The Problem & The Solution

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Heavenly Father, as we open up your word, as we study and look at the things of you, I pray that we would not just be puffed up with knowledge, but that we would be brought into humility and that we would come to know you in a greater way. Not just to know about you, but to know you personally. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Good morning, Conduit, how are you? That's definitely me, that's hot. Is that better? Here we go. We're continuing in our service this morning, our sermon series this morning on Conduit's doctrinal statement or our statement of faith. And Pastor Luke kicked us off for you last week and has some of these booklets. They are both back on the bookshelves and in the foyer, has our complete doctrinal statement on it. All of the major points of doctrine that from a theological standpoint that Conduit holds to, this could be, I'm gonna say it could be a valuable resource. But I don't know if you ever think this is the reason, if I was at a church, this was the first thing that I would be grabbing.

So this is a resource for you. I think what Pastor Luke did last week was also give you some resources that if these theological topics were something that you wanted a little bit more of extra reading in or you were interested in or you felt like, yeah, I wish I could just get a little bit more on that. Had some titles for you. I have similar this morning and I wanna start out with those because once we get into this, we're getting into it. And so one of the first ones is the same one that he shared last week. I think I got a picture of this one up, yep. You are a theologian by Jen Wilkin in JT English. This is a great intro to theology, basics of Christian theology. And I really recommend it. A lot of the information that we're gonna be talking about this morning came from this. A lot of the reference material came from this. It is a very basic book. And if you're saying, well, geez, why are we all like, what's with the basics? Listen, oftentimes we like people are down

On the basics of theology. Like, oh, we don't want just the basics. I want the deep things. I want the bigger things. I want the more significant things. Listen, unless your obedience can match your intellect, the basics will get you to heaven every single time. Okay, so we have less concern about whether or not we're going deep enough and more concerned about whether we are being obedient to what we do know. Second book is a new one for you. It's by John Ortberg. It's called "Who Is This Man?" It talks about the unpredictable impact of the inescapable Jesus. Excellent, excellent, excellent book on the nature of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the life of Jesus, and the impact of Jesus. Just two books that I would recommend to you if you're looking for a little bit more on some of these topics that we're talking about this morning. This morning, we are going to talk about the next two points of our doctrinal statement, which is humanity and sin, the condition of sin, and the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, I have no idea why we're trying to do both of these the same day, really, or even in the same year.

These are topics that volumes and volumes and volumes and hundreds and hundreds of sermons could be preached on each. And so please give me a little bit of grace and patience in maybe not saying all of the things that you think that I should say about it, okay? Because there's obviously more here, but we're gonna try and talk about some of the more important things this morning.

Whether or not you realize it or not, we all live in or exist in a very particular cultural moment,

Meaning that our culture is the result or the fruit of things that have happened in past eras and times. And we are in what most would call a post-enlightenment culture, right? The major claims of a post-enlightenment thinking and really the scientific revolution is this, is that, what our culture generally has been formed around is that these ideas that humanity, you and I, we have evolved beyond our need for a belief in God.

It's kind of the major claim of the cultural moment that we find ourselves in. It would say things like, well, now that we have gained kind of major ground as a culture and as a society, we've gained major ground in things like science and philosophy and sociology and psychology. We understand so much better now what a human being is.

We've gained a greater sense of morality and ethics as we've evolved as human beings. We are no longer actually in need of a frame of reference outside of ourselves.

We can find everything that we need for every area and problem of life just within ourselves. We can get better. We can improve. We can make this life and this world all that it needs to be and more. And we do not need the idea of God to do it.

It's kind of like the major claim of the kind of moment that we're in. But like, if you could just hear me out for a second on this, I think that anyone that has two eyes, maybe even one eye, you don't even, you can probably be blind and figure this one out,

Has two eyes, two ears, a heart that beats, can tell you that humanity's attempt at creating a better today and tomorrow out of our own sense of rightness or progress is a failed experiment.

