This I Believe: I Have Chosen To Be A Sinner

 Jeff Strite

OPEN: (We opened with a Dorito’s commercial that has Eve attempting to share the forbidden fruit with Adam and he rejects her offer – holding up a Dorito’s Bag and saying “I’m good.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHSjpezHHcw)

Now, I liked that.
Not only was it humorous… but it a great point.

The point?
Adam and Eve had a choice.
They didn’t have to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But God gave them ability to make that choice if they wanted to.

They had a choice.
Granted, there weren’t any Doritos to eat in the Garden but there were plenty of other really good things to eat. Genesis 2:9 says “the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground— trees that were PLEASING to the eye and GOOD for food."

So, it wasn’t like they were hungry, or that there wasn’t anything as good. God had given them the gift of a wonderful garden filled with delicious food.

But the Garden and its fruit weren’t the only gifts God supplied to them when He created them. God also gave Adam and Eve something more precious and valuable. God gave them the gift of “Freedom to Choose”.
Adam and Eve could choose to do good.
Or they could choose to do evil.

God didn’t make them to be like dumb cattle out in the field. He didn’t make them robots who were programmed to act and speak and think in a given way. God essentially made them equal partners in this new world He’d created, and in order to prepare them for that task, He trusted them with a Free Will. A free will that made it possible for them to make good choices… or bad.

The Bible repeatedly stresses that God has given all of us a free will. We ALL have been allowed by God can make free choices. But the Bible also repeatedly stresses the fact that God expects us to choose wisely.

After the Israelites had taken the Promised Land, Joshua challenged them with these words:
“… CHOOSE for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15
In other words: make a choice! But make the right choice.

Later in Israel’s history, the prophet Elijah stood before a disobedient nation and made a similar challenge: "How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him." 1 Kings 18:21a
In other words: make a choice! But make the right choice.

And Jesus taught "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. Matthew 6:24
MAKE A CHOICE!

God gave Adam and Eve a Free Will.
They were allowed to make their own choices because you can’t have a Free Will if you’re not free to make any choices.

So God gave us all a Free will. He gave us the right to choose. But He repeatedly tells us: there’s a lot riding on these free choices of ours.

God told Adam and Eve: “You are FREE to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it YOU WILL SURELY DIE." Genesis 2:16b-17

And - as Israel was preparing to enter the Promised Land, God said:
“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death,  blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” Deuteronomy 30:19
Make a choice!… but make the right choice!!!

Romans tells us the same thing: “now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God repeatedly declares: what you choose determines what will happen in your life. You can choose that which leads to life - or that which leads to death… SO choose wisely.

Now, there’s a glitch in this concept of Free Will.
There are people who get all tied up in their theologies and ultimately reject this concept we have free will. And both base their theologies on Romans 3:23 that says “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

The first group are called Calvinists. They believe in something called predestination. Predestination basically maintains that: the choice has already been made for you. It’s already been decided that you’re going to heaven… or Hell. And there’s no choice you can make in this life that will change that.

Their reasoning is: since all of us have sinned, we’re depraved. In fact we are so Totally Depraved that we cannot make the choice to follow God. And so they say that God has to decide whether you go to heaven or hell BECAUSE you are too depraved – too warped and perverted in your psyche - to make that the choice to come to God on your own.
So God predestines some to go to heaven and some to go to hell.

That’s part of the reason some groups cling so heavily to the concept of: “Once saved always saved”. Have you ever heard of it? The general teaching is: you were predestined to make the choice to become a Christian. You didn’t make that choice it was prompted/predestined totally by God. And having been predestined (by God) to be saved you can’t ever lose that salvation. You couldn’t make the choice to enter salvation and you can’t choose to leave.

When someone asks: “Well, what if a person becomes a Christian and then turns away from God?
What if they refuse to pray, go to church, honor God? What if they curse like sailors, cheat their neighbor, kicks dogs? Are those folks going to heaven?”
The stock answer is: “Well, they were probably never saved to begin with.”

You see, the fact that this person made a decision to become a Christian, but then rejected Christ proves to them that this man was NOT predestined for salvation to begin with.
You follow that???

Now, I could go down through a series of Scriptures to show why Calvanists believe that, BUT, as we’ve seen in the few Scriptures we’ve looked at we know that this kind of teaching is NOT true.

God HAS given us Free will.
And God expects us to use that Free Will to make a choice.
We CAN choose life, or we CAN choose death.
We can choose to accept God’s Free Gift of salvation… or we can choose to reject it.
But God places that choice in our hands.

