So when people come, usually what they do - what you find is that people try to find a way to get rid of this concept of sin and the New Age, they totally reject God, and an ultimate moral authority. Therefore, there's no such thing as sin, nor failure. So everything is smoothed over, so no one has to own that I have sinned, and it really sounds very appealing, because man becomes his own God, his own redeemer, his own saviour. This works kind of like this; well I can work on myself to improve myself. That's the core of it. The trouble is, you can't deal with sin just by working on yourself. That's what we're going to get to - redemption - in a moment, because you have to see what redemption means, and you'll see how there's two ways you're either going to redeem yourself, one or the other - you either do it God's way, or your way. Ha ha! Okay, so sin's violating God's law.
Okay, now let's get this. So I can deny it, I can blame someone else, I can say I don't believe in it, I can say it's just a Christian junkie thing to make you feel guilty. I can try and find all kinds of ways to try and persuade you sin isn't sin, and dress it up so it looks better than it is, but actually sin is sin. Okay and sin has a consequence - death. So what does that look like? What does death look like, because you notice that Adam didn't immediately die. He lived quite a long time before he died, so when God says that you'll die, He says certain things are going to happen around your life as a consequence of your actions, you see? And once you realise this, most believers, most Christians can't connect what they're experiencing now, to what they chose to do a little while ago. That's why they don't get to repent of sin, and that's why we don't fear sin, because this next bit we don't really believe. Let me tell you what it means. This is what sin means; every time, every situation, every circumstance that this happens, this is the consequence - these are the consequences. I've identified these ones. There may be others, but these are good enough to me. Number one is, the separation from God, or a loss of connection with God. You lose. You become disconnected from God. The wage of sin is death. What it means is you are disconnected relationally. You've disconnected from God because you rejected Him. He didn't move, you moved. You disconnected when you sin. Okay then - and what that leaves is spiritual emptiness. Romans 6:23, says the wages of sin is death, so sin pays up, and it's just always the same. It's never inflated. It's always been the same. You actually get disconnected.
Some of us in the church today, the thing we're struggling - the disconnection we're struggling, I'll just put it really simply; it's due to sin in the heart. Oh, well I don't know about sin. I don't feel I've got any sin going on. That doesn't mean there isn't any, just because you can't recognise it. That's why people counsel. We show what causes - and people come, you know why they come? They can't see what's going on! It's just terrible, all of these things in my life - the fruit. And the counsellor, if they're a good counsellor, will just sift through it all, pull it all apart, get right down - guess what's underneath it? Sin! Every time - and as soon as they own the sin, and do God's remedy, you get free, see?
See, so the first thing's sin. So we've got to see that first is separation from God, so mostly you find when people come to us with a problem, they've disconnected from God. They don't hear God. They feel just, boo-hoo! I don't feel God anymore, God's a long way off - so they talk at God; God, He's a long way off - see, because the heart's not clean and clear and close and intimate.
The second thing that we experience is judgement. God must hold us to account for what we've done. He's a just God, He's a holy God, so He does call all of us to account. The Bible's very clear, in Romans 14 I think, Verse 10. It tells us that all, all, all, all, all - no exceptions - give account of ourselves to God - no exceptions. You come into the world one at a time, we leave one at a time, we stand before God one at a time. We get to be judged one at a time - so there's no we and us in that. It's personal, very personal, very personal, every one of us.