It is a failed experiment. This experiment, kind of in recent, more recent sociological terms, has been called the era of secular humanism. You might have heard that term before me. Like, what is, what even is that? What is secular humanism? Now, listen, I'm not a sociologist and I'm not a cultural exegy or anything like that. But I think this is an important idea to understand why is it that the world is the way it is right now and what exactly is happening? And like, we can kind of sense it and feel it and see it, but maybe we don't have words to put to it. And the term secular humanism really, I think, just puts words to the reality that we live in. It's this, the basic idea of secular humanism is that it is a philosophy, belief system, or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while specifically rejecting religious ethics and supernaturalism as the basis of morality and decision-making.

It posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or without a belief in God.

And this is generally the cultural position that we find ourselves in, especially in Gen Z and the later millennial generations. We don't need God as any frame of reference for any type of moral or ethical or philosophical or position that we are in. We can understand ourselves perfectly just by our own sense of reason and what we think is right and wrong. Our frame of reference for all of life and all of belief is just us.

Again, I think a failed experiment. The world we live in now is more anxious than ever. It is more depressed than ever. It is more lonely than ever. It is more divided than ever. There is no trust of people in power or leadership. Religious rulers are failing. Political leaders are failing. Sports figures are failing. Important people are failing. People, just people, failing.

And people are recognizing, I think, that the ploy of secular humanism has failed and they're searching for some kind of meaning somewhere.

Some kind of even new age way of manifesting something somewhere and searching like crazy for what's going to make sense out of this life and this world that we live in.

Now, I want to tell you that we've been talking like kind of like sociological or cultural terms so far. The Christian faith and Christian belief has language for this as well. We don't need to try and understand this in some kind of cultural or philosophical way. We can actually understand this in a very richly biblical way and godly way to get a sense of what's going on in our world, what's going on in our hearts, and what in the heck we're going to do about it.

Well, the term is not explicitly stated. Just like last week, Pastor Lou preached on the nature of God as triune, right? The Trinity, something that we hold to at the core, a core of our faith, a core of Christian belief is in the threeness and oneness of God. But just like the word "Trinity" is not found in Scripture but is inferred from what we see,

The term that Christianity has, so kind of like this cultural situation that we're in, is also not explicitly stated in Scripture. But it's more of like a distillation of all Scripture, both from Old Testament and New Testament, as it vividly demonstrates that sin is not something that we just do, but something that we are.

In the late, or I would say in the early 1900s, a magazine or a publication in London and went around to some cultural and philosophical and religious elites to ask them the question and get their answer, what is wrong with the world today? What is wrong with the world? And when they got to the famous theologian G.K. Chesterson, he replied very simply, what is wrong with the world today, dear sir? I am.

I am wrong with the world today. This is what we call in Christian theology, the concept or the belief in or the idea of original sin. That what is wrong in the world today, is we have a creation that was subjected to the consequences of sin,

Whose effects has rippled down, not just into my own individual soul and separation from God, but has affected every aspect of life and creation and culture. John Wesley was a pastor, a church planner and a theologian during this enlightenment period where people were saying, yeah, we don't, we kind of like are evolving beyond our need for God. Scientific revolution was just booting up at that time. And even in the midst of seeing people having this like idea that somehow we were evolved beyond our need from God,

That he stated that he reacted strongly against that idea, that we could basically do this life without any respect to morality that was rooted in historic Christianity. And he was famous for saying this. He said that the doctrine of original sin is the most empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.

Now, if we are honest with ourselves and we look at the culture and we look at the world and we look at the progress that we've made and we land on the failed experiment that it is, it does not take us very long to determine that there is something deeply, deeply flawed and broken with the world that we live in.

In Christianity, we call this sin. Now, when it comes to sin, we have typically been taught or maybe thought that sin is mostly about the things that I do that are bad that I need to stop doing.

I do things that are bad that God doesn't like and I need to stop doing those bad things. I have bad thoughts. I say bad words. I do bad things. And if I can just stop doing the bad things, maybe even under my own sense of willpower and grit, if I can just stop doing those bad things, then I will be good. And if I stop enough of the bad things and do enough of the good things, then God will look at me and say, "Yeah, okay, great." You did it. You have finally stopped doing the things that I don't want you to do. And maybe have started doing the things that you should do.

