WESTSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH
PASTOR: TERRY VAUGHAN
SERMON TITLE: WHAT SIN WILL DO TO A CHRISTIAN
“For God so Loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth in Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:16-18
TEXT VERSE: HEBREWS 12:1-2 “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”
I want to say to you tonight that sin is very, very heavy when we carry it around as Christians. We’re living in a day and time where Christians have more sin in their life than they ever have. According to God’s word I believe we’re living in the last days. In the Bible you can read in Daniel and also in the new testament about what the Bible refers to as the abomination of desolation. We believe that to be a time, maybe in our generation where Christians are living in sin yet they think they are living in Salvation. They think that every thing they do is right. They think that they can’t do anything wrong. When you start thinking like that you’re starting to think like the devil thinks. The Bible says that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We’re living in a day and time where sin seems to become common to a lot of Christians. It seems that they love sin more than they do Salvation. Seems to me like they let anything and everything stand between them and their God. I want you to know tonight as a Christian that when sin gets into our lives, it starts to weigh us down. It starts to get real heavy. Proverbs 27:3 says “A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.”
Isaiah 5:18 says this “Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:”
They carry it around with them. Dragging sin with them where ever they go. A lot of times dragging it into the church. Some drag it into their home. They have it in their life. The Bible said: “OUR SIN WILL SEPARATE US FROM GOD.” Nothing can ever separate God’s love toward us but we as Christians when we get weighted down with sin beloved we will start to recognize there’s something wrong in our life. I would tonight that more Christians would recognize what’s wrong in their life. It’s filled with troubles and trials on every hand. The Bible said that the ways of a transgressor is hard. People love being in sin more than they love being in Salvation. We’re living in a sad day and a sad time when people and Christians have better things to do than worship and serve and Almighty God that loves them tonight.
In Romans 6:1 it says this “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” “God forbid.” God forbids us to live in sin just so grace can abound.
Now I want to share a few things with you on what sin will do to a Christian.
NUMBER ONE: Sin will corrupt a Christian. There’s more corrupted Christians in the day and time we’re living in than there has ever been. There’s more corrupt Baptists in the day and time we’re living in than I’ve ever seen. A lot of them like to be called church goers. A lot of them like to talk about what they got down at the church house. A lot of them like to brag on the church and what the church is doing. (Talk about what the Lord is doing, instead.) But I wonder what you’re doing tonight. Our sin will separate us from God. If you want to be an on-fire Christian for God....get all the sin out of your life and start living for Christ today. Then you can start being a good Christian.
In Matthew 7:17 it says “...a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” Did you know the Bible says that you’ll know a tree by the fruit it bears? I might can only look on the outside and God the heart but I believe according to the word of God that what you have on the inside is going to show up on the outside. There is a lot of Christians that just don’t have it tonight. Fighting and devouring one another. Trying to bring one another down. Idol worshippers. They have more things between them and God than I have pews between me and the back wall of this church. They let everything come between them and their God. They let sin corrupt them. You see Christians that once stood tall, stood for the Lord and wouldn’t let nothing bring them down and over a period of time they start to let sin get in their life and sin starts corrupting them and then they try to make excuses as to why they aren’t the person or the Christian they used to be. They start trying to make excuses to you and I as to why they can’t do this and can’t do that. There’s only one thing that will keep us from doing the will of God and that is when we have SIN in our life. Sin is like an old wretched disease. It will corrupt your Christianity, they way you walk with the Lord and everything that you do. Sin corrupts. It’s corrupted a lot of our Christians in the day and time we’re living in. Like we said, in Matthew....A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. You will know a tree by the fruit it bears. It’s sad and it’s a shame when you look around and see Christians living the kind of life their living. Let me say this real quick, if I could give you a statistic and this is just my opinion, 95% of Christians will try to live a Christian life on Sunday. But as soon as they get home where that old television set is or they get out in the world where their work is....they turn God off. That’s not being a child of God. You have to stand tall for God anytime, every time and all the time. You let sin get in your life and it will corrupt you. You know what the first sign is of a Christian letting sin corrupt their life? All of a sudden that Christian will start blaming every thing else on everybody else. They’ll start wondering what’s wrong in their life and then they’ll start seeing what’s wrong in every body else’s life. Then they will start blaming it on somebody else and say they are in the wrong. They’ll start saying that those people have sin in their life. When sin starts corrupting your life you better check in with yourself. Don’t you start looking to someone else. The Bible says if a man don’t know how to take care of his own house, how can he take care of the house of God? The Bible says to look to yourself so that you don’t lose those things that has been given you by the Lord Jesus Christ.
