The Dark Downgrade of Sin

There is nothing that grieves the heart of God more than sin. God is holy and he hates sin. Sin is the pernicious activity of the wicked who delight in their sins.

Sin in a believer's life is more provoking to God because it's aggravated sin. For we sin against knowledge and light. We sin against God and his glory.

We sin against Christ and his blood. Sin is ruinous. When Adam fell, his sin ruined a race and we suffer the consequences of that tragic event to this very day.

God demands obedience from us and when we disobey him, we sin. Sin is disobedience, friends. The shortest definition of sin found in my Bible is in Isaiah chapter 53 and verse 6 which states, all we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way. Sin has gone our way when we know it isn't God's way. Adam and Eve knew God's way and they aggravated their sin by going their own way through disobedience and we each have a ruined nature because of sin.

I want to preach a message on the sinfulness of sin today, friends. A topic seldom preached in our day of politically correct pulpits. My message is entitled, the dark downgrade of sin because that is what sin is.

A downgrade to further sinfulness. A walk through the Bible will give us much knowledge on the dark downgrade of sin. I don't normally alliterate a message, friends, but I feel the best way for us to remember this message is to do that very thing.

I'd like for you to participate with me throughout this message on sin. If you will take out a piece of paper and a pen or you can do this on a blank page in your Bible. I want you to write out the following outline as we proceed.

I'd like for you to draw a descending staircase with 10 steps with each step long enough to write a word upon it each time lowering the line to make it look like a staircase going downstairs. Can you picture that in your minds? That's what I'd like for you to do right now and it's my prayer that this message on the dark downgrade of sin will always stay with you to keep you from stepping into sin. All right, do you have that staircase going downstairs with the blank lines? Some can keep going as I proceed.

Let us fill in the first blank. I want us to see the disobedience of sin. Write out the word disobedience on that first stair step and write the following verse beside it as well.

Romans 5 19. Let me read that to us at this time. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Here we see Adam's fall in the garden whereby the disobedience of Adam ruined us. We're born under a curse. We're born with a ruined nature because of sin.

Why? Because of one man's disobedience. Sin is disobedience. The sin of Adam and Eve had a great aggravation attached to it because they sinned against the direct command of God not to eat of that particular tree.

By doing so, they asserted self and got up on the throne of their hearts and sat there and decided to rule. And if you, friend, weren't eating back then, you too would have tried to pull God down from his throne and sit there yourself. You have a depraved nature that has a bent towards sin.

Man drinks iniquity like it's water. So our verse in Romans declares, for by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. So disobedience is our first word on this descending staircase which ends up in a basement of despair.

Now beside the second stair step on that blank line, write the next word which is downgrade. For all sin is a dark downgrade into more sin. If you don't believe me, friends, just look at the life of King David.

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 11. Let us peer into the downgrade of sin as seen in King David's life. A man described as a man after God's own heart.

The sad and tragic story of David and Bathsheba should be a lesson and a warning to each of us to avoid all sin, avoid all haunts of sin, avoid all occasions for sin. Here is David resting on his couch when he should have been fighting the Lord's battles. He's pampering self, indulging self.

He goes for a stroll atop his house and gazes down at a gorgeous woman who is naked taking a bath. And instead of turning quickly away from embarrassment, he looks, he lingers, he lusts, he acts, and the downgrade of sin begins. He takes her and commits the act of adultery with her.

It's an aggravated sin because of all the favors and blessings God has already bestowed upon King David. He had plenty of wives already. Why does he need another? He wants to gratify his lusts and he's king.

He can get away with it. He can do anything he wants to. He begins with a look and it turns into an act, an act of adultery.

Then the downgrade of sin continues down that steep slope as he ends up a murderer by eliminating Bathsheba's husband Uriah. He places him at the front line of a hot battle and he is killed. And David's downgrade continues yet to a morbid state of unrepentance as he becomes one of the most famous backsliders in our Bible.

It takes Nathan the prophet to point a finger at him and say, you are the man whereby he's finally convicted of sin. And the saddest verse in this sad chapter is found in verse 27 where it reads, but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Oh, the sad dark downgrade of sin, friends.

