Cutting Room Floor: Sin Nature

Hey, what's up everybody?

Welcome to the cutting room floor.

I'm here with my good buddy Madison.

Hello.

And uh we do this from time to time when there's a message that just has uh a lot of stuff that can't make it into the final cut.

I think this is gonna be a weekly podcast.

No, it's it's not.

I promise it's not.

I don't have time, number one.

But uh but the last two weeks have just been the reason it's been two in a row is that it it we've covered really broad topics the last couple weeks that are that two weeks ago was on.

Was the devil, and this week was Sin Nature.

Is that a that's like if it was a glade product?

Oh, nice S Sin Nature ruins your life.

It's got like a mom in a denim shirt and like khakis who's just smiling and like hold up.

I don't even have to sell it to you.

You already have it, it's yours.

Um yeah, so we did a message on sin nature, and really the idea is we've been doing this series on uh coming back to life, like resurrection, you know, that we've been resurrected, and and it makes a really bold claim.

Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says, You were you were dead, used to be dead.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And then he kind of, before he gets into the life stuff, he's he talks about uh really dives into the death.

He does.

He he basically says that you were dead because of your sins.

And uh we've talked about that, and then he he really describes the powers behind sin, which is the devil, evil, spiritual forces, temptation, all those kind of things.

We talked about that in the other one, and uh and then your sin nature.

And so that's what we talked about on Sunday, but man, there were so many things that I didn't like I wrote them out, and then I was like, there's no way I can go through all this, and actually, so I just had to cut it.

So, what didn't make it into the official Sunday morning message?

So two specific things that I would have done much more on the front end would have been A, I would have talked much more about how the idea of a sin nature goes against some of the stated beliefs of our culture.

Okay.

I would have also dived a little bit more.

There was a point where I went, we we kind of did use this word flesh to sum up the things that the sin nature kind of craves.

By the way, the junior high kids were in there on Sunday, they could not handle the word flesh.

They were like like a zombie, like just whispering about zombies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

Uh so the word flesh, you know, is a word that scripture uses almost always in association with the just the things you naturally desire that aren't good.

And in Galatians 5, there's this the works of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit.

And so when I went through the works of the flesh, there's this list that Paul gives in Galatians 5, and it's amazing.

And it actually literally covers almost everything you could think of in our world today, which is crazy because it's so old.

Um, and there are even a few things that if you look at the original language, you realize it's talking about that we we don't even see that are there.

So I would have talked a little bit more on that.

And then probably toward the end, and this is not something that quote unquote didn't make the cut, it's just something that if I could go back and do the message over, I probably would have restated or made really clear.

It's just that this idea of the if you really want to live differently, then you have to just choose daily which nature you're going to appeal to.

And I talked about it, but I would have like maybe even if I would have had more time, I would have like dug in on that a little bit more.

Like, choose every single day.

I'm gonna live by my my new nature, not my sin nature.

Cool.

Um, and yeah, so so hey, if you're listening to this, make sure you've listened to the Yeah, please listen to the message.

Otherwise, this will just be tidbits and extra things that have no context.

It's like watching a uh deleted scenes without seeing the movie.

You know what is that?

Like, oh, I wonder why they deleted that.

Hope that didn't make sense.

Yeah, okay, cool.

Okay, so you said stated beliefs of our culture is the first thing.

What are those stated beliefs?

So our culture, and this is something I have talked about before, and I probably will pretty often because it's important.

We don't often we don't often put names to the things we're brought up to believe.

They tend to be pretty subversive.

We just think, oh, well, this is this is the way the world works.

But if you go halfway across the world, people have very different ideas of how the world works because they have different worldviews, different cultures.

Our culture is defined by secular humanism, which is a philosophy that believes that we have everything in and of ourselves as people to do everything we need to do.

That's why, by the way, we don't need to talk about God in schools.

We don't need God.

We we in and of ourselves have everything we need to make the world great.

