WYC 2011: Alive Again!

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GYC West

The Sins of the World and Learning How to Think for Yourself

Eugene Prewitt

The Sins of the World and the Lamb of God Part 1

Our Father in Heaven, I ask that you would be here as our teacher, that you would help us to understand what's true by your Holy Spirit, and I ask for this in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 1.

Actually, she brought her Bible, but it's the 1 that I'm using.

It is becoming 1 of my very favorite passages.

The next day, John sees Jesus coming unto him and saith, Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world." We're talking this period about the sin of the world, And before we get into the sin of the world, I just want to start with this gospel truth.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

If we find however bad or thorough the sin of the world is, it doesn't change the fact that Jesus takes it away.

When I gave the introduction to this series this morning, right after the manna talk, we addressed Romans 7.

We talked about the idea that sin is not known intuitively.

Romans chapter 7 and we're looking for I had not known which verse is it for I had not known sin except the law had said thou shalt not not known lust I'm gonna quote it to you while I find it.

For I had not known lust, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet.

For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

This verse is so helpful to me because when I think it through, I would not have known that lusting was wicked if it wasn't for this verse.

And Paul would not have known that lusting was wicked if it wasn't for the 10th commandment.

In other words, what Paul says in Romans 7, 7 is that sin is not something that is identified by my intuition.

John Bunyan, you like him, he wrote the book called?

That's right, and he also wrote another beautiful book called The Holy War about the town of Mansoul.

John Bunyan was a Christian man, But did you know he wrote a book about the seventh-day Sabbath?

He wrote a book entirely about the seventh-day Sabbath, and that book is against the seventh-day Sabbath.

It is to prove that the seventh-day Sabbath is not obligatory for Christians today.

And here is John Bunyan's primary line of argument against the Seventh-day Sabbath.

It's that when a man is born again, that man has the law of God written in his heart?

And when a man is born again, he knows he shouldn't kill, he shouldn't steal, he shouldn't commit adultery, but he doesn't know anything about the seventh-day Sabbath.

And so that must not be part of the law of God that is written in the heart.

And my response would be from Romans 7, 7.

That is, the sin is not known intuitively.

And if you would go to the law, there you would find that the Sabbath is obligatory for Christians today.

And if John Bunyan was here, I'd take him a step further and say, John, the law is written incrementally.

That is, each aspect of the law is written in your heart as you submit to it.

So God brings you up, step higher and higher, you are an epistle.

It's not like that God was done writing you the day that you gave your life to him.

That is, you are his orchard or his garden.

The law is not known, excuse me, sin is not known intuitively.

The other thought doesn't need any proving because it's too much common sense.

But that is that our theological errors are not perceived intuitively.

It's hard to even say this because it's so obvious that it doesn't make a good sentence.

But if you think something wrongly, you're not going to realize it's wrong just by thinking about it.

You're welcome to come in, but you don't have to.

So the effect of sin, have you read this in Hebrews?

It talks about the deceitfulness of sin, that we in fact ought to exhort 1 another daily lest any of us be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

If you turn that sentence around, you find that sin is deceitful.

That is, the effect of sin is it leads me into error.

I hope you haven't lived long enough to, or haven't observed this in your life, but when you meet someone who has a theological aberration, what's an aberration?

Like they, when it comes to theology, there's something wrong with how they think.

When you meet someone like that, if you know them long enough, my experience is eventually something crops up that there's a sin in their life.

There's a connection there that sin is deceitful.

And when you have a sin in your life, you end up in some foolish or false way.

Yeah, lest you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

The converse of that is also true and is also easy to follow.

And that is that a man who has a misunderstanding of what is true, to whatever extent he misunderstands truth, to just that extent, it's easy for the devil to lead him into sin.

Eve has a misunderstanding about what is true, that is, that she believes Satan's lie about God.

And what does that do when she believes a lie?

I'm glad it's good music that they play in the cafeteria.

Let me review these thoughts and then we'll move forward.

1 thought, we find sin by revelation and that keeps us from going into theological error.

Another thought is that we find theological error by revelation and that helps keep us from going into sin or even can lead us out of sin?

So of our six-part series here, the first 3 parts we're going to spend talking about sin.

Remember our very first verse, Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

But the sin that Jesus takes away from me is the sin that I recognize.

And until I recognize the sin, he's not going to take it away.

So that by talking about what sin, by recognizing the sins in our life, we open the way for Jesus to take them away.

The last 3 lessons are of my effort to fulfill what Ellen White says in the book Education, where she says we should not teach young people to be mere reflectors of other men's thoughts.

We should in fact teach them how to think.

But I find many young people and elder people alike so misunderstand thinking that when they make their own opinion, they feel like they've been thinking for themselves.

And I just want to preface those last 3 lectures by saying that making an opinion is far different than thinking so much so that you could make an opinion without thinking.

And learning and thinking is not the same thing as thinking well.

