Sick of Sin

Psalm 14:1-7 –

¹ The fool says in his heart,

    “There is no God.”

They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;

    there is no one who does good.

² The Lord looks down from heaven

    on all mankind to see if there are any who understand,

    any who seek God.

³ All have turned away, all have become corrupt;

    there is no one who does good,

    not even one.

⁴ Do all these evildoers know nothing?

They devour my people as though eating bread;

    they never call on the Lord.

⁵ But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,

    for God is present in the company of the righteous.⁶

 You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor,    but the Lord is their refuge.

⁷ Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!

    When the Lord restores his people,

    let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!

 It's a privilege to open God's Word together. As I was getting ready to share some thoughts with you, some things came to my mind. As I was thinking about growing up, some phrases that my parents would use a lot came to mind.

One of my dad's most iconic phrases that he would use is we, my siblings and I, would be asked to do something like unload the dishwasher and we'd reply, "Dad, I had to do it yesterday." And my dad would smile his little half-smile and say, "I like a man with experience." I remember thinking, "Dad, no, it's not fair. I already did this. Experience doesn't matter." And it's one of those things that as a child, I thought, "Ah, this is so annoying when my dad says this."

But guess what? It's one of my favorite phrases to use and I'm planning on hitting my kids with it when they complain. I like a man or a woman with experience, right?

Because some of those things, we just we just pick up. Another one of those phrases that my dad and my mom would say a lot of times is when my siblings would be arguing. We'd be fighting and my dad would get down to on our level physically. He's a little taller than I am. And he'd said, “I'm sick of it. Stop it. What you're doing? I'm sick of whatever it was.”

And this is another one of those phrases that I thought was really dumb. You're not actually sick. What do you mean? We're not doing that much.

But it's a wonderful phrase. You can use it for so many different applications, right? I can I can tell my kids now, I'm sick of all the whining or I I'm sick of you not listening to your mom or I I'm sick of you just not being thankful for the things that you have. It's a great phrase. You can use it. Feel free. It's a free tip today.

But I think it's an exaggeration, but sometimes when people are doing things that are wrong over and over and over, it can actually make us feel kind of physically sick when we look at things and it's just the wrong things happening over and over. And maybe you, like me, have had times where you're looking at things in your life and you just want to shout, "I'm sick of it!" Maybe it’s things happening in your family, in your job, even with your finances or as you look at like our political leaders and you just want to say, “I'm sick of it. I'm tired of this. I want it something else. I want it to be a different way.”

And while we might say this for those little annoying things that our kids do or our spouse does or our boss does, it's also something that I think we feel when there are bigger problems at hand. When we begin to look at the world around us and we see the wickedness and the sin and the evil in the world around us and I think if we're honest in our own lives as well and we begin to just think, "God, I'm sick of this. I'm tired of this."

A couple weeks ago, I was reading a news article from my preferred news source called The Pour Over. It's a Christian-based organization where they give you the news in as much as an unbiased way as they can. But they also give you a prayer point on how you can pray about that piece of news as well

And so this day I was reading this article and like most things that you hear in the news, it doesn't fill you with warm fuzzy feelings. It fills you with anxiety, fear, and frustration. And I felt myself just getting worked up because I was so tired of hearing things like this. I'm tired of reading stories where people have hurt other people, where there's this rampant sin and wickedness in the world, and where I just I just wanted to shout, "God, I'm so tired of this. I'm tired of reading things about people's sin. I'm tired of seeing the way that sin impacts others in this negative way. I'm sick of it.”

And thankfully, God worked through their ministry and the verses and the prayer points there to remind me and bring me back to the truth that He's in control. He's on the throne and we can trust Him. But it sparked in my mind this question of what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to respond as followers of Jesus when we see this evil in the world around us? What's the remedy for that? And so my hope is today that we see, that we need to remember, our life before God, our life from God and our life with God. And that should inform then how we respond when we feel sick of sin in the world around us and in our own lives and respond in a godly way.

So this is where we're going to be going today. We're going to be looking at our life before God, our life from God, and our life with God.

Life Before God (Psalm 14:1-4)

In the first four verses of Psalm 14, David says, “¹ The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. ² The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. ³ They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. ⁴ Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord?”

So, what David's describing here in these first few verses kind of echoes what we hear throughout the rest of scripture when we look at the condition of mankind as a whole. We're corrupt. We've turned aside from God. Every single one of us in the room has done, thought or said things that go against what God's will is— that does not please God. We have sinned. We have lived through our words, our actions, our thoughts as if there is no God, right?