Now, the sad truth is the Bible says we’ve ALL made the wrong choice.
We’ve all chosen poorly.
We’ve all chosen to SIN

According to Ecclesiastes 7:20 “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.”
Romans 3:23 says “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

And Scripture tells us that the reason this is true is because Adam chose to disobey God. Romans 5:12 tells us that “… sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…”

There’s no denying that we sin because Adam first sinned.
And so, some look at this verse and see it as a declaration that we didn’t have a choice in becoming sinners. They say - we inherited Adam’s sin and thus we don’t make the choice to be sinners. That choice had already been made for us by Adam.
And because Adam made that choice for us we came out of the womb as sinners.
Thus, even babies need to be baptized…because they inherited his sin.

This theology was first promoted by Augustine who believed that unbaptized babies who died went directly to hell. That didn’t sit well with many of the theologians in the church, and so – over time – they created a place between heaven and hell (called Limbo) where the unbaptized children could spend eternity.
They didn’t make it to heaven… but they at least they’re weren’t in hell.

Now, aside from the fact that Limbo isn’t mentioned in Scripture… that’s not what Jesus said

Jesus said: “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God LIKE A LITTLE CHILD will never enter it." Luke 18:17

Jesus said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven BELONGS TO SUCH AS THESE." Matthew 19:14

Little Children were made to be heaven.
They didn’t inherit sinfulness from Adam because sin is based on the CHOICES we make and babies and toddlers aren’t old enough to make the choices we’re expected to make. They’re not old enough to choose life or death/ salvation or damnation.

Neither they, nor we inherited Adam’s sin.
But we did inherit something from Adam.
His sin altered our DNA (if you will).
His sin bent us toward limping in our righteousness.

ILLUS: The story’s told of a doctor who was teaching a group of medical students. She points to an x-ray and says, "As you can see, the patient limps because his left fibula and tibia are radically arched.”
Turning to one of the students, she asked, “Michael, what would you do in a case like this?"
He thought for a moment and then said, "Well, I suppose I’d limp too."

The patient limped because there was a weakness in him.
And that weakness made it harder for him to walk the way he should walk.

The Bible says we have a weakness in our bones too.
It’s a weakness that makes it harder for us to walk the way we ought to walk.
That weakness doesn’t MAKE us sinners… but it makes it so that tend to CHOOSE sin. We have a weakness toward sin because Adam sinned first.

So let’s return to our original statement: We have free will.
God has endowed us with the ability to choose to do right… or wrong.
Neither Adam’s sin, nor God will, takes that away from us.

When we sin it’s our choice… it’s OUR fault.

Now, why is that important?
It’s important because people don’t tend accept their sin is their fault.
They don’t want to take ownership of their sins.
And until we take ownership of our own sins we’ll never deal with them. If we don’t accept that OUR sins are OUR fault, we’ll never feel need to confess those sins… and get right with God.

So how do people avoid accepting that their sins are their own?
Well, they blame somebody else.
If it’s somebody else’s fault… it can’t be mine!

When God confronted Eve about her sin… what did she say:
"The serpent deceived me, and I ate." Genesis 3:13
It’s NOT my fault - the devil made me do it.

When God confronted Adam about his sin… do you remember what Adam replied
"The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
Genesis 3:12
It’s NOT my fault. It’s Eve’s fault!
But worse than that – God – it’s YOUR fault!
It was “The woman YOU gave me”
If you hadn’t given me this person in my life I never would have made that choice!!!

People try to hide their sins, behind someone else’s.

Do you think I’ve done it? Yeah, I probably have.
Have you? Yeah, probably.

The problem is it’s such a inherently easy and knee jerk reaction to the feeling of being vulnerable to the guilt of our sins that we often don’t realize we’ve done it until someone points it out to us.
And THEN when people DO point out to us that we’re shifting the blame to others… we’re so intent on escaping judgment and guilt and shame that we probably wouldn’t accept that we have hid behind someone else’s sins anyway.

ILLUS: I talked with another preacher recently who made a woman in his church mad. He called sin, sin… and she didn’t like that. He’d specifically addressed something she felt hit too close to home.
How did she respond?
Well, she groused about it for awhile.
Then she got on the phone with him and spent a couple of hours attacking him, the Eldership, and the church. She told him of the hypocrisy of the church, and him (as the preacher). She named all kinds of sins she didn’t think were being addressed. Why was he addressing her sin?

