The Depths of Sin & the Cure/Hope

[Kokavkrystallos]

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By Lee Roy Shelton, Jr.​

Men support sin rather than righteousness.​

In the fifth place, we learn from our text that men come to the place where they are the supporters of sin and vices rather than the righteousness of God. You see, the terrible effects of rejection of truth are seen in the moral ruin of the soul. The final step on this earth is that which leads to the approval and the applauding of the sin of others. Now you listen to me! I think this is the most serious point I’m going to be on this morning: it is the public applause of unrighteousness. We have outstanding instances of this every day! When men sit with their black robes in the highest court of this land and approve and legalize abortion, they are applauding what others do! God calls it murder and they call it “legalized.” They approve of it! And the blood of every butchered baby is not only going to be on the hands of the mother, the mid-wife, or the doctor but on those judges who sat upon that Supreme Court and legalized it! They’re going to have to give an account to God for it, for they were put there by the ordinance of God and must bear the responsibility of their office. Every judge on our benches who releases the murderers and rapists to return to society and commit the same crimes will have the blood of those victims on his hands in that day! God put the judges there to restrain! Read the 13th chapter of Romans. I didn’t write it; God did. And He’s put you and me where we are, my friend, so we’d better be faithful as one who must give an account!

The whole world approves of what’s going on today! The approval of society is upon all of this ungodliness out of Hollywood, all of these actors with their many divorces, remarriages, and riotous living. When we watch their films and love what they portray on the movie or television screens, we are putting our approval on their life style as well as that of the characters they portray! But God says the judgment awaits the soul that puts his approval on sin. If you can watch and delight in these soap operas, and be taken up with all of that infidelity, fornication, and harlot-mongering, lying, stealing, and everything else they portray, you are giving your approval to all of that! But it stinks in the nostrils of God! Brother, if you like that kind of entertainment, if you like to eat that kind of garbage and to drink from those kinds of wells, you are really revealing your heart! You are showing that you approve of sin! I read of a preacher who watched a program on TV with the excuse that he wanted to count how many suggestive things were in it. He counted 31, but admitted he had laughed at every one of them. Now you people know how this pulpit has stood against TV for years, and I’m going to stand against the filth it portrays until I die; for the Word of God says that not only those who commit such things are worthy of death, but they also who have pleasure in (approve of or enjoy) the sins others commit (Rom 1:32).

Instead of condemning the sins of these men and women out of Hollywood who parade across the movie and TV screens as leprous and infectious to our nation, men have gone after them, bowed down at their shrine and worshipped them. But their life-styles are a stench in the nostrils of God, for He is against sin! So let me repeat it: if we put our stamp of approval on that which is paraded across the TV or movie screens, then we are taking pleasure in what they do. “Oh no!” you say, “I wouldn’t be caught dead doing all of that.” But you watch somebody else do it, and take pleasure in that! I’d rather that God would send me on to hell before I’d take pleasure in hearing my God’s name vilified and made fun of in talk shows that blaspheme the Word of God and lift up homosexuality and lesbianism! God forbid! God forbid it!

Listen to me, don’t turn me off! May God by His Spirit give you ears to hear, for God has laid this upon my soul! You may never hear me preach again, so listen! God’s Word says you are doing the same thing as others, that you are committing the same evil as they when you begin to take pleasure in the evil they do! And that’s the last step in the rung of the ladder in the downward path of sin!

When any man or any state or legislature puts their approval on legalized gambling, they’re taking pleasure in what others do. Our courts and our judges approve murder, rape, and every type of stealing when they let the prisoners go and will not punish them according to the law. That’s
approving what they’re doing! And every shyster lawyer in the nation is going to be responsible for every technicality he has ever used to keep murderers from being punished. Men are responsible to God! And did you know that there is in every man something that secretly hopes the criminal won’t get caught or that the murderer will be able to escape? You follow the story and you side with the criminal, don’t you? But that’s approving sin, and God says we are to hate it. God hates every evil and false way!

Further the ministers and churches who approve the “carnal Christian” theory that’s promulgated today are putting their approval upon sin, which God hates. Do you know what they’re really saying when they call those people “Christians” who have made a profession and yet live in sin? They’re saying, “I would that I could do it and get away with it like you do; go ahead and have your fun, brother, and everything will be okay, because you made a little profession one day, so everything is okay!” No! It’s not okay! That’s taking pleasure in what others do instead of drawing the line of demarcation!