So what David is describing here is the human sinful condition of saying that there's no God. When we sin and we do what we want, we're living our lives as if there is no God. And through our selfishness, our greed, our anger, our pride, we have done what we know, what's best. We don't need God. And as a result, we've hurt others and we've hurt ourselves in the process. And many times throughout the Bible, we hear God speaking about the people on earth in this kind of context, in this way of where the people as a whole have turned away from God.

One of the first spots that we see this is in Genesis 6 11-12 right before the flood where we're told that the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way on earth.

We know what happens after that. God sends the flood to destroy all of the earth and He saves His creation through the remnant of Noah and the ark and all of that. And we think that okay; that's course corrected, that's gotten people back on the way that they need to be. But we know it's not. Couple chapters later, in Genesis 11, we see that the people as a whole have once again gotten together and said, "We don't like what God said. We are going to do something different. We're going to build this tower. We're going to make it go to heaven and we're going to make a name for ourselves because we are deserving of that glory." And God says, "No, you aren't. Here you go. Get out of here. Go be scattered." He scatters them because he confuses their languages.

So, so then certainly it gets better, right? Right after that, now, God's course is corrected. No, later we see in Genesis 18 that there's a story of Sodom and Gomorrah where these cities are so wicked as a whole that even God in wanting to show mercy, there's not even 10 righteous people living in these cities. They're corrupt as a whole. And if you think, yeah, but that's the other people. That's the sinners. That's not God's people. That's not the people who follow after God. We do the right thing, right?

Unfortunately, not. In Jeremiah 2:1-13, we see that even God's own people are not immune to this collective corruption. God says through the prophet Jeremiah to his people in Jeremiah 2:11-13, He asks, " ¹¹ Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. ¹² Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, ¹³ for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water." God's people even as a whole who should have known better turn away from Him. They live their lives in such a way as if they would say there is no God.

And this isn't the end of this. It's not an Old Testament problem that gets resolved and gets fixed. This is still a problem today where people as a whole are turning away from God. And Paul addresses the same problem that David— he’s watching and seeing in the world around him. He talks about this in Romans 1:18- 23. Paul says, "¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Remember how David says that it's foolish or he says that fools say there is no God.

Well, Paul is giving us some reasons why it's foolish to say that there is no God. He says that when you look at creation, if you go outside the walls of this building and you look at what God has made, some things are pretty clear about God, of his eternal power, his divine nature. You should conclude when you look at the intelligent design of creation,that something had to make this. It's not just by accident. It’s not just by mistake that things are ordered the way that they are, that there is the intelligent design that there is, the beauty that there is. It doesn't just happen.

And so Paul's saying if you go outside, you open your eyes and you look, you can see there's a God. We have a term for this. We call it general revelation. What can be known about God through what He has made, His creation. That's general revelation.

And so Paul's saying that you can't pretend to not see it. You are held accountable. You are without excuse to respond to what you see in creation to seek out, who is this God? How can I know him? How can I have a relationship with him? He says that we are without excuse.

But instead of people are saying, looking at creation, say, “Wow, there must be a god. Let me let me seek after him,” they are exchanging what they know about God, what can't be clearly seen. They look at it and say, "Man, we want something else." And so they come up with some other kind of thing, some other story, or some kind of science or reason that they might give for how everything happened. And they pretend that they're wise. They pretend that they're smart, but ultimately they've made a life-altering swap. They've exchanged the life-giving truth of God for a life-stealing lie.

And so David says as he's looking at this, he's looking at the evil in the world around him. He looks at this and says that God is looking down from heaven to see if there are any who understand, anybody out there who would seek after God. God can't be fooled.

When God's looking down from heaven, it's not like he looks at us and is like, "Well, they did go to church three out of the last four Sundays and they did pray. They're probably doing okay."

No, God is not fooled by our outward behavior or the things that we say, right? We might come to church. We might put on a good face, maybe pretend that everything's okay, or we might come and try to do it just so we're checking that box so that the pastor doesn't follow up with you or your mom doesn't follow up with you and ask if you went to church today.

You could fool us, but God can't be fooled. And so when God looks down, He sees through our morals and our good deeds and all these things. He sees through to the intentions of our heart.

In Psalm 139, David reminds us of this truth about how God can't be fooled. He says, "Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, oh Lord, you know it all together." You know, we can fool each other, but God who knows all can't be fooled.