Our intellect, our strength, our creativity, yep, yep, all that, our character even.

And so secular humanism, um, which you is so pervasive, it is taught in school, it is it is taught in every show.

The main stated like goal of of the main stated goal of secular humanism is just be yourself, right?

And so this is like I call it Disney theology.

Like, just be yourself.

Don't like your parents, run away.

Run away.

Your parents are dumb, they don't know anything anyway.

That's like every Disney movie.

Here's a young person that wants to do something good that will help make the world a better place.

Their stupid parents won't let them because of their dumb traditions.

So what do you do?

Ignore your parents and their dumb traditions, save the world, and then your parents will realize that they were wrong all along and they don't know anything.

Every Disney movie.

Um, no, and hey, my Disney movies are fine.

I'm not taking a knock at those.

I'm just saying that there's there there are themes that pop up all the time because there are these beliefs, and so be yourself.

The idea behind secular humanism that's so at odds with scripture is scripture says we were born broken.

We were born in sin.

We are born with a sin nature.

Our natural default setting is not good.

It is to do selfish things, which um is so against what people would say.

Like you say, oh, I'm born broken.

Like, no, I'm fine.

Like, no, I'm doing myself.

Secular humanism says we are born good.

Right.

That human beings are that blank slate thing.

And it's and but it falls apart so fast.

That's the funny thing, is like there's so many things our culture believes that just don't make any sense if you have a very brief conversation.

I'm not even talking like details.

And then I mean it's it's everything from like I mean, I won't even get into some of the, you know, there's a lot of things I can talk about right now.

Yes, though.

Um but but just that basic fact.

Okay, so humans by nature are good.

Well, then why is there evil in the world?

Well, because uh there's environments.

There's bad environments that make people bad.

Well, who makes the environments?

The people who are good?

Yes, but they become bad because of the environments.

Well, who makes the environments?

The people.

The good people?

Well, yeah, but the good people It just gets it breaks down quickly.

It breaks down really quickly.

And and so this idea of it's all nature good, nurture bad, well then why at the very least you would have to say this, even as a secular humanist, that people are good, but they are really easy to corrupt.

Like super easy to corrupt, because otherwise, how do you explain how much corruption there is?

I was gonna say there's there's this sort of helplessness too when you your belief is like solely on the individual, where it's like, okay, well, if I'm supposed to be good and I'm supposed to be perfect as myself, why do I still desire to do bad things?

Why do I still have a tendency to do bad things?

Why are bad things going on in my family and my community and the world?

It's like you're just helpless at that point because it relies on yourself.

And if you don't have the capacity to in the moment fix that thing, right, you're just completely helpless.

And it's just a really take an honest look in the mirror and say, what's more natural?

Doing what's doing a selfless good thing or being selfish and doing something that isn't, you know, it's it's it's not, you don't have and I say this analogy, I have four kids, so I can use this from the stage.

I my kids do stupid stuff all the time and mean things.

And I didn't teach them those things.

No one has ever had to sit a kid down and be like, lie to get out, dude.

If you ever if your parents are ever like getting in trouble, just tell them something that's not, just tell them a different story.

And then kids figure that out on their own.

Um, so this idea of we're naturally good, I think what plays into that is like you're saying little little babies are not naturally good.

Have you been around a little baby?

Yeah, they they puke on you, they cry.

No, they're they're it's inevitable.

So, yes, are children cute?

Absolutely.

I have them, I love them.

But I I have this this baby Eli right now, who's only about six months old, and I love Eli, and he's the most adorable person in the world.

In a year, he'll be an evil terror.

Well, he's gonna start, he he's gonna develop a will, and his will is not going to be to serve mankind.

Right.

His natural will is not going to be, you know what?

How can I make my my brother and sister's day a little bit better?

Even if at my own inconvenience and expense.

I I just want to serve you guys.

I'm just here for you.

Selflessness is not our default.

