Preaching on sin has become taboo among many pulpits and modern-day megachurches because it is a killjoy word that discourages people and makes them realize they are guilty before God and must sue God for mercy. It makes some realize they cannot save themselves they are less righteous than they thought they were and they're getting knocked out of their their comfort zone. Yes, preaching on sin is very unpopular and a pastor takes a great chance in doing it because there may be deacons or elders who are guilty and many members might even believe they are offended.
So what is a sin? When we do that God would not do anything that does not bring glory to God or brings him shame and dishonor anything that falls short of God's perfect standard and put self above God. When it failed to do what we should have done as well as violate what we were commanded not to do. It is our virus inherited from Adam as our birthright and Declaration of Independence from God and shows our solidarity with Adam and slavery to sin.
I dare say that the preacher was godly and preached on sin simply because you must get them lost before they can get saved. This is the first step to receiving salvation; we all start here humbling ourselves to God realizing that the way up is down! We must get down on our knees and acknowledge the Lordship of Christ who gave himself in our stead for our sins. When we realize our feet of clay or hidden faults are exposed to God it makes us know we are mere sinners who are lost without God’s mercy and grace. We are halfway there to being close to the kingdom of God! We must realize we are not good enough to be saved but bad enough to need salvation!
One must become aware of sin as the first step in salvation jesus came to save sinners and to seek and to save those who were lost. As long as we are comfortable with who we are. We think we are righteous in our own right we cannot be saved we must throw away our own self-righteousness and self-esteem and realize that we need God to steam in God's righteousness. Our righteousness is not our gift to God but his gift to us we must give all of God all the glory for everything we get none we are recipients of the glory of God and the mercy and grace of God we share his glory and reflect his glory it is not ours.
The mission of the Gospel is the number one priority among preachers and is really the basic thing we preach because fulfilling the Great Commission is our goal as job number one. Anything else is a commentary on that. We are not only to preach the gospel and save people and get them born again but to disciple them and get them to mature so that they can help others receive Christ and find God. You must mature to become Christ-like until actually Christ is formed in us and people see Christ in us as we do good works that glorify God but we must be zealous of good works and choke worth the fruit of our salvation to prove our faith which cannot be seen without works.
Jesus' name is called Jesus because he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus' name means Jehovah saves or God saves in short. What he saves is souls He is in the resurrection business of changing lives! He says that he saves us from sin, Satan, death, and even ourselves. We are our own worst enemy we met the enemy and he is us as I say. We should never point the finger or play the blame game we are guilty of our own sins and God only punishes us for our sins not for other people's sins the soul that sins is the one that dies. We have looked inside our hearts and found out that we are not that pretty we have a lot to hide from. We all have a dark side a show nobody this is what must be exposed by God only the Holy Spirit can convict us of sin.
We can preach with the Bible says, but God is the one who does the work to open the heart and change the heart. We do not want our faith to rest upon the wisdom of men but in the power of God the power of the Gospel has the power to change lives we must put faith in it and preach it. Repentance is not therefore just a change of opinions but a change of the heart, mind, and soul, and everything about us must be changed not just our opinions and our attitude and we must show forth the fruits of our repentance to prove it is genuine.
In fact, there is no genuine repentance without saving faith they go together hand in hand that's why we call them penitent faith or believe in repentance--they're both gifts of God and need God to work in our hearts to accomplish. There is not a word to replace sin it is a dirty word even to God and the call by any other name does it injustice. If we called the poison essence of Peppermint it would be even more dangerous because people would be all the more deceived in other words we must call a spade a spade. We must call people's sins by name, confront them from the pulpit rhetorically, and call them out on their sins even the comfortable ones that they're with the ones that their pet sins, the ones they do not want to change.
The sins that so easily overcome us and trip us up! They could easily live to rationalize or justify themselves. We all tend to justify ourselves and we need to be reminded of these sins. It's not always the big deadly sins that we are guilty of but sometimes these little sins that we are accepted by society and are the real ones that judge us in our character. When you hear the word of God preached, there is the conviction the Holy Spirit is at work opening hearts even if you are a born-again believer. God never stops convicting you of sin and bringing you to faith this is an ongoing resolution and work of God. We never stop repenting of our sins, it is not a one-time act of salvation but renewed every time we get convicted of our sins. Serving one in the Spirit with Heidi Broberg, Soli Deo Gloria!
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