[0:00] Last night we looked at man as ruler. This morning we're going to look at man as ruined.! What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving,! How express and admirable, in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a God, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals? And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
[0:51] So wrote Shakespeare in his play Hamlet. Did you hear Shakespeare's tension as he looks at man? In one moment he looks with admiration. Oh, what a piece of work is man! And in the next moment he looks with aversion. Man delights not me.
[1:15] We do the same, don't we? In one moment we look on the human being with admiration, like when we see the intellect of an Albert Einstein coming up with a theory of relativity, or when we see the athleticism of a Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon in the Olympics. And yet in another moment we look on the human being with disgust, like when we see the men of ISIS destroy women and children in Syria and Iraq, or when we hear of Rolf Harris abusing women and children all of his life. Why in one moment do we look on the human being with amazement, and in the next moment with aversion? Oh, what a piece of work is man! But man delights not me! Why the tension? Well, the Bible gives a very simple answer.
[2:11] Well, the Bible gives a very simple answer, and it's a one word answer. Sin. S-I-N. Our origins, as we saw last night, are high and holy, but we have fallen very far short from what God intended us to be.
[2:28] We have, in a word, sin. And Genesis chapter 3 gives us three aspects of sin. Number one, the definition of sin is transgression. The definition of sin is transgression. Verses 1 to 6 of chapter 3.
[2:49] The perfect creation that God had made in chapter 1 is soon disturbed by one of his own creatures. Verse 1. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
[3:05] He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Now, the serpent doesn't directly contradict God's words here. He just twists God's words.
[3:19] Look back at chapter 2, verse 16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat, or freely eat, of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
[3:40] Then look at what Satan says. Chapter 3, verse 1. Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Then, God gives an expansive provision.
[3:52] You're free to eat from any tree except one. And Satan turns that expansive provision into a restrictive prohibition. Did God say you can't eat from any tree?
[4:05] He's trying to make God look like a killjoy. He's trying to make God look tight. Now, if we're going to understand Eve's response properly, we first need to think about what this tree of the knowledge of good and evil actually represented.
[4:22] And in order to do so, I want you to imagine, or draw on your page, a picture, a diagram. Imagine a big circle. Big circle.
[4:33] And underneath that big circle is a little circle. So big circle, little circle. And in between both circles is a horizontal line. That is Genesis chapter 2 and 3 in a picture.
[4:48] The big circle is God. The small circle is everything that he made, including us. And the horizontal line is the distinction between God and us.
[5:01] Between creator and creature. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is like that horizontal line. It's God's way of saying, I'm the creator, you're the creature.
[5:14] I'm the one with the authority to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. It's God's way of saying to us, I'm God, you are not God.
[5:27] That was the first law. It was the first law of all God's laws. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall respect the horizontal line.
[5:41] So, with that understanding of the tree, let's return to this conversation between the serpent and the woman. Now remember, God's the big circle above the horizontal line.
[5:53] And he is given a command. And here is a creature, the serpent, below the horizontal line, questioning the command. And what does Eve do? Verse 2.
[6:04] And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
[6:18] Eve enters into dialogue here with the serpent. And in effect, she acts like the authority of God is up for debate. She starts rubbing out that horizontal line.
[6:29] That's her first mistake. It's not that the fall occurs at this point. But her foot has started to slip. Why? Because she has started to deny God his position of absolute authority.
[6:45] As the one who decides what is right and wrong. When Satan asked her the question, did God say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
[6:57] Her response should have been, who are you to talk back to the creator? He's God. You are not God.
[7:08] You do what he says. It is for our good. Instead, she adopts a position of neutrality. As she thinks, let me objectively assess here what God's word has said.
[7:26] And look what happens when a creature enters discussions over God's word with another creature. God's word gets minimized. Did you notice that in her words?
[7:38] Eve minimizes their privileges. God said, you are free to eat or you may surely eat. She says, we may eat. She understates the potential judgment.
[7:50] God says, you will surely die. She says, you will die. She's taken out the surely. She maximizes the prohibition. God said, you must not eat.