Now I want us to go to the next stair step and right beside it the following word, a danger, but there's a great danger associated with sin. In Genesis chapter 6 in verses 5 through 7 we read, and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And he repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. Listen, friends, little did those antediluvians realize the danger they were in because of sin. God had been observing them.

God knew their filthy thoughts, which grieved his holy heart and that continually. Oh, what a great danger that generation was in while they listened to the preaching of righteous Noah as he built that ark. What danger they were warned from as each blow of the hammers were a sermon illustration warning them of the coming danger, which was fast approaching.

A great judgment was about to befall them, every single one of them, and they were ignorant of their danger as they continued in their sins. It isn't sin like that, friends. The sinner is ignorant to his great danger.

He's not awakened to his perilous position because of sin. Danger is all around him, and he knows it not. Now, I want you to place the next word on our next ascending step of our downward staircase, and that next word is depravity.

Oh, the depravity of sin. All one has to do is to read Romans chapter 1 to see the awful depravity of sin. Listen to this sad laundry list of perversion and depravity associated with sin.

For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error, which was meat. And today, friends, our society promotes the depravity of sin and calls it human rights, but they forget that the God of heaven is a just judge who will and must punish sin.

For my Bible declares in Romans, but after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasure us up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds. So we see, friends, this dark downgrade of sin in regard to depravity. Let us go now to our next stair step and write the word destruction there.

Satan's both a deceiver and a destroyer, and sin is his tool to destroy mankind, to get man to sin all he wants to, and fill up his cup of iniquity to bring the judgment of God down upon him. Listen to the destruction, the destructive aspect of sin. And Abraham, get up early in the morning, to the place where he stood before the Lord, and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace, and it came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham.

Our text describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as that of a great burning furnace. When I was just a kid of a boy, I had a summer job in a grocery store, and my job description was that I had to break down the cardboard boxes that the produce came in, and then carry them to a cast iron furnace in the back of the store. I will never forget the white hot flames as they twisted and danced in that burning furnace of fire.

The heat was so intense that it singed my face if I got too near that furnace door. My Bible describes God's anger like that of a furnace that'll burn like an oven. That's what it says in Malachi.

Oh, friends, the destructive nature of sin. Satan is a thief who comes to seek and destroy. Jesus, on the other hand, comes to seek and to save that which was lost.

Everything about sin is destructive, friend. Now, let us travel down the staircase to our next word. Write out the word desensitizing.

Oh, the desensitizing nature of sin. Look at our society over the last 60 years, since the invention of television, and how that instrument has been used of the devil to flood our homes with perversion and vice and immorality and nudity. How we as a nation used to blush at sin.

How many years ago there was such a thing as shame in society. Now there is no shame. No one blushes anymore.

This generation doesn't know what it means to blush. They're so desensitized to sin. Sin is promoted in hot places everywhere you go.

Perversion and nudity is in the media all around us. We as a people have been so desensitized to sin that even Christians, many of them, don't even blush at sin anymore. We just accept sin as normal in our society because we're a sinning society.

And many church members today think they can sin all they want to and still go to heaven. But listen friends, Jesus never preached a sin in religion. My Bible declares holiness without.

No one will see the Lord. Now let's go lower. Let's travel downward to our next stair step.

And beside it, write the word devaluing. Devaluing. The devaluing nature of sin.

When we become desensitized to sin, we then tend to devalue our principles, devalue human life. Abortion used to be considered a horrible shameful act of murder. Now it's just Planned Parenthood.

The devaluing nature of sin is seen at every level of society. Look how the entertainment industry has devalued women by making them sex objects. Society teaches our teenage boys that girls are to be enjoyed and then discarded.

Sin devalues the importance of a thing or a person. Sin has a devaluing nature associated with it. The people of God at Sinai devalued their opinion of what worship was and who God was.

And they made themselves a molten calf to worship and dance before. I believe friends that today in our churches, we have so devalued worship to God and regulated it just a human entertainment. We worship the human performing for us today in our sanctuaries.

We've so devalued everything pertaining to religion and God. Now let us go lower to our next stair step and write upon it the word demoralizing. Sin will demoralize a person to the level of a beast.