So our culture just indoctrinates us with this idea that you're good, you're good, you're good, and it tells us just be you.

You just you just be yourself, which is so crazy because then our culture says you gotta go find yourself.

Well, how can I be myself if I have to find myself?

You know, and and and then half the things we see in our culture are like, well, how do I be myself?

Well, you have a surgery and you change every physical thing about yourself, and that's the best way to be yourself.

Now we're down the rabbit hole.

Oh, sorry.

But my point is, I cut all that from the message.

So so it's just the idea of sin nature is in it's an antithetical to the idea of our culture with we're born good.

Okay, so there's the stated culture, cultural beliefs.

Right.

What was the second thing?

Second thing is is the whole like works of the flesh.

Yeah.

So I went through that, and here's what it says.

Um if it sounds weird right now, it's because I'm like looking down, I'm trying to read, but still keep my my mouth at the microphone.

Uh he says, Where are we?

Oh Dead air.

I know.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I can't read.

Oh, here we go.

Um, sorry, verse 19.

I you ever do that thing visually where you're used to reading something in a different Bible, and so you're looking at the place on the page.

The Bible you're looking at has only one column, which usually there are split columns.

I know, and so I actually just picked up this Bible, and it's a Bible that's designed for you to be able to take notes in, because it's got a lot of space on the margins, which is awesome, but it's not what I normally read from.

So I'm like, I know where this is.

Okay, here we go.

Galatians 5.19 says, When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, and some translations say the the flesh, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.

Um, so so those are the works of the flesh.

And it's a super cool list because it's like crazy modern.

I'm gonna say you went through it pretty quick, but that stuff's convicting.

That's like Oh, it's it's crazy convicting.

And it's very modern.

Right.

Like we look at that, and some of the things on there just seem like wild parties.

Like, like, oh yeah, people need to realize that that is a work of the flesh.

And this is when you decide to to do to participate in this, this is so some some translations actually put orgies there instead of wild parties.

And there's this I I read about this online uh at a news site like two days ago.

BuzzFeed?

Yep.

I'm always just kidding.

I'm always buzzing off the feed.

Is that what they say?

Yeah, all the all the cool kids.

Yeah, so no, um, but there's this big festival called Burning Man in Utah.

Yep.

I was unaware of this until You don't know about Burning Man?

I don't.

It's like go into the desert, take drugs, set a lot of cool art pieces on fire.

Oh, okay.

It's that's why it's Burning Man?

Yeah.

So I'm reading this article, and basically what it's talking about is the Me Too movement happening and a big crackdown on sexual harassment.

And this was the most, it was like literally the I thought it was like I thought it was like an onion article.

Like it was satire of the great because it was basically saying how the Burning Man festival is trying to figure out how to have appropriate boundaries and uh like you know all this kind of stuff.

Like written rules, yeah, posted signs in the orgy dome.

So they literally have a dome called the orgy dome.

Right.

And it's not a clever name.

Of course.

It's a place for people to go have orgies.

And they're like, but we need to make sure that we're doing these orgies.

I don't want anyone sexually harassed.

Properly.

We don't want anyone getting we don't want any boundaries being crossed in the orgy dome.

And I'm sitting there like, is this for real?

This is ridiculous.

You know what I mean?

And so we look at some of that stuff.

It's funny because of that helplessness thing that we just talked about.

It's like when you are living by the flesh and you are also believing, oh, you are good, you are good, you are good, there's this contradictory to what's actually.

But can you just can you just imagine the the the Burning Man conference room meeting where someone walks in and goes, hey guys, I think we need to talk about the orgy dome?

And they're like, Yeah.

Someone's like, Yeah, we probably shouldn't even talk about it.

You know, and they're like, so should we we don't want to get rid of it?

Like clearly that would just be ridiculous.

Tradition.

It's yeah, I mean it's it's a good thing.

But uh we we need to make some more rules around it's just it's just it's ludicrous, right?

Yeah, so there's that.

