257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105
(262) 763-3021
We have purchased land on Highways A & W and are planning to build soon!
Drive by and take a look at our future home!
What is our Greatest Need?
Romans 3:9-23
May 10, 2009
If this afternoon we were to go out on the streets and ask people at random, “What’s your greatest need?” you’d probably hear a number of responses. Some would say, “My greatest need right now is to get a decent job. I can’t pay my bills and get out of debt in my current situation.” Others may say, “My greatest need is that I’m lonely. I need someone to love me.” Others might say, “My family is a war zone. We need peace in our home.” But if we went to a poor country, like India or Sudan, the answers to our question would center more on raw survival: “I am starving. I need food!” “I’m dying of a disease that’s treatable, but I can’t get the proper medicine.” “I live on the streets. I need a roof over my head.”
Without denying the legitimacy of any of those needs, according to the Bible, the people giving those answers are blind to their greatest need. Their greatest need is for God to forgive their sins and give them eternal life. Without this focus, we could meet all of the perceived needs, but their greatest need would go unmet. If they were to die, they’d spend go into a Christless eternity.
K. P. Yohannan has written a powerful book on world missions, Revolution in World Missions. He grew up in India and didn’t wear shoes before he was 17. He’s preached the gospel all across India and is not oblivious to India’s oppressive poverty. Yet, he strongly contends against being so distracted meeting physical needs, but ignoring the spiritual needs. He points out that India has seen 150 years of schools and hospitals brought to them by missionaries, but it has not had any noticeable effect on Indian society. He also says that it is one of Satan’s lies that people will not listen to the gospel unless we offer them something else first. He’s sat on the streets of Bombay with beggars who are about to die and told them that he does not have material goods to give them, but he has come to offer them eternal life, and he has seen many respond. Yohannan writes, “There is nothing wrong with charitable acts—but they are not to be confused with preaching the Gospel. Feeding programs can save a man dying from hunger. Medical aid can prolong life and fight disease. Housing projects can make this temporary life more comfortable—but only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can save a soul from a life of sin and an eternity in hell!”
Our emphasis must always be first and foremost on evangelism and discipleship. Social concern is a result of the gospel. We must not put the cart before the horse. Probably, no other passage so clearly unpacks our spiritual condition before God, as does Romans 3:9-23 (p. 797).
Our greatest need is our sin problem. Our greatest problem is not swine flu or the economy or the war in Iraq or world peace, our greatest need and our greatest problem is our sin problem.
We’re in the midst of a series, Lost…we all start on the same island. At the same time it’s Mother’s Day. Yet, every Mom’s and every child’s greatest need is their sin problem. The Psalmist wrote, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5).
Sin is not a popular word today. Though all of our personal and world problems can be traced back to sin, you’re not going to hear the word mentioned. Can you imagine turning on CNN and hearing some commentator saying, “The greatest problem in America today is our sin problem.” Or, “The President has just put together a task force to address the sin problem in our major cities.” Sin is the problem no one talks about.
That’s because while nothing has happened to sin, something has happened to us. We simply don’t want to talk about sin anymore. It isn’t PC. Just try mentioning the word “sin” the next time you go to a party and see how long it takes for someone to change the subject. But our avoiding the subject doesn’t change the truth. Evil has been let loose in this world. Evil is everywhere we turn. Consider these word groups: Los Angeles…Miami…Detroit. Or Bagdad…Somalia…Pakistan. How about Dennis Rader, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz? We all know what joins each group together, don’t we? Sin!
If we’re honest we have to agree with G. K. Chesterton, “Whatever else is or is not true, this one thing is certain—man is not what he was meant to be.” We don’t need to spend a great deal of time debating that point. If you have any question about the sinfulness of the human race, simply go anywhere in the world, pick up any newspaper you want, in any language you please. Just read the front page and you will be convinced.
Something has gone wrong with the human race. No one can successfully deny that fact. We are not all that we could be. No matter how much we boast of our technological achievements, the sorry story of man’s inhumanity to man always grabs the front page. The details change, the faces come and go, but the story is always the same. Something evil lurks inside the heart of every single person. No one is immune, no one is exempt, and no one is truly innocent.
