No Excuse

If you have a Bible with you tonight, I'd like you to turn with me to the first book, please, the book of Genesis and chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3 and we'll look at verse number 9. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he, Adam, said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he, God, said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou should not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. The Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

Now let's turn to the book of Proverbs, please, chapter 5. Just read one verse from this Proverbs, this chapter of the Proverbs rather, verse 22. His own iniquity shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. And into the New Testament, please.

2 Corinthians, chapter 5. 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, and the last verse of the chapter, verse 21. For he, that is God, hath made him, his Son, the Lord Jesus, to be sin for us, who, that's referring to Christ, knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, in Christ. And we trust that God will bless what we have read together of his word tonight and what we've been considering of the truths of the Lord Jesus already from John's gospel.

I just want to take you back to a little over a year ago, March 2009. Our new president has taken office, and he is gathering with a number of others at an event where they were calling for reform in government contracting, quoting for contracts with the government. And President Obama said this, by any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.

In other words, his new government had inherited a mess physically from the previous government. Well, you can push the rewind button and go back eight more years, and you can put yourself in the crowd and you can be listening to the former president, George W. Bush. And this is what he said.

Mr. Bush pinned the lackluster economy that he had entered into on his predecessor, former President Bill Clinton, calling it the Clinton recession. And so goes on the blame game. I want to emphasize, particularly tonight, particularly as we look at Genesis chapter three, that that is an old game, trying to blame others for our circumstances.

There are, of course, occasions from time to time in our experience where there is a sufficient reason that someone else should take the blame for whatever our circumstances might be. I don't know everybody well here tonight, the most I have some familiarity with, but our society is infected with a thing that we call victimization. And that is where a person has developed in personality and character because of things that happened to them in the past, various abuses.

They may have been sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally, verbally abused. And it is deeply affected them. So they become a person that really has just marked by misbehavior in society.

So it's very easy for them just to pass it off. It's what was done to me that has made me what I am. And it's very difficult for a person of that mindset to ever learn their need of knowing they need a savior for the forgiveness of their sins.

I would have to tell you that tonight, that not only is that a desperate thing that such things happen to people, particularly when they're young and vulnerable and abused by people of authority and positions of authority. But I would have to tell you tonight, as far as I can tell, that that is a process that has been energized by the very enemy that we've been hearing tonight, that has been instigated by the man, by the person, the being, Satan himself, that hates the creature man made in the image and likeness of God. And if he can stir things up to such a stent in the society and have people so misused, if that's how he can get them and lose them because they never seem to be able, and I say never, God is able.

But they often find it difficult to think, I need a savior because of my sins, not because of what people have done to me. And that evil enemy has infested our society at great length. It's increasingly so because man, people that is in their wickedness are abusing others.

And that's just a tool to get souls into hell. Don't know where you're at tonight, what your situation, but we have to understand that sin has its consequences. And when we look at what we read in Genesis chapter three, the experience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and I hope you don't just dismiss this as some kind of myth that may have some moral benefit to instruction.

This is the root of your problem tonight, dear soul, my problem tonight, sin in us, that which distorts our thinking, that which distorts our behavior, that which takes us away from the living God in heaven, dead in sin, separated from him. This is where it started. But notice how it unfolded when Adam and his wife Eve had disobeyed God's one commandment that was given and the awful impact of guilt has, just as it were, exploded in their consciousness, and they're trying to hide themselves from God.

God comes out and says, Adam, where art thou? This is a demonstration of the wonderful nature and the very heart of the God of salvation. God comes seeking. God comes calling.

And perhaps this is unusual for you to be here tonight, or maybe it's a common thing for you to be in a gospel meeting. But every occasion that you have the opportunity to sit and listen to the word of God is not just your choice. There is a working in the circumstances of your life that are parallel to the very God in this garden who came out looking for his rebellious, sin-burdened and ruined man.

He wasn't going to leave Adam there. He wouldn't leave Adam and Eve in their despair. He came out looking.