Look at the life of a prostitute and how demoralized she is. Look at the person who is addicted to pornography and how by their continued gazing at it, they demoralize themselves often ended up as perverted as what they are beholding. There have been studies which demonstrate that kids who sit before television and continually watch violent entertainment will become violent themselves.

They are demoralized by it. The demoralizing nature of sin is a dark downgrade that affects an entire society. Now let us continue down the staircase even further to our next word.

Write the word demonic. Sin attracts demons. An angry individual prone to outbursts of uncontrollable wrath is inviting demons into their home.

A person who watches demonic movies invites demons into their home. A person who is addicted to pornography invites demons into their home. When we sin, we lower the hedge of protection around us which God has placed there.

When we sin, we give Satan ground. We give him an inroad into our lives by giving him permission to plant a stake of sin there which we delight in. The demonic nature of sin should frighten each of us away from sin.

In Matthew chapter 12, we read the following. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out.

And when he has come, he findeth it swept and empty and carnished. Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.

If you only knew what fire you were playing with when you sinned, friend, what demons you are attracting to your home, inviting to come in and live with your family, you would flee from sin. Let us go now to our last stairstep in this dark downgrading staircase of sin. If you would, friends, write the word dividing on this bottom step.

For the dividing nature of sin is seen throughout my Bible. Jacob deceives his father Isaac and steals the birthright from his brother Esau, and the family is soon divided. In Genesis chapter 11, we find the story of the tower of Babel and how the people wanted to make a name for themselves with a tower that reached up to heaven, and God sought and dispersed them all through confusion.

He divided them all over the place, giving them different languages because of the dividing nature of their sin. Sin is a great divider, friends, and a sad divider indeed. I'm thinking of a former friend now.

He was a leader in his church and a model Christian family man. Then one day he began to lust after his pretty young secretary, and it ended up in an adulterous affair. The sinful act brought ruin and division to his home.

His marriage ended in divorce. His children were alienated from him, all because of the sad dividing nature of sin. I have seen churches divided because of sin.

Church splits are commonplace today. Everybody wants their own selfish way. Sin is a great divider.

Biot friendships are ruined, trust betrayed over the dividing nature of sin. Take a good look at that descending staircase of the dark downgrade of sin, friend, for that's exactly what it is. Sin is a downhill slope to destruction, for many a downhill slope to perdition.

The apostle Paul declared in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 13 the following concern of the downhill slope of sin, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. The deceiving nature of sin, friends, will make you wax worse and worse on that dark downgrade, which only goes from bad to worse. Well, I hope the sermon on the sinfulness of sin has helped some of us realize how black and awful sin really is.

We preachers today who are not afraid to call sin sin, we'll go ahead and preach on it, and more of us need to preach on sin today, friends. We need more preachers who will call sin black and hell hot and warn folks not to go there. We need to worry less about being politically correct in our pulpits and be more honest with folks and warn them of the great and deadly nature of sin.

Sin will ruin you, friend. Sin could destroy your family if you play with it, and that's exactly what Satan wants to do. He wants to ruin you and your family through sin, but we must remind ourselves as believers, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, Jesus Christ out on a bloody cross for sin, but when we presumptuously sin, we trample the blood of Christ and spit in his face and rob God of his glory.

We provoke God with sin. Let us flee sin as Paul admonished his disciple Timothy to flee youthful lusts. Let us go now to a time of prayer, and let's ask the Holy Spirit to shine his spotlight into our lives and reveal to each of us things which are displeasing to the Lord, and let us ask for cleansing from sin and separation of sin in our lives.

Let us ask the Holy Spirit to mortify our sins. I'll always remember what my homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen Oldford, used to tell me. He said we should continually walk with God beneath the cloudless sky, but anytime temptation presents its ugly head in whatever form, we should deal with it immediately by taking it to God in prayer and then taking it to the cross.

I remember Dr. Oldford's words he used to share with me when he said he was confronted with temptation. He would give it to God and say, nail it, Lord, nail it, and that's what we should do as well, friends. Take it to the cross.

Before we were believers, we were dead in sin. Let us now be dead to sin, for Christ Jesus has saved us not only from the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin as well. Let us go now to a time of quiet and reflective prayer and ask God to shine his spotlight on our hearts.

Let us pray.