[8:02] She says, you must not eat and you must not touch it. Eve, you can go and put your hammock in it if you want and have a sleep. You just can't eat from it.
[8:17] So do you see what happens when you enter into neutral discussions about God and his word instead of respecting his authority? His word gets minimized.
[8:29] Well, the serpent has noticed that Eve no longer respects God's authority completely. And so he goes for the jugular. He contradicts God's word directly.
[8:40] Verse four. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. The exact opposite of what God said in chapter two, verse 17.
[8:52] For God knows that when you eat of this tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. What the serpent offers the woman here is the opportunity to be like God, to become God of her own world, to have her own kingdom.
[9:15] Look at her response. Verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her.
[9:30] And he ate. Now, I want you to think with me about what actually happens here in this process. Notice how the woman comes to this decision.
[9:42] She comes to the decision to eat from the forbidden tree independently from God. The woman depends on her own senses and rationale as she weighs up eating from this tree.
[9:57] Do you notice that in verse six? Pleasing to the eye, good to taste, intellectually advantageous. God said it is not wise to eat.
[10:08] She assesses it independently from God and says it would be wise to eat from this tree. She becomes the interpreter of reality.
[10:20] She rejects God's interpretation of reality and she becomes her own interpreter. In short, she interprets the tree independent from God.
[10:32] That is how she comes to this decision. But notice also what this act means. Precisely because she interprets the tree from her own perspective and not God's perspective, what has she done?
[10:47] She has set herself up as the ultimate authority to interpret the world. She now decides what is right and what is wrong.
[10:59] And for her, it's right to take from the tree. Because she has interpreted the tree independently from God. She has rubbed out that horizontal line and she's moved the little circle up beside the big circle.
[11:18] In the beginning, God established a kingdom. And here are his creatures, Adam and Eve, establishing their own kingdom. The kingdom of the self. Where self interprets by itself and self acts by itself.
[11:33] And the name of the kingdom, autonomy. Auto nomos. A law unto themselves. And that is the heart of sin.
[11:48] They wanted to be God. They wanted to have their own kingdom. Jackie and I last year enjoyed watching a TV series.
[12:01] Not recommended to anyone under the age of 18. Called Breaking Bad. From the giggles I can see that some of you have seen it. And in this TV series, it's about a man who's a chemistry teacher.
[12:16] Who's dying with a lung tumor. He's got six months to live. And he decides to try and make money for his family before he dies. And because he's a chemistry teacher, he knows how to make methylene drugs.
[12:29] He doesn't take it himself. But he starts making it. And he starts making lots of money. Like hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars. But life just gets so complicated.
[12:42] He starts getting offside with gangs who he's selling the drugs to. The cartel in South America start wanting to kill him. People have been killed in the process.
[12:53] And his partner, Jesse, at one point says, We have to get out of this. It is getting too crazy. People are getting killed. People are losing their lives.
[13:04] Families are being destroyed. Why won't you give this up? And Walt looks at him and says, It's not about the meth. It's not about the money.
[13:17] It's about the empire. It's this poignant moment when you start to see what is in Walter White's heart.
[13:27] It's about the empire. And for Adam and Eve, it wasn't about the fruit. It was about the empire. They wanted to be God.
[13:39] They wanted their own kingdom. And that is what is at the heart of sin. It is the promotion of ourselves to that place of ultimate authority where we become our own gods.
[13:52] Adam and Eve transgressed the law that God is God and we are not. They broke the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me.
[14:04] They worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator. They transgressed the line between the big circle and the little circle.
[14:15] When God said, you shall not cross that line. That is the definition of sin. It is transgression. Transgression of what?
[14:26] Transgression of the law that God is God and we are not God. That is the first point that Genesis 3 teaches us.
[14:37] The definition of sin is transgression. Number two. The corruption of sin is systemic. The corruption of sin is systemic.
[14:48] That's just another way of saying that sin affects the whole person. Now, in each of the points that I'm going to make this morning, there's a picture I want you to have in your head or an image.
[14:59] The first one is the big circle, the little circle, and the horizontal line. This one is of a river. A river that's being contaminated with some chemicals at its source.