And dear soul, tonight he's calling and looking for you. But what did they do? Soon as Adam realizes there's no hiding from God, he says, the woman that you gave me, she gave me of the tree, the fruit in that tree, and I did eat. Now my fault was her.

And God turns to her, to Eve. And this is the question, dear friend, we want you to particularly draw from this passage. What hast thou done? It's no longer the opportunity to pass it off as somebody else having influenced you or affected you in whatever way.

What have you done? That's God's question to Eve. And it's God's question to each one of us in this meeting tonight. What is it that you have done? And what does she say? The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.

It's not my fault, it's his fault. And that has been the program. That's been the game plan for generations to this present night.

Try to find somebody else to pass it off on. The question remains, withdraw it, lift it from this passage. We lift it here for you right now, friend.

What have you done? And I'm not putting myself in some pompous position here to, as it were, point fingers at those who are in the audience tonight, and to try and make you wiggle in your chair or whatever, because I know what it means to have been there. I know what it means to have had the sense of guilt of my own sins weighing deeply on me, and to know that I could not escape the all-seeing eye of God. The Bible tells us that all things are naked and open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

You can't get away from the seeing eyes of the God that has made us, to whom we are accountable, against whom is our sin. But the wonderful thing is, He comes calling. He comes calling.

But the question remains, what hast thou done? Sin has its consequences, both presently, but tonight what we're looking at and we're seeking to emphasize, eternally. It's not what my wife encouraged me to do. It's not what some other creature or person in my experience has affected me to do.

Friend, it's what you've done. You've sinned against God, and those sins must be forgiven. So when we look at what we read in Proverbs chapter 5, verse 22, it really just serves to emphasize what we learn in Genesis 3. The proverb writer said that his own iniquities, the one who has sinned, his sins shall take the wicked himself.

We will not be held accountable for any other individual's sin against God. Yes, we're affected by it. You may even say it's like collateral damage sometimes in life.

What people do and we might be just too close to the event and we fall into it. Even what Mr. Perkins has been telling us about tragedies in a nightclub. Somebody else did something that was very irresponsible.

Many perished as a result of it. But this proverb tells us his own iniquities, your own sins shall take the wicked. Take you yourself and you are holden by the cords of your sins.

It's like sin. It's like a boa constrictor. It's a constricting thing.

As we go on in life, persisting and following and pursuing a path of sin against God, whether we're conscious of it immediately or not. We do have a conscience internally. Book of Romans in chapter two tells us that it either accuses or excuses us as we endeavor to undertake certain behavior.

Be that as it may, sin begins just to get a hold of a person. He said sin has present consequences. And I learned something of that in my days of unbelief and rebellion against the gospel message and refusing to know Christ as Savior.

There were things that I chose to do in life and they were starting to catch up. There were things that were starting to happen that it's only the mercy of God that I was ever delivered and saved. But your sins, friend, hold you tonight.

Did we already hear or am I thinking of earlier in my own mind earlier today? When the Lord Jesus says that the person who sins is servant to sin, bond slave to sin, unable to deliver themselves from their sins. Friend, tonight you cannot escape the account of your own sins. To hold you and to pursue things in life without Christ and to ignore the God that loves you will find you increasingly held by those sins.

And nobody else will take account for them. Now, some, most of us, really all of us likely tonight will not be able to put ourselves into the shoes of this story. But let me just run the story by you and see how the underlying principle applies to you in the meeting tonight, perhaps.

Again, we go back a year. The man's name is Bernard Madoff. He's a 70 year old financier, a man who has been involved in consulting with people about financial investments.

Been working for years at this. People not understanding what they were involved in. And in the end, the thing blows wide open and it becomes evident that it's been a fraud.

And people have been milked of their life savings to great extent. Some medium income people, some very wealthy people. And so finally, standing in a courtroom, Mr. Madoff pleads guilty.

11 counts of felony security frauds. Pleads guilty. They open the door, click goes the jail door, the cell door, and he's behind bars.

