The Secret Of Sinning

fLThe Secret of Sinning

JCC 21.03.10 am

John 15:22 “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.”

Ps 19:9-14The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, And I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.

Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting

Watching ‘unseen worlds’ with Richard Hammond reminded me about the way we look at things around us

There are millions of things that the human eye cannot see

But that doesn’t mean they are not there

Around us are ‘other worlds’ which we may or may not be aware of

Eg. Angels, demons, bacteria, underground, under the ocean, in space etc

Sin can be the same: seen or unseen

But whether seen or not, there is One who sees All

Nothing is hidden from the sight of God

Matt 10:26 For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known

Georges Braque said, Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented.

We can all wear a cloak of deception

Illustration: During the 1960’s, fear came upon the town of Walsall and the West Midlands

Something happened that we hadn’t experienced before

For 3 years a man called Raymond Morris was getting away with murder

Cannock Chase killer Raymond Leslie Morris was jailed for life at Stafford for the brutal murder of seven-year-old Christine Darby some 18 months earlier.

Morris, who is frequently referred to as being responsible for the A34 murders, was only ever convicted of Christine’s murder; she had been enticed from her home in Walsall.

He was also responsible for killing two other little girls, Diane Tift and Margaret Reynolds, but was never tried for them.

It was the biggest murder hunt in the region, sparked off by the discovery of the bodies of these two girls in a ditch at Mansty Gully on Cannock Chase more than three years earlier

It took 15 months for the police to arrest Morris, an engineer who was living at the time opposite Walsall police station

He thought he could get away with it

Even if he had, there is God who he will one day stand before

He was a local man who many acknowledged

My mum and dad knew him and he would often stand chatting to them and speaking to my brother in his pram

It really does not matter what we may clothe ourselves in religious piety, if there is sin in the heart it is only a matter of time before it will come to light and ruin you

It is only when Jesus Christ steps into your life, whether by invitation or by accident, that His law and actions expose your sin

Sin is always disguised when it tries to enter our lives

It comes in covered in the finest of clothing, and it masquerades itself into our lives as normal behaviour

This is because sin is normal to us, we are born with it

When sin enters our lives, it never comes as a monster, but it comes as a wooing friend who has the ability to fool even the best of people

James 1:13-16 Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren

He was talking to the church, not the world

Absalom: He never understood that his rebellion was actually sin

Balaam: He never understood that his associations with Balak was a sin

Ananias: He never understood that his deception with the Apostles would lead to his death

Sin is a smell from the Pit

It is a loathsome disease, a deterioration of the inner man

Like a cancer spreading through the whole body