NUMBER TWO: Sin will control you. Romans 7:19 says this “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” If you let sin get into your life it will start controlling the way that you walk. It will start controlling the way that you walk. It will control your function and your motion and your body. You cannot worship or serve God freely. You say, preacher, it’s not possible for me to get sin out of my life. I beg to differ. A lot of Christians read that Scripture that says, “We’ve all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” and they say, God knows we’re going to sin and he knows we can’t help it so we might as well go on and do it. That’s not what he meant by that. He also said that sin shall not have dominion over you. Romans 6:14 says this “For sin shall not have dominion over you.” If you’re going to read the word then read all of it. Sin is corrupting Christians lives and it is controlling what they do.
When I got into trouble as a little boy my mom would pull my ear and I went where she told me to go. She’d grab my ear and I’d go even if it wasn’t where I wanted to go. That’s what sin does in a Christians life. It starts controlling them and all of as a sudden they lose control of self. Sin starts controlling their every move. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it at Westside Baptist Church. I’ve seen it in every church I’ve ever been in. I’ve seen it in Christians lives that I’m around. Sin corrupts Christians. Sin controls Christians. You let it in, it will take over. Paul said, “I find in my flesh no good thing.” There’s not one good thing in the flesh. We have to get beyond the flesh. The Bible says we have to crucify the flesh and live after the Spirit. The people that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit. Let me tell you what is always on my mind and my heart....how to get somebody saved. How to reach the Lost. How to reach those Christians that are saved and are now out of church and backslid. This is always going through my mind and my heart. You know what goes through other Christians minds? Something needs to be painted in the church. If you want to spend your time painting you go ahead but I’ll spend my time working for God.
NUMBER THREE: Sin will change your life. I know Christ can do. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says this “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” But listen to this, sin can also change your life. Hosea 13:2 says this “And now they sin more and more....” When you let sin in and you let it corrupt you and control you then all of a sudden sin will start to change you. There’s been people at Westside Baptist Church that if you had asked me if they would have quit on God...I would have told you NO. But they let sin get in and they have quit. It stunned me and it shocked me. I would have never believed that it would have happened. but it did. Sin will change people’s lives. It changes them not for the better but for the worse. You know what? Those people are very, very hard to reach. They’ve had sin in their life for so long that it has corrupted them, it’s controlling them and now all of a sudden sin is starting to change them. Their changing from the Christian or the child of God that God wanted them to be into what the devil wants them to be. They’ll start getting further away from God. They start getting so used to sin that they keep on sinning. It starts becoming a common practice in their life. If you picked up something bad to drink, would you pick it back up and drink it again? Sin will corrupt you, control you and change you....GET RID OF IT!!!
Sin does not do any Christian any good. Isn’t it sad to see a mother and father with children maybe in the house of God worshipping God, fellowshipping and then one day they aren’t there. Sin starts to change them. I’m not trying to be mean tonight. I’m trying to preach what God laid on my heart. Sin is all around us and in us. Where Christians make a mistake is when they get too big or too high minded to think the devil can’t get to them. The Bible says to let no man think himself to be somebody he is not or love what he is. But when they start thinking that way sin starts coming in and corrupts them, controls them and changes them. You start witnessing to them and start praying for them and it burdens our hearts. You say, how come you can’t be the Christian you used to be? Why don’t you work for the Lord and worship God like you used to? You see them bearing that evil fruit and you wonder why, why, why? it’s not something they decided to do on purpose. They’ve accidentally let sin get in and now sin has changed their life. Now they are living for the devil instead of living for the Lord. Let me say this, there’s Christians that have so much sin in their life that you know where they go to try and hide from God? They pick out the biggest church they can find that has the most people they can find and they’ll slip in somewhere. They’ll sit on the pew where the Pastor doesn’t know they are there and their family doesn’t know they are there. They’ll sing Godly songs and raise their hands in praise. They’ll sit right there among the saints. Doesn’t that sound like what the devil does? Over in Job it says that the saints of God came to present themselves before the Lord and the devil came among them. That’s why a lot of people don’t like going to these little churches. They don’t want you to know every thing you do. They want to hide stuff. You might can hide stuff from Brother Terry, but you can’t hide anything from God. I don’t ever expect to have a big crowd at Westside Baptist Church. You know why? Because Christians have sin in their life.