Now the investigators, prosecutors involved in the case can't help but think there's other people involved in this. So they set about the task of trying to identify people. They even look at his wife, his brother, two sons, employees, many people.

Part of a scheme that turned into a $65 billion ripoff. But I want you to, I just want you to answer me a question, quietly in your own heart. For whose guilt is Mr. Madoff behind bars? The Bible tells us clearly.

The soul that has sinned, it shall be held with the cords of his own sins. Though there's very likely, I haven't heard anything in the news of late, how that whole scene is unfolding, how that case is concluding. But that man is not behind bars because perhaps his wife might have been involved, or one of his sons, or an employee, or some individual.

Somebody that we've heard about that was excellent in the software, in the programming of computers, and how that whole thing worked. They may have their part, but that man is behind bars because of what he has done. And there isn't one soul who will find themself lost in eternity.

Sin's not forgiven. To whom the Lord Jesus will ever call to their account something that somebody else has been guilty for. The soul that the proverb speaks of is held by the cords of their own sin.

Before we go to the reading in the New Testament, I'm just going to turn, still in the Old Testament, to the prophet Isaiah. And read these words. Isaiah 53, verse 5 says, But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And with his stripes we are healed.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity, or the sin, of us all.

Over 700 years before the birth and the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, that man in this world, those words were written. They are words that for generations have brought great confidence to those who have come to trust in God's word. Those words have been the very means where individuals have found and settled their heart with peace that when Christ died, he died for their sins.

But somebody in the meeting, maybe tonight, is saying, but there was no word. The name of Jesus wasn't mentioned. It doesn't say anything about Christ.

No, it doesn't. But they were words that a prophet, Isaiah, by the moving of the very Holy Spirit of God, as we said, over 700 years before the birth of Christ, was moved to write. As he looks, as it were, with the prophetic telescope through the years, the generation, through an age, to a time that is to come.

And what we read in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 is, as it were, built on the very truth of what Isaiah foretold those hundreds of years before. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. By his stripes we are healed.

He's wounded. He's bruised. Why? Because of our sins.

Those of us that are parents tonight, and if we're honest enough and we look back to our own childhood, we're very familiar with the expression, it isn't fair. You know, something's happened. And, you know, you're trying to straighten out who's done what and what the problem is, and somebody always comes out with that, it isn't fair.

Unfortunately, it's not little kids that say that anymore. We've got a culture that's full of it. People that march and run in the streets for whatever social injustice they think they have liberty to complain about, and all kinds of things happen, and the general theme of the cry is, it's not fair! Well, maybe sometimes it hasn't been.

But before the God of heaven and earth tonight, the God that provides salvation, I want to say something to you, dear soul, tonight, that comes from my heart as I read these things. It's not fair. Why should this man, why should Jesus of Nazareth, the compassionate one, the one who calls himself the good shepherd, why should he be made accountable for the sins that I had made against God? Why should he take upon him the judgment that I so rightly deserved in eternity separated from God? Why is he smitten in my place? It's not fair.

No. In a sense, from our perspective, it's not. But it's wonderful.

What a wonder this is. This is the love of the heart of God. This is the God that comes out calling for the rebel, for the rebellious, and unwilling to take the blame at him.

He'll take that sin, that Adam, that Eve, that they're accountable for. He takes my sin, for which I was accountable for. He takes the sin of the multitudes of people from that garden seen until this present night and makes his son accountable for man lost and ruined in sin.

What does the verse say again? God has made him, the Lord Jesus, his son, to be sin for us. This horrible invasion of the human nature that come about by one act of disobedience, God has made his son accountable for it. He has laid the whole weight of it on his son.

And there on the place called Calvary, on that cross, we can't measure this. Or we can read the hours of time that are involved. From the time he's crucified to the high noon, the third hour they crucify him.

And at the high noon there's a darkness that comes over. And then there's another three hours as the darkness persists. In those hours, God is dealing with his son because of our sin.

