“Ripples of Sin”
Sermon Title: Ripples of Sin
Scripture: Psalm 14:1-3 ESV
Introduction
I was asked the question: There are people who have been good all their lives (including Christians), so why does God make them suffer?
My first response would be: What do you mean by “good”? How do you define that? If you are able to make a definition of good that is infallible, then how do you know they’ve been “good” all their lives. You might vouch for a person because you know this person. I understand your confidence, but that’s hardly evidence of how you would know if they’ve been good their entire life.
What do you mean by good? Do you mean a person who has never spoken a bad word? A person who has never done harm to another person or a creature or to the environment? A person who hasn’t committed a crime. I saw a granny the other day jaywalking, jaywalking is a crime, does that disqualify her? You were caught speeding. You could have potentially hurt someone but didn’t. You did break the law, so does that disqualify you as a good person? Or do you reserve the bad category for crimes like murder, theft, and adultery? What do you mean by good? Do you consider yourself to be a good person? Can a person who is good become bad, or a bad person become good? It would seem by the logic of the original question asked that both would be disqualified from being good because obviously they are no long “good” their entire life.
This brings us to Psalm 14:1-3.
Psalm 14 is credited to King David. I personally have no doubt of King David’s authorship because David was special. He wasn’t special because of his deeds and victories and accomplishments. He was special because he understood the condition of the human heart and the depravity of sin, and he recognized this within himself. This psalm is a lamentation of the sinful human heart.
Verse 1: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
Unfortunately, God is talking about both unbelievers and believers – another reading of the original Hebrew text is: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God FOR ME!” You believe that there is a God, great, wonderful, but guess what, so do Satan and the demons too! The unbeliever says this out of ignorance, but what is your excuse Christian, for living your everyday life as if there is no God? You tell me what is worse, the one who acts out of ignorance, or the one who knows but acts no different than the one who is ignorant of the truth? God’s verdict over man is: “They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good (v. 1)… there is none who does good; not even one (v. 3).”
Romans 3:10-18 further expands on Psalm 14: “no one seeks God. All have turned aside… tongues to decieve… mouth is full of curses… swift to shed blood… no fear of God before their eyes.” God has found no one to be good because we are all lawbreakers of God’s laws, which can be summed up as the following in Luke 10:27: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” HEART, SOUL, STRENGTH, and MIND; the problem with sin is that it violates all of the faculties with which we are to worship God! As people corrupted by sin you are not able to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind – much less your neighbour.
We do not love our neighbours; we hate our enemies. We do not seek God; we are self seekers, self-centered and selfish in all things especially in the church. We go to great lengths for ourselves, but make excuses when it comes to serving God as you calculate the costs. We want things to go our way and we become bitter when they don’t. We expect to be treated with goodness, grace, mercy, and compassion, but do not show the same to others; we care more about how others made us feel and think nothing of our own actions. You criticize, not sacrifice. You judge other’s based on their weaknesses and failings although God made people to be so much more. We are careless with our words and cause harm to others; our words have no filter, no mercy, no grace. We use the name of the Lord in vain - it is not just a name, it is the name above all names! We steal, murder, commit adultery, in our heart if not in action. Are you confident that your thoughts are pure? Would you be able to leave your house if people could all see your thoughts? Some have fallen to greater depths of depravity as they display their sinful thoughts and actions for others to see and they glory shamelessly in their sins.
And the Lord is proved right when he says in Matthew 15:19 – “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
Do we have the right to point fingers at other religions who worship other gods like the Hindus who believe in 3.5 million gods? Do we not do the same with our own idols which we call by different names? Do we not harbour idols in our hearts that delight, excite, arouse, and capture our attention? Before God, we have only the following to demonstrate as sinners, as it says in Galatians 5:19-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
And again in Revelations. 21:8 – “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
We have broken the command in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, and it’s to rejoice always in God, pray continually to Him, and to give thanks to God in all your circumstance. we don’t rejoice but grumble at every trouble and every annoyance, we don’t pray, we don’t give thanks in all circumstances, we take for granted everything else. What is it that we are breathing to keep us alive? Air. When’s the last time we gave thanks for that? Was your heart centered on seeking God during times of trouble, or were we more interested in just making the trouble go away.