You people have been listening to me long enough to know that we’re not going to back up for anything when God lays it upon our heart to draw that line of demarcation. He sent us here this morning to preach His word even though I wept my way to the pulpit. I’ve preached boldly, but I’ve preached in love and tenderness because I know the power of sin. I know what it does. I know how it holds, and I know what happens when a man wants to get out of it. What is he going to do? I know the power that it has upon the soul who’s crying unto God for mercy from it, who’s trying to flee from it, and who’s pleading for deliverance from it! He finds he’s helpless and hopeless before God with no power to deliver himself from the fix he’s in. And there he is: he’s in the hands of a sovereign God to do with him as He pleases. But, praise God, when we come there, there’s help and there’s hope because we’re beginning to hate sin. We’re crying out against and fleeing from it! And this is part of repentance.

I’m not going to stem the tide. Who am I, one man, against all the advertisement that goes across this nation? Everything in the magazines, the newspapers, the television, the radio, and everywhere you look, is calculated to appeal to the flesh! Everything that’s sold has to have a naked or semi-nude woman with it. It is appealing to the flesh! All of the magazines upon the news-stands in our grocery stores are there appealing to the flesh. Every story that’s told is appealing to the flesh. I’m not going to change anybody, but I’ve come to you this morning, peradventure God will be pleased to take His Word home to your heart, because He said, “who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (KJV).

6. What is our hope?​

You ask, “Pastor, what is my hope?” Our only hope, brethren, is the Lord God of glory! My only hope lies in the shed blood and righteousness of Christ, and in the power of the grace of God to change the hearts of men. If I didn’t believe in the sovereign God, and that salvation is of the Lord, after looking at these verses this morning I’d quit preaching and you’d never see me again! If I didn’t believe that God was able with His power to change the hearts of men and break them by the love of Christ from the cross—if I didn’t believe that in the midst of this wicked and perverse generation in which we live, the power of God was able to bring men down at the feet of the Lord Jesus and break the power of sin, making them new creatures in Christ Jesus, setting their eyes and their feet toward heaven and their back toward hell and sin—if I didn’t believe that, I’d quit preaching before daybreak. But I do believe it and I’ve seen God do it! He did it in my life, and I’ve seen Him do it in the lives of some of you sitting before me this morning. I know the change that’s come upon you and in you. I know God is able to do it!

You ask, “Pastor, what is my hope?” Your only hope and my only hope is the mercy and grace of God that He would deliver us spirit, soul, and body from this way of sin and bring us into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. This God gives new hearts! This God gives new natures! This God changes a man and makes him ready for heaven by His almighty power. He takes the hammer of the cross and breaks down the heart, making us willing in the day of His power to seek His face and call upon His name. And I’m going to preach it until I die! The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek for therein in the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed (Rom 1:16-17), and that’s what we need. The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ—that’s what we need! I praise God that He gives it! There’s never a soul yet that ever sought Him in vain!

Now we’re going to have to do something with what God has said in this message this morning. Not what I have said, but you have to do something with what God has said! What is it? You have a responsibility before God. You are without excuse, and you’ll be without excuse in that day! Are you in Christ? Do you know Christ? Have you bowed to His scepter? Have you closed in with Him? The Lord Jesus is our only Help, our only Hope, our only Salvation. His blood is our only cleansing, His righteousness our only covering. I need none other because He will hold me in the Day of Judgment!

My prayer is that God in His grace will grant you repentance to the acknowledging of the truth (2Ti 2:25), that you may acknowledge that Romans 1 is a true picture of your heart by nature, and that your need is for godly sorrow over sin which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of (2Co 7:10). May the Holy Spirit write Isaiah 55:7 upon your heart: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (KJV). May He thus enable you to turn to God in repentance and to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, finding in Him the suitable Savior for your soul.

May you see and know that your only hope of salvation and a right standing before a holy and righteous God is in the Person of the bleeding, dying, resurrected Lord Jesus Christ Who Himself became the Substitute for sinners and Who by Himself suffered the full payment of your sin in His body on the tree. Hear it again: only in Christ can a poor hell-deserving sinner stand righteous before a holy God.
This message was preached at Mt. Zion Bible Church, Sunday morning, October 18, 1982

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