And so when God looks and He's all-knowing and He sees the intentions of our heart, He can see we're all sinners. We all fall short of that standard of holy perfection that God has. In fact, we all have turned aside and become corrupt. No one can do what is good on their own. And what David's looking at and what Paul is describing for us, we, in church context, call it total depravity. Total depravity is essentially defined as mankind as a whole is thoroughly corrupt and sinful as a result of the fall.

So, for those of you who don't know, I have three children. My younger daughter just turned one in July. We were on vacation two weeks ago. Look at her face. Look at that horrible rotten sinner's face. Isn't it beautiful?

You would say, "Well, Pastor Caleb, she's so cute. She's so innocent. She's so precious." You think so?

On vacation, her mission was to climb up the staircase— the entirety of our vacation. There's this big, beautiful staircase that has carpet. And my daughter has learned to climb stairs. She loves it. At our home, we have a gate. We didn't have a gate on vacation. And so she would go and she would be on the second step and she would look back at us and we'd tell her, "No. You get down off the stairs." And she'd look back, she'd kind of smile again with a little dimple in her cheek. And we'd say, "Get down." And she goes up the stairs. And we have to run up and get her down and pull her down. And this was the entire vacation.

It threatened to undo all of my rest and peace on this vacation. I did not have to teach her to disobey what I am telling her. It was built in. It was hardwired. It's her default setting to do what's right in her own eyes. Now, she is adorable. She's precious. She's cute. But she's a sinner. She needs Jesus. Pray that she would come to know Jesus as her Savior. Pray for all of my children.  She needs Jesus. We all need Jesus because we are all sinners. We all fall short of God's perfect standard. We all need him. And Paul refers to this total depravity, this this inability that we have on our own to do any good in the sight of God.

In Galatians 4:3, he talks about it as we're enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. Or later in Galatians 4:8, he talks about when formerly we didn't know God, we were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. Right? He talks about this is the problem of sin is that we're stuck. We're stuck in our sin and we are

lost. We're blind. We think that we can live our lives without God and somehow be okay. And we can't.

And unfortunately for us, as much as we might try to ignore it, our sin has consequences. It hurts us. It hurts the people around us. And that's just for us who know Jesus as our Savior. And we know that we struggle with our sin. What I want you to imagine then and picture what David is also looking at here is not just people that are wrestling with their sin, but are living in unrestrained, unrepentant sin— that kind of destruction.

And that's why in Psalm 14:3-4, where he's talking about they've all turned aside and they became corrupt, he also says that they eat God's people up like bread. Their sin is so destructive that it's not just hurting them or hurting the people around them. It's literally consuming the lives of people around them. And I want us to remember that it can be really easy for us as Christians to look at the sin in the world and say, "Yeah, it's terrible. Oh, it's so bad.”

We’ve got to remember though that if it wasn't for God, we're the fools who say in our heart that there is no God. We're the one who are unrepentant. Unrestrained sin is destroying the lives of people around us. We're no different without God. Left to our own, we're those fools.

But praise be to God, this is not where God left us. And this is not where he leaves people.

Life From God (Romans 3:21-26)

We've seen our life before God. Now, we want to look at how God gives us life. How does life come from God? So, we're going to turn over to Romans 3 which talks about this a little bit more. Right after quoting actually some of these verses from Psalm 14, Paul writes this in Romans 3:21- 26. He says, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in

Jesus.”

Growing up, I love playing sports. I love playing different games— I played basketball, soccer, a lot of different things. Disc golf is in my adulthood, so if you know about that, that was later in my life. But, growing up, we played basketball with my brother, with some of my friends, and we'd go to shoot the shot, and you miss it, and say, "Oh, man, that was so close."

And inevitably, somebody who was playing with us who was very smart, a very wise person, they would say, "Well, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." Horseshoes and hand grenades. Because in horseshoes, you score points if you're actually close enough. And hand grenades obviously make sense. If it's close enough, it's good enough. But that is not how it works with basketball. If the ball is not in the hoop, it doesn't count for any points. Much to my attempts to convince the guys on Monday nights here, otherwise that my shot was close.

It should count. I mean, it was really close. No, it only counts if it goes in. The same is true for us when we're looking at this. No, there's no spectrum of falling short in God's standard. The Bible talks about James 2:10 that says if you keep the law but fail in one point, you're guilty of it all.

Even if it was possible for you to live your whole life and only sin one time, God says you still fall short. Close is not good enough when it comes to trying to live a perfect life. We all fall short of the glory of God, of his perfect standard.

