PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

Before we start, let us look at the meaning of the word indictment so that we will fully understand the meaning of the saying “a world indictment’’: an indictment is an official accusation or to be accused of wrongdoing, to be charged with a crime stating that a person, in this case the world or the world’s people is being charged with a crime and that a criminal trial will be held by a prosecuting authority. No doubt Lord God is at the Centre of this! We have to know Who is indicting the world’s people and Who is the Prosecutor? Recall that for some time now we have been dealing with the five questions God confronted our first parents with when they went astray which in effect is the same question we too are confronted with since we inherited their fallen nature and as such are prone to doing the same thing or committing the same mistake of life that brought ruin to them. Not many people in today’s world are willing to face up to God’s moral and ethical question ‘What is this you have done?’ Recall that their questions from God began when the serpent mislead them and when God came visiting them in His usual way in the garden they were not where they use to be in other to meet with God and God inquired ‘where are you’? Followed by ‘who told you’? Then ‘what is this you have done’? This is where we are for two-three weeks now; there are still two more questions! The so called sophisticated and worldly-wise would not stop to even listen to it, and if in an unguarded moment they faintly heard it, they would laugh it off. The whole idea of moral responsibility is increasingly regarded as a relic of medieval times or a Victorian mind-set. We no longer regard moral ethics to mean anything to us anymore! This is something many today see themselves emancipated from or do away with in our misdirected freedom, hence the flagrant shamelessness that so often characterises public sin today, people committing sin with impunity without feeling any sense of wrong doing. In this passage before us today, the Apostle Paul uncovers the condition of the human heart. The political philosopher Edmund Burke said that it was difficult to draw up an indictment against a nation’s wrong doings, yet, in the opening chapters of the book of Romans, Apostle Paul perfectly and courageously draws up an indictment against the whole world – and what an indictment! There are sections that bring a blush to the cheek, but the Apostle’s words make up one of the most devastating refutations of humanism ever penned. The perverted, the depraved, the insolent, the arrogant are all caught in the headings of God’s holiness showing themselves as lacks in divine human nature, attitude, behaviour, character, and even life style as is obtainable in Christ; no wonder the book of Galatians 5:20-21 and 22-23 spelt them out comparatively and everybody in the world has to fall into one group or the other which characterises the type of fruit that we bear. Christ came appealing and teaching people to transform from the ugly fruit in verses 20-21 to the divine fruits in verses 22-23 which is the fruit Christ bears. But the wrong structures, the wrong ethics and the wrong intellect in the world society serves a hindrance to achieving Christ’s aim, too bad! The Scripture and the Gospel is given to help us, those who will decide to adhere after we have all realized through our repeated failures that indeed as the Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘follow Me, I am the way the light and the truth, no one cometh to the Father but by Me’! ‘He who have ear let him hear’; is perfectly essential! Special rebuke is reserved for all those who positively approve of the practice of things condemned by God. Eugene Peterson, in the Message paraphrases verse 32 like this: ‘They know perfectly well they are spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care –worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!’ Again I ask, does this strike a chord with you? Do you see yourself reflected in these verses. If you are standing by while others flout God’s laws, I encourage you to seek God’s forgiveness and ask for His help and courage to stand for Him.