Now none of that had any relationship at all to the topic that had made her mad. But as the old saying goes: “If you throw a stone into a pack of dogs… the one that yelps is the one that got hit.”

She knew she was wrong. But if she could shift the blame to someone else (in this case – an entire church) then she wouldn’t have to come to grips with the fact that she might be wrong. That her attitude might be sinful. As long as she could blame somebody else… (in her mind) she was free and clear.

Like I said before… we ALL tend to deny our own sins.
We’re all prone to try to make somebody else’s sins bigger than our own so that we can use THEIR sins as a smoke screen to hide ours.

When was the last time you told somebody
“I was wrong”
“It was my fault”
“Forgive me, I shouldn’t have said that/ done that/thought that?”

I tell you what. I’m going to help you out. We’re going to take a few moments and practice saying these things. Repeat after me (with words up on screen)
· I was wrong
· It was my fault
· Please forgive me.

ILLUS: Too often we don’t do that. We think that if we stonewall long enough, the problem will go away.
Back in 1980, New York Mayor Ed Koch had made a bad decision. He had authorized the spending of a ¼ million dollars to build bike trails in Manhattan. As it turned out, cars drove down them and pedestrians began walking in them - crowding out the bicyclists. It became an embarrassment for his administration.
Koch was coming up for re-election, so a handful of journalists cornered him while  he appeared on a ½ hour news program, planning to tear him to pieces for spending money foolishly when the city was nearly broke.
One reporter said, "Mayor, in light of the financial difficulties New York City is facing, how could you possibly justify wasting $300,000 on bike lanes?" The stage was set for a half-hour confrontation.
Instead, Koch said, "It was a terrible idea. I thought it would work, but it didn’t. It was one of the worst mistakes I ever made." Then he stopped. None of the other journalists knew what to say or do. They were expecting him to squirm and make excuses, but he didn’t even try.
The next journalist stammered and said, "But Mayor Koch, how could you do this?" Koch said, "I already told you. It was a stupid idea. It didn’t work."

The reporters were expecting Koch to do what everybody else instinctively does. Dodge responsibility for a poor decision. Instead, he was upfront and admitted he’d been wrong and his critics had nothing to humiliate him with on this issue.
He said “I was wrong. It was my fault.”

ILLUS: In Alcoholics Anonymous – when a member stands to address the rest of those gathered - they’ll say: “Hello, my name is ________ ________… and I’m an alcoholic”.
Over the years they’ve found that this is the best way to help alcoholics to deal with their addiction because - in order to master their addiction they first had to admit they have a problem.

It works.
And it works because that’s the very basis of our relationship with God.
Until we’re willing to admit that do sin. That we do fail. That we do fall short of glory God we will live in a world of self-deception.
1 John 1:8 says “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”

In order to master the grip sin can have on my life I must be willing to say
I am a sinner.
I’m saved by grace but I fall short of the glory of God.
I am a sinner – I don’t deserve God’s love or forgiveness

One man once said: “The Church is a society of sinners - the only society in the world in which membership is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership. (Charles C. Morrison)

It starts with ME… and extends to each one of YOU.
This we believe: we are sinners… saved by grace.

CLOSE: Once upon a time a man died and went to heaven. As he came near the pearly gates he saw Saint Peter standing at the door and confidently approached him believing he would be able to enter the eternal city with no problem. To his amazement, he was told by Peter that there was a point system he would be required to meet in order to qualify for heaven.
"How many points do I need to get into heaven?" he asked.
"Thirty thousand," replied Peter.
"Thirty thousand?!... Well, I was a member of the Church of Christ at Logansport -How much was that worth?"
"About five points," came the answer.
"Five points!" the man stammered, "Okay, then what about all the good things I’ve done for my neighbors and family. Surely that is worth quite a bit."
"According to our records," Peter, at this point, consulted his clipboard, "that comes to about eight more points."
Worried now, the man cried out, "But that makes only thirteen of the thirty thousand required. Why, if it weren’t for the grace of God, no one could make it into heaven!"
"That’s the rest of the thirty thousand, " replied Peter.

We don’t deserve to get into heaven.
We are sinners… who have fallen short of the glory of God.

But we’ve been given a privilege – the privilege of CHOOSING to belong to Jesus. Is that the decision you need to make this morning? We offer an invitation every Sunday so that you can make that choice. Won’t you please come forward as we sing…