A Greater Sickness V: Against Your Body
We’re back to talk about the world’s original pandemic: sin.
“Sin” is a word that has lost all its weight. For someone outside of the church, it is a term that is archaic and laughable. But for the church goer, it is a term that has become so familiar it really no longer means much.
Our working definition of sin is “Living for yourself, rather than God or others.” Sin is against God, but it is also against you.
Sin turns your body against you.
Like a virus, sin infects every part of you, from head-to-toe. Living for yourself has a way of enlisting all of your physical existence and devoting it to sin’s service.
Paul writes, “You presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness” (Romans 6:19).
Sin affects your neck.
“Because I know that you are obstinate,
And your neck is an iron sinew
And your forehead bronze” (Isaiah 48:4).Sin affects your eyes.
“Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, Nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied” (Proverbs 27:20).
We are constantly looking around for what we want, never satisfied.Sin affects your ears.
“For the heart of this people has become dull,
With their ears they scarcely hear,
And they have closed their eyes,
Otherwise they would see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart and return,
And I would heal them’” (Matthew 13:15).
You can hear every whisper that promises you the happiness you feel you deserve. You hear and see and feel every time your rights are violated, but you can’t seem to hear anything God says to you. You are deaf to His promises, His warnings, His Word.
4. Sin affects your mouth.
“All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.
Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,
The poison of asps is under their lips;
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness” (Romans 3:12-14).
James tells us that the tongue is so little, but it can flame a huge fire. Sin turns the tongue against us. The mouth destroys friendships, marriages, relationships.
5. Sin is against your heart.
Ezekiel describes the heart as a heart of stone. Jeremiah describes it as deceitful and wicked.
6. Sin is against your belly.
Our desires rule over us. Enemies of the cross of Christ are those “whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame” (Philippians 3:19).
7. Sin is against your hands.
“Concerning evil, both hands do it well” (Micah 7:3).
8. Sin is against your feet.
What places does sin take you? “Feet swiftly run into sin” (Rom 3:15), but how slow we are to go to God!
Sin turns your senses against you.
Sin is against your sight.
“We grope along the wall like blind men,
We grope like those who have no eyes;
We stumble at midday as in the twilight” (Isaiah 59:10).
“The way of the wicked is like darkness;
They do not know over what they stumble” (Proverbs 4:19).Spiritual blindness can happen within the church, too. We are blind to the loveliness of Christ Himself.
2. Sin is against your hearing.
How many times did God say to Israel that He called to them by the prophets but they would not listen? How many times have you read the Bible, but it meant nothing?
3. Sin is against your touch.
Like a spiritual leprosy, things begin to rot and ruin and decay, but you don’t feel it and so you assume that you’re OK.
4. Sin is against your taste.
You think what’s poisonous is good and what’s good is poisonous. Sin warps your appetite.
Sin turns all of our senses against us. It invades our bodies. Sin is truly the plague of plagues. But Christ was sent to reverse the plague and destroy sin and death once and for all.
O Lord, I stand here guilty of the curse and everlasting torments in hellfire when this wretched life is ended if You should deal with me according to what I deserve.
Yea Lord, I confess that it is Your mercy which endures for ever, and Your compassion which never fails; with You, O Lord, there is mercy and plenteous redemption.
I beseech You, O Lord, not only to wash away my sins with the blood of Your immaculate Lamb, but also to purge my heart by Your Holy Spirit from the dross of my natural corruptions, that I may feel Your Spirit more and more killing my sin, so that I may serve You, the everlasting God, in righteousness and holiness this day. Amen.
(Lewis Bayley)
A Guide to Family Worship
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Show Notes
Podcast Resources
The Sinfulness of Sin, Ralph Venning