SAILING @ LIFE Part 4
Improving Your Relationship With God Part 2
Pastor Jeff Seaman
We are continuing in the series called Sailing @ Life, and we are on the part call “Improving Your Relationship With God.”
Jer. 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”
When we read Jer 29:11, I know that we all want see this come to pass in our life. In order to see that we sail @ life I believe we must always be improving our relationship with God. Last week we talked about our enemy the devil, and how he is trying to come against our relationship with God, and we learned that the Bible tells us that we are not to be ignorant of his schemes. So lets do an over view before we start.
Read Overview of last week:
So today we are going to look at another scheme the devil uses to come against are relationship with God.
Gen. 3:1-19
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.
Vs. 4 - You will not surely die, the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, where are you?
He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
The man said, the woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.
The Lord God said to the woman, what is it you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.
To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.
To Adam he said, because of you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thrones and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The devil was right there in the garden using his schemes to try to break down the relationship that Adam and Eve had with the Lord God. From this scripture we can see many insights of sin and the result it can have with us.
Let me tell you the devil has been at this for a long time and he knows our weaknesses better than we do so let learn more about his schemes so we can guard our selves.
We will talk about three things concerning sin.
1. A Definition of Sin
2. How We Can Recognize Sinful Behaviors
3. The Results of Sin
1. THREE DEFIINTION OF SIN
1.Sin is disobeying God.
Gen. 3: 17 (TLB) “And to Adam, God said, because you listened to your wife and
ate the fruit when I told you not to, I have placed a curse upon the soil. All your life
you will struggle to extract a living from it.”
Adam and Eve learned by painful experience that because God is holy and hates sin,
He must punish sinners. The rest of the book of Genesis recounts painful stories of
lives ruined as a result of the fall. Disobedience is sin, and it breaks our fellowship
with God. But, fortunately, when we disobey, God is willing to forgive us and to
restore our relationship with him.
2. Sin includes unintended wrongdoing.
Leviticus. 4:1-2, (TLB) “Then the Lord gave these further instructions to Moses: Tell the people of Israel that these are the laws concerning anyone who unintentionally breaks any of my commandments”
Have you ever done something wrong without realizing it until later? My wife had a week a few years ago that she was became a thief, she would go shopping and would forget that she had put something under her cart, and did not put it on the counter and would go to the car and would realize that she did not pay for that. This happened about three or four times in one week, she was breaking the law unintentionally.
Although your sin was unintentional, it was still sin. One of the purposes of God’s commands was to make the Israelites aware of their unintentional sins so they would not repeat them and so they could be forgiven for them.
Lev. 4 and 5 mention some of these unintentional sins and the way the Israelites could be forgiven for them. As you read more of God’s laws, keep in mind that they were meant to teach and guide the people. Let them help you become more aware of sin in your life.
3. Sin is a disease beyond human cure.
Matt. 8:3 (NIV) “Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said. Be clean! Immediately he was cured of his leprosy”
Leprosy, like AIDS today, was a terrifying disease because there was no known cure. In Jesus’ day, the Greeks word for Leprosy was used for a variety of similar diseases, and some forms were contagious. If a person contracted the contagious type, a priest declared him a leper and banished him from his home city. The leper was sent to live in a community with other lepers until he either got better or died. Yet when the leper begged Jesus to heal him, Jesus reached out and touched him, even though his skin was covered with the dread disease.
Sin is also an incurable disease—and we all have it. Only Christ’s healing touch can take away our sins and restore us to real living.
2. CHARACTERISTICS OS SINFUL BEHAVIORS
1. Sinful behavior often begins as a delightful and fun action.
Gen. 3:7 (TLB) “And as they ate it, suddenly they became aware of their nakedness, and were embarrassed. So they strung fig leaves to cover themselves around the hips.”
Satan tried to make Eve think sin is good, pleasant, and desirable. A knowledge of both good and evil seemed harmless to her. People usually choose wrong things because they have become convinced that those things are good, at least for themselves. Our sins do not always appear ugly to us, and the pleasant sins are the hardest to avoid. So prepare yourself for the attractive temptations that may come your way. We cannot always prevent temptation, but there is always a way of escape.
2. Temptation to sinful behavior is rarely obvious at first.
Notice what Eve did: She looked, she took, she ate, and she gave. The battle is often lost at the first look. Temptation often begins by simply seeing something you want. Are you struggling with temptation because you have not learned that looking is the first step toward sin? You would win over temptation more often if you followed Paul’s advice to run from those things that produce evil thoughts.
II Tim. 2:22 (NLT) “Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right.”
3. Sin’s effects spread.
After Eve sinned, she involved Adam in her wrongdoing. When we do something wrong, we often try to relieve our guilt by involving someone else. Like toxic waste spilled in a river, sin swiftly spreads.
I remember I time when me and Mark were room mates and he started drinking and he got me into it with him.
4. Sin usually causes guilt.
After sinning, Adam and Eve felt guilt and embarrassment over their nakedness. Their guilty feelings made them try to hide from God. A guilty conscience is a warning signal God places inside you that goes off when you’re done wrong.
The worst step you could take is to eliminate the guilty feeling without eliminating the cause. That would be like using a painkiller but not treating the disease. Be glad those guilty feeling are there. They make you aware of your sin so you can ask God’s forgiveness and then correct your wrongdoing.
5. Sin creates a barrier between us and God
God desired to have fellowship with us, but we are afraid to have fellowship with him. Adam and Eve hid from God when they heard him approaching. God wanted to be with them, but because of their sin, they were afraid to show themselves. Sin had broken their close relationship with God, just as it has broken ours.
But Jesus, opens the way for us to renew our fellowship with Him. God longs to be with us. He offers us his unconditional love. Our natural response is fear, because we feel we can’t live up to his standards. But understanding that he loves us, regardless of our faults, can help remove that dread.
6. Sinful behavior is almost always covered by excuses
When God asked Adam about his sin, Adam blamed Eve. Then Eve blamed the serpent. How easy it is to excuse our sins by blaming someone else or circumstances. But God knows the truth, and he holds each of us responsible for what we do.
Admit your wrong attitudes and actions and ask God for forgiveness. Don’t try to get away with sin by blaming someone else.
7. Sin often leads to more sin.
II Sam. 11:26-27 “When Bathsheba heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him; then, when the period of mourning was over; David sent for her and brought her to the palace and she became one of his wives; and she gave birth to his son. But the Lord was very displeased with what David had done.”
David allowed himself to fall deeper and deeper into sin. (1) David abandoned his purpose by staying home from war (11:1). (2) He focused on his own desires (11:3). (3) When temptation came, he looked into it instead of turning away from it (11:4). (4) He sinned deliberately (11:4). (5) He tried to cover up his sin by deceiving others (11:6-15). (6) He committed murder to continue the cover-up (11:15-17) Eventually David’s sin was exposed and punished. The consequences of David’s sin were far –reaching, affecting many others.
3. THE RESULTS OF SIN
1. Sin deserves punishment.
Rom. 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
2. Sinful actions can become sinful habits.
II Peter 2:19 b, “for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.”
Rom 7:15 (TCNT) Twenty – century new testament “I do not understand my own actions for I am as far from habitually doing what I want to do that I find myself doing the very thing that I hate.”
Gal. 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
If we want to learn to sail @ life we must be a people that knows that the enemy will be looking for a way to break our relationship with God, so the Bible tell us no to be ignorant of his schemes. We have looked at two of the ones that he uses a lot on us, and next week we will finish looking at the third one called “DISTRACTIONS”
