Lesson 5 (the Bad News)
This document was uploaded by user and they confirmed that they have the permission to share it. If you are author or own the copyright of this book, please report to us by using this DMCA report form. Report DMCA
Overview
Download & View Lesson 5 (the Bad News) as PDF for free.
More details
- Words: 883
- Pages: 2
“Jesus, the Kingdom, & Us: Living Here & Now as God’s Missionary People” New City Church: Northridge ~ Fall 2009 Session #5: Understanding My Story in Light of God’s Story Part 4—The Fall & the Bad News of Christianity
“As the great writing prophets of the Bible knew, sin has a thousand faces. The prophets knew how many ways human life can go wrong because they knew how many ways human life can go right.” ~ Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way Its Supposed to Be
I. Review: Sin as ‘vandalism of shalom’ •
Plantinga, “…shalom is God’s design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder.”
II. Focusing in on the Heart of the Problem
A. Sin as an affront towards God. • “All sin has first and finally a Godward force.” • Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” B. Sin is rebellion against God. • 1 John 3:4, “Sin is lawlessness.” • J. Bridges, “Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of wholehearted obedience.” • Plantinga, “Sinners sometime draw pleasure from mere rebellion.” C. Sin is a distortion of reality. • Rom. 1:18ff, “…who suppress the truth….” • A. Huxley, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption….The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom." D. Sin is self deception. • 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” • E.g., David & Bathsheba • L. Smedes, “First we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves.” • Plantinga, “Self-‐deception is a shadowy phenomenon by which we pull the wool over some part of our own psyche. We put a move on ourselves…We become our own dupes, playing the role of both perpetrator and victim. We know the truth—and yet we do not know ti, because we persuade ourselves of its opposite.
Plantinga, “Self-‐deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual nervous system.” E. Sin is selfishness • Matthew 22:36ff, “What is the greatest commandment?” • D. Miller, “The most difficult lie I have ever had to contend with is this: Life is a story about me.” •
F. Sin is personal disintegration. • Psalm 32:3-‐4 • Isaiah 6:5, “Woe to me. I am ruined.” • L. Smedes, “What we are is a set of walking contradictions.” • Cf. Romans 7:15-‐20, “I do not understand my own actions.” G. Sin is corruption • Jer. 17.9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick….” • Isaiah 64:6, “…all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment…” • Woody Allen, “The heart wants what it wants.”
H. Sin is insanity. • Ecclesiastes 9:3, “…the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live….” • “Crime & Punishment”/ “Anna Karenina”, ad infinitum…
I. Sin is death. • Genesis 3, “…for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” • Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death…” • Plantinga, “Everything sin touches begins to die.”
J. Sin is separation from God. • Isaiah 59:2, “…but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” K. Sin is universal. • Rom. 3:10ff, “None is righteous, no, not one, no one understands; no one seeks after God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” • Psalm 143:2, “No man living is righteous before you.” • 1 Kings 8:46, “There is no man who does not sin.”
III. The Good News: “Christianity is, in fact, a rescue religion” (J. Stott) • • •
Mark 2:17, “I come not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” 1 Timothy 1:15, “This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
Key Point: We must understand that the bad news—the diagnosis—always precedes the Good News—the remedy. “Sin has a thousand faces” but the solution is the same: Jesus stands ready to forgive us, to change our desires, and to use us as heralds of His Gospel and agents of change in His kingdom. Are we shooting straight with ourselves as it relates to our own personal sin? Does it keep us humble? Does it drive us to experience the joy of the Gospel ourselves?
“As the great writing prophets of the Bible knew, sin has a thousand faces. The prophets knew how many ways human life can go wrong because they knew how many ways human life can go right.” ~ Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way Its Supposed to Be
I. Review: Sin as ‘vandalism of shalom’ •
Plantinga, “…shalom is God’s design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder.”
II. Focusing in on the Heart of the Problem
A. Sin as an affront towards God. • “All sin has first and finally a Godward force.” • Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” B. Sin is rebellion against God. • 1 John 3:4, “Sin is lawlessness.” • J. Bridges, “Sin, in the final analysis, is rebellion against the sovereign Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the universe. It resists the rightful prerogative of a sovereign ruler to command obedience from His subjects. It says to an absolutely holy and righteous God that His moral laws, which are a reflection of His own nature, are not worthy of wholehearted obedience.” • Plantinga, “Sinners sometime draw pleasure from mere rebellion.” C. Sin is a distortion of reality. • Rom. 1:18ff, “…who suppress the truth….” • A. Huxley, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption….The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom." D. Sin is self deception. • 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” • E.g., David & Bathsheba • L. Smedes, “First we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we are not deceiving ourselves.” • Plantinga, “Self-‐deception is a shadowy phenomenon by which we pull the wool over some part of our own psyche. We put a move on ourselves…We become our own dupes, playing the role of both perpetrator and victim. We know the truth—and yet we do not know ti, because we persuade ourselves of its opposite.
Plantinga, “Self-‐deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual nervous system.” E. Sin is selfishness • Matthew 22:36ff, “What is the greatest commandment?” • D. Miller, “The most difficult lie I have ever had to contend with is this: Life is a story about me.” •
F. Sin is personal disintegration. • Psalm 32:3-‐4 • Isaiah 6:5, “Woe to me. I am ruined.” • L. Smedes, “What we are is a set of walking contradictions.” • Cf. Romans 7:15-‐20, “I do not understand my own actions.” G. Sin is corruption • Jer. 17.9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick….” • Isaiah 64:6, “…all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment…” • Woody Allen, “The heart wants what it wants.”
H. Sin is insanity. • Ecclesiastes 9:3, “…the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live….” • “Crime & Punishment”/ “Anna Karenina”, ad infinitum…
I. Sin is death. • Genesis 3, “…for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” • Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death…” • Plantinga, “Everything sin touches begins to die.”
J. Sin is separation from God. • Isaiah 59:2, “…but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” K. Sin is universal. • Rom. 3:10ff, “None is righteous, no, not one, no one understands; no one seeks after God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” • Psalm 143:2, “No man living is righteous before you.” • 1 Kings 8:46, “There is no man who does not sin.”
III. The Good News: “Christianity is, in fact, a rescue religion” (J. Stott) • • •
Mark 2:17, “I come not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” 1 Timothy 1:15, “This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.”
Key Point: We must understand that the bad news—the diagnosis—always precedes the Good News—the remedy. “Sin has a thousand faces” but the solution is the same: Jesus stands ready to forgive us, to change our desires, and to use us as heralds of His Gospel and agents of change in His kingdom. Are we shooting straight with ourselves as it relates to our own personal sin? Does it keep us humble? Does it drive us to experience the joy of the Gospel ourselves?
Related Documents
Lesson 5 (the Bad News)
June 2020 3
Breaking Bad News 8
August 2019 18
Lesson P Good Bad
October 2019 17
Romans One The Bad News Needs The Good News
June 2020 6
Death Notification: Breaking The Bad News
May 2020 5