Eroding and Drifting of Morals

In Jesus' name, amen. You know, yesterday we were anticipating to see what would come of the election, and you know, for the last 7 or 8 years, the NDP government has set us on a course, and there are certain things that we like. We like no tolls, and we like, you know, free medical, and we like some of these things.

But with all that comes an agenda, and with that agenda, they've really pushed this thing called SOGI, and they are putting people into place, the school board, to educate our small children about things that little children should know nothing about. And so, because maybe something is good for our pockets, you know, then we say, well, you know, financially I benefit more from the social programs, or the child care benefits benefit me more. So it's worth it to me, you know, on that regard, because it helps me today, but we don't see how it's going to affect our children tomorrow.

And this is where we need godly wisdom. We don't understand what is right and what is wrong anymore. We don't understand what is black and what is white, because over time, our morals have eroded.

You know, we had a big rainstorm the last couple of days, and I walked around the pond and I seen where it was overflowing on one of the drains, one of the inlets, and it had eroded the soil away and washed it away, and there's quite a bit of a hole over there. And that's what happens in a society when the church is no longer doing its job to proclaim the truth of the scriptures, the gospel gets muddied and watered down so that people don't know what right and wrong is anymore, because we don't want to offend anybody, even the churches become political, in the sense where, you know, they bring some good things, but they also allow a lot of other things, and next thing you know, what do you really have? You have the world in the church, and you have a gospel, which is lukewarm at best, and there's no power there, and so it becomes no different than a country club or a social club. It becomes like any other good outfit that does some good things, and has some good programs for our children to participate in.

And nobody stands up for truth, and nobody has a backbone, because they don't want to ostracize anybody, they don't want to lose money that might come into their coffers or into the money bag for the salaries and for the expenses of the place. And this is how a society drifts off into darkness, until the Lord sends all kinds of things to wake us up, and bring us back to our knees and to repentance. You know, when we were young, they were starting to remove prayer from schools, and in removing prayer from schools, they began to teach us that we came from monkeys.

You know, at the time, it was like, our parents would tell us, no, you didn't come from monkeys, God created us, and it was that way in the beginning. And it was just total foolishness that somehow we evolved, and we came from some thing, and now all of a sudden, from the monkeys, here we are. And so many things the government is infiltrating our minds and corrupting us, where young boys will come home and wonder if maybe they're girls, or young girls will think maybe they're boys, or maybe they're cats, or maybe they're some animal.

This is total confusion on a society. Where are the godly men and women who will stand up for truth, and say, you know what, something's not right, and something has to be done. Well, what has to be done? The people who are Christians, if they're called by his name, we have to humble ourselves and start to pray, and start to seek God's face, and turn from the compromise in our life, wicked ways, and then God will hear our prayers, he'll not only forgive our sins, but he'll heal our land.

When I was young and growing up, there were evangelists that would go throughout the states in Canada, guys like Billy Graham, they would have at BC Place, they would pack out the stadium, and thousands would go forward to get their hearts right with the Lord, because they had gone astray and making bad choices. But these things don't happen anymore. When I was growing up, there used to be tent meetings that would come, and different evangelists would come, and people would come, and when I would go to school, I went to a Christian school in high school, and they would have a week called Spiritual Emphasis, where people would get right with the Lord, and they would bring in special guest speakers, and even in our churches, they would have these kind of things.

We've gone away from all that, and now we accept all kinds of things as truth. I'm not talking about not accepting people, I'm talking about not accepting God's word as truth, and preaching it for what it is. There's all kinds of different ideas out there, and they're not rooted in truth.

You know, according to the word of God, in the beginning, God created, and that's what we teach our children, and that's what we believe. There was darkness, and he created light. There was light, he separated light from darkness, and then he created the moon and the sun, even after there was light from darkness, because God himself is light.

