He Will Save his People From Their Sins: Basic Hamartiology - Matthew 1:21

1:51And so, as we journey tonight, understanding sin, we want to do so so that we will understand the Savior and what he came to do. You know, the Bible makes it very clear that the one who loves much is the one who has been forgiven much. And sin has become a bad word. We don't like to talk about it. In fact, we really don't even like to consider ourselves sinners. Let me tell you what that does. If you don't see your sin, and I don't care how old you are, okay, this is for everybody. If you don't understand your sin, and you don't understand how you have grieved, and how you have wronged, and how you have offended God, if you do not understand that, you will have very little. Capacity to love the Savior. Because the one who has been forgiven much is the one who loves much. And so I'm going to talk to you tonight about sin, and I'm going to use Matthew 20, I'm going to read to you Matthew 18 through 21. And Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.

3:33Chapter 1, verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother, Mary, had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Verse 21, she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. So that's it. Joseph didn't put her away, as you know the story.

4:30He will save his people from their sins. Sins. What is sin? That's what he came to do, is to save their people from their sins. He came to save you and me from our sins. Now, the word for sin there is hamartia. Hamartia. Can you say it? Hamartia. You know what? You know what the word ology means, like biology? What does biology mean? Study of life, right? Biology, study of life. What do you think Hamartiology would be?

5:15The study of sin, right? Hamartiology. Can you say hamartiology? Say it again, hamartiology. One more time, hamartiology. It's good to learn these things. I know it's a word you probably have never heard before and probably couldn't spell. Especially in Greek. Yes, but you see the English up there, Hamartia, right? Hamartiology is the study of sin. I teach a class on this. So I'm hoping that soon I'll get more students who will be interested. This is the kinds of things that we talk about.

6:00In class. But what is sin? That's the basic fundamental. He came to save us from our sins. And if he came to do that, then we need to know something about what our sin is and what sins he came to save us. And so we get a picture of what his salvation looks like. Now, unfortunately, or fortunately, however, you want to look at it, it just so happens the Bible has a very expansive terminology for sin. There's lots of it. You know, probably why? Because we're sinners, right? We know how to sin in many, many ways. And so the Old Testament and the New Testament have many, many words to describe our defection from God and what defection from God looks like, what sin against God looks like. And there's no way we could cover them all. So tonight, I'm just going to give you, I don't know, maybe six or seven or something. We'll just go until we can't really go anymore, I guess. But it does end tonight. We don't get too wrapped around the axle. I think you'll find it fairly straightforward. But I'm mainly going to be drawing from the Old Testament terminology. There's a whole bunch of New Testament terminology, but we'll just start going down the road here and look at terms that the Bible calls sin so that we can understand. The first one, sin, is the word we get sin from. Hata. It's a word. You see it in parentheses, hata. You can see the Hebrew there, but you know, just hata. We'll just go with the sin. And that is basically when the New Testament translates a word martiyah, it uses this Old Testament term, sin. And it's the basic word for sin. It's that general idea of sin itself, that overarching, big, catch-all idea, sin. And the basic idea is to miss the mark, to miss the mark.

8:29In Judges 20, 16, you get a picture of this. Out of all these people, 700 choice men were left-handed, and each one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss its mark. So the idea is that these men could, with their left hands, they did that, seem pretty good, and they could hit a target a long way off. How many lefties do we have in here? Quite a few. Right? Hitting a target. But these guys could sling a stone and not miss. They could hit a hair. That's how on spot-on they were. And so the idea of sin, sin is a failure to hit God's moral standard. God has something He wants humanity to be.

9:25He's got a target. When He made humanity in His image, when He made man in His image, He had a standard. And you see the standard, you see the little cross up there on the little X up on the cross up there. You can think about that as God's target. The cross tells us a story about the perfect man, right? He absolutely loved the Father's will comprehensively, totally, no matter what it was. He trusted His Father. Adam, on the other hand, you remember, he was in paradise. He had a whole bunch of options, he had all kinds of trees to eat from, and he wanted to do the one thing that God told him not to do. But you look at Jesus, and this is God's mark. This is the standard. He always did what was right, he always loved supremely, and we're not just. Talking external, we're talking in the heart. When we're talking about sin, I want you to think actions that happen outside that you do, but also thoughts in the heart, where your mind, where your heart goes, because that's really where the issue of sin comes from. So, I'm talking about your heart. So, sin is failure to meet Christ's standard. He loved totally, he loved completely. He gave himself. He never missed God's standard. He delighted God in all ways, at all times, in every thought, in every word. God was absolutely delighted in him.

11:21That's the standard. And to fall short of that is sin. And it's not just we can't live up to it, it's that we won't, we will not. Sin is one that has a component, like I am not going to live up to that standard. I'm going to live according to my own standard. And that fundamentally is sin. And the penalty of sin always. Involved death. Whether it was the death of a sacrifice or it was the death of an individual, sin brought about death. And I mean in a gruesome fashion. You brought those animals up, they got mangled. Access, access to God, forgiveness of sins involved death. Always. So sin, that's the big word. Let's move on to another word. If you have questions, you can raise your hands. Hand.

12:36But another word, one of the first words you come to is the word ta'a, and it basically means to leave God, to leave God. The basic idea is to wander around, wander away from God. Okay, the idea of sin is to wander away, to drift away, to care less, to care less about God, to willfully not be interested in the things of God and to wander around. In Exodus, this is just a non-moral picture of it. If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. That's the idea.

13:24Think about this as a law. If you see your, even your enemy, If your enemy, if his donkey is wandering around, what's going to happen to the donkey? Yeah, what do you think is going to happen to a donkey or an ox out there in wilderness type thing? What's going to happen to them? Yeah, they're going to get killed. They're going to die, right? They're aimlessly wandering around, right? And so you shall return it, right? Even if it's your enemy.

14:00You see something here? So the idea of wandering away, sin is a moral wandering. We feel it, right? We feel the propensity in our hearts to wander away from God, right? Now, which of these symbols up here, what do you think art really kind of reflects like an endless wandering up here? You see it up here? The eight, yeah, that can just be endless, aimless wandering. You see that? Or I should say like that, right? Well, that's what sin is. It's an aimless wandering, an erring, a going astray. Like, I'm not giving my mind to the things of God.

14:50That's sin. And it inevitably leaves in departure from him. And God makes it very clear that people are accountable to God. We are accountable to God for our wanderings, whether they're intentional or not. We are accountable when we wander away. What's your interest in God? What's your interest in the things of God? Do you seek to remember Him, or are you kind of like, ah, I've had enough God stuff. I only go to church because my parents make me go to church. I'm kind of tired of it. But when I get out, I just not thinking about God. I am doing my own thing.

15:33And people know what happens. What happens to a donkey when it gets wandering around? It's not good, right? Same thing about people. Psalm 119, 118 says this: You have rejected all those who wander from your statutes, for their deceitfulness is useless. You have rejected all of those who wander away from your statutes. So, sin is to leave God. Another word for sin, as we make our way through, is the word transgress, a bar. It's the idea, it's to cross over a boundary. You can't see them up here, but some of you, I have these boundaries. I'm not supposed to cross these as I preach. I've got these wonderful boundaries up here to make sure the preacher. I mean, he gets nervous when the preacher does this thing, right? Comes down here, everybody starts getting nervous, right? That's when a preacher crosses the boundary. We make sure our stay behind the pulpit, you know, that type thing. But the idea is of to transgress, is to cross over a boundary that God has established. Now, it's a very, in a non-moral sense.

16:57In Genesis 31, you remember Jacob deceived Laban by not telling him that he was fleeing. Jacob's leaving Laban. And so he fled with all that he had, and he arose and he crossed the Euphrates River and he set his face toward the hill country of Gilead. So if you think about just non-morally, just the picture here is that, okay, Jacob has crossed over the river. He's crossed the line, and his face is toward the new land, not the land that he came from.

17:38That's the idea of transgression. So, in a moral sense, as it's used in the Bible, as it's developed, sin is the crossing over the boundary of right, crossing over the boundary of right and entering into the forbidden realm of wrong. Have you ever crossed a boundary that you knew was wrong? Have you ever done something you absolutely knew that God forbid? And you crossed the line anyway. That's transgression. That is what sin is. It's overstepping God's law, it's setting your face to that land that God has forbidden and disregarding God's law and stepping over into the forbidden.

18:35And we do that as individuals, don't we? In fact, we can do it as a nation, can't we? What are some ways that you see that our nation is moving across boundaries? Abortion. Yes. God has given life. He is the author. You shall not kill. We do that. Now, there's another form of this. What if I do this? Okay, I'm not supposed to cross this, but what suppose, what if I do this? I need somebody, yes, somebody really put that boundary down there. Now, what if I move this boundary down here? Now I can be that preacher that stays behind the boundary, right? But did I cross it? I moved it, right? Moving. The boundary.

19:32That's high-handed sin, isn't it? Moving the boundary of what is right and wrong. Can you think of some ways that we might do that as a nation? Yes, marriage, sexuality, there's nothing more hardwired than our gender at birth. And yet we want to redefine. That's moving a boundary. That's high-handed transgression. But we do it all the time, right? As individuals. Has God really said that this is wrong? I can, no, that's going to be okay for me.

20:32I can divorce my wife and be right to do so because X, Y, Z. Right? I hear it all the time, right? Excuses. And even saying, I am sinning, but I am doing what is right. Moving the boundary. Right? Transgression. That's the word. Another word. Rebellion. Rebellion. And as we're going through this, I want you to think about how your transgressions, how you're crossing the lines, how your rebellion, how that affects, how that ruins the relationships, how that ruins things in your life, how it offends God. I want you to be thinking through these things.

21:38Rebellion. Rebellion is another word. And the basic idea is to overthrow authority. Overthrow authority. You remember 1 Samuel? You remember David hid in the cave? Saul was wanting to kill David, right? Because he was saying he was rebellious. He was trying to take his kingdom away from him. And David was in there, and Saul comes into the cave, and David had every opportunity to kill him. But what did he do? He just cuts off a corner of Saul's robe just to show him, hey, I could have taught you. And then this is what he says. He goes out after Saul has gone out away from the cave and David comes. Comes out and he says, Now, my father, see, see indeed the edge of your robe in my hand. For in that I cut off the edge of your robe and did not kill you. Know and perceive that there is no evil or rebellion. That's that word. There is no rebellion in my hands, and I have not sinned against you by rebelling against you. I have not sinned against you, though you are lying in wait for my life to take it.

23:04He's saying overthrowing the government, overthrowing authority. That is sin. Sin is spiritual mutiny. You know what mutiny is? Well, I should have put a boat here. You know, I should have put a little boat here. But let's suppose this is a captain of a ship. What's mutiny? Throwing them overboard, right? That's mutiny, right? And that's exactly what sin is. It's spiritual mutiny, overthrowing the authority that God has placed in your life. Maybe parents, right? And when you sin against, when you rebel against your parents, when your parents say, do X, Y, Z, and you go and say, no, I'm doing X. Not X, not Y, and certainly not Z, guess what? You have sought to overthrow their authority. And the authority, but ultimately, what you're doing, it's not just about your parents, it's about your relationship with God. Listen, if you struggle with your parents, if you don't like your parents, you know what? You don't like the God who gave you these parents. You're struggling with the God who gave you these parents, who put these authorities in your life. The same is true with government, same is true with church, same is true in the point when you start overthrowing the authorities.

24:48That's an act of rebellion. But certainly, what sin is, it's spiritual mutiny against God. God, I don't want your authority. I will do as I please, and I will persist in it. That's the idea of rebellion. And sin is an act of spiritual mutiny. Sin is also the unfaithfulness, unfaithfulness. And the basic idea of unfaithfulness is treachery, infidelity. Disloyalty, the idea is a breach of trust, that there is the relationship is close enough for there to be trust, real trust, especially you see this throughout scripture in the idea and context of marriage. There is nothing more treacherous than making a vow, making a pledge to haven't to hold someone till death. You do your part to let somebody else to make promises before heaven and earth, before her parents and his parents, and to not make good on it, right?

26:11That is treachery to, and so, and this is where in Malachi, this is what God was saying. He's telling the Israelites: look, this is something that you do. You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with groaning, because you no longer, because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. In other words, you're crying over this altar because you're not experiencing God's favor. Why? Why? Yet you say, for what reason? Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth against whom you have dealt. Dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. So, the idea of dealing treacherously, can you think of another individual who dealt treacherously with someone? Judas. Yes, a trust, a trust. But the basic idea is that God has created us and we owe a loyalty to him.

27:30And so, it's but to deal treacherously, to disregard, to be unfaithful, that's the painful one. It's the one that grieves. It's the one that really messes up humanity. We want faithfulness. It's the one thing we want, right? We want faithfulness in relationships. Hosea 6:7, like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant, they have dealt treacherously against me. So, Saul, all sin ultimately goes back to the unfaithfulness against God. It's like David, after his sin with Bathsheba, it's against you and you alone have I sinned. Phenomenal statement. But what is he saying there? He says, I have wronged you. You have dealt wonderfully and gracious with me. And all of us in this room, if we're on. And take a serious look at our lives, we will see the good hand of God who has been faithful to us.

28:41And so it makes our unfaithfulness to Him all the more treacherous. So sin is basically being unfaithful to God. Another moving violence. Have you ever heard the word Hamas? Have you ever heard any groups called Hamas? Right? What a name of an organization. My organization is called Hamas. Violence. Violence. God hates violence. But the basic idea of violence is ruthless, chronic wrongdoing. I was trying to hit you with that. Did you get this? Wrongdoing. Wrongdoing, right? Violence, you know, perverting things, twisting it up, and then violence, right? Okay. Well, that's the, what's that?

29:41I missed the mark. Yeah, violence really misses the mark. But the idea is chronic wrongdoing, brutality, ruthlessness. In fact, when you read Genesis 6:11, listen to these. Words. Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. What happened after this?

30:31The flood. You see, when violence, listen, God hates violence. He hates brutality. He hates the ruthless, the chronic wrongdoing. And this is what earth had become. And when it becomes that, guess what? You can expect God's judgment. His exterminating judgment is not far off. Violence, the groups of violence. But listen, sin is being ruthless and brutal. And we can see in our society today violence of all sorts, organized and independent, right? That is sin. And it's not going to get God's favor.

31:31I don't care how violent a person gets. It's not going to win the favor of God. But, but you know, keep in mind, think of some of the things you've said about people. You can be ruthless by throwing things, but you can be ruthless by what you say. And there are some people, and dare I say, maybe even in this room, that can slice and dice and brutalize people with their words on a level that machine guns can't even do in the flesh, to the flesh.

32:25Listen, our words, and even those who claim Christ, I have heard things come out of a person's mouth that ought not ever be said. That's Hamas. And yet, saying it's one thing, but let's take it back of violent thoughts. Violence. I mean, we can think things. Can destroy people, we can murder. That's sin. That's another colorful way in which we sinners. Now, who in the world would want to have anything to do with this? Now you're starting to see the backdrop of God's love for us.

33:25Another word for sin is perversity, perversity. And the basic idea is to bend or to twist or to distort. Which one of these do you think is kind of bending or twisting something? This one right here. Yeah, I asked some guys, can you make a braid? And they're like, a braid? I think they had to get, yeah, so the idea to bend, to twist, you can think about mangle, you know, something bending and twisting, something that will never really function again. This will never function again like a piece of tape if you pulled it right off here, right? Because this is what this is what perversion is: it's to bend or to twist or to distort something.

34:17That's what it is. And Psalm, just in a non-moral sense, it's like, I am bent over. The idea is to bend. Isaiah, behold, the Lord laid. The earth waste and devastates it. He distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants. And the idea there distorts it. It's like an army coming through and just distorting and destroying the earth. That's what sin does. It perverts things, it twists things, it distorts things. What sin has done to humanity is just grotesque.

35:00It tangles, it can mess up a life. It's like it just tangles things, it ruins things. So sin is to pervert something, to take something clean, something good, and pervert it, distort it. That's sin. Proverbs 12:8 says, A man will be praised according to his insight, but one of perverse mind will be despised. A mind can be perverted. It can think and meditate upon things that it should not meditate upon. And then it can act upon those. It can do things. That is what destroys, perverts the world we live in. Job 33:27 says, This, I have sinned and perverted what is right. And it is not proper for me. Have you ever perverted something that is right? Have you ever distorted something? Have you ever bent the rules? Have you ever? That's the idea to do, to take something that is right and to bend it and pervert it. So, perversity.

36:21Another word: deceit, deceit. And the basic idea is fraud or deception, trickster, fraud. Genesis 27:35, you remember Jacob came and he got the birthright away from Esau. And after stealing his blessing, Isaac says, Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing. Then he said, Is he not rightfully named Jacob? That is, one who grabs the heel, part of this deception idea. For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing. By deception, you remember what did he do? He went in and pretended he was who?

37:19Esau, right? And he deceived, right? And he got the blessing, right? Yeah. His mama was in on it. Deceitful, right? Sin is deception. Sin is deception. Now, which one of these figures up here is a picture of deception? Anybody see the artistic rendering of the hook? Anyone see a hook? Yeah, you see a hook? Where is it? It's the hook. Better not. Yeah, the hook. That's really a good picture of what sin is, right? Deception. It's a hook. It promises one thing. And what happens to the fish that bites the hook? It's gone, right? It's a goner, right? And sin. And this is the condition of man's heart. Deceitful. Deceitful. Jeremiah says this: the heart is more deceitful than all else.

38:28Wow, your heart. This is what the Bible says about your heart. It is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds. Listen, we can deceive ourselves, can't we? We can lie to ourselves. You know, and this is the condition we find ourselves in. I've got a video that Langston was so nice to put together.