Call it what you will—a twist, a taint, a bent to do wrong. Somehow, somewhere, someone injected poison into the human bloodstream. That’s why, even when we know the right thing to do, we go ahead and choose to do wrong. Deliberately. Repeatedly. Defiantly. Yet though sin is our greatest problem, it’s still an unpopular subject. Sometimes preachers are criticized for talking too much about it. But we do so for two reasons: Because the Bible says so much about it…Because we are realists. We must talk about it because we must know the bad news before we can truly appreciate the Good News. This morning if you’re taking notes…1. Sin is a reality in our world and lives. Most people say they aren’t "that bad"…whatever "that bad" means. To me, "that bad" means telling God to leave you alone, to live "on purpose" away from God. But who does that? The answer is: We ALL have the capability of doing that. And when we live without God, we are inherently evil.
In 1960, Israeli undercover agents kidnapped one of the worst killers in Hitler’s army from his hideout in South America. His name was Adolf Eichmann. They took him to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Prosecutors called a long list of witnesses who had either seen Eichmann commit those crimes or had seen the evidence of his crimes. One witness was a small elderly man named Yehiel Dinur, who had escaped death in Auschwitz. When it was his day to testify, Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man in the bulletproof glass booth – the man, who had murdered Dinur’s friends, personally murdered hundreds of Jewish men, women, and even young children, and presided over the slaughter of millions more.
Yet, as the eyes of the two men met something happened that shook the enter courtroom. Yehiel Dinur stood in silence, looking at the man who had done all that, and then he began to shout and sob uncontrollably, collapsing to the floor. Was he overcome by hatred -- by the horrifying memories -- by the evil incarnate in Eichmann’s face? No. As he later explained in a riveting 60 Minutes interview it was because Eichmann was not the demonic personification of evil Dinur had expected. When he entered the courtroom that day and saw him, he saw a small, older man who had soft eyes and a vulnerable expression on his face. He said he saw nothing but an average man, and he said it was at that moment he realized everybody has the same capabilities of being evil. In that one instant, Dinur came to the stunning realization that sin and evil are the human condition. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I am capable to do this...exactly like he. Eichmann is in all of us.”
Dinur’s remarkable statement caused Mike Wallace to turn to the camera and ask the audience the most painful of all questions. “How is it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted? Was he a monster? A madman? Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying…Was he normal?”
How can that be? We’re good people, right? We aren’t "that bad", are we? We claim to be good people, but let me ask you a question: Have you ever told a little white lie? Now, let me ask you another question: Have you ever thought that when you did, it wasn’t all "that bad?" I lied recently. Can I confess it to you this morning? You know on a computer program before you install it, they ask this question: “Have you read the legal agreement for this program?” I hadn’t read it but I still checked Yes so I could download the program. Have you ever taken something that didn’t belong to you? Even a pen or pencil? If you’ve ever done that, you did it because you didn’t see it as a really bad thing, did you? After all, it was nothing more than a pencil, or whatever it was didn’t seem that important, did it?
R.C. Sproul put it this way: “We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.” The heart of every person is already polluted with something that is opposed to the authority of God or the idea of surrender - something that sets itself up against the God’s standard of holiness. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Rom. 8:5). Dogs bark. Birds fly. Bees sting. Sinners sin. Each one is done for the same reason: it is their nature to do so.
Sin isn’t just committing of murder, theft or adultery. It’s also the evil desire behind the act. It is the desire to live outside of God’s presence and on our own; to put ourselves first; to make our own decisions. Isn’t that the trap that snared Adam and Eve? The act of eating the fruit didn’t bring sin into this world. They placed their own beliefs above the Word of God.
Rather than quote a number of verses (which would be very easy to do), let me quote from an oft-overlooked document, the Statement of Faith for Grace Church. It says, “We believe that man was created by God in His image. By willful transgression man fell into sin and thereby incurred not only physical death, but spiritual death, which is separation from God. All human beings are sinners by nature and choice and under the condemnation of a holy God (Genesis 1:27; 3:1-6; 3:9-23; Psalm 14:1-3; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 5:10-19).”That’s a strong statement isn’t it? Think about those phrases for a moment: “spiritual death…separation from God…sinners by nature and choice.” Add to that “under the condemnation of a holy God.” At Grace we don’t take an optimistic view of human nature. Quite the opposite because apart from divine grace, we’re all in a heap of trouble.
This world is a mess and we all know it. The world is a mess because we ourselves are messed up. The problem is not “out there.” It’s “in us.” The world is bad because we’re bad. The world is evil because evil lurks within us. People are not inherently good. The milk of human kindness is sour. And the reason I can’t say “people are good,” is because people aren’t good. They are bad because of sin.
It’s common today to talk about evil as a result of a bad environment, lack of education and poverty. Many believe that if those things were changed, we could eradicate evil in the world. We hope to change people by changing their environment. But after billions upon billions of dollars, it hasn’t happened and it won’t happen. Today we’ve produced a generation of high-tech criminals who know how to kill more people with less effort than ever before. Racism remains, killing continues, crime spreads, and nations are still at war. Why? Because there is evil inside the human heart.
How many of you locked your car before coming into this service? How many of you locked your house before coming today? We have elaborate security systems because human nature has not been improved.
Our problem is that sin that separates us from God. We call it by other names, whitewash it, and then re-label it. But it doesn’t work. You can take a bottle of rat poison and label it “Whole Milk” but that doesn’t change its basic character. If you drink it, you will be wholly dead. Poison is still poison no matter what you call it.2. Sin has been around for a long, long time. The Bible traces sin back to the Garden of Eden. God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of just one particular tree. Satan deceived Eve who ate the fruit and then offered some to Adam who, though he was not deceived, ate the fruit anyway. It was through that deliberate choice that sin entered the world.
Before that moment he was a living soul in an immortal body. After that moment he was a dead soul in a dying body. If you’d been there that day, all you would have seen was a man taking fruit from his wife and eating it. No lightning or thunder, no bells, no scary music in the background. Yet from that one act of disobedience, terrible results flowed out across history.
Theologians call this event “The Fall.” It means that when Adam ate the fruit he fell from a state of innocence into a state of guilt. He fell from grace to judgment. He fell from life to death. He fell from heaven to hell.
In the King James Version of Romans 5:12 we are told that “by one man sin entered the world.” There’s no way to explain the world apart from the Fall. How do you explain terrorism or school shootings? “By one man sin entered the world.” How do you explain babies having babies? “By one man sin entered the world.” How do you explain racial hatred and ethnic violence? “By one man sin entered the world.” How do you explain rampant divorce and broken homes? “By one man sin entered the world.” Hatred, greed, violence, injustice, fraud, murder, senseless bloodshed—Where does it all come from? Why can’t we change human nature? The answer is simple: “By one man sin entered the world.”
So what does all this have to do with you and me? In some mysterious way, you were there and I was there. When Adam sinned, you sinned with him and so did I. This is what we call the doctrine of original sin. It means that when Adam sinned, you sinned. When Adam disobeyed, you disobeyed. When Adam fell, you fell. When he died, you died. To say it another way, although you and I were not historically there in the Garden, because we are descendents of Adam—in his family tree—we suffer the consequences of what he did.
Let me say it another way. Adam was the driver of the bus of humanity. When he drove the bus over the cliff, we went down with him. He was at the controls when the airplane crashed. It doesn’t matter that we were back in the coach section watching a movie on the big screen. When he crashed, we all went up in flames.
A few years ago the great tennis player, Arthur Ashe, died of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion during the days before doctors had good blood screening techniques. Somehow tainted blood was used during his surgery. He didn’t know it, the doctors didn’t know it, nobody intended for it to happen. But when that blood was pumped into Arthur Ashe, it contained the deadly AIDS virus. Nothing could be done about it. Eventually the disease he contracted through tainted blood took his life.
When Adam sinned, he tainted the human bloodstream. The virus of sin entered the human bloodstream, and as a result, every baby born into this world is tainted with the deadly sin virus. Every person is born with a tendency to do wrong. We’re all born with a sin nature.
Many people think God has some kind of divine voltmeter that registers Good, Neutral, and Evil. They think that by nature the needle that measures their soul is somewhere right in the middle—Not too bad, not too good, mostly just neutral. They aren’t the best, but they aren’t the worst either. But the Bible tells us that because of Adam’s sin you come into the world with the needle stuck firmly on “Evil.” Apart from the grace of God, that’s where the needle will stay as long as you live.
To say it another way, you’re not evil because you do evil. You do evil because you are evil. Your basic nature is corrupt and depraved. That’s your inheritance from Adam. You’re born living on the Wild Side. You’re born with a minus on your record. You turned the wrong way back in the Garden and all your life you’ve been going the wrong way.
It started with Adam but it didn’t end there. It continues in your life and in mine. Adam was the first sinner but he wasn’t the last. We follow in the footsteps of our forefather because we share his tainted blood.3. We all sin and our very nature is sinful. Sin has infected every part of our being—your mind, your emotions, your will, your intellect, your moral reasoning, your decision making, your words and your deeds. No part of your life is exempt from the debilitating effects of sin. As someone has said, “If sin were blue, we’d be blue all over.” Part would be dark blue, part would be sky blue, part would be light blue, but every part would be blue in one shade or another.
This leaves us with God’s solemn statement that “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10). As God looks down from heaven, He doesn’t see a single righteous person—not even one. But how can this be? How can God look down at nearly six billion people and not see even one person whose life pleases him? Is this not an overly-harsh judgment? The answer is that God judges according to a different standard than the one we use. Most of us grade on the curve. That is, we look to our neighbor and say, “Well, I’m not as bad as he is.” Or we compare ourselves with someone we know at work who makes us look good by comparison. But God doesn’t judge that way. When He looks down from heaven, the standard He uses is His own sinless perfection. He compares us to His own perfect holiness, His own perfect love, His own perfect wisdom, and His own perfect justice. Compared with God’s own perfection, there is no one, not even one person—who comes close to being righteous in His eyes.
Where then will you find a righteous person on the earth? In Brazil? No. In Cambodia? No. In Japan? No. In Turkey? No. In Israel? No. In America? No. Will you find a righteous person in Congress? You must be kidding! How about Hollywood? Forget it! Burlington? Sorry. Waterford? Not a one. Rochester? Nope. Is there anywhere in all the earth where we could find a truly righteous person? The answer is no. From God’s point of view there isn’t a single righteous person in the entire human race.
Let’s be honest and admit that even as we read these words, there’s something in us that resists this harsh conclusion. When God looks down from heaven, He sees a race of people who are “worthless” as far as redemption is concerned. We’re like a basket of fruit that has gone rotten in the hot summer sun. We have all “gone bad” in the eyes of God.
What’s the conclusion? There are no redeeming features in the human race. Not in the so-called “good person” nor in the evil law-breaker. From God’s standpoint, both are wholly corrupt.4. Sin is complicated and pervasive. What is sin? Sin is any violation of God’s righteous character. It’s anything we say or do or think or imagine or plan that does not meet God’s standard of perfection. The Bible uses several word pictures to describe sin. Sin is lawlessness. That means sin is anything that ignores or violates the standard God laid down in the Bible. Sin is missing the mark. Picture an archer shooting an arrow…and missing so badly that not only does he not hit the bull’s eye, he doesn’t even hit anywhere on the target. Sin causes us to aim our lives in the wrong direction and to miss the mark of what God wants us to do and to be. Sin is transgression. This has the idea of going beyond the limits of what God has said is good and proper. Sin is iniquity. This is a stronger word that means deliberately choosing to do wrong. Sin is deviation from the standard. This describes a crookedness of the soul that results in a life full of twisted choices, evil deeds, and broken relationships. Sin touches the inner ugliness of the soul. It involves our thoughts, our dreams, and our hidden motivations seen by no one else.
But God sees them all. So much takes place beneath the surface. We can hide from others, and even hide from ourselves, but we cannot hide from God. All things are laid bare before His all-seeing eyes.
5. Sin has deadly consequences. Where does all this leave us? I can sum up the biblical data this way. Because of sin we are…Lost—To be lost means to be in a position of great personal danger because you cannot find your way to safety. The unsaved are “lost” in precisely that sense. They are far from God and do not know where or how to find him.
Separated from God—Sin has created a great chasm between God and us. We were made to know God but our sin keeps us from him. We feel it and we know it is true. There’s a cloud between us, a mountain of sin rising up, and a deep chasm beneath us. This is why we are restless. Nothing on earth can satisfy our hunger for God. This is why we are seeking and searching and trying and striving.
Blind—Sin destroys our ability to see things clearly. We live in the darkness of sin and not even the tiniest ray of light breaks through to us.
Enslaved—Because of sin we are slaves to our own lusts. Even our heart has been corrupted. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that the heart is deceitful and wicked so that we cannot trust our own instincts. Left to ourselves, we repeatedly choose to do wrong. We are enslaved and we cannot set ourselves free! God says, “Thou shalt not” but we say “I shall” and then we hate ourselves afterwards. Why? We’re enslaved to sin. Sin masters us, rules us, dominates us. We are a people of high ideals and weak wills, of big dreams and small deeds, high hopes and low living.