Recall that we learned in one of our last messages say on the 5th of June 2022 about what goes on inside of us when we were treating God’s second searching questions to our first parents father Adam and mother Eve on ‘who told you’ pointing us to the tendency and possibility of our believing, trusting and acting on lies thinking they are truth and thus be misled in life. We also learned that there is a sure voice, the Voice of our Lord Jesus Christ ringing in our ears saying: ‘Follow Me...I am the Way and the Truth and the Life’ as seen in Jn. 14:6; ‘He who has Ear, let him Hear’ as seen in Mat. 11:15 telling us to be very careful because in the course of life, one is bound to encounter many voices that could deceive and mislead us. We encountered other words called Formalist and Hypocrisy whereby we learned about how Ideas in terms of principle reflects on our character, our figure and on events pointing us to what the book of Galatians 5:22-23 says about our feeding on the fruit of the spirit as love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; different from when we feed on the fruit of the spirit Galatians 5:20-21 as immorality, impurity, indecency, idolatry, sorcery or witchcraft, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, division, party-spirit, envy and drunkenness. Each of these portions of the fruit of the spirit determines what we are on the inside and in turn shapes what our character, our decisions and our action would be in life processes. As we continue to look at the essential ethical question God put to Eve – and ultimately to every one of us – we begin to understand more clearly the tragic consequences of human independence from God and the resultant sinfulness that follows. The Fall (of man) was a relational and moral disaster, when human wills departed from the Will of God. Look more closely at the sinful pair and what do you see? They became Fearful, shame took hold on them as their alienation pushes them away from God, from their original selves and the natural world around –these were just a few of the consequences of their sin of wrong independence from God and so it is for anybody who will do the same in life. How pathetic was their attempt to hide from God, how uneasy their concealment, which is to be a serious warning for anybody who will act in similar manner. Ravi Zacharias, an American writer who is becoming widely referred to for his expert analysis of moral issues, says concerning the Fall, ‘Neither Adam nor Eve could break free from the ensuing anguish of a choice made in wilful violation of God’s command.’ To read the third chapter of Genesis is like looking in a mirror. We see that what went on in the hearts of Adam and Eve is going on in our own hearts today. Do you recognise the tendency in your own heart to avoid the questions God asks with a view to helping you mature, the tendency to go contrary to God’s command to you, and run and hide when you have ignored or broken one of His laws, the desire to blame other people when you have done wrong? Always try to evaluate your ideas, your desires, your choices, your decisions, and your actions in everything you do in life; make the Word of God and the Holy Spirit your guide and follow the examples of our Lord Jesus Christ when He lived on earth, and it shall be well with you! Many deny the idea of original sin, but our thoughts and behaviour so often confirm its existence meaning that it has transcended the entire human race. The sad truth is that we don’t have to look at our lives before we see the sin which pervades it. The truth that is so practical is that when we turn away from God, we turn away from all that is meant for our good.

Now we turn to consider the third question God put to Adam and Eve, in this case one directed to Eve. The question was this: ‘What is this you have done?’ as seen in Genesis 3:13. This was the moral question designed to confront Eve with the fact that she was a responsible being, and God asks it to all who now walk outside of dependent relationship with Him God. God holds each one of us responsible for our actions and reactions. The realisation of this fact that each individual person is responsible for his or her actions and reactions is both wonderful and frightening. One of the privileges of being made in God’s image is that our choices matter and that it must correspond with God’s for us. We have been created in such a way that, just like God, our actions make a real difference in the world. Making decisions is part of our high and holy dignity. We touched on this a little earlier, but now we must give more detailed attention to the matter. What we think and decide actually counts for something in God’s world. We are not just specks of dust floating through space; we are beings made in God’s image with the ability to choose, and sometimes those choices have a great impact on the course of life. The immediate deduction of this is sobering and challenging. If our choices are meaningful, we are responsible for them and we must be held accountable for them. The theologian Lewis Smedes said that our recovery from sin begins when we are willing to ‘own our stories’; in other words, when each one of us is willing to say ‘I did that’ or ‘I take responsibility for what I did.’ God’s question to Eve and ultimately to us, is a vital one if we are to understand the true ethical basis to living. What we do is what we choose to do and it has tremendous effect on the course of life.

For one more day let’s consider the second of God’s five questions: ‘Who told you?’ In asking this question, ‘who told you’, God seeks to ask what is going on inside us, inside our minds and hearts, in other to drive away our confusion and gain a hearing with us; in other words God wants to reason with us which is why He said come let us reason together. He queries if we are listening too much to the opinion-formers in the world around us, if we are bowing too easily to peer pressure or the fashionable trends in our culture, or if we are paying too much attention to those damaging voices from the past that still reverberate in our memