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Restoration Ministry

Restoration 2005: To The Point

Randy Skeete

What I Like About Mohammad

The Real Truth About Sin

Can God Feel My Pain?

James Kyle

Clean, but Empty

A Dean’s Letter from God

How to Live Without Fear

The Science of the Resurrection

World’s Greatest Crime Part 1

World’s Greatest Crime Part 2

Research Suggests. So Does God.

How to Read Your Boyfriend’s Mind

How Safe is Safe Sex?

Lose Weight, Find Life

Are You Right or Righteous?

The Horror of Horoscopes

What and Where is the Kingdom of God?

Are There Degrees in Heaven?

All or Nothing

Phil Mills

Bible Study Hour

A Better Life Is Here

Question and Answer Session

God Used It. It Worked. You Try It.

And there isn't a person under the sun, I would suspect, certainly not in the Western Hemisphere, who is not familiar with the word sin.

Our Father in heaven I ask in the name of Jesus to come very close to us in the person of your Holy Spirit.

Please open our minds, enlighten our understanding, sharpen our intellects, and break down the Jericho walls of opposition to truth that you may find surrounding any heart.

Father, capture every living soul in this place And save us when you come.

The Bible says in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Now in verse 31 of chapter 1, the Bible says, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Now we know that when Adam was made Adam was made sinless sinless Despite the fact that Adam was made sinless, God did not make that condition permanent simply on the basis of the fact that Adam was made sinless.

Despite the fact that Adam was made sinless, He had a sinless nature.

Characters are not created the same way Adam was created.

In contemplating what is sin we have to understand that nature is something we don't choose.

That is not an expression of a free moral agent.

But God needed to put Adam in a position where he now could exercise his free moral agency and choose whether to remain or retain that sinless nature or to choose contrary to God's will for him.

God waited to see how Adam would choose, how this man with a sinless nature would choose and so initiate the process of developing a character.

You and I were born with a certain nature.

It is a nature that if not controlled, would sin interminably.

The Bible says in Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

In the same book chapter 13 verse 23 can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots then me also do good who are accustomed to do evil those 2 texts combined And then we add the third verse Romans chapter 8 verse 7 because the carnal mind is enmity against God For it is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be that's the way we are born with a nature leaning away from God But that nature itself is not a conscious choice we make.

I must stress this tediously because it is fundamental to understanding sin.

God does not judge me based on what I inherited through the genetic stream.

He judges me based on the decisions that I make.

Let's observe that Genesis is the book where we find the definitions of all fundamental concepts within the context of salvation and the life of a child of God.

We learn for instance in Genesis chapter 1 verse 3 and God said let there be light and there was light.

We learn from that that God's Word is absolutely reliable whatever God says comes to pass exactly as he says it and so the Bible says and God said let there be light and there was light that's God's Word whether creating a world or creating righteousness in you and me whatever God does he does it through his Word We learn from Genesis chapter 2 verse 24 therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and there shall be 1 flesh.

We learn that a marriage is a man and a woman 1 man 1 woman not 1 man and 1 man or 1 woman and 1 woman 1 man 1 woman.

We learn the definition of a marriage in the early chapters of the book of Genesis.

Genesis chapter 2 verse 15, And the Lord God took the man which he had formed and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

We understand that people should have something to do with their time.

Genesis 2, 16 and 17, And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.

That's a difficult concept to swallow in a nation where we feel we have the freedom to do whatever we like.

But for perfect people God put restrictions of every tree of the garden thou may freely eat But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it for in the day thou eatest thereof Thou shalt surely die we discover that God places Limitations even on sinless people How much more limitations on sinful people?

Let's look at verses 16, 17 again of Genesis chapter 2 in the light of our subject, what is sin?

And the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely eat but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

This is clear, indisputable, crystal clear information.

For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

And we have in these 2 verses of verse 17 the great law of cause and effect.

For those of you who are not Seventh-day Adventists, I want to recommend an author to you that will fascinate you more than John Grisham, Michael Crichton or Crichton, whatever his name is or Stephen King or Shakespeare or any other of those writers or Ernest Hemingway or William Faulkner or Virginia Woolf I recommend to you a woman called Ellen G.

If you read them, you will sit back in consternation and wonder, how is it a woman with Little or no education can write with such profundity.

33 She wrote a book called Patriarchs and Prophets 34 which deals with this subject.

35 If you have Seventh-day Adventist friends, they should fall over themselves to get you a copy at no cost to yourself.

She said to parents, when raising your children, teach them to reason from cause to effect.

People need to learn that for every action, you scientists finish it for me, there is an equal and opposite reaction it is a biblical principle in the day thou eatest thereof that's the action thou shall surely die That's the opposite and equal reaction perhaps far more devastating than the action itself.

Listen to me let me digress briefly at 22 minutes after 12.

Cause and effect operates in all areas of life.

It is a principle that functions in the cosmos from 1 end of this unfenced universe to the next.

If you study hard and in an organized way, you will get academic results.

If you earnestly study God's Word, you will lose your taste for the things of this world you will develop a refined taste for spiritual things If you keep yourself according to the will of God, your influence will be wholesome on those who operate in your sphere of influence.

God said, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

What God gave to Adam was plain and simple information with which and on the basis of which to make a choice.

Now animals have no moral structure even though physiologically animals and we are virtually the same thing.

The Bible says the life in us is a life in an animal.

Ecclesiastes 3.19, for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts.

Genesis 2.7 we read at the beginning of this presentation what is sin and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.

Genesis 2 19 and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the earth and every fowl of the air.

Ecclesiastes 3.20, all are of the dust, all return to dust again.

At a physical, physiological, non-moral level there is no difference between me and a cow.

When that cow dies it decomposes whether in the ground or in my stomach.

But God made human beings with something the animals do not have.

And that is the capacity to make moral choices.

And a moral choice is not necessarily a reflex action it is a conscious activity of the will and so God said to Adam if you eat this if you choose to eat it in the light of this information clearly given to you, if you make that choice, that is the consequence.

Sin will occur as a result of your choice.

And so Genesis tells us that sin is a choice.

Series

Restoration 2005: To The Point

The Real Truth About Sin

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Conquering Addictions: A Personal Testimony

1h 28m

Freedom From Fear 2006

Poor Satan

56m

Think On These Things

Think on These Things- Part 2

39m

Restoration 2005: To The Point

The Real Truth About Sin

49m

Experience The Power

An Equal and Opposite Reaction

44m

With Me Where I Am

33m

There is Hope

What’s Chasing You?

52m

Freedom From Fear 2006

How to Resist Temptation

1h 13m

Freedom From Fear 2006

Who is the Devil?

57m

The Blood Sacrifice and Blood Applied

1h

SWYC 2008 Plenary Sessions

Delivering the Captives

58m

God is Looking

49m

Sound Doctrine