But this is more than just stopping doing things. Listen, brothers and sisters, we are not generally just good people who need a little bit of moral tweaking in order to be right with God.

It is not just the things that we do that we shouldn't or the things that we don't do that we should. It is certainly sin does overflow into our conduct and our speech and over our thoughts. But original sin, the idea of original sin is not just this idea that we do bad things sometimes, but if we just switch things around in our life a little bit, we got a new planner at the beginning of the year and it's gonna fix everything, right?

But original sin is the idea that I am holy and completely and fully unable to walk in perfect obedience to God because of who I am.

It is a part of my nature. It has been birthed in me as a son of Adam. I am fully broken down to my very core.

If we were to walk through some of these theological principles of like, well, how exactly did we get here? What is the theological basis for what it means to have a nature of sin more than just having done the wrong things and not doing the right things? Now, we're gonna be moving a little bit fast here, like I said, in some of these scripture verses I'm gonna read in totality and some I'm not, but feel free to take them down. Please take them down. And everything is right here in these booklets as well.

Is this the way things have always been? That's the ultimate question. Is the way things are right now, the way that things have always been? Well, it's the way that they've always been for us, but it's not the way that it's always been for humanity. The beginning in the book of Genesis describes the creation, ourselves included as part of the creation, as being created in glory and perfection. We look at passages of scripture like Genesis chapter one, verses 26 through 31. You have the consistent refrain of the creation account that God created and it was what? Good. And then God created and it was good. And over and over and over again, we see this account of God having created and it was good. And then he said in verse 26 of Genesis one, let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all of the earth, over all of the creatures that move along. And so God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

Then God goes on to say, he gave them every seed bearing plant on the earth. And then in verse 31, it says that God saw everything that he had made, man and woman included, that God saw everything that he had made. And it was not just good, but very good.

The word, the phraseology here in the Hebrew is the say, it doesn't actually say very good. It says good, good, good. As a way in which to describe the breadth of the goodness, similar to how the angels are saying holy, holy, holy, right? It is good, good, good.

So there was a time where all was created in glory and perfection, including you and I, or including humanity, sin came onto the scene in Genesis chapter one and it was seen as, or it was displayed as sin was a rebellion against lordship.

It was a rebellion of Adam and Eve's, of God's lordship over Adam and Eve. And it was the adoption of a self-centeredness about themselves, a self-centeredness towards themselves. It was displayed or it is displayed in disordered affections and acceptance of lies about God and self.

Sin ultimately comes as a rejection of God's lordship over life, placing ourselves now in the center where everything else in our world must revolve around who? Me. And it is often displayed in our lives as disordered affections.

I don't love the things that I should love. I don't hate the things that I should hate, but instead those things often get switched. So we have disordered affections and we have a readiness to accept lies about ourselves and about God. It is a poisoning of our mind and our ability to rightly discern the truth of God's word.

We see this really clearly in the account in Genesis chapter three. How does the serpent, the deceiver, approach Adam and Eve? It really is with language of trying to twist and deceive them into God's character and God's truth. Did God really say that?

Is that what God really said? Well, you know, the reason that God said that is because he just doesn't want you to be like him.

He knows if you eat of that fruit that you'll just be like him, like pulling on the desire to be our own Lord. Pulling on the desire for us to be central in our own story.

So as soon as rebellion against God's Lordship, it's an adoption of self-centeredness and it's often displayed in our lives as a disordered affection, a ruined love and acceptance of lies about God and about ourselves.

It's important to understand this next point is that sin is not just personal. Meaning the sin of my life or sin in general is not just a personal reality. Meaning it's not just like, well, my sin only really affects me and my little individual heart and soul. But sin is described in scripture as something much larger than just something that we do that we shouldn't do or we don't do that we should do. But it's described as a living force that breaks relational covenant and that has cosmic implications.

That sin is not just individualized and personal, but it is something that is seeped down into the cracks and crevices of all of God's creation and sought to destroy the thing that got good.

That it affects all things, every area of creation, every bit of the world. No one and no thing is untouched by sin.

We see these realities in verses like Romans chapter three, verse 10. Do I have Romans three times up there or not? I don't remember if I have that one. Romans chapter three, verse 10, we'll go to it if I don't.