Our sin condemns us and leaves us, like Paul describes us in Galatians, as slave to our sins, unable to redeem ourselves. We're stuck.

But look at what Paul is saying is made possible through Jesus. He says that the righteousness of God, which is previously unavailable to us on our own, is now made manifest or it's clear. It's available to us through faith in Jesus for all who believe. See, we all fall short of God's perfect standard, but we also are all given the opportunity to be saved.

This is the beautiful thing about the way that God works. Paul says that because of Jesus, if we put our faith in him, we're justified. We're declared righteous even though we aren't on our own. We're declared righteous before God because of our faith in Jesus. And this justification, this declaration of righteousness uh for those who put their faith in Jesus is made possible because of God's grace. It's a gift. You can't earn it. You can't deserve it. You don't deserve it. I don't deserve it.

It's made available for us because Jesus did what we couldn't do. He lived that perfect life. He died in our place on the cross and he rose again on the third day so that any who put their trust in Him can be saved, can have life from God.

This sacrifice of Jesus accomplished what Paul refers to as propitiation which is a satisfying of God's wrath.

He paid the price for our sins. He accomplished this propitiation. He satisfies God's wrath which allows God to be just and punish sin. Like Paul says in Romans 3:26, but also be the justifier, the one who then declares us righteous. This is the life that comes from knowing God, from acknowledging Him and from surrendering your life to Him. This is the life that is available to you because God delights in giving life to former fools like you and like me.

And so this is the life that comes from God. This is the beauty of what He does. And this is what then enables us to even look at the rest of the world and to see the evil and the sin and to ask that God would deal with that in the way that that David asked.

Life With God (Psalm 14:5-7)

So let's jump back to Psalm 14 where we're going to finish up today. In Psalm 14:5-7, David writes this. He says they are talking about the fools who said in their heart there's no God, “There they are, these fools in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion. When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad.”

This is life now with God. This is what happens when you know Jesus as your Savior. When you're walking with the Lord, when you're seeking after holiness, after righteousness in in your life and following Him, when we experience God's grace in our life, we go from darkness to light. We understand what He's done for us.

It doesn't mean that we've done anything to deserve it, doesn't mean that it's, “Oh look at me. I have found God. I am better than the rest of you.” No, that's not what it's about because remember— without God, we would be those fools in verse 1 saying, “There is no God. I can do whatever I want.”

So life with God is a beautiful thing. There's peace. There's hope in it that even when we see the evil in the world around us we can we can have hope. And David, notice in verses 5 through 7, what isn't there? David does not tell us that, “Oh guys, this is what happened. Here's how God works. He came, He delivered us, He rescued us from the hands of these wicked people.” It's not there. He doesn't tell us that that this problem has been resolved.

He says that that God is with the generation of the righteous and that the Lord is a refuge. But it doesn't say that there's any resolution to the problem. Instead, he's looking to the future that he knows is certain when you have life with God.

All throughout Esther, we've been reminded of this, but especially so in Esther 7 of what David's talking about in verse 5 here where he says that the wicked should be in terror. They should be terrified because they're opposed to God. They're standing in opposition to God, saying that He's not real. I could do whatever I want. It doesn't impact me.

And we saw what happened when Haman lived his life that way. If Haman could go back and see who he was up against. You think he'd be building that that gallows in his in his backyard? You think he'd be trying to stomp out God's people? You think he'd be doing all of that? No. Because he would know that it's impossible to stand against God. Nobody can beat God.

Wicked men like Haman, if they knew better, should have been in terror because God is not with them. God is with the generation of the righteous. And because of that, He's a refuge to his people. He's near to the poor and the broken. Even though the wicked want to try to harm those who seek after God, says that God is near to them. He is a refuge.

And so David closes his psalm with this encouragement for the people of Israel to rejoice. Not because it's happened yet, but because they know that God has already won, that He is on the throne, that He is in control.

And look at what he says. He says, "When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people.” Not if, but when. He knows it's certain. He knows that it is going to happen. When that happens, rejoice, celebrate, because your God is the one who will save, who will restore, who will rescue you, and that nobody can stand against him because of what God has done for us. If we put our faith in Jesus, we can have the same reason to rejoice no matter what is going on in our life."

Application

And as I close, maybe you're here today and you're thinking, "Okay, but Pastor Caleb, I'm looking at the world around me and it just seems too evil. There's too many things that is going, too much hurt, too much pain, too much sadness going on.”