And then, on the sixth day, he created man, and he had the animals there, they named all the animals, and he saw it was good for man not to be alone, and so he put him into a deep sleep, and he took a rib from his side, and he created the woman from the man. Adam was formed from the dust, and God breathed into his nostrils, and he became a living being. And God had intended that man would live forever, but like the angels who lost their choice, who lost their, they had a free will at one time, they lost their free will when they had to choose between light and darkness, so man had to be given a choice.

And God gave Adam a choice, and he gave him his wife, Eve, and they were in the garden of Eden at that time, all the trees that he had created were good for food, there was a tree of life in the midst of the garden, and there was also a choice, a tree of knowledge of good and evil. And God told them one commandment, they had one commandment, one rule, you can eat from every tree, you can do whatever you want, but don't eat from this one tree, because the day you eat of it, you'll die. Well, in the process of time, there was a serpent that came, and in that time, the serpent obviously spoke, spoke to the woman, and she was deceived, she took of the fruit and she ate.

Now, she brings the fruit to her husband, and the husband gets to choose between the woman who sinned against the Lord, or God, who said the day you eat of it, you shall die. And that's why it's never referred to as the sin of Eve, it's always referred to as the sin of Adam, because Adam made a decision to side with what the woman did, and he took of the fruit and he ate. And when they ate, they knew they were naked.

They had been naked all along, but there was no shame in nakedness. But now, they were guilty. And when God came to walk with Adam, as he did every day in the cool of the day, to go walk with his friend, because God has a desire to be a friend to us, there was Adam and his wife hiding from God, the very one who created them, who loves them, who formed them, who blessed them with all things richly to enjoy, hiding from God.

This is what sin does, my friends. Sin separates us from God. God is looking for us, and we are hiding from Him.

We don't want to go to places where we are going to be made to feel uncomfortable. We don't want to go to places where we are held responsible for things that we've done that we shouldn't have done. Because then we have to acknowledge that we sinned.

We have to acknowledge that we've done things that are not right. And in doing these things, there must be humility. Humility is together with repentance.

When I meet someone, maybe someone up at the creek or at one of the treatment centers where we go, and I say, well, what brought you here? Well, quite often it's like, you know, you don't know how I was raised. You know, we start blaming our dad or grandfather or, you know, how I was abused, and all these things. And these things probably happened.

But rarely do you hear a person say, you know, I made bad choices in my life, and I did things that were wrong and sinful. You know, because when you can acknowledge that you have sinned against heaven and against God, God can help you. But if you blame everybody else, what help can you receive? God comes and says, Adam, where are you? And he says, well, we're here.

And he says, why are you hiding from me? Well, we're naked. Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you guys not to eat from? Adam says, yes, I ate from it. The woman that you gave me, she gave to me, and I ate.

The blame game starts. You see, God, really, it's your fault, because you gave me this woman, and this woman went and ate from that tree, and she gave it to me, and I ate. God, it's your fault.

And it's this woman's fault that you gave me. There's no repentance there. And then God speaks to the woman and says, what did you do? He says, the serpent convinced me that it was good for me to eat it.

And I listened to the serpent, and I took it, and I ate. He blames the serpent, the snake. Everybody's blaming somebody.

You want to know something? If we blame people for the way that we are and for the consequences that we're enduring, we're never going to find freedom in our life. You have to own it. Yes, there's a lot of things out there that have shaped our character, and a lot of people have done us things that are wrong and have been hurtful, and we have to let go of those grudges and all that and forgive people.

But we have a responsibility to take ownership of our sin. And let's not call them mistakes. Let's call them sin, because that's what they are.

Adam and Eve sinned against God, and each one of them had consequences, and ultimately God had said that the day that you eat of it, you're going to die. But naturally, they didn't die. So did God lie? You see, many times we don't understand these things, because we think in terms of natural.

But sin separated them from God, and so they were put out of the garden. They were put out of the garden, and then Adam had to work by the sweat of his brow to provide for himself and for his family. And this is part of the way that the curse spread to the ground, and the weeds would come, and it would be hard for us.