As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Like there is a, there is a pervasity to sin where no one can escape from it.

Paul says later in the same chapter, Romans chapter three, verse 23. For what? For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Later in Romans chapter eight, verses 20 and 21. He talks about how sin is not just personal to the individual, but the whole of creation is waiting and groaning in this sense of anticipation for the sons and daughters of God to be finally revealed so that they can be released from their own or its own suffering from the power of sin. The brokenness of the world is the result of sin.

Whole dynamic of how humanity has related to creation was changed because of their sin. You go back to the Genesis account and you're reminded that when Adam and Eve sinned, sinned, it wasn't just that they were now separated from God and kicked out of the garden and that there was some relational break there. But the consequence of their sin was a curse upon the ground. Was a curse upon creation as a whole. The ground would be cursed. They would work it with toil and labor that there would be pain and childbearing. Sin is not just personal.

Sin is relational and sin is cosmic in its consequence and its effects. Well, you know, I still think that if we're just a little bit smarter and we're a little bit nicer and we make a few more tweaks and adjustments to the things that we believe and the things that we say and the things that we do, maybe change the way humanity is impacting the environment, then maybe we can save this broken world.

And again, we see that this has become a failed experiment. We are unable. We are unable to fix sin on our own. And no amount of good works balances the scales of our sinful nature. Yeah, we can make tweaks to our behavior and maybe stop doing some bad things and start doing some good things, but there is no amount of change that we can make in our lives

That heals the nature of sin and the brokenness of creation. Paul is famous for saying in Ephesians chapter two, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.

Listen, we have tried for all of human history to make it better on our own. Okay.

And it is worse than it was. And it continues to get worse. And the moral and ethical and even the philosophical fabric of all of the world that we live in continues to degrade to the point of absurdity sometimes.

I'm going to look at the news and I'm like, this is okay. Well, wait a sec. When did we, when were we okay with this being okay?

When was this normal? Secular humanism has failed. And not only has it failed, it's dove us deeper into the pit.

Sin breaks the purpose and plan of God for our lives. It incurs the judgment of God and sin ultimately leads to death.

Sin that is not, sin, sin that is not dealt with, sin that is not dealt with breaks the purpose and plan for, of God for our lives. It brings or incurs the judgment of God upon our lives. And it ultimately leads to death. We should have that up on the screen for me. Paul goes on to say in Romans chapter six, verses 23, that the wages of our sin, or the payment for our sin, what we, what we get for possessing sin is death.

And he says earlier in Ephesians chapter two, he says this about sin, he says, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, he said, we were by nature, objects of his wrath.

That the nature of our sin incurs the judgment and not just the judgment of God, but incurs the wrath of God upon us and no one can escape from it.

It's a hopeful message, right? Now listen, we could shut it up right now and be like, and that's the truth of God's word. And that is the truth of God's word. Okay. Sin is, sin has in totality destroyed the fabric of God's creation. Sin is and will stand in both judgment and wrath before God. And we do have a nature of sin within us. One that we cannot fix on our own. One that we cannot escape from on our own.

And the world just keeps lollygagging along like it can fix itself. Completely darkened and hardened in its heart. I mean, like Romans chapter one was written for 2026, but I want to get, I want to hear something like, and I don't know if you've seen this. I don't know if you've heard about this. I don't know if it's on your radar, but as much as there is this cultural idea of secular humanism that we do this on our own, there is also this growing wave within culture of like, actually, I don't think we can. And not just from guys like me or people like you, but there is a resurgence and a hunger for the power of God through Jesus Christ.

There is more, there is more Jesus in sports now. Go read about like, of course, the media does not like to report on this because it goes against the like ideology of that we can do this on our own. But go and just like Google up reports of the revivals that are happening in D1 athletic programs like Penn State and Ohio State.

There's more Jesus in sports. There's revivals across college campuses. I mean, for crying out loud, when you got a guy like Jelly Roll preaching the gospel at the Grammys, you know, Jesus is on the move, right?

I got so many thoughts about that. I am like, oh, Jesus, would you raise up more voices like that?

