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Total Depravity - Bondage of Sin

  • E.O.
  • Nov 17, 2020
  • 7 min read

This past Sunday Pastor Ray preached a message that my soul didn’t know it needed. He thought this sermon would go over our heads, and it did..... it went straight to my heart. The short summary of this sermon are the three chains or effects of the bondage of sin. He took us from Ephesians 1:7 to Genesis 3 at the fall where it all began- sin. It’s as if the garden of eden remained in stillness waiting to see if Adam and Eve would chose to be completely dependent on God in determining good and evil or become autonomous from God and thus out of his presence. And well, if you grew up in the church or had any exposure to Christianity or just be human, you already know they fell... fell far, yet not too far for God to redeem. But the consequences of sin, is as real and as drastic in the garden of Eden as it is now. The heart of this message was not to sit in our shame or guilt, but to recognize our sin and the pervasiveness in each of our lives for the greater purpose of our praise, our gratitude, and our joy because of the cross.

The depth of our understanding of sin forms the praise that comes from grace. There is much to be celebrated and much to be praised in Christ.


Chain 1: We live under guilt and shame that causes us to hide and resort to living a life of managing our guilt.

Chain 2: We died because we rejected life, the very Presence of God.

Chain 3: Once we experience spiritual death, we tend to reach for small gods to fill that God-shaped void lost at the fall.


Total depravity: It is not- I am not as bad as I could be. It is I am not as good as a I should be.


If people could see your thoughts on a screen, what kind of person would you prove to be?


I think these two questions really caused me to stop and think, what lie and paradigm am I living under? Because I know I am a sinner, but subtly believe that I’m not that bad of a sinner. And I see how that shapes my worship, my gratitude and praise. I know how to play the part, but I think my tendency to not see sin as bad as it is has led my heart and my song to fall dry. I know it, I understand it, but I am just not feeling it? But again, Pastor Ray reminded me that the depth of understanding sin, will be the height in which we see our need for grace and Christ. So me denying the icky parts of sin within me, is to deny the very thing that should be causing me to revel in the cross.


As Pastor Ray began to share example after example of each chain ( need to watch the sermon for sure :) ) I began to see how each part from Chain 1 to 3 began to play out in my life and by God’s grace I was able to sit in my sin without falling into the deception that it is unredeemable. I hide behind my morality and placing a barrier for people to see and only see my good side as an act to justify hidden sins in my heart and in my mind. If I can be good enough for everyone and ensure that they accept me, I’m good. Or I justify, whether it be through people or through redefining ( Isaiah 5:20) the act- just to ease any sort of guilt that resides in me. Hide behind busyness, if I distract myself enough with doing, then I don’t have to face the stillness of being. I look to small gods to fill this God-shaped void and begin to fall into a cycle of self-centeredness and hiding, sounds pretty familiar to Adam and Eve? Here are some specifics that the Holy Spirit revealed some of the sins I was too ashamed and too prideful to want to consider as sin.

If people could see your thoughts on a screen, what kind of person would you prove to be?


- I actually use people: I viewed people around me, coworkers, friends, people at church, as a means for approval to be good enough. Rather than loving them, I use them in order to fill this need to be seen and heard.

- I don’t love people at work as much as I claim to: Instead of serving people with joy, I tend to grumble... a lot! Especially when they treat me like a rug and order me around. I get offended easily and cuss at them in my head. But on the outside I smile. This is not genuine love for them.

-I use God’s name in vain: I think it’s actually gotten a lot better, but last year at small group was really bad. Something in me just wanted to display a lot of my knowledge and always need to say profound things whether it be in prayer or going over a passage- in short, I wanted the glory and attention while we were supposed to be talking about God’s glory.

-I am greedy and don’t trust God financially: I think this started in college but the bad habits turned to be more of heart issue than the circumstance. I would always freeload and not want to pay for anything in college and would justify it by saying I needed to pay for rent, books, car, etc. But I mean every has their expenses. But even now after college, I see that at work it’s really easy for me to want to just sneak and ask the chefs for food rather than paying for it with integrity like I should. I would brush it off and justify it by saying that it’s the food business, everyone else is doing , or it won’t cost the business that much money. But the heart issue and sin really lies in thinking that the money or even time at that it takes to earn the money is seen as my own. And yes my parents pressure me not to spend on this or that but really, I am stingy and greedy at the core of it rather than giving out of the abundance of how much God has given me. So understanding the source of where my stuff, like time and money comes from, is the real issue.

-I have imaginations ( fantasies sounds worse but we’ll call it what it is) about relationships with a specific person that I don’t even know well. I actually will admit this is the biggest one that has caused a lot of hindrance but never wanted to even think of it as sin because I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed building what my dream relationship would look like, desiring physical intimacy, imagining what having kids would look like, and dates. You name it, it was like I was trying to build my own hallmark movie in my head. And I didn’t want to call it sin because I actually really loved building this future almost as if I was building my own kingdom in my head and expecting God to give it to me. And actually this was the sin that really disgusted me and woke me up at 1:30am because I realized how much of an idol it became. It’s not bad to desire marriage and to desire dating, although P. Ray did say it was all a lie ( LOL), but this was getting bad because I found myself hoping and even to an extent of praying for this to come to fruition. My eyes were not fixed on Jesus, but were fixed on myself and deceiving myself to think that what I wanted would fulfill me and give me the fullness I actually craved. Not only was this an idol, but i saw the sin in honestly not honoring the name and the person the guy that I would use. I would build him into this dream guy but really, it’s unrealistic expectations AND most of all I’m not seeing him as a son of God, just a person who I built to fill my needs. I began to see that my desire for a relationship and even “ marriage” was not for God’s glory or even God’s purposes, but another way for me to find that love and acceptance that only God can give through Jesus.


And after just seeing how much filth I still have inside of me it made me disgust at my sin:

” Oh God, that is in me? No, it can’t be”. It made me see how dirty I still am , I may not sin outwardly because I love to hide behind my good deeds ( moarality), behind people’s opinions of me ( approval), but if they really knew me and saw what was in me. Sometimes it’s easier to keep people at an arm’s distance because it feels safer. It feels safer to sit in my sin and ignore it as sin.


I realized, all of this. All of it, what is it for? And as I began to see my filth, yet what if it’s the filth we keep running from with all of its hidden forms is supposed to bring me to the cross and not to myself. I think I was seeing sin wrong- I wanted to see it as not as bad, rather than seeing for what it is- death. Because being bad but not “that bad”, has caused me to run in circles playing in an act we weren’t supposed to be in. The wages of sin is death. It is in us and we know it, when we actually take time to look there, when sin rears its ugly head, we begin to put makeup on it rather than allowing it to be a mirror. We don’t like owning up to it, the world kind of lies to us and tells us that if we paint ourselves to be a certain image or if we just be better, we’ll be fine. But the reality is that we can deceive the world, but God sees right through it. And that scares me. All the things I actually think, all the desires of my heart that look to small gods rather than God himself, the whole facade- it hinges on two lies that the enemy doesn’t want us to see in order to step into true freedom

.

Sin is just that bad, it deserves death. But there is a better word, there is grace and forgiveness in Jesus.


The sermon has caused me to identify and even sit in my sin, not ignoring it and hiding from it. I believe God is doing a work to help me understand that sin is just that bad in order for the cross to be that much more glorious, for my shouts of praise and gratitude to rise above the shame and guilt that cling so close to me. Thank God Jesus’ blood covers it all. Really. Praise God that sins known and unknown in me, are covered by grace and covered by Jesus’ righteousness.

 
 
 

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