39:19But just if you listen to the pulpit of our society, you know, in Judaism, first couple early centuries, the rabbis had an issue with the children. The children were having an issue. They wanted to go to some of these Greek theaters. And the rabbis made it very clear that, no, it's really not for Jewish, for those of the Jewish faith to go to the Gentile theaters because those are the pulpits of their philosophy. It is in that theater that they teach the philosophy, the religions of Greek or Roman culture. And so if you listen to what is our pulpits, what do, what is, and mainly I'm speaking about, generally speaking, Hollywood, not everything, obviously, but generally speaking, there is this mantra that you'll hear. Here, over and over. What is it? Follow your heart. Why don't you go ahead and play that? It shows up more than you realize.

40:40Okay, thank you. Yeah, the eclipse could have gone on all night, right? You see that over and over. Follow your heart, listen to your heart, trust your heart. Your duty is to your heart. And that's what the world's going to tell you. But you've got a real problem when God looks at the heart and says, Your heart is more deceitful than all else. You need to have another standard than what you think is right, what seems right, what your feelings say. You need to have a standard outside of that. You need to inform your heart with the truth. That's why we need the truth, because there's a thing called deceit out there. And if we just follow our heart, our fallen heart with its rebellious inclinations, with its trespassing inclinations, with its violent inclinations, and so forth, it's going to mess up the world. Not just you, but the world. And that's categorically what sin is. Following your own heart, your own reasoning.

42:00Over God's. Now, what are we to do? We are to inform our hearts. Inform our hearts with the truth and let our hearts grab on to the truth and go where the truth goes. So, sin is the propensity to leave God, to transgress His laws, to rebel against Him, to be unfaithful to Him, the violence, perversity. Sin is deceit, and it affects every part of the person. It affects your soul. We call the depravity is total, it affects your spirit, it affects your heart, it affects your mind, the way you think, it affects your conscience, even.

42:49The Bible says we're dead in sin. Our offense is total. We have offended God, we have offended each other, we have offended even ourselves. That's what sin does. The offense is total, and the awfulness is total. The awfulness, this is what hell is about. The sin is so awful that hell comes into place. Not only that, an innocent sacrifice had to for the payment for anyone to be righteous, an innocent sacrifice had to come on the stage to be able to satisfy, to make it right.

43:31Crucifixion. The awfulness is total. What it does to this world, what it has done to this world. And yet, it's against this backdrop that now we can start understanding salvation. One writer said it like this: I look on the doctrine of sin as of great importance. For if all mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin, then doubtless the great salvation by Christ stands in direct relation to this ruin as the remedy to the disease. We need something to happen in our hearts, right? We need something to happen that can deal with the penalty of sin and our disposition to cross the lines. We need something to take place to where we love God's law, we love his standards. Instead of doing violence, we reach out in love even into the enemy. Something has to change.

44:34He has to do more than just pay for our sins, which he did. The salvation isn't complete until we are transformed into his image, and where every thought, every act, every work is only pleasing to the Father always. That's the standard. The mark. And salvation is about bringing us sinners. Listen, God knew. He knows your sin. He knows you've done all these things. We're guilty of breaking all of these in some way, shape, or form. And he knows that. And he took that into account and he took care of it. So the whole gospel, the whole good news that we're going to be celebrating through this Christmas season stands with this sin as a backdrop. The whole gospel or doctrine of salvation must oppose this sinful disease, and all real belief or true notion of that gospel must build upon it. In other words, he will save his people from their sins.

45:50The penalty. And in every aspect, he will save them from their sins, from committing their sins, from being incarcerated by their sins. And his salvation is about being justified, justifying his people. He does that on the cross, and then sanctifying his people so that they completely meet conformity to God's standards. That's it. That's all I have to say tonight. Let's pray, and I'll be up here if anybody wants to talk more. Thank you guys for being attentive and listening. I know it's long. We're talking about systematic theology. Can you say Hamardiology one more time?

46:51I hope it doesn't become a bad word in your mind, but that you will, it will whet your appetite to study these and other things much more in depth. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the teaching of your word, the vivid description that it gives us of man's sin, not because we're fascinated with sin, but we're fascinated with the Savior who saved us from our sin. Help us to understand our hearts better, to understand our disposition better. Help us to inform our hearts with truth. Help us, Father, to really appreciate the Savior this Christmas season as we look upon the baby born in a manger.

47:45Prepare our hearts to see the shadow of the cross, his perfection, his love for us, his love for you, and the kind of people that we will be one day. So, Father, we just help us to celebrate this. Help us to think long upon Christ and how wonderful our salvation is, that he would step on to this earth with a backdrop as ugly and distorted as sin had left it. What tremendous love. Help us to know how much we've been forgiven so that we may love you in like manner. Go with us now. Thank you for this day in Jesus' name. Amen.