[15:11] What happens when you pour chemicals into a river at its source? Well, the whole river gets contaminated, doesn't it? And that's like sin. Sin gets to the source of our being, to the core, and it contaminates everything.
[15:29] Our body, our emotions, our will, our heart, our words, our actions, our mind. And I want to focus on two of these. The heart and the mind.
[15:41] The will and the mind. Let's take a look at the heart. Come with me to Genesis 6, verse 5. Genesis chapter 6, verse 5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
[16:06] Now, the heart in the Bible is the control center of the person. It's not where you shed your tears from. It's not your emotions. The heart in the Bible is the command center of the person.
[16:20] It's the command center of the will. And look again at what Genesis 6, verse 5 says. Note the extreme expressions.
[16:31] Every, only, continually. There's no wiggle room here. Every inclination, not one inclination, evades the accusation. Every inclination, it gets to the root of our decision making.
[16:45] Every inclination of the thoughts gets to the thinking behind our actions. And behind our thinking is an inclination. It's only evil.
[16:58] Singularly descriptive. Nothing else describes every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart except that adjective, evil. All the time, continually.
[17:11] The evil of the heart has no respite, no pauses, no timeouts, no Sabbaths. All day, every day, every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart are only evil.
[17:26] Wow. Jeremiah 17, verse 9. In the heart is deceitful above all things. Beyond cure, who can understand it?
[17:40] Now, this is not how our society views the human nature. I think there's a number of views that our society expresses about human nature.
[17:51] Let me give you two. And let me give you two explanations they give for why we do what we do. There is the view that we are amoral beings. That is, that we are neither good nor bad.
[18:04] We are simply advanced animals. Products of a long evolutionary process. We act out of impulse and instinct. When we do do something bad, in inverted commas, it's not really badness, it's just immaturity.
[18:21] We're just exhibiting that part of us which we have in common with the lower animals. We just need to grow up, or rather grow out, of those immature, primitive, instinctual behaviors that we have inherited from our ancestors.
[18:39] So that's the one view. We are amoral. And we act out of just instinct, because we're just animals. Another view is that we are actually essentially good. We're not bad.
[18:50] We're essentially good. And it's just external factors that make us behave the way we do. It's things outside of us, like family, environment, culture, circumstances, that cause us to act or react instinctively, not intentionally.
[19:11] And the Bible's perspective is so very different to those two views. We are not amoral creatures. We are moral creatures. We are not inherently good.
[19:23] We are inherently bad. We are corrupt at the very core of our being. Every facet of our nature is contaminated by sin.
[19:35] The Bible doesn't speak of sin on a scale of immaturity to maturity. The Bible speaks on the axis of moral accountability.
[19:50] The Bible doesn't say that we act out of instinct or impulse. It says we act out of intent. What the Bible says is that we do what we do out of intent, not instinct.
[20:03] We do what we do, not out of anxious emotional reactivity of the brain, but out of the intentional thoughts of the heart. It's not that your brain isn't involved.
[20:14] It is. But it is your heart that is driving your mind. Paul Tripp puts it well. Circumstances and people do not make us do what we do.
[20:25] They are simply the occasions for our hearts to reveal themselves. It's not your circumstances or the people around you, the external factors that make you do what you do.
[20:39] They are simply the occasions for your heart to reveal itself. And Genesis says that our hearts are corrupt at the core.
[20:50] They're polluted at the source. Every inclination of the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually. And our society doesn't know what to do with this.
[21:02] A good example is the case of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer. Do you remember that guy in Norway who set off a bomb down in the city as a distraction and then made his way to an island where there was a socialist political retreat of young people?
[21:18] And then with a machine gun he mowed down 77 people on that island. During the court case, Anders Breivik testified that he knew exactly what he was doing, that he wanted to do it, and that he did it because of his fascist ideology.
[21:36] What was fascinating in that case was that the prosecution didn't accept his testimony. They refused to think that this man was compass mentis when he acted in such a way.
[21:51] They wanted to prosecute him on the grounds that he was insane. Yet all along he's saying, I know what I was doing, I wanted to do it, and I did it because I'm a fascist ideology.