But listen, we, we have to be careful even in this, we aren't talking about Jesus as just the better option when compared to all the bad options out there.

We're not talking about just like, ah, well, yeah, you know, I considered what kind of like ideology or belief system that I would kind of take upon myself and try and like power through this malaise that we see in the culture right now. We're not just talking about Jesus as an option among many other options.

We're not just talking about following a new philosopher that has a marginally better teaching than the others, a marginally better vision for the world marred by sin. We're talking about Jesus Christ, the power of God for salvation for all who believe.

We're not talking about a restructuring of our behavior patterns so that people are generally just more nice. We're talking about a complete renovation of the human heart, where through faith in Jesus Christ, a heart that was stone is now a heart that is flesh. Through faith in Jesus Christ, the darkness has been broken off of us. Sin has been destroyed and ruined, and we have got victory over death through the resurrection of Jesus.

God did not wash his hands of the human race when they broke his law, when they betrayed his love, and when they rebelled against his purposes. Instead, he stepped into time in the incarnation of Jesus Christ to deal with the problem of sin himself.

Jesus himself said in Luke chapter 19 verse 10, "The Son of God has come to seek and to save the lost."

Now, if you read our statement of faith here, you'll read exactly what we have. Michael, do I have the statement of faith on the part on Jesus in the slides? It says, "We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God." There we go. Can you read that? There we go. This is word for word here. I'm going to read it because what it displays is it displays the who, the what, the where, and the when of Jesus, and that's how we're going to go through this. "We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, perfectly obeying the Father, and offered himself as the substitutionary atonement for sin through his death on the cross. He rose bodily from the dead on the third day, demonstrating victory over sin and death, and ascended into heaven where he intercedes for his people. He will return in power and glory to judge the living and the dead."

First thing that we're going to talk about is the who of Jesus. If we talked about the problem, the problem of sin and its pervasiveness, we now talk about Jesus as the solution, God himself as the solution. Who is Jesus? Jesus is divine.

Jesus is not just a man. Jesus is not just God. Jesus is, as Pastor Luke maybe said a little bit last week, that there is a union of both the human nature and the nature of God into one person, that is Jesus Christ. Theologians call this the hypostatic union, two natures, one person. We get this from all over the scripture. One example here will be John chapter 1.

In it, John the Gospel writer says this, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men." It says later in John 1.14, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father full of grace and full of truth." Later in Colossians chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 2, the apostle Paul says that Jesus is the exact representation of God's being. He is deity in human form, in fullness.

Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature. The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 1 that the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word. Who is Jesus? Jesus is God. He is divine. This is an immovable, inescapable, unarguable aspect of our faith and the Christian faith as a whole. The divinity of Jesus is an unmovable pillar in the Christian faith. Be very, very, not, no, don't be cautious and aware. Run away for your life.

And any religious system or any teacher that questions the divinity of Jesus. Now that was the who of Jesus. He is divine. What about the what of Jesus? Jesus was and is the perfect sacrifice and victory.

We're gonna, there's a lot here, okay? There's a lot here. As was stated in our, like in the actual, in the actual statement, He was, He perfectly obeyed the Father. He offered Himself as substitutionary atonement for sin through His death on the cross. He rose bodily from the dead on the third day and He demonstrated victory over sin.

One of the, we talked about the divinity of Jesus, but also we have the biblical truth. The idea that, not the idea, the truth that Jesus is also fully human. Hebrews chapter four, verse 15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin." What makes Jesus different from you and I? Not just the fact that He was divine in His nature, but also that He took on a human nature and did what Adam could not do. Obeyed God fully and completely in all things throughout His entire life. We believe that Jesus was without sin. First Peter chapter, first Peter chapter two, verse 22, "He committed no sin and no deceit was found in His mouth." First John chapter three, verse five, "But you know that He appeared that He might take away our sins, and in Him was no sin."

Because Jesus did not sin, because Jesus lived a perfect life, He Himself was able to offer atonement for our sin.

That He was able to stand in our place. That He was able to take upon Himself the punishment that was due us because of our sin. He became the perfect sacrifice.

