why were they not thankful? They did not glorify God in their hearts. They did not know God. If you take it in reverse, you can see how we've got to where we are. The first sin in many ways is failure to know God and failure to thank God. If sin is not serious, then why did our Lord Jesus Christ have to come to this earth and suffer such a horrendous death on the cross at Calvary? The doctrine of sin may not be a popular message, but it's a vitally important message. It's worth noting that the middle letter of sin is I. And the middle letter of pride is I. And the middle letter of lie is I. And the middle letter of Lucifer is I. Selfishness, I. is at the heart of our problem. We are our own worst enemy. The Bible defines sin as missing the mark. It's an archery too. Missing the mark. Violating the law of God. Augustine defines sin as every work or word or whiff contrary to the law of God. Sin is not only the bad things we do, but the good things we fail to do. Therefore to know the good and not to do it, that is sin. The environmental destruction caused by three months of crude oil gushing out of the depths of the sea shocked and horrified millions worldwide. But that is just a picture of the destruction and the degradation and the disruption caused by sin gushing forth from the hearts of wicked men, wicked women, wicked directors, wicked producers, wicked publishers, wicked governments. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. It's not what you say you are, it's what you say that reveals what you are. What are you talking about? What is it that you text about? The reality of sin should cause us to turn to God and kneel at the foot of the cross of Calvary. We dare not live our lives in denial and tolerate sin. Over a century ago, General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, warned that a time may come when churches will preach a savior without a cross, salvation without repentance, heaven without hell, Christianity without holiness. Well, plainly that time has come. On the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter proclaimed, repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Ten Commands are not only a list of prohibitions. Each of the Ten Commands includes an implicit call to action, to worship God alone, to resist adultery, to speak respectfully of God in His Word, to work six days and rest on the Lord's Day, to honour our father and our mother, to respect life, to protect the sanctity of marriage, to respect private ownership of property, to be people of integrity, to maintain a clear conscience before God and man. Praying the Lord's Prayer requires action. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus taught, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. The Ten Commands teach us to respect God, to respect people, to respect God's creatures, to respect property. We are commanded to be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving ourselves. God will judge each one of us. He will punish the wicked. He will reward the faithful. An eternal hell awaits the unrepentant. A glorious heaven is promised to those who truly repent of their sins, trust in Christ, and follow his word and obedience. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. The heart of the gospel is a changed life. But each one of us must make a choice. God will change your life and your spiritual destiny. You must choose to trust and obey Christ. Our Lord Jesus began his earthly ministry with these words, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Our Lord's last recorded words to the churches in Asia was, repent. In Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, again and again, the word comes. It lets us, the churches, repent. The first time our Lord Jesus Christ came to this world as a savior, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and all who turn away from sin and repentance and trust in Christ, following him in obedience, are saved. But the second time, he will not come as a lamb. He'll come as a lion. This is the message that we have heard and we declare from Him to you, that God is light and in Him there's no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and we walk in darkness, we lie. We do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him to be a liar and his word is not in us. That's in 1 John 1, 5-10. Our Lord Jesus Christ will come again. This time he'll come as a judge. the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Conqueror, the Eternal Judge, and all who have not repented and obeyed his law will be condemned and punished eternally in hell. Either you surrender to Christ as Saviour today, or you face Him on Day of Judgment as Judge. Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour, or is He your Judge? Where will you spend eternity? God now commands all men everywhere to repent. This is a message which is urgently needed to be proclaimed throughout the world, throughout the nations, throughout our nation, throughout every nation, because we've got a self-centered, entitled population that are deceiving themselves that they're good people, and that is the worst thing they can possibly do. God was very gracious and merciful. to the repentant sinners, but he had no mercy for those who were self-righteous, who were arrogant, who were full of themselves. The man who stood up and prayed, I thank you God, I'm not like other men, the Bible says he prayed to himself, but the one who beat his chest said, God have mercy on me, I'm a sinner. He is the one whom God accepted. And so the worst thing we can do for anyone is to let them continue in the self-destructive path. warns people of reality to get right with God now. This is what will heal and save our nation, protect our people, if people can again understand the true gospel, because the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Let's pray. Lord God, we want to thank you and praise you for your love and for your mercy and for your grace and for the gospel, which is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. We thank you, Lord God, For the privilege we have of being your sons and your daughters, your servants and your soldiers, you've given us a reason to sing, a message to give, a life to live. We thank you, Lord God, for the gospel that has entrusted to us to share with our neighbors and to proclaim from the rooftops. Help us, Lord God, be faithful to your word, to be effective in your service. We pray, Lord God, that those who are living in deception today May hear the Word of God and understand where we stand with you, to understand your holiness, our depravity, our need of a Savior. And there's no other name given unto heaven by which we must be saved than that of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord God, that you enable us to communicate this faithfully and effectively, if we pray it in Jesus' precious name. Amen.