If I said I want to teach you how to cook, I don't mean I want to teach you to cook.

That is, I could teach you to cook without teaching you how to do it and you might just be making mashed potatoes every single meal.

The Sins of the World and The Lamb of God Part 2

Our Father in heaven, I ask that you would be here as our teacher.

And as we talk about a dirty topic, I ask that you would find a way to keep us clean, that you would purify our minds.

I ask for your spirit in the name of Jesus, amen.

This is a new lecture for me, and what that means, when I give a lecture, say 5 or 6 times, the verses end up being in my mind, and then I don't really need notes.

I just sort of have them for formality, but I don't really touch them.

But when it's a new lecture for me, I'm quite addicted to them.

Does that make sense to you, how that would work for you?

Well, in this case, they're right there on my computer, and I'm afraid it's gonna go dead.

So what I decided to do for sensibility is start out by telling you what in my thinking and prayer and study I concluded the sins of these various entities are that is of Latin and North America and of the of Asia and then to go after a Bible study because if the computer goes dead I can wing the Bible study.

Oh it's in room 305 in the inn If you want to get it for me, that'd be super.

What would I call the sins of North America?

Why don't you turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 16.

It seems sensible to start with the sins close to home.

I have been in liberal churches that preached against conservative sins and in conservative churches that preached against liberal sins, and I consider both to be kind of pointless and aimless preaching.

Does that make any sense to you what I'm saying?

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom.

Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters.

Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." When I read that verse, it just looks like what's right around me.

Did you notice what you'd expect it to say when it says Sodom would be homosexuality and fornication?

But what does it list first as the sins of Sodom?

It was in the airport, And it was describing the parts of the United States that have the least longevity.

That is, they live longer than the rest of the states.

It's the states all the way around the 1 I live in plus the 1 I live in.

The states all the way around Arkansas are where you live the shortest amount here in North America.

It's Because we eat too much food and we smoke.

And my wife began to comment on this 3 or 4 years ago.

That is, we would fly to give a series of lectures, maybe in Europe somewhere, and then over here in California somewhere, and maybe in Michigan somewhere.

And every time we'd come home, she would see something and she started saying, Eugene, why do the people in the Arkansas airport look so different than the people in the other airports?

That's what she means is that there's a difference.

1 of the sins in North America is that we eat too much food.

But this verse didn't say about eating too much food, it said you have too much food.

How to, we'll have a Bible study on pride, but let's just talk about what the sins are.

Have you ever thought about idleness as a sin?

Idleness is a violation of the fourth commandment in principle.

That is, the fourth commandment doesn't only say, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

It also says, 6 days shalt thou labor and do all thy work.

We were made to have useful employment and did idleness benefit Sodom?

Now maybe you could ask the question, why was Sodom idle?

The answer is in the verse, Sodom could be idle because Sodom didn't have to work to have food.

That is that, and It's really something here in America that our food is so cheap that most Americans could work for only 3 or 4 days, and in the 3 or 4 days earn enough money to buy their food for an entire month, really for their family for an entire month.

Do you know in most of the world it isn't like that?

In most of the world, you work a good chunk of your time to get your food.

Pride, abundance of bread, idleness, but then there was another 1.

Neither did she strengthen the hands of the poor and needy.

I've lived in Alaska and I live in Arkansas.

This is what The United States does for poor people, we give them abundance of bread and idleness.

We give them, I have a sister-in-law who gets food stamps.

She needs them, she's a single mother of 4 children, she gets food stamps.

But she would have to have a family of gluttons to have any hope of using up the amount of food stamps she gets.

That she can eat the most fancy organic vegetables and fruits and still have plenty, what the government is giving her and they pay her rent.

A single mother of 4 children, she needs help.

But what is the government giving to poor people?

It's the same thing the rich people have, abundance of bread and idleness.

They need to have someone to literally, to help them and get them going.

And this is 1 of the sins of North America.

It's the sin of treating the poor with indifference or carelessness or even careless gifts.

That is, helping them in a way that really doesn't that really doesn't help them.

If I were to talk for a minute about the sins of Asia, 1 of them would be ancestor worship.

Ancestor worship has not disappeared, it has morphed.

And I'll be very plain when I address this kind of thing in my experience.

The desire to please one's elders to the extent of violating principle is idolatry.

That is, when you obey someone contrary to principle, this is a kind of homage that is due alone to God.

And to give that kind of homage to a man is to put him on the throne or to treat him as deity, and that is 1 of the sins of Asia.

It has, I'm thinking of China right now, China has spoiled an entire generation.

That is that you have a generation of people who, the entire society outside of the farmlands, you have single child homes.

That is, I'm talking about the one-child policy.

I was in China and listened to people talk.

I listened to a lady talk about how she didn't want to get married and didn't want to have a child because it would interfere with her career.