[22:04] Now why was it the prosecution couldn't fathom that? Well it's because they didn't have a category for understanding human nature as evil.
[22:16] But if we accept the Bible's testimony, then we have to say that Anders Breivik did what he did, because at the very core of his being, all common grace restraints had been removed, and the full evil of his heart was revealed.
[22:37] I'm sure his family history affected him. I'm sure his social environment affected him. I'm sure his cultural context affected him. I'm sure that day he was reacting emotionally with anxiety as he went around shooting people.
[22:54] But Anders Breivik did not act out of instinct or impulse. He acted out of intent. And that is what the Bible says, that at the very core of our being we are corrupt.
[23:09] And that corruption affects all of our actions. It affects our heart, but it also affects our mind. So we've looked at the heart, the will, now I want to look at the mind.
[23:23] Now of course, we know the mind is finite, we know it's forgetful, but beyond this, does sin actually affect our minds? Most Christians I know have either not thought about this, or if they have, they think it hasn't affected our minds very much, because after all, don't non-Christians invent things, make great scientific discoveries, produce magnificent works of art, literature and architecture?
[23:50] And at one level that's true. If we had time to keep reading in Genesis chapter 4, we would read about rebellious, murderous Cain, who builds a city. Well, you have to have some intellect to build a city.
[24:03] Or his descendant, Jubal, was gifted in music. And Jubal Cain, another descendant, was an engineer who worked with industrial instruments like bronze and iron.
[24:14] So non-Christians can think, they can create, they can play, they can construct. As Cornelius Van Til put it, the Israelites did not have to recut the timbers fashioned by the Phoenicians to fit them into the temple.
[24:32] When the Phoenicians measured a piece of wood for the temple, the measurement was the same as if an Israelite had measured it. Measurements are measurements or measurements.
[24:43] Pagans, Christians and Muslims can each measure. So the question is, does sin actually affect our minds? Well, I want to suggest that it does and I want to go through various passages now to show you that it does.
[24:59] We get the first hint of it in chapter 3 actually of Genesis. Just look at what Adam and Eve's response is to their sin. Verse 7. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
[25:16] And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
[25:28] Now just think about who it is they're trying to hide from. The creator of the universe who made the trees, who made fig leaves. I mean, if this isn't the case of the human mind not quite thinking straight, then I don't know what is.
[25:45] Let's go and hide from God. Yes, behind those trees. He won't see us behind those trees. It's a bit like our son Ben who loves to play hide and seek after dinner while we're still sitting at the dinner table and he goes and hides in the very room that we're sitting and draws the curtains and says, Where's Ben?
[26:06] Where's Ben? We don't know Ben. Where's Ben? I mean, he is a legend, you know, but he's letting down the family name at that point.
[26:18] There are strong hints here in Genesis 3 that the human mind has been affected by sin. They're trying to hide from the God who sees all things. But come with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
[26:31] Ephesians chapter 4. And here's a passage that I think really penetrates to the heart of how sin affects our minds. Ephesians 4 verse 17.
[26:46] Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart.
[27:09] Do you see how Paul gives a cause to the cause of our darkened understanding? Verse 18, our minds are futile, our understanding is darkened. Why? Because we are separated from the life of God because of the ignorance of God that is in us, that is the willful defiance that there is a God, due to the hardening of heart.
[27:33] Do you see the double causation behind our thinking that's futile and darkened? There is the ignorance of God and behind the ignorance of God is a hard heart.
[27:48] That is the cause of futile and flawed thinking. Behind the mind is a heart that hates God.
[28:00] The mind is governed by the heart. The mind is governed by the heart. This is a profound theological point. Now some people would like to dispute that.
[28:12] They'd say, no, no, no. It is possible for the mind to govern the heart. It's possible for the mind to control our actions, our emotions. Indeed, isn't that the mature person?
[28:23] The person who acts, exhibits, sorry, mind over will, mind over heart, mind over emotions? In other words, if only Anders Breivik had just stopped to think for a moment.
