-T’Naya Edwards
I believe God would have it that we would continue our word study in this teaching time together given the overarching theme of sin in our homework for the last two weeks. However, I will not be spending much time defining sin but rather, we will be looking at it’s effects.
Kandice did a phenomenal job talking about the Fall during our Faith Group time as we are journeying through the Story of Scripture. You certainly can’t go anywhere in the rest of scripture without covering Chapter Three of Genesis in the Bible now can you? It is there that we find the first sin of all of humanity. If you weren’t with us for that lesson, I HIGHLY recommend you click here and read her teaching as it is very informative and insightful and she hashes our more of just what took place in the Garden with Adam and Eve.
As we learn from the Garden account, we know that ultimately sin causes both a physical and spiritual death and sin causes separation from God. Romans 6:23 says “the wages of sin is death” and Isaiah 59:2 says ' but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.' In the garden we see this played out by God killing an animal to clothe Adam and Eve which was the very first death in all of creation, and we know that because they ate of the tree they would surely die just as God had said. While their physical death wasn’t immediate, it was sure to come as they just saw played out with the animal that died for them, but their spiritual death took place immediately. It was then by faith in God alone that they could be justified before Him.
Here is the definition of sin as it comes from the New testament greek-
Sin- Greek “hamartia”
to be without a share in
to miss the mark
to err, be mistaken
to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour, to do or go wrong
to wander from the law of God, violate God's law, sin
To sin is to miss the mark that God requires. In the Garden, Adam and Eve had one commandment of which they were not to do, and that was to not eat the fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We know they failed to follow this command- they missed the mark, they wandered from the path of uprightness and God’s law, they did wrong- and this is where we learn of the effects of sin.
My first point is that our personal sin ALWAYS has an effect on those around us.
In the Garden we see the first effect of sin from Eve being deceived which then transferred to Adam. In our homework we saw sin devastate the surrounding people in David’s life. Because of his choices, countless people were affected. Uriah lost his wife(albeit unknowingly) then his own life. Uriah’s parents lost a son. Israel lost several valiant soldiers in order to fulfill the death sentence of one man. Bathsheba lost everything; she lost her life as she knew it, her dignity, her child. We are told in 2 Samuel 11:27b, that what David had done displeased the Lord, better translated to say what he had done was evil in the sight of the Lord. What was evil only took root and spread.
When the LORD speaks to David through the prophet Nathan, and reveals that David is indeed is the villain in the parable in 12:1-5, God goes on to address David directly saying..
“I anointed you King, delivered you from your enemies, gave you everything, and now you HAVE DESPISED THE WORD OF THE LORD AND DONE WHAT IS EVIL IN MY SIGHT. YOU HAVE DESPISED ME.” (This is my paraphrase)
David sinned first and foremost against God. We are commanded to LOVE the LORD with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. In this moment David despised the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, and all his strength, therefore he also despised his neighbor-and sinned against them as well.
Take a moment to think of just how your sin affects those around you. For example- I really love Georgina’s style and her clothes. Then my mind starts to veer and think about how I don’t have good style or money to buy nice clothes...but Georgina does, which only leads me to think, “if only I had what Georgina had”, birthing jealousy, which is a….SIN.
But my jealousy doesn’t stop there in my thought space, it then makes its way out into the way I now talk to Georgina or my body language toward her. She knows something is up, which then could lead her to question why in the world I am now being passive aggressive and petty which could lead into making her defensive or even questioning what she did to me creating her own inner turmoil or insecurities.
We saw this play out between David and Michal a couple of weeks ago in our homework when she said, “Well, well, well how the King honored himself today…” Michal already had strife in her heart towards David(rightfully so) and it came out in her sarcasm directed at him as he returned home from worshipping in the streets before the Lord.
Jen Wilkin stated in her teaching on this lesson that sarcasm is always an expression of anger, and that we should take a moment to analyze that in our lives when it comes up. If I am honest I have taken note since that lesson, and it’s true. Whether it’s coming from a small irritation or a large one, the root of my sarcasm almost always is from a place of my own angry heart condition, which then makes its way out of my mouth and all over the person I’m directing it at masked in humor.
After denouncing the Pharisees for their hypocrisy Jesus says in Luke 12:2-3 He said to His disciples ““Be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing covered that won’t be uncovered, nothing hidden that won’t be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in an ear in private rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.”” While Jesus was dealing directly with hypocrisy, this teaching can be true of all of our sins.
Jesus says that sin is like leaven, or yeast. Once a lit bit enters dough the entire batch is affected. It spreads and there is no taking it back or picking it out. Our sin does the same thing. When we send it out into the world it has a domino effect on all who are near to us. The key component to most of our sin is concealment. We know what we are doing is wrong, and so we try and hide it away, and do it in secret. But Luke 12:3 makes it clear all of our sin WILL be brought to the light, one way or another. We can do as David did and when the LORD confronts us and illuminates our dark places, and confess and repent. David takes ownership of his actions confessing before Nathan in 2 Samuel 12:13 and says, “I have sinned against the LORD.”
The second point I want to make is that our sin has a generational effect on our families.
It is important to understand that our sin nature does indeed come directly from Adam. Romans 5:18&19 says that “one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, and as by the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” It is in our very nature when we enter the scene as helpless babes to sin.
So as we raise our children, as they watch with little impressionable eyes, we are teaching them and molding them showing them how to live. It is our job to teach them to CHOOSE to love God and to CHOOSE to love our neighbor. When we don’t we can look back through the generations and see clear as day which aona have been “passed down”. This isn’t only true of our children but of anyone watching us. We are supposed to look like Jesus to the world so they can can see His love. What a mess we make of His name when we are everything but his reflection.
This generational effect is made very evident through David and his children. Amnon was a despicable, godless, perverted, disgrace, not treating women any better than how he learned from his father.
Absalom was a fool led astray by his father’s “everything goes” style of parenting. David's own daughter, Tamar, was completely ruined by her father’s sin through what he passed on to his son.
SIN IS DEATH wreaking havoc wherever it goes just as the enemy would have it. But we have a CHOICE. We get to choose God. We get to CHOOSE to embrace our freedom in Christ and break the chain of sin throughout our family lines and CHOOSE to raise our children differently.
And it’s never too late. Maybe your children are grown. You still get to lead by example. You can go before them and confess when you went wrong, and explain that you are CHOOSING LIFE now.
‘The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is life in Christ.’ (Romans 6:23)
The life He offers is a life of FREEDOM, so 'stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. ' (Galatians 5:1)
The power of God within you is able to break every chain of sin that has you bound so that you can live a life that glorifies Him to each and every person you come into contact with. But it starts with willingly bringing it all into the light.
So take some time now and do just that.
Read and meditate on Psalm 51 and ask Hid to expose your dark places that need His cleansing light. Then confess. Repent. Be transformed.