NUMBER FOUR: Sin will conform you. Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” God’s perfect and acceptable will IS NOT for us to look like this world. But sin conforms Christians back to their old life. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they become unsaved. I don’t believe there is such as thing as becoming unsaved unless you’re already not saved. I believe once you’re saved you are sealed with holy seal of promise. But I believe sin conforms people. They get out in the world and sin corrupts them, controls them, changes them and then it begins to conform them. You can’t tell those Christians apart from the world. Isn’t that a parable that Jesus shared with us in Matthew 13. It’s the parable of the wheat and the tares? Jesus planted good seed and the wheat began to come up and all of a sudden their came up thorns and briars and tares in the wheat. The good man of the house said, Lord do you want us to go and root up the thorns? He said no because if you do you might pull up some wheat also because they are so tightly mixed. Jesus to just let both grow together and then when harvest time comes I’ll send my angels and we’ll separate them. Christians now a day are so tightly conformed that you can’t tell the Christians from the sinners. Jesus said if you are ashamed of me before men, I’ll be ashamed of you before my Father which is in Heaven. They’ll stand up in church and proclaim to be a Christian but when you get them at work around their co-workers, you’ll never hear them say anything about Christ. It’s like they are ashamed of him. I work with several Christians and I also work with several lost people. Some of the Christians I work with will hear me talking about the Lord and they say Shhhhh! Like they don’t want somebody to hear about the Lord. I’ll tell them they have a problem. I’m going to tell people about the Lord. Why hush. That’s the problem with Christians today. They’ve stopped being Christians to a lost and dying world. They just confine their Christianity to the church house. They confine their Christianity to their home. But what kind of Christian are you to a lost and dying world? What kind of Christian are you when you’re up against opposition? When you’re up against persecution from somebody that is lost or backslid? Somebody says, I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian or I don’t want any part of religion...what do you say then? Are you still able to share the word of God with them? Sin will conform Christians to where they don’t look like Christians anymore. They don’t act like Christians. We’re living in that day and time.
NUMBER FIVE: Sin will finally consume Christians. 2 Peter 2:14 “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin.” They cannot cease from sin. Think about it. They let one little sin in and it starts corrupting them. Then it starts controlling them and then changing their life. Then it starts conforming them to the world and lastly it consumes them. I know a lot of Christians that used to be in church years ago and they were on fire for God. They worked for God, they loved God, they shared God’s testimony. Then all of a sudden they let sin in and they quit and you know what the final result was? They’re still saved by the grace of God but they let sin in and it has consumed their life and it appears like they’ve never been saved. That’s what it looks like. They get so bad that they will tell you that they don’t have to go to church. We don’t have to live for the Lord. We don’t have to do this and we don’t have to do that. No, you don’t. Christ gives you that choice. He didn’t have to save you either. He don’t have to bless you. He don’t have to meet your financial needs. He don’t have to meet your physical needs. he don’t have to meet your Spiritual needs. But get sin out of your life and God will be honored to do it for you. I want people to know...maybe this is for you or maybe it’s for you to share with somebody. When sin gets in your life you can tell because the things that used to be a joy for you to do for the Lord will become a burden for you. You’ll start feeling like you’re having to do it for Christ rather than wanting to do it for Christ. Then all of a sudden your prayer life will start becoming a burden to you. You’ll feel like you’re praying only because you have to pray and not because you want to pray. James said the effectual fervant prayer of a righteous man availeth much. I believe that means praying right out of your heart and turning every thing over to God and don’t worry about who hears you or what you say, just turn it over to God. But when people start letting sin in, their prayer life starts going down hill. Then their church attendance starts dropping off. Isn’t it amazing that when it starts happening...they know it, they realize it and they don’t want it to happen so they try to make it up. They’ll start getting further and further out in sin and here’s what they say, “I sure do love that little church down there.” “I