[28:41] And this, of course, is the boast of secular humanism, that the natural person, by the reasonable use of reason, can interpret the course and constitution of their nature, that the mind can control the heart.
[28:56] But that is fundamentally to misunderstand how God has made us. God has made us in such a way that we have a mind, but that behind our mind is a heart that drives our mind.
[29:11] Let me give you an illustration. Imagine I gave you a bowl of cockroaches. Imagine this afternoon you had cockroaches for lunch. And I said, please eat the cockroaches.
[29:23] And you said, well, I don't want to eat the cockroaches. And I say to you, why don't you want to eat the cockroaches? I don't like cockroaches. Okay, so, you've proved my point, that you're driven by your desires.
[29:38] You hate cockroaches, and that's why you won't eat them. You're driven by your heart, not your mind. And you say, well, okay, I'll eat the cockroaches to prove to you that my mind can overcome my desires.
[29:54] I'm going to apply my mind in such a way that I overcome my dislike for cockroaches. So I'm going to eat them. So you start chomping on your cockroaches.
[30:05] And you say, see, I've proved it. I've made a decision with my mind that has overcome my desires. And you would be right.
[30:15] Right? Wrong. Yes, you have overcome your dislike for cockroaches by a decision of your mind, but you are now controlled by a stronger desire.
[30:29] The desire to prove me wrong. Do you see? Every decision is driven by the desires of your heart.
[30:40] Whether you don't eat the cockroaches because you don't like them, or you do eat the cockroaches because you want to prove me wrong, either way, you are led by the desires of your heart.
[30:51] It is heart over mind, not mind over heart. And this means that our thinking, first and foremost, is a heart issue. It's a moral issue.
[31:02] And do you see that in Ephesians 4? Our mind is futile, our understanding is darkened. Why? Because at the very root of it is a hard heart.
[31:15] And the first point I want to make on this thing about the mind is that our thinking is a moral activity. It's not neutral intellectual activity. Another way of saying this is thinking is a very spiritual thing to do.
[31:31] And by thinking, I don't just mean thinking about the things of God, I mean thinking about anything. What Paul says to us is, the thinking we do with our minds is a very moral thing.
[31:43] It's the activity of your heart. All thinking is essentially moral and spiritual. You can't think about psychology and geology and engineering over here and then go over here and start thinking about morality.
[31:58] When you think about psychology and geology and engineering over here, you are acting morally. That is a spiritual activity.
[32:11] And that is the first connection we need to see that our thinking is moral. Our thinking is moral. Second, our thinking is hostile. Chapter 4, verse 18.
[32:23] They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. Our heart lies behind our thinking, but notice what kind of heart lies behind our thinking.
[32:40] It is a hard one. Another way of saying this is that our hearts are hostile to God, set in opposition to God, which means therefore that our minds are set in opposition to God.
[32:52] because our hearts control our minds. Paul says in Romans 8, 7, the mind controlled by the flesh is hostile to God, does not submit to God's law nor can it do so.
[33:08] If all our thinking is moral and if our hearts are hard in rebellion against God, then our thinking is really immoral. It is hostile to God.
[33:21] All our thought patterns and whatever areas of life are constantly expressing rebellion against God. The reason we do that is because that was what our first parents did.
[33:34] Remember what we saw with Adam and Eve. They interpreted the tree independently from God using their own senses and rationale. They thought in opposition to God.
[33:46] They acted in opposition to God. Their thoughts about the tree became hostile thoughts in comparison to God's thoughts. They stopped thinking God's thoughts about the tree.
[33:58] Do not eat. It is not wise to eat. And they started thinking their own thoughts about the tree. We can become like God. And that position of independent interpretation God's world is what skews all thinking about the facts of God's world.
[34:17] Another picture for you from Cornelius Van Til. All is yellow to the jaundiced eye. If your eye is jaundiced and you're looking out of it, you'll see yellow everywhere you go.
[34:34] And because our hearts are hard when we look at the world and try to think about something, our mind is futile, our understanding is hostile to God.
[34:45] Which brings us to the third point, our thinking is moral, our thinking is hostile, and third, our thinking is darkened. Because it's hostile to God, our thinking is darkened.
[34:59] Last year I was in Oxford. We were playing a hockey game and I was travelling home that night from Oxford and I borrowed a friend's GPS, a friend who lives in Cambridge and when I got into the car I switched on the GPS and I saw the home setting and I just clicked home.
[35:18] And I looked on the map and it looked like it was heading to Cambridge so I just said done and off we went. And I was just on my own and I'm driving back and I'm moving from Oxford towards Cambridge and as I'm coming 30 miles towards Cambridge the GPS starts taking me slightly away from Cambridge and I'm thinking maybe it's just a different route to get me back to Cambridge so I just keep going and the closer and closer I get to Cambridge the more I realize I'm being taken slightly away from Cambridge and I'm sort of tapping this thing what's wrong with this GPS and then I realized that the home setting wasn't actually Cambridge it was something like 10 miles outside of Cambridge I didn't know whether this friend played a joke on me or not but he basically visited a friend and for some reason he put his home setting down as this friend 10 miles out of Cambridge and here I am following this GPS going slightly away from Cambridge now what was wrong was it the
[36:21] GPS no there's absolutely nothing wrong with the GPS it was functioning normally what was wrong was the home setting the default setting was wrong the coordinates were wrong and it's the same with the human mind as a reasoning faculty it works just fine like the GPS but it's home setting for discovering truth has the wrong coordinates they're set in opposition to God therefore no matter how much you trust the normal functioning of the mind it will always end up at the wrong destination when trying to discover something that is true a human mind whose home setting is opposition to God independence from God is never going to arrive at a true understanding of any subject why because God is no longer in the picture now I want you to think with me about this why does rejection of
[37:27] God lead to darkened understanding why is it that when I reject God when I study geology and rocks I can never properly understand them I'm always just slightly off a proper understanding well let me take you back up the road to Oxford to the Bodolian library and it's one of the oldest libraries in the world it has 9 million books in it and inside one of the rooms in the Bodolian library on one of the roofs this old panel paneling wooden paneling of a roof there are little Latin phrases written on this roof it's the same Latin phrase dominus illuminatio mea God is my light it's the motto of Oxford University now why did the founders of that great university put that on the roof of the library because they knew that when any student studied any subject in order for them to understand that subject correctly they needed the light of God
[38:36] Psalm 36 verse 9 in your light I see light think about where they put it they put it on the roof so that the students would know if you want to understand English if you want to understand German if you want to understand psychology God is your light and when you ask God to leave the building you flick the lights off that is what's wrong with all non-Christian thinking they've asked the God who is light to leave the building and so they are studying in the dark God you see is the source of all true knowledge and every fact has its interpretation in God all true knowledge exists in God because he created all things and he therefore interprets all things every fact in the universe is an interpreted fact there's no such things as brute facts mere facts facts that are facts simply by being facts all by themselves no fact is a fact outside of its relationship to its creator a fact is only a fact because
[39:52] God created it determined it to be that fact and has given his interpretation of that fact and if you want to understand the facts of the world then you need to live in the light of the God who created those facts and gave those facts their interpretation you need the God who is light to give you light so that is the three ways that our mind is affected by sin it is moral it is hostile and it is darkened now that was a bit of serious brain thing going on there wasn't it the facts the facts the facts you may be saying if you've kept with me you may be saying but can an unbeliever know anything then perhaps perhaps I don't know if we're having a Q&A but I think we will be having a Q&A after those last 10 minutes let me give you my quick thing can a non-believer know anything about chickens cows and calculus absolutely not they don't have a clue about chickens cows and calculus in their world view they have lived independently from the
[41:11] God who is light they switch the lights off and they don't have a clue about cows chickens and calculus unbelievers all the time speak truth about cows chickens and calculus how is that well God's common grace at that very point when an unbeliever speaks something that is true about cows chickens or calculus they are acting like a Christian they are exhibiting that they are image bearers of the God who made them they are at that very point when they understand that 2 plus 2 equals 4 they are at that very point showing themselves to be image bearers that they need the God who is light to give them light but you can maybe ask me more about that in a Q&A let me just pause and reflect where we've come from the definition of sin is transgression