And then the Bible gets even more particular and it says, he bear our sins in his own body on the tree. And then Paul will say in the first letter of Corinthians, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. This was the prophet's words of old, and this was fulfilled in the man Jesus Christ when he was crucified at Calvary.

And I ask you tonight, dear soul, what about your sins? The Lord's words to Eve in the garden, What hast thou done? What about your sins? Are you bound by them yet tonight? Do you feel the snare and the constricting, ungiving power of sin on you? Will you stop for a moment and just glance from, as it were, this auditorium tonight in Waukesha and look into eternity and see what it's going to mean if you die in those sins. That you'll never be released from the accountability for them. But you will perish in the anguish and the torment of a place that is so foreign to all that God has purposed for his creature man that he loves.

And he has shown it without reserve by giving his son, making him accountable for our sin. He who knew no sin. There was no measure of sin in any form to be seen related to Christ.

There was none in his person. He was sinless. He did no sin.

He never spoke a word that was out of place. There was nothing of sin. And that he is made sin and he dies for our sins.

It's not fair, but he did it. And I am thankful tonight. I can look back to the night as a young man, 21 years old, as I sat in my bed in the bedroom in the old farmhouse where I was raised back in Canada, the city of Sarnia, Ontario, and just coming to that conclusion, Christ died for me.

Yes, it's so simple. It's so profound. And truly eternal.

You say, what is eternal life? What's it mean to have everlasting life? It means to have Christ. That eternal life which was with the Father has been made manifest to mankind. Having Christ, you have eternal life.

You have no Christ. Your sin's not forgiven. You don't have eternal life.

And as it says here, those that have received him have been made the righteousness of God in him. They have something that makes them acceptable in the holy presence of God. Without Christ, you have no standing before.

I'm going to turn and read from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation in chapter 20. A couple of comments and the meeting will be concluded. Revelation chapter 20.

We'll read two verses, 11 and 12. It says, I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead small and great stand before God and the books were open and another book was open, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. Dear soul, tonight, if your sins are not forgiven, if you persist and to hold on to some sense of self-righteousness and whatever flavor or what color it might be, whatever dimension of from white to black, self-righteousness is the damning tool of many. Those sins are never forgiven.

This will be your portion to stand before what is called the great white throne. And God, in due course of justice, will open the books and he will turn to a book that refers to you and the record of sin, of disobedience, of rejection, of outright rebellion, all recorded in the book because the book that he reads concerning you, it says that he can justly judge according to their works. Each individual.

Not accountable for somebody else. And there'll be no room here to be saying, the woman you gave me, the serpent beguiled. There'll be no blame game left at the great white throne when God judges.

But with due course of justice, he will go through the books. And friend, you will be held accountable for your sins. And unforgiven, be made separate for eternity, separated from God for eternity, lost in your sin.

That's why God made his son to be sin. That's why Christ died for us, the Bible says, for our sins. That you might know the forgiveness of sins, a deliverance, a redemption paid, a price to release you, all accountability removed, and to stand with a righteous position before God.

Nothing to boast in. Nothing of self to offer, but to say, I was a guilty sinner, but Jesus died for me. That's my only hope, and I need nothing more.

I trust you'll come to him tonight. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank Thee for such a gospel message.

Like the Apostle Paul, many of us tonight would echo his words when we think on it and say, the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me. This is our great hope and certainty. Thank Thee that not only did Christ die for sins, but he was buried and rose again from the dead to ascend up to heaven, to sit at Thy right hand.

And from that place, we expect him. For he said he will return to take us, to be with himself as we heard earlier today. And we expect to hear his call.

But, O God, we pray for those tonight that perhaps have heard the call of God's voice. The Word of God has spoken to their hearts. We pray, Father, that they might just confess before Thee in the quiet of their own spirit that they're a lost, guilty sinner.

They cannot deliver themselves. They need a Savior. And turn to the Savior who has said that to all that come to Him, He will most certainly receive.

None He would turn away. For this, we give thanks and we pray Thy blessing in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.