This devotion to wealth and to prosperity is, it is, It's a covetousness and it's 1 of the sins of Asia.

But when I talk about the sin of Asia, can you sense that the sins of Asia are the sins of America and that the sins of North America, can you sense the sins of people are the sins of people?

It reminds me when I was preparing this series really about the 7 churches, because when the Bible talks about the sins of Ephesus, at the end it says, let him that has an ear hear what God the Spirit says to the 7 churches.

And it's that way all the way through, right?

Sure, there are weaknesses of Ephesus, but pay attention, we have those, too.

And there are weaknesses of Pergamos and of Thyatira.

The Sins of Europe, Africa, Oceana, and the Islands

We're going to have a prayer and then we'll begin.

And for those in audio-verse land, I'm glad that you are with us.

Our Father in heaven, I'm asking that you will be our teacher.

We need you to use your Bible to make clear to us what is right and true.

And I ask that you will do this for your own sake and that you'd give us of your spirit.

What we're talking about in this period are the sins of the world with particular focus on the sins of Australia, the islands of the world, Africa, and Europe.

Now, when I planned to do this series Originally, there would have been like 8 or 9 different lectures, 1 for each continent or subcontinent.

So you know when you try to put this much together, you are really abbreviating things, right?

It says, but when diverse, that is, various persons, were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of 1 Tyrannus.

There's a principle there that is very helpful for those that are in Europe and for some in Australia, and that is a principle to know when to separate from a congregation.

Do you see in that verse when our apostle separated from the congregation?

Was it when they didn't believe what he said?

It said when they were hardened and believed not, but that wasn't the only issue.

And they began to spake evil before the multitude.

That is, it became a public controversy over, I think you can see it.

Let's say that we were a church right here, and I'll make myself the wicked 1, and Let's say that I'm preaching error, and when you get a chance to teach, you teach truth.

I preach error, you teach truth, and people here are making decisions.

But now let's say in come visitors that are not yet members of our church and are just learning.

If you and I have any common sense and courtesy at all, we are going to be quiet in front of the visitors.

We're not going to discuss these things in front of the visitors, these things that divide us.

But what if I violate that common sense and I began to oppose the truth of God in front of visitors?

Can you continue doing evangelism in this congregation?

Because if you bring the people in, the work that you've been doing for months is gonna be undone in just a few minutes, and that is a time to do what the apostle does here.

I don't mean it needs to be next door, but in this case, that's where it was.

He separated, he didn't separate just because someone disagreed with him, just because there were personality differences.

It's when they were speaking evil before the multitude.

Do you know it was in Europe among the Germans that this concept called higher criticism was invented?

It's a scientifically refined type of doubting.

There is a place for doubt and skepticism when you're dealing with humans.

And if you go back to the Middle Ages, you'll find a couple men that worked together for some time, 1 of which was named Peter Abelard.

Peter was a great developer of thought in the Middle Ages.

And his great development, really, was that he began to test everything people said to see if it matched up with the facts, with reason, with data.

And this was such a revolutionary idea, not to just believe what the people had said before you, but Peter took this idea too far, and he treated the words of man, the right way you might say, with doubt, but then he did the same thing with the words of God.

That is, he treated the words of God with the same type of skepticism that he did the words of men.

And does it make good sense to you that you shouldn't do that?

That the words of God and the words of men are not the same?

Europe has never fully escaped from that tendency.

And in the Adventist church, there's some really bad history there centering around a man named Conradi that has left a distaste for the writings of Ellen White, a disbelief in the sanctuary message that has just slowed down the movement of the 3 angels' messages in Europe for now about 100 years.

In the island of Mindanao, just 1 of the larger islands in the Philippines, there are more Seventh-day Adventists than in the entire continent of Europe.

And in the 1 nation of Romania in Europe, or on the edge of Europe, you might say, depending on, but I'll say in Europe, in that 1 nation where communism was controlling for so long and persecution was strong, When communism fell, there were nearly as many Adventists in that 1 nation as in the rest of the westernized free Europe combined.

What I'm trying to illustrate for you is what skepticism and doubt does for the church in terms of prosperity and growth.

It stunts it, it slows it, and we're gonna look at a few verses about unbelief.

Someone who's listening might want to ask me, why should you not doubt what God says?

Do you mean you just blindly believe anything that God says?

And my short answer to that would be, I can't deal with that in this talk.

But if you would look at predictive prophecy, you would find abundant evidence that God knows well, that he knows the future and is infinitely intelligent.

And then if you look at the character of Jesus, you find abundant evidence that he has the character to manage that kind of knowledge.

So my taking God at his word is based on evidence, not on a blindness to the data.

It's because of the data that I trust him, Not because I ignore the data.

That is, God has never asked us to have a blind faith.

Well, let me tell you what it's, oh, it's Matthew.

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The Sins of the World and Learning How to Think for Yourself

Thinking Vs. Opining and Reacting

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