Hear the word atonement a lot in Christian theology. Atonement means, in a really simple way, reconciliation or recompense. It is the means by which we are made right with God.

Jesus makes us right with God. We cannot be made right on our own with God. Jesus must make us right with God through His sacrifice on the cross. That Jesus takes upon Himself the payment of our sin, or the wage of our sin.

Second Corinthians chapter five, verse 21, Paul says, "God made Him who had no sin to be sinned for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

That God made Jesus who had no sin be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. We might be declared righteous before God. First Peter chapter three, verse 18, says, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."

There was a penalty for sin. There was a payment due for sin. Paul says that the wages of sin was death.

And the immensity of God's love, God entered into time in Jesus Christ, not to demand payment from us for our sin, but to make the payment Himself on our behalf, so that what was due to us, death, Jesus received, so that what was due to Jesus, righteousness, and glory, we could receive by faith.

Jesus took what was ours so that we could take what was His. Jesus took upon Himself the sin, taking it to the cross, so that we could take upon ourselves what was His, the righteousness of God.

This was done in victory over death or resurrection. This signified victory over death through Jesus' own resurrection. We see in 1 Corinthians 15, three through four, Paul says that, "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised again on the third day, according to the Scriptures."

Jesus Himself prophesied that He would be killed and then be raised again in Luke 24. "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day rise again, be raised again, that the penalty and power that sin had in that it caused or the wage of it was death, that in the power of God through the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ, victory over death could be gained."

Where is Jesus now? He is ascended back into heaven according to the Scriptures and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, where He waits to come back to judge the living and the dead. Acts chapter 1 verses 9 through 11 says that after He had said this, this was, they're speaking of Jesus, after He had said this, He was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight. They were looking at Tetley up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee, " they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way that you have seen Him go to heaven."

Jesus is now in heaven, seated at the right hand of God, and He is coming back again.

This is the when, Jesus is coming back. Matthew chapter 25, Jesus says, "When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne."

Revelation chapter 19 verses 11 through 16 has perhaps the greatest, the greatest vivid picture of the return of Jesus Christ as victorious King.

This is from John, he says this. He says, "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.

With justice, He judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire and on His head are many crowns. He has a name written on Him that no one knows but He Himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and His name is the Word of God.

The armies of heaven were following Him riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of His mouth is a sharp sword to which to strike down the nations.

He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh, He has this name written, King of kings and Lord of lords."

There is a section of scripture in Romans chapter 5 where Paul, seemingly looking forward to 2026 when Cameron Lionheart would preach a message on original sin and the nature in Jesus Christ. And I'm going to give Cameron a silver bullet verse to tie these two sections together. So good looking out Paul.

Says this in Romans chapter 5. It says, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned, for if the many died by the trespass of the one man,

How much more, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to many?"

Paul goes on to say like, "Listen, sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in that way death came to all men because all men sinned. But if, just imagine, if the many could die from the trespass of one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many?"

He goes on to say, "Later in the passage, consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men. So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For justice through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous."

I have three scriptures that I want to, that I want to end with this morning, okay?

"Receive this as an invitation." Not from me, okay, not from your church, not from your pastor. "Receive this morning as an invitation from the Holy Spirit."

"To reckon with the nature and pervasity of sin in your heart, the brokenness of the world in which you live, and the relational and cosmic destruction that sin has caused.

And hear the invitation from the Holy Spirit. I have not abandoned you in your sin.

But I have sent Jesus Christ as an atoning sacrifice for your sins, that you may know the Father."

In Colossians chapter two verses 13 and 14, Paul says this, "When you were dead in your sins, and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away and nailed it to the cross."

Jesus said in John chapter six verse 40, he said that my father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. And in a world where we are looking for absolutely every possible scenario and solution and teaching and tweak of behavior to solve what sin has created.

God is asking you to look towards the Son, that those who look towards the Son and believe in him will have eternal life, and God will raise him up on the last day.

Finally, in a moment of desperation where both Mary and Martha were standing in front of Jesus in John chapter 11, in grief over the death of Lazarus, Jesus says to them, "Well, don't worry, like you're gonna be resurrected and there's like, there's resurrection in the last day." Mary's like, "I know there's resurrection in the last day."