But the crazy thing is there's even a few things listed on here that we don't realize, like porn, for example.

Um, a lot of guys will come up and talk to me.

You know, I I had a history with porn.

Most guys in our generation have like 90 something percent.

I don't say that as an excuse.

Um, you know, if you're a guy listening to this, chances are you have, and no one ever taught you what it is, how no one ever that is even an issue.

Yeah, no one even no one equipped you how to deal with it, but you have this thing that maybe has become a habit in your life, maybe even an addiction, and you feel shame and guilt about it, so you keep it hidden and it eats you up inside.

Like, if you go to his hands, come talk to me, come talk to somebody.

We we this is something that we we kind of own and we're willing to talk about.

But I'll have guys talk to me and be like, well, porn's not the Bible.

You know, it doesn't ever talk about porn.

Well, what's funny is the first thing that's listed here is sexual morality.

The Greek word for sexual morality is pornea.

There you go.

So literally the word porn means sexual morality, and that's where we get it from.

So when you say the porn's not in the Bible, Paul would have actually said the word porn.

Like, and the works of the flesh are porn, you know, pornea.

And we call it pornography.

We've kind of that's how our English translation of that, but it's like, nope, that's that's in there.

That that's that's so I think that's cool.

The the funniest one to me is sorcery, because that's I think the one where we read about and we're like, well, we don't have many sorcerers.

So the Greek word for sorcery is pharmaka, and it's the word we get pharmacy from.

And the number one meaning of pharmacia is the use of or administering of drugs.

There it is.

So like drug addiction.

Now, if you're listening to this and you are a pharmacist, I'm not calling you a uh a sorcerer.

Right.

But in the ancient world, like 2,000 years ago, we we read sorcery and we think we think Harry Potter.

Or Merlin.

Yeah.

Well, Paul never read Harry Potter.

Right.

You know, it wasn't out quite yet.

And Merlin hadn't been written either.

That's like Middle Ages type stuff.

Paul's way predates that stuff.

In in Paul's time, sorcerers were kind of like apothecaries.

It was like this, and you still can actually kind of see that in fairy tale stuff like Snow White.

It's closely tied to this like uh The witch in the cauldron.

Potion making, herbal, such and such.

Now it's uh all the natural health people are all witches.

Yeah, yeah.

And two frogs and like sprinkle and even that's even a pretty recent thing.

Like even 300 years ago, people that were witches were administering poisons and uh tinctures and you know, very various things to soothe such and such, where they would even call themselves witches, but what they're doing is creating types of medicines.

A witch doctor.

There you go.

That's actually a term, right?

The witch doctor.

So now in saying that, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, because what we've done in our culture is we've divided physical and spiritual.

And one of the things we talked about in the series is that you know, that's not something that Jesus and the gospel writers and the writers of the New Testament had in their minds.

They did not separate physical and spiritual very often, if much really at all.

We do that in our culture.

So for us, it's like, well, drug addiction is not sorcery.

Well, I it you're right, it is not sorcery in the way that we think of sorcery today, which is like I submit my life to the devil or Satan and I am casting spells and blah, blah, blah.

But that isn't what that word meant 2,000 years ago.

So in Paul's day and age, sorcery was the use of drugs and substances that altered your state of mind, and and it, but it was all in their minds tied to the spiritual, and you were allowing spiritual forces and entities to like talk to you and all that kind of stuff.

Because you're not in full control of your decisions, and you're not in full control of the things that you do.

And by the way, we still have language like that in our society today, like you're under the influence.

Yeah.

Well, of what?

Are you actually under the influence of the substance?

Under the influence of a voodoo doll.

You know, it's like there's still something.

And you'll hear people say, like, man, it's like when I drink, I'm not myself.

You know what I mean?

So again, I'm not saying that you are a witch or a sorcerer, but that word, we might look at that word in that list and go, what a, what a silly, you know, these silly biblical people worried about sorcery.