sure do love working for the Lord and I’m going to be back.” They start telling you all the things that they are going to do. That’s a sign that you’re letting sin control you. You can’t do anything but Christ can do all things. When we start depending on ourselves to do something for God, we’re already letting sin in. You say preacher, a lot of people look at it like this: Sin only gets to those people out in the world that are killing people, taking drugs, rapists, lesbians and homosexuals. Got news for you. Sin can get in a Christian that’s sitting on a church pew just as easy as it can in a sinner out there in the world. Sin is every where. We’re living in a world full of sin. That’s why Christ had to come and die for our sins. Paul said there is no good thing in my flesh. The Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of God. Thank God he did. You know why? God looked down from heaven after he made this creation and you know what he said. He looked on the heart of mankind that he had made and it grieved him that he had made man upon the earth. He said because men’s hearts and minds are always full of wickedness, I will destroy man from off of the face of the earth because their thoughts are only evil continually. But thank God there was a man named Noah. Noah wanted to be different. When we do that and turn everything over to God we’ll find grace also. But sin starts inching in a little bit at a time. Used to we’d go to church Christians wouldn’t even wait on the preacher to preach. They’d be coming in the door getting ready to start the service and people would fall down at the altars and begging God to forgive them of their sins. They was able to worship better than me and you. We always wait until the end of the service to get rid of their sin. They got rid of it before the service. People now a days have sin in their life and don’t even know it. Christians don’t even realize it. Christians always look at the negative and never the positive.
Look at first John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The Bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart. If there ever was a description of any of us I’d want mine to be just like David’s. He wanted to do what God wanted him to do. He wanted to go where God wanted him to go. He wanted to say things that God wanted him to say. Wasn’t that great? He was a good man of God. But....he was not above sin. Psalms 51:1 “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” He had transgressed against God. In verse 2 he said, “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Then in verse 3 he says, “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” Now listen to this in verse 10, 11 and 12. Listen to what he prayed. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. restore unto me the joy of thy salvation...”
When Christians start letting sin in, they’ll quit enjoying their Christianity. If being a Christian right now is being a burden to you instead of a blessing then you have sin in your life. If coming to God’s house is a burden to you, you have sin in your life. If you think for just a minute that you’re working for God just because you feel obligated to, then you’re not where you need to be and sin is getting in and starting to corrupt. You ought to enjoy this way. You ought to enjoy working for God and being on fire for God. I find it a blessing and a joy and a privilege and an honor to be able to work for such a wonderful God as He. But there’s a lot of Christians today that are letting sin get into their life. What did we read to you in Hebrews 12? “Let us lay aside the weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.” That’s what Christians problems are today. They aren’t looking unto Jesus. He’s the Author and the Finisher of our faith.
LET US PRAY: Father. I have sin in my life. I have allowed it to consume my whole being and my household. I have allowed to take me further than I am willing to go. I find myself not enjoying the Salvation which was given to me by your Son Jesus Christ. How he suffered and now I Lord am ashamed. I have gotten so far out in the world of sin that I don’t know how to get back. Help me Lord to step back into the fold on faith. It doesn’t matter what others might say about me when I do it, because you know my heart. I want to come back to the fold and begin to live the Christian life that I was born to live. I want to serve you again and stop allowing Satan to control my life. I ask you to forgive me of these sins and to cast them into the sea of forgetfulness. I have allowed my sin to hurt me as well as others around me. It is not my desire to continue in this sin. I want to see my family members saved and my children’s children and their children down through the generations. I want to live an exampled life in front of them. Cleanse me now Lord and make me whole. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen
Philippians 4:13 “I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHICH STRENGTHENETH ME.”