And Jesus looked at them intently and said this in John chapter 11, and I think this is ultimately, this is ultimately the question from God's word for you this morning.

I'm gonna read it right out of the gospel, not off my notes. Start in verse 23, or let's start in verse 21 of John chapter 11. "Lord, Martha said to Jesus, 'If you had been here, my brother would not have died.'

"But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day."

Verse 25, Jesus looked at her, or Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life.

"He who believes in me will live even though he dies, "and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

Do you believe this? Yes. Do you believe this? That is the question that the Holy Spirit offers to you through his word this morning.

Mired and broken by sin. No power to save yourself. Doomed for death and judgment and destruction. Jesus Christ offers to you himself as the atoning sacrifice for your sins. Taking your sin upon himself and putting it to death on the cross. That you might become the righteousness of God in Christ.

It is him and him alone that is the resurrection. It is him and him alone that is the life. It is him and him alone that has victory over death. Do you believe this?

Maybe you've believed it before, but you're questioning to believe it now. Maybe you've never even considered it before, but the Holy Spirit through his word is piercing through. If you're really uncomfortable this morning,

Listen, man, I prayed all week that you would be really uncomfortable this morning. I'm serious. I love you. And that is why I prayed for your discomfort.

Because if there is a disquieting presence in your soul right now, I want you to hear very clearly. You're not just hungry.

The Holy Spirit is calling out your name. And do you recognize that you are separated from me in sin? Do you recognize that my son has come to save you and reconcile you to me?

Will you put your faith in him today? Will you give yourself to him today? Will you choose to believe in the one that can truly save and forgive you from your sins and release you into eternal life?

As an invitation for you today, if you have never even considered that decision, if you have never even thought about what is actually going on in this world today and what is the problem and what is the solution, I'm telling you right now, the problem is sin. The problem is your sin. The problem is my sin. The problem is sin and Jesus is the solution. And Jesus is the answer. And if you're like, I don't even know what it means to believe in Jesus, that's great.

Because Jesus is going to help you even in your unbelief. Because belief comes at the beginning as a moment of surrender. It is a moment of conviction, Lord. Yes, I hear you. Oh my God. What's going on? Okay, I surrender to belief, Lord, that it is you and you alone that called me out of my sin. That it is you and you alone that offers me healing. That it is you and you alone that can reconcile me to the Father. I surrender my will to you. I surrender myself to you. And here I am.

So worship team can come back up this morning. We're going to go back into a time and a period of worship. But listen, if you are here this morning and you are saying to yourself internally, man, like I know he is talking to me. And I know that there is a holy discomfort within me this morning. And I don't know what it is. It is the Holy Spirit saying, come forth. It is the Holy Spirit saying, come forward. It is the Holy Spirit saying, think less of those who are around you and what they will think and think more of the God who calls you. Listen, it is impossible to be conscious of God if you're only conscious of yourself.

If you live in a perpetual state of self-consciousness, what will they think? What will they say? What will they believe about me? It is impossible to be both at the same time self-conscious and God-conscious. I'm calling you to be God-conscious right now. Lay aside your belief and your embarrassment about what others will think and respond to the word of the Holy Spirit in your heart by coming forward as we worship and meeting me here at the altar. We will pray with you.

We will support you. We will love you. We will celebrate with you as you give yourself to the one and only one who can forgive your sins and heal your soul.

Heavenly Father, we pray, Lord, in these moments that your spirit would begin to move,

That you would speak to hearts, Lord. Lord, that you would destroy any scheme of the enemy

To scare someone away. Just speak a lie, Lord. We cancel every lie of the enemy in Jesus' name right now. Every lie that says, "Yeah, it's not talking to you. You're fine. You're not that bad. You don't actually need Jesus."

Lord, we throw ourselves on the altar of your grace this morning, coming to receive what we could not produce on our own

And asking Heavenly Father that you would call all men, women, and children to Jesus Christ this morning. In your name, amen.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine. According to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Conduit, you are loved. Be blessed. We will see you next time.