Helpless—This is the logical end of it all. A person who is lost, separated, blind, dead, and enslaved is truly helpless. He is trapped with no hope within himself. Any help must come from somewhere else.
Dead—A dead person has eyes but cannot see, ears but cannot hear, lips but cannot speak, feet but cannot move. The spiritually dead have within them no ability to respond to God. Unless someone raises them to life, they can never know the God who made them. Turn to Eph. 2:1-3 (p. 827).
Paul goes even deeper in analyzing the condition of man apart from God. The problem is not just behavior or even thoughts, but our basic nature. Verse 3 states that they were “by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” When Adam sinned, the entire human race was plunged into sin (Rom. 5:12-21). This means that we’re not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are by nature sinners. We are born alienated from God, in rebellion against Him.
This is why unbelievers can’t exercise their “free will” to believe the gospel: they don’t have a nature that’s inclined toward God. They may dress up their old nature with good works, but it’s like dressing a pig in a tuxedo. He may look nice for a short while, but his nature will drive him back to wallowing in the muck. To change the pig, you’ve got to change his basic nature!
Those apart from Christ are “by nature children of wrath.” This expression means that they’re characterized by being under God’s holy wrath against sin. While modern man scoffs at the notion of God’s wrath, it’s a concept that occurs hundreds of times in the Bible, especially in the final book of the Bible, Revelation. It refers to God’s holy, settled hatred against all sin that will result in His final, eternal judgment against all sinners, casting them into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-15). John 3:36 states, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”6. There is a complete cure for sin and its consequences. Jesus' offering of Himself on the cross satisfied God's wrath for our sins. 1 John 2:2 says that He was our “atoning sacrifice for our sins.” The NIV translates it "atonement"; the RSV has "expiation." The KJV translates it “propitiation.” Atonement and expiation refer to the cancellation of sin, whereas propitiation refers to the turning away of God's wrath.
The Puritan, John Owen, pointed out that there are four elements in propitiation: (1) an offence or crime to be taken away; (2) a person offended, to be pacified or reconciled; (3) a person offending, to be pardoned; and, (4) a sacrifice or other means of making atonement.
This notion of God's wrath is not popular but it occurs over 600 times in the Bible. Jesus often spoke in frightful terms about the future judgment (Mark 9:48; Luke 16:19-31). The Apostle Paul spoke often of God's wrath (Rom. 1:18, plus nine other times in Romans). The Book of Revelation is filled with horrifying images of the wrath of the Lamb (6:16).
God's wrath is not an angry outburst, but rather His active, settled hatred and opposition to everything evil, arising out of His holy nature. The important point is that if we diminish the wrath of God against all sin, we also diminish the love of God for His people. What God's holy justice required, His love and mercy provided, in that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). As Philip Hughes exclaims, “Our hell He made His, that His heaven might be ours. Never was there such mercy, never such faithfulness, as this!" So we must hold firmly to the Biblical idea that Jesus became a man to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice that the wrath of God demands for our sins.Conclusion: Here’s the Bottom Line: You were born in sin—separated from God, fallen, corrupt, spiritually dead. You’re dying physically and dead spiritually. You’re responsible for every sin you’ve ever committed and you’re in big trouble. Unless Someone intervenes to help you, you can never be saved.
Jesus Christ is the only one who can take away your sin. During His ministry Jesus said He did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Did He mean that some people didn’t need to be saved? No, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He meant that only those who realize their sickness will get the help they need.
Friend, do you feel your need for God? Do you admit that you are sinner? Do you agree with God’s estimate of your desperate condition? If so, you are an excellent candidate for salvation. If you do not agree with what I’ve said, nothing else I say will matter one way or the other.
I have several good friends who are undergoing very difficult chemotherapy treatments for cancer. It’s a very unpleasant experience. I don’t know of anyone who takes chemotherapy for the fun of it. You take it because the doctor says, “If you don’t, you will die.” So you take it as the only available remedy. If sin is the cancer of the soul, then the Gospel is God’s divine remedy. In fact, it is the only remedy for sin.
Let’s wrap up this message with two thoughts:
1) We must face the truth about our own condition and our greatest need, until we do, we can never be saved.
2) Until we see how bad the bad news really is, we will never appreciate the Good News of the gospel. May God help us to see ourselves as we really are and may we flee to the Cross of Christ as our only hope of salvation.
Friend, have you fled to the Cross? If not, please run to the Cross today!