[42:11] God is God we are not the corruption of sin is systemic! it's affected our whole lives our heart and we saw that our society has two views of the heart this one that it's amoral it's neither good nor bad and that we only act out of instinct then there is the idea that our heart is good essentially and it's external factors that make us do what we do and then we've seen that sin affects our minds our minds are driven by our hearts since our hearts are hostile to God therefore our minds are darkened in short we are fallen in every area of our lives what a piece of work is man said Shakespeare but man delights not me so what then is the solution to our sin where do we find the solution well I hope if you followed me you can see that we don't find it in ourselves if our hearts are only evil continually then we don't have the desires within ourselves to change ourselves if our minds are hostile to
[43:26] God and therefore darkened in their understanding then we don't have the mind to work out how to get out of the darkness we're a bit like people who are hiking out in the mountains and we've lost our compass well the solution to sin is not found in ourselves Cornelius Van Til has this great picture he said there's more chance of a man made of water this is a totally bizarre illustration but come with me for a moment a man made out of water at the bottom of an ocean climbing out of the water on a ladder made of water picture it a man made of water at the bottom of the ocean climbing out of the ocean on a ladder made of water what was Van Til trying to say he was trying to say it is utterly futile to think that you can save yourself you are encased in the very problem you're trying to get yourself out of we cannot save ourselves doesn't the phrase you need to be saved take on a whole new meaning now when you understand the doctrine of sin we've seen the definition of sin is transgression the corruption of sin is systemic and this brings us to our final point back in
[44:52] Genesis 3 15 the solution to sin is Christ the solution to sin is Christ verse 15 I will put enmity between you and the women God is speaking to the serpent I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel in dealing with the problem of sin God goes right to the source the serpent the serpent was the one who brought sin into the world and so God promises to destroy him and thus by implication to rid the world of sin but I want you to notice in chapter 3 there are two men who have an encounter with the serpent there is Adam the first man who stands by his wife silent do you notice that in verse 6 he her husband who was with her he just stood there silent he stood before the serpent and fell down before him but there is this other man who is going to have an encounter with the serpent this descendant of Eve a son a representative son who will do what who will fight against the serpent two men in chapter 3 fight the serpent
[46:18] Adam stands before him as a coward says nothing and falls down before him this second son this second Adam will stand before him and fight him the solution to sin is in this promised son the hope of the world is in a son now I've given you a number of pictures this morning a big circle small circle horizontal line the picture of the distinction between the creature and the creature the river contaminated at its source a picture of the systemic corruption of sin cockroaches picture of your heart over your mind the GPS home setting leading us away from Cambridge picture of our thinking being skewed because we've asked the God who is light to leave the building the
[47:19] Bodleian library with that motto on the roof God is my light with our darkened understanding let me give you one more picture I want you to picture two giants and by giants I mean giants the shoe of one giant would be in this whole building his ankle would be up to that roof so we're talking about a big giant and on that huge giant these two giants is a belt each of them has a belt and on that belt is tens of thousands of tiny tiny little hooks and hanging from those hooks are people two giants two belts and there are people hanging onto their belts you may think I've gone completely crazy Thomas
[48:20] Goodwin the Puritan said in God's sight there are only two men Adam and Jesus Christ and these two men have all other men hanging from their girdle strings that picture of those two giants is the theological structure of the whole Bible the one giant is called Adam the other giant is called Jesus Christ and what we've seen this morning is that our problem is this we are hooked onto that first giant we're connected to the wrong man Adam's heart became corrupt with evil intentions all the time our hearts have become corrupt with evil intentions all the time Adam became hostile to God in his thinking we have become hostile to God in our thinking Adam became darkened in his understanding we have become darkened in our understanding our problem is this we are in Adam we're connected to the wrong giant and the solution to our sin is to get unhooked from
[49:27] Adam and to get hooked into this promised son Jesus Christ the last Adam and when you get unhooked from Adam and get hooked onto Jesus Christ you get a new heart and you get a new mind let us pray Let's go.
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