We have pride in our hearts that seeks to lord ourselves over others. Pride that seeks to have you as your own god. We do not honour our parents. We have grown up, received an education, we have learned some ways of the world, and we turn around to the parents who raised us and now try to tell them what is right and what is wrong. We decide for yourself what is right and wrong, and sometimes we tell God that we are right and He is wrong.
And the Lord is proven right when He says in Proverbs 21:2 – “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”
And again, in Proverbs 14:12 – “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”
We love the things God can do for you, but we don’t love God. We want the benefits of salvation, but not His lordship over your life. We hate God and we hate His word.
Conclusion
Why does God make good people suffer? The conclusion is that no one is good, not even one. We all fall short of the glory of God. We stand before God in filthy rags smeared with feces.
And here’s another truth that you must know: God doesn’t make people suffer. He may allow suffering to take place, but God is not the creator of suffering and evil in the world. It’s the same thing if you were outside in the rain and I have an umbrella. I can choose to place the umbrella over you to keep you from getting wet, but I can simply choose to do nothing. However, I did not make the rain fall on you, nor do I have an obligation to shield you from the rain.
Then the question is, who’s responsible? Satan, the Devil? He surely has his part, but there’s a bigger culprit for the evil and suffering in the world.
IT’S YOU. IT’S ME. IT’S OUR SINS. It’s the sins of every human being that has ever walked the face of the earth from the beginning of human history to this very day. How is this so?
Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It’s the concept that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in one part of the world can make tiny changes in the air pressure to cause a tornado on the other side of the world. Of course, the butterfly itself does not directly cause a tornado otherwise we’d all be dead, but it’s the idea that every action matters and it builds up into a huge complex wave down the line. Or it’s like a stone that is dropped into a pool of water and it causes many ripples throughout the water. In the same way, every action, words, and thoughts that come forth from our sinful hearts ripples throughout all of history or rather rips through it up to this very day and to the future. Yet, we have no idea of what our sins have done. We do not realize that our “wings” are much bigger than a butterfly’s.
Now imagine on a global scale of 8 billion people who sin every single day of their lives. Now imagine this on a historical scale from the beginning of human history - t is believed that around 120 billion people have lived on the earth since the beginning - imagine the magnitude of the ripples that wreck havoc through this world? We have utterly failed in loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. Look at the mess we’ve made.
It is our sins, our consequences, our responsibility, and yet, we turn to God and blame him for the misery that we have caused and demand that He takes responsibility. We accuse God of being unfair.
We throw up our fists at God and wrongly blame Him for the misery and suffering in this world! We demand He take responsibility and fix everything! AND HE DID! He, who had no sin and who was the source of goodness, took the blame, He took the responsibility and died on the cross instead of us.
Sin ripples through the world clinging and staining everything and everyone it touches like a curse, but God has showed us the way to break this curse. It is through the blood of Jesus Christ. It is the blood of Jesus Christ that not only covers our sins but breaks its chains over us. It is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us so that we are no longer standing before God in filthy rags because what God now sees is the blood. We are covered with the blood of Jesus, when we believe in his name, and place our trust in him, and repent of our sins. Without a heart of repentance, without realizing who you are as a sinner, without realizing how hopeless you are in your sin, you will never fully understand the need of a Saviour.
Brothers and sisters, you may be offended by what I have said today. I do not stand in judgement against you, but I stand in judgement with you before our holy God. I stand with you as a fellow brother in Christ who needs saving from his sins, who needs the mercy, love, and grace of God. My hope and prayer for you, as a sinner among sinners, if you feel a nudging in your heart through today’s message, that you would not harden your hearts, but turn to the one who died for you and repent of your sins. This world is not what it was meant to be, but through Jesus Christ, we can be good the way God intended us to be. Christ is our hope and salvation, there is no other.