Maybe you're even willing to say, “I'm looking at my own life and I'm so tired of this sin. I'm supposed to be a follower of Jesus. Why do I still have all this sin in my life? What am I supposed to do about this?"

You know what? What do I do when I'm like David and I look around at the world and my own sin? God, I'm so tired of it. I'm sick of this. What should you do?

Well, I believe that God wants us to do a few things.

First, I believe that God wants us, as followers of Jesus, to stay humble. As Christians, it's far too easy for us to take for granted our salvation and to begin to look at the world as if the problem is them and not us. As if it's only them. They're the ones with the sin and we're the victims here. We need to remember that we're all sinners who need God's grace. That without God, we are no different from them.

Without him opening our eyes to see our need for him, we're the fools who say in their heart, "There is no God." We're sinners who are saved by grace. We can't forget where we came from. Or even like Paul in Romans 7 where he's wrestling with the desires of his flesh or the desires of the spirit working in him. That's true of us. We're still growing. We're being sanctified.

And that is not just, boom, we're done. Hey, we made it. Cool. That happens when Jesus returns. But for now, we will continue to struggle with our sin. We are going to need people to call us out and to say, "Hey man, your life is not living in accordance with God's word. We need to welcome that kind of conversation as painful as that might be because we need to remember that we have sin in our lives that needs to be corrected. We need the Holy Spirit to continue to refine us and we need to stay humble, be willing to accept that kind of correction.

Second, along with staying humble, we need to pray.

When we see evil in the world, rather than just raging about it or putting some poorly thought out post on social media or responding in fear, what would it look like if we stopped and we prayed and we asked God to thwart the plans of the evil, to bring about salvation, to be a refuge to his people? What if after every piece of news that you heard, you took a moment to pray and ask uh for wisdom, ask for God's uh plan to be accomplished?

How would that impact your heart, your anxiety, the way you respond, the way you interact with others? If you took the time and brought it to your Father, the one who knows, the one who can do something about it, and the one who is in control.

Third, we need to rejoice. Wait, is that right? That's right. We need to rejoice. You're like, "Wait, Pastor Caleb, hold up. I'm taking notes and that doesn't make sense. How am I supposed to rejoice when there's evil happening in the world?" Well, we got to be careful because I'm not telling you to rejoice that there is evil happening in the world, but to rejoice in spite of the evil happening in the world.

See, because David tells us and we are reminded of this that that we can rejoice because our God is in control.

He's on the throne and that someday that wickedness and sin will be dealt with and we will rejoice and we will give praise to him for that. And so we can rejoice because God is on the throne. But we can also rejoice because even as we struggle with sin in our own life and we get frustrated at, “Why haven't I figured this out by now? Why haven't I stopped being unkind to people? Why haven't I stopped living for my flesh and what I want?”

Even as we wrestle with that, the Holy Spirit works to sanctify us and to make us more like Jesus. And so we can remember that our salvation never was and never will be based on the things that we've done. Yes, God does not want you to sin. He doesn't want you to keep doing that. But the Bible also tells us that nothing can separate us from his love in Romans 8.

And so we live in his grace, but we rejoice that He loves us and that while we are work in progress, we're being refined daily as we seek after him. And like I said, we can rejoice when we see evil in the world around us because this is but a temporary pain. Jesus will return to wipe away every tear, to restore what is broken, to heal.

Our hope has never been and can never be the things of this world which will always let us down. As we see evil around us, we have to run to the Father. We have to stay humble. We have to stay prayerful. And we have to stay rejoicing because He is on the throne. He is in control. And we can trust him.

If you're here today and you're saying, "Pastor Caleb, I'm struggling though. There's some things going on in my life, some sin that's either in my life or in the lives of those around me, and I'm just struggling to believe that that God is in control and that there's a plan for this or that, that he's going to accomplish this."

We would love to pray with you. We'd love to talk with you. If you don't know Jesus as your Savior, you want to know and see the problems of the world around you, but don't know what the answer for it is.

We believe with all of our heart that Jesus is the answer and we want you to know him as your Savior. We would love to talk with you about how Jesus can completely change your life and can give you a hope that lasts even when you're sick of sin. Even when it feels like you're trying to seek after him and you're still struggling, we believe that that God will carry you through that and any and all circumstances of life.

And if you're on the fence about it, you want to know more, please talk to us. We want you to know the hope that can be found in Jesus.

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