The Cost of Sin
1. Read 2 Samuel 24: 1 – 10
2. Vs: 10 I have sinned ----- Topic today from the Word of God: Sin
Why is Sin so important?
What does the God say to His people: You and me? “Be Holy for I am Holy”
Even God’s mighty man (btw God has no mighty men, Men have an Almighty God)
Have sinned: Let’s learn from that today;
I want to say today: I am standing here today not to judge or condemn any person, BUT with you I am standing under the judgment of the Word of God, a place where all Christians MUST stand, if our lives are to be pleasing to God at all.
1. First: Sin will always take us farther than we intend to go:
No matter what sin.
All the principles we are going to look at today: applies to all sin.
Whether: to lie, rob a bank, to betray some-body, to give way to gossip, immorality etc
ALWAYS THE FIRST THING WILL BE THAT WE GO FARTHER THAN WHAT WE INTEND TO GO.
Telling a lie--- then that lie WILL FORCE US to tell another to support it, and another
Rom 16:6 16Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. (The Message)
2. Second: Sin will always invariably expose some-one else to danger or hurt:
Gen 12
Remember Abraham: Called to come out of Ur, to leave an walk with God, then a famine to test Abraham’s faith: He failed, went back into Egypt, and told a lie, about his wife.
Remember he said she was his sister: and Yes Sarah was his half-sister:
SO IT WAS A half-truth.
The result: Pharaoh wanted to take her as his wife.
What was the cause of all this: A half-truth.
YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO A WHOLE FAMILY IF SOME_ONE IS CAUGHT STEALING, or CHEATING etc.
3. Always a THIRD thing: Repentance becomes more difficult:
You see if we go to far - the longer we go on in sin, the more we give way and choose the evil, the harder it is to turn around or stop.
I fact if we go to far we MIGHT JUST FOUND IT IMPOSSIBLE to turn around.
The book of Hebrews ALONE warns us no less than 5 times:
Be careful! If you go to far you will find that you can not come back.
Balaam The old Testament prophet pictures this truth to us: (Numbers 22)
Offered money to curse Israel - he knew it was wrong, he did not pray about it,
BUT TO COME TO THE LORD and ask the Lord’s permission to go.
God said NO BUT Balaam decided to go anyway God send an angle to block the road - and his own donkey was given speech to speak to Balaam.
What are you praying for this morning ? What are you trying to get out of God?
How many donkeys have spoken to you lately?
DON’T you want to turn around before it is too late?
BUT this morning if you decide to turn around know this: You are dealing with the ONE that deals with hearts, he does not deal with words, DO NOT try to manipulate God, He is not mocked!
BUT know this if you are serious this morning: God forgives freely and fully: If you are serious about it this morning, He is so serious He gave His only begotten Son. He will re-instate you as if it never happened, BUT YOU HAVE to be serious.
Does that mean that all is ended and over, and nothing more will happen to us as a result of that sin?
The answer might shock you this morning BUT IT IS NO!
There are some inevitable results that must occur.
You ask what are these things? (after hearing this we will even better understand why God warns us as His children to live Holy)
4. Fourthly: Sin will leave a permanent area of weakness in our lives:
Once we have given way to temptation it will forevermore remain an area of weakness, where we can so easily give way again. No mater how long you live. We can fall again in that area of weakness and more easy that the first time.
Abraham is our picture again: 30 years after telling a lie, he does exactly the same thing again; He lies about Sarah to the Philistine King. The time he walked with God in between made no difference at all.
WE ARE CAPABLE TO BEING AGAIN WHAT WE ONCE WERE, WHENEVER WE FALL BACK INTO THE FLESH.
NOW IT DOES NOT MEAN THIS MORNING THAT WE will FALL AGAIN, OR GIVE WAY AGAIN. BY GOD’S GRACE, WE NEED NOT TO.
But we will always find ourselves peculiarly subject to temptation at that point.
5. Fifth effect is that we will loose certain temporal blessings:
NOTE: Temporal
Certain blessings we excluded from permanently because of our fall into sin.
The preeminent picture of this is MOSES
God told Moses to strike the rock and water flowed from it (Exodus 17:6)
Sometime later in the wilderness wanderings they came to a place of great thirst again, BUT this time God said “Go and speak to the rock and water will come out” (Numbers 20:7-8)
Moses was angry and hit the rock, God immediately rebuked him saying “ Because you have not seen fit to glorify me in the eyes of the people, you are unfit to lead them into the Promised Land” (Numbers 20:11-12)
Later when they came to the edge of the Land, Moses asked God to release him from this restriction. God said no. It was a permanent loss of a temporal blessing.
Note that Moses was not to enter into the Promised Land while he was alive
God’s grace was shown on the Mount of transfiguration though. (Matt 17:1-5)
Paul later mentions this in 1 Cor 9: 24-27 24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. 25And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. 26Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. 27But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
6 Finally ; Sin will have an effect in huma life:
Pail writes to the Galatians “Galatians 6 7Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.
The law of inevitable consequences: When we sin, even though our relationship with God is restored in forgiveness, and God promises to go with us through all the results that will follow, nevertheless, these results will still follow.
Picture: of dad driving a nail into garage door: asking son to remove nail, that done, asked his son to now remove the hole that the nail made.
Let’s return to our text reading
2 Samuel 24:11 – 15.
Conclusion:
Now do we understand why God is so serious about sin?
There is never a better time to stop the sin we are doing, or stop the evil thoughts and plans we are making than just now.
Isiah 1:18 "Come now, let us argue this out," says the LORD. "No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool.
Don’t you want to speak to God just now, I will give you a few minutes in silence.
All the Glory to God