Guys, that's why we got to get up at 5 or 5.30 in the morning, and we got to drive and commute, and we try to find the best jobs we can, and we try to do everything we can, but life is hard. It's part of the fall. It happened way back in the beginning.

And that nature that happened to spread to Adam, that rebellious nature spread to his sons, Cain and Abel. In the process of time, Cain killed his brother Abel, because he was envious and jealous of him. Envy and jealousy is not from God, my friends.

And that spread to all men, and so it spread to us. And so even you can have a small, beautiful child, but you know what? They sit in their high chair, and they laugh at you, and they take their food, or they spit it on the floor, or they throw it, and they have a good laugh, because it's in their heart. Beautiful and innocent, yet rebellion is in their heart, because it came from you.

It came from me. Because it came from Adam. And so there's something that we need to acknowledge first, and we need something to overcome the gravity of this nature that's within us.

I often say when we go to the treatment center that rules are meant to be broken. So you know people give you rules, and we try to bend the rules, and we try to manipulate the rules to suit ourselves. And the whole Old Testament is filled with rules.

And the more people tried to keep the rules, the more they found they were breaking the rules, even if they had the best intentions. So God saw it necessary that there would be a new covenant, a new way of doing things. There was an old way of doing things, by giving people rules to try to control their rebellion that's inside of them.

And there were sincere people who really honestly tried. And God saw that, that they were putting a good effort in, but not one of them was acceptable to God by their own efforts. And so in Adam, death spread to them.

And when I say the day you eat of it you'll die, sin separates from God, and so even though they were naturally alive, inside they became dead. See we are made up of three part persons. We have a spirit that's going to live forever, one place or another.

We have a soul which feels just like animals have souls. An animal can sense if you're fearful. You can sense, they can sense if you're happy.

Same thing with little children, they can sense if we're fearful or if we're happy. And we have these senses to feel, to understand, to reason. You know the soul is made up of our minds and our will, we have a will, and our emotions.

And our soul needs saving, and that is what was alive. God breathed on him, became a living being. His spirit and his soul and his body were alive.

Now our body is that carton which is not the real you. It's the carton in which we carry in this lifetime, and it starts off as a young babe and it ends up at best old and wrinkly, and one day we pass and it goes into a box. But that's not the real you.

The real you is on the inside. And God intended that we would live forever. But because sin came into the world, and death through sin, through the sin of Adam and Eve, it spread to us.

And so we are born dead in trespasses and sins, it says in Ephesians chapter 2. But when we get born again, when we ask Christ to take control of our life, when we invite God back into our life, and we humble ourselves and we say, we've sinned against you, we've done things that are not right, and we take ownership of it and we ask you for forgiveness. This is the new covenant way of doing things. Asking for forgiveness, because we know that of ourselves, in us, dwells no good thing.

But we've tried to do good, to outweigh the bad, to ease our consciences. But when we repent and we turn to the Lord, then we get a good conscience before God. That's how you know that you're in right relationship with Jesus.

Your conscience is right with God. If your conscience is guilty, a lot of people deal with their guilty consciences different ways. I remember when I had a guilty conscience before I was drinking heavily and all that, I went to the doctor and I asked him for depression pills, for anti-anxiety stuff.

I was anxious. I was struggling internally. I was feeling the weight of my sin, but I thought it was an external thing because of the pressure and the stress I was under.

I couldn't cope with it. But you see, the Word of God says, cast all your anxieties and your cares upon Him because He cares for you. I was not in right relationship with God.

So I was looking to deal with the symptoms with medication. Well, when the doctor told me that I didn't need medication because my life was very good, he sent me home. I was upset.

So I went and I bought a bottle and I started to drink because that was a way that I was able to deal with all that anxiety and all the weight of my sin. But then in the morning, it was back again. And so people find vices.

They bury themselves in things and hobbies. They try to do good works to try to ease their consciences and tell themselves that they're good, but it never lasts. And so we have someone who came and dealt with the sin issue in what Brother Dan began to share about.

