Exposition IV
Christ taught a good deal about sin. He saw it as man's number one need for God. He saw it as corrupting and spoiling the life of every person born into the world. That's why He came: 'to save His people from their sins' (Mathew 1:21).
He knew that unless the diagnosis was known and accepted, this cancer of sin would spread and kill. Yet is it not incredible that some people are still optimistic about the quality of human nature? If we look back over history, every civilisation has boasted of the achievements and abilities of man. We read of the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Golden Age. In the words of Professor James Stewart, 'The renaissance humanists thought that man was the measure of all things. His will was the architect of destiny. His intelligence, storming the secrets of the universe, had occupied the throne of God. "Thou art smitten, thou God", shouted Swinburne vociferously: _Thou art smitten; they death is upon thee, O Lord. Glory to man in the highest! for man is the master of things._ Is man really the master of things? Look at Vietnam, Rhodesia, South Africa, China, race riots...and yet today we find the same silly optimism. *It's only pride that won't allow men to admit that they are truly sinful and wicked at heart.
Humanists say that man is well able to cope with himself and with the problems of the world, provided that he is not shackled bythe immature creeds of religion. It's worth pointing out that humanism flourishes only in intellectual circles, where it is easy to be idealistic about life.Ministers areconstantly faced with complex human and domestic problems; and in this ordinary world of needy men and women, although many strange beliefs exist, They scarcely ever encounter a convinced humanist. Once you step out of an intellectual greenhouse into the fierce storms of everyday life, you are forced to be realistic about human nature.
You cannot be blind to the sin which exists in the heart of man. Dr C.E.M Joad, who for many years embraced a 'rational-optimist philosophy ', found his idealistic beliefs shattered in the last world war. He came to see that:*...evil is endemic in man, and that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature. Therefore, for the first time in my life, the existence of God in the world made its impact upon me as a positive, obtrusive fact.* Christ described human nature in these words: *From inside, out of a man's heart, come evil thoughts, acts of fornication, of theft, murder, adultery, ruthless greed and malice; fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly; these evil things all come from inside, and they defile the man* (Mark 7:22-23).
Paul summed it up with a quotation from the Old Testament: 'All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one' (Romans 3:12). Here 'gone wrong' means 'gone sour'- become rotten or putrid. Paul is therefore saying that *human nature on its own, without Christ, is corrupt and useless in the sight of God.* One aspect of man's nature is reflected in the widespread feeling today that we can play with God's gift of sex. 'Why shouldn't I go to bed with a girl if I want to?' is a question that I am often asked in university circles. The first answer to that question is: because you're not a self-created being, responsible only to yourself. You are created by God and responsible to God: *We shall all stand before God's tribunal. For *Scripture says, 'As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee shall bow and every tongue acknowledge God'.
So, you see, each of us will have to answer for himself'* (Romans 14:10-12). Any complicated piece of machinery has with it the maker's instructions, and if these are ignored, the user has only himself to blame if things go wrong. God's laws are our Maker's instructions; we cannot toss them on one side as irrelevant nonsense without suffering the consequences. Some try to do so, but often with tragic results.
That is what the woman of Samaria found; she played with sex and ignored her Maker's instructions. But her pursuit of happiness left her unhappy and dissatisfied.*FRUSTRATED:* In the second place, _her pursuit of freedom left her bound and enslaved to a way of life from which she many times longed to be free._ There is an extremely revealing comment on this woman's life. Christ exposes her sordid sex life, and she goes away to tell her friends: 'Come, see a man who told me *all that I ever did* .' Yet Christ had only talked about her abortive and miserable relationships with men.
In other words, this was her life, and she was enslaved to it. In one way or another, this enslavement is what happens. *We never find the freedom we want until we find it in Jesus Christ. Freedom, apart from Him, is a pure myth and delusion.* Ask the prodigal son: a man fed up with the stuffy rules of his father's house; who rebelled to be independent and free. It is worth looking at this story for a moment(cf Luke 15: 11f). The son tells his father that it's time for him to leave; so he takes his inheritance and goes on his way to lead his life and spend his money and waste his time, just as he wants, in his way. The father says not a word and lets his son go. What does the young man find in his bid for freedom? Much the same as the Samaritan woman. But there are three disturbing factors as the weeks and months go by First, he can never quite get out of his mind the memory of his father. He keeps on hearing his voice, seeing his face, and remembering hisgrief when he left home. He can not quite free himself from these pricks of conscience. There is no silencer for the conscience on the market. And this is the fear of guilty men in relation to God. At one moment we desire to find God; in the next, we try to flee from Him. We protest violently that we want to be left alone, and yet being left alone is the very thing we most dread. In His love, God will not leave us alone without doing His utmost to reach us. It's quite impossible to run away from God or to hide from His presence; wherever we are, He can reach us through our conscience, and our conscience always stays with us, whether we like it or not.
Merry Christmas 🎄 and Thanks för reading. Have a blessed day 😘.