Well, the actual word Paul uses pharmakia.

That's the Greek word he actually would have written down there because he spoke Greek, and it means, you know, drugs.

So that I thought that was interesting.

It just couldn't make the cut.

Cool.

So and then there was one more thing.

Well, I just said I would have leaned in more to I I You would have finished it off on more of a punch.

Yeah, and the reality is the the question I sort of ask going into this to a lot of people hey, if I'm a Christian, why do I still struggle with sin?

And there there's a there's a couple answers to that.

One answer is, well, because you're not perfect and you still have a sin nature, it doesn't just go away.

Um but the reality is very few Christians believe that they really even have a new nature at all.

And we still appeal to our old nature all the time.

We say things like, well, naturally I'm this, or this is just how I am, this is how I'm wired.

And we when we say that, we're almost always talking about our first birth, you know, our nat our human nature, sin nature is what the Bible would say, human nature, our culture.

When when we get saved, we're born again, the Bible says we get a new nature.

Ephesians 4 24, Paul says, put on your new nature.

Um when we talk about how we are naturally, how we're wired, we're almost never referring to that.

Because in our minds, we still believe that the old nature is really who we are.

And we more or less see ourselves as Christians as just being a broken person acting on their best behavior.

Yeah, that's how we think.

So that becomes really hard for us to actually live that out because you know, you can only act on your best behavior for so long.

And if the average Christian actually believed that, no, no, no, I am a new person.

I have a new nature, I have the spirit of God living in me, and I can naturally, I can get to the point where I crave what God wants naturally.

Naturally, not like I have to resist.

And I've experienced this.

Like there are there have been behaviors in my life that I used to really, I used to want to do them and I just did them.

And then through my my faith, I wanted to do them, but I didn't do them, or I resisted, or I tried not to.

And there are some of those behaviors now where I'm like, yeah, I don't want to.

I don't want, I literally don't want to.

You could come and be like, hey, you want to do this?

And I'd be like, no, no, I don't.

It's disgusting to me.

Or like it's just it's not what I crave.

Right.

So my when I say naturally, I don't want to do that.

Well, what nature am I talking about now?

My new nature.

And I think Christians in America have this very, we because again, we divide spiritual and physical, and we see the physical as more real.

So, yeah, yeah, no, spiritually I'm a new person, blah, blah, blah.

But not really.

I'm really, we we kind of dismiss that.

If you really believed that you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, that you've been given a new nature, and that you can appeal to that nature and be to a totally different person.

And that that that new person is more you than the old person, and you lived out of that belief, you you would be able to, what the Bible says, put sin to death.

Put sin to death.

Like that's that I would have leaned a little bit more to that.

That's intense.

Yep, yep.

That's powerful.

And I mean, yeah, that's life-changing.

It's it's so cool.

Yeah, so ask- Jesus is cool.

Jesus is awesome.

And ask yourself that.

Like, ask yourself, do I believe that I'm a new person?

Or do I believe that I'm just an old person trying to act a little bit better?

Yeah, and I think it spirals pretty uh pretty quickly and easily into what you're gonna talk about this week, right?

Grace.

Yep.

We still have all this crap we deal with, but we have grace.

We do.

Well, we have a lot of it too.

Yeah.

Like not even, not even a going on the whole pharmacia thing.

Yeah.

It's not even like a prescription where we've been given the minimal dose needed for, you know.

It's like when you have pain.

Super booster.

Yeah, you want to take, what do you want to take when you have pain?

Like what the doctor wants you to take is the minimal dosage to deal with your pain.

They would not be like, hey, just down this whole bottle of aspirin.

It'll knock it out, you know.

But grace is not something that God has doled out sparingly.

And in like So it's cool.

We don't have to talk about all that.

Oh, yeah, you got me going.

I'm sorry.

No, no, you're good.

Well, hey, that's that's it for this uh this cutting room floor episode on Sin Nature, and thank you guys for listening.