Born of the Virgin Mary, God sent His own Son to save. And He is referred to as the second Adam or as the last Adam. So in Adam all die, but in Jesus Christ, all shall be made alive.

Whoever believes in Him, all shall be made righteous because of what He did. So through one sin that Adam did, it says death spread to all of us through this nature. But through one righteous act and what Jesus did in offering Himself as God's Lamb, many shall be made righteous.

Now let's explain. The wages of sin is death. Death is what separates us from God who is life.

God is light, right? And we do stuff in darkness. But when we turn to the Lord, we start to bring our dark things to the light. And the Bible calls it confession.

You don't have to go to a priest, but he says if we confess our sins one to another, you find someone who you respect as desiring to follow God. And you open up your heart and you start saying, you know, I'm struggling with these things. These are the sins of my life and I want to ask God for forgiveness.

Maybe you pray together and all of a sudden you have peace with God. Something happened. Your conscience becomes clean.

Let me explain to you briefly what is going on there with this having a clean conscience or a good conscience before God. That's how you know that you're justified by the blood of Jesus. And what is this blood of Jesus and all that? Well, let's explain it.

In Adam all died. But then there was a need for the sin of Adam and all the sins of everyone who had been born that they had committed to be atoned for. Now, in the Old Testament, God said that they needed to bring an animal.

If you were poor, you bring a bird. If you were middle class, you would bring maybe a goat or a sheep. That was the best you could buy without spot, not blind or lame or crippled.

A good sacrifice, something that would cost you something. You would bring it to the priest in those days, the Jewish priests who were set up for that. And they would make a sacrifice for the people to atone for their sin.

But every year they had to bring a sacrifice. And every year there's a reminder that you're not a good person and you keep doing all these sins. And you have to pay a price for it.

But you know, when Jesus came in the middle of the week, he put an end to sacrifices for sins. Right? By the sacrifice of himself. And this is what happened.

We can say between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, this is the middle of the week. Jesus is the one who atones for sin. Through the offering of one perfect sacrifice, he has perfected forever those of us who are being set apart, sanctified.

Who have a desire to continually follow the Lord. So we keep short accounts with God now. We ask for forgiveness if we make offenses.

Sometimes our consciences bother us. That's called conviction. After you're right with the Lord and all of a sudden you said something.

You said a funny or you laughed at something filthy or you walked something filthy or you listened. And then you get conviction and you turn from it. And you confess it to the Lord.

You confess it to someone perhaps. You know, if you did something wrong to someone. Right? And this is how we keep in good standing before God.

It's called repentance. So Jesus was born of a virgin. Virgin Mary.

Born into the world. And he was raised and lived the perfect life. He never sinned once.

He became God's lamb. So that there are no longer going to be sacrifices for sins anymore. Animal sacrifices.

Jesus becomes God's sacrifice. And so in the process of time it became necessary for him to understand the will of God. And in understanding the will of God.

He willingly submitted his will. His mind and his emotions to the will of his father. And he had a cross to bear.

The father revealed it to him. Spoke to him. And he picked up his cross.

This is what Easter is all about. He picked up his cross. And he was beaten and bruised for our transgressions and our sins.

And our sins were laid on him. And he carried that cross up Golgotha's hill. And he willingly allowed them to put him on that cross.

And he became the scapegoat. He became God's lamb. Who took the punishment and the weight of our sin.

So that we could go free. See at that time they had three men they were going to crucify that day. And then when Pilate was trying to let Jesus go.

Because his wife had had a dream and said it had nothing to do with this innocent man. He tried to let him go back to the people. And the Jewish people started to shout crucify him, crucify him.

And he said who do you want me to release to you? And they said give us Barabbas. He was a thief and a rebellious leader. Who raised a rebellion.

And finally he washed his hands. And he released to them Barabbas. And they arrested Jesus.

Barabbas is a picture of you and me. A rebellious person. Who is rebellious through and through into the core.

And deserves to be punished and killed for his sins. He was released. And Jesus took his place.

And so what we see is that. Jesus becomes the sacrifice to deal with the sin issue. So that whoever believes in him.

John 3.16 should not perish but have everlasting life. It says in John 17. God did not send his son Jesus into the world to condemn the world.

But that the world through faith in him might be saved. But this is the condemnation John 3.18. That light has come into the world and men love darkness. Just like Adam and Eve were hiding in the darkness.

Because their deeds were evil. They sinned against God. They won't come to the light.

But when we come and we accept Christ. Then we need to bring all things to the light. And that's what the Holy Spirit does.

Leads us to walk in the light as he is in the light. That's when you and Jesus have fellowship. But if we say that we have fellowship with him.

But we keep walking in darkness. And practicing the old ways. We are not sincere.

We lie and we don't practice the truth. Now sometimes we may sin. If we sin.

It says in 1 John 2.1. We have an advocate with the father. Our advocate is Jesus himself. Who is seated at the right hand of the power.

But you know what? He has not left us alone. He has not left us as orphans. He said he would come to us.

And what he did is he sent the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 2. They were waiting for the Holy Spirit to come. The spirit of the father and the son comes.

And indwells us through faith in Christ. And empowers us that we might be new creations. So he says if any man is in Christ.

You become a new creation. Old things are passing away. Because it's a process and a journey.

And everything is becoming new. But being born again. It happens in an hour.

But then what happens is. There is a change of direction. Because there is a change of heart.

He says in Ezekiel 36. That he will take our heart of stone. He will take a heart of stone out of us.

And he will give us a heart that can feel. You know sometimes. I remember a time in my life when.

I used to have conviction for stealing. For lying. For all kinds of things.

But then I came to a place. Where I had just justified my actions. And my heart became hard.

And just like I had some surgeries. For a ruptured appendix. On the incision I have absolutely no feeling.

But if I do some harm. Or I get cut there or something. Just because I can't feel it.

It doesn't mean that it's not hurting me. And just because I don't have conviction about stealing. I don't have conviction about the things that I look at.

Or the things that I laugh at. It doesn't make it right. And so as I begin to follow Christ.

He gives me a new heart that can feel. And a new spirit. That has a desire to please God.

And he's restoring us back to that image. That Adam had before he fell. The journey of reconciliation back to God.

This is what it means to be born again. Not of corruptible seed. What is corruptible seed? You know we think of putting seed into the garden.

It's spring time. You know we're planting for our family. And we have a little plot there.

We go and we get different seeds. Some carrots, maybe some onions, some garlic. We get some bulbs and things.

And some peas and beans. And potatoes and tomatoes. We had some.

Our daughter Katie she loves these things. You look at the package. And you have a picture on it.

And you look at the seed. And you say this is what's going to come out. And the one that goes into the ground.

That little tiny seed. Is not the one that comes out of the ground. So when someone calls himself a Christian.

And they say that they were buried with him in baptism. And to death. But they've never changed a nothing.

They've not experienced the life that's in Christ. They're still dead in their trespasses and sins. Maybe the seed went to the ground.

And a bird ate it. Maybe the seed went in the ground. And it didn't die.

Maybe it didn't go deep enough. You know we're having baptism. I believe next Sunday.

You know when I told Gerson. I said I'm going to hold him down just a little bit longer. Make sure the old Gerson's dead.

When we plant a seed. You want to make sure it goes into the ground and dies. Because when it comes out.

It can't be the same partying. Person that I once was. Can't be the same.

Angry brother that I once was. Can't be the same filthy person. The same drunk.

The same drug addict. Loving filthy things. If there's no change.

Then there's no conversion. Doesn't matter how many months and years you sit in church. Doesn't matter how much money you put in the box.

To God it's a zero. The evidence of life. Is the power.

Of the Holy Spirit in your life. Is a change. And it's not perfection at once.

When June comes around. We see the blades coming out. And they all look different.

But I'll tell you the common denominator of all of them. Is they're green. When they went into the ground.

They went in a natural body. A little seed. But when they came out of the ground.

They came up like a spiritual body. Totally different looking. You know it was sown in weakness.

But it's raised with life. And this is what it means to be born again. A new creation.

He'll take a heart of stone out of us. And he'll put a heart that can feel. A heart of flesh in us.

And then you know what happened to me. Is I got light on how I had behaved. And how I had manipulated.

How many evil things I had done. And how much he forgave me for. When he had no business forgiving me.

My sins. And I just would cry. And then I would feel waves of his love.

And I would experience the love of God. Which surpassed the knowledge. Because I knew I was deserving of punishment.

But he was giving me another chance. To not take it for granted. Not to take it lightly.

And in the process of time. You're not getting peas in the first week. Out of that blade that comes.

First the blade. You're not getting corn. Right.

Then comes the ear. The ear starts to form. And then the corn has to form in the ear.

In the same way as a Christian. You're not going to be full of patience. And kindness.

And gentleness. And self-control all at once. But there will be something starting to form there.

But in the process of the journey. You are going to become a sweet person. Rather than a sour.

Bitter. Angry person. And this is the hope that we have.

That if we continue to be faithful. And follow the Lord. And walk with him.

And ask forgiveness when we fall short. That we will become. The beautiful.

Recreation of Adam. In Christ Jesus. Prepared for good works.

May the Lord give us understanding of these things. We don't have to know how they can happen. I don't know how.

When a seed goes in it comes out alive. I don't know the mystery of how that works. But I know that inside that seed.

That goes into the ground. And it says we were buried with Christ. In baptism into death.

There is a seed in Christ. That when I am joined with Christ. That seed in me.

Is going to bring forth a change. And that change. Is going to bring forth good fruit.

From the spirit of God. Which dwells in me through faith. Faith is the mystery.

And it is the victory. That overcomes the way. That we have been held down by the gravity of life.

To rise above. The forces of evil that push us down. To become new men in Christ.

New women in Christ. Behold old things. Have passed away.

And everything is becoming new. And it is not about. I am not perfect yet.

But what direction are you facing? You were dead in trespasses and sins. But you had a change of direction. You repented.

And you are following Jesus now. No turning back. He made us alive together with Christ.

And he seeded us together with him. He is in us. And we are in him.

This is a mystery. It says we shall not all sleep. But we shall all be changed in a moment.

In a twinkling of an eye. At the last trumpet. When Christ returns.

And the dead shall be raised incorruptible. And we shall be changed. Brother.

Sister. Has your change come? Or you have still need of repentance? Repent. And be converted.

That's what the exhortation is. That's what the word is. So times of refreshing can come from the Lord.

So he can take the weight of your sin. So we don't need those vices. To try to cope.

With the true problem which is the root. Let Christ. Who already paid the penalty for our sin.

Take our sins. He doesn't cover them like the blood of bulls and goats. In a reminder every year.

There's a taking away of the sin. So that we can have peace with God. Ask the Lord Jesus to fill your life.

And. Ask him to open up the scriptures. So you can understand his word.

Because the word of God is. Has the genes. Has the DNA in it.

To cause us to become like Christ. Because Jesus is the word of God. Not just letters on a page.

But the living word. He sent his word to heal us. His word is truth.

Ask him to help you. And he will. Let's pray.

Father in heaven. Grateful for your son and your sacrifice Jesus. Lord I just pray for forgiveness.

Where we've sinned and fallen short of your high expectation. We have Lord. But we ask for more.

We have need of you every day. We need you every hour. Have mercy on us.

Breathe on us brother of God. Send your Holy Spirit. Surround us with your love.

Fill us with your grace and truth. You are full of grace and truth Jesus. I pray that you would help us.

To walk in a way that is pleasing to you. With your help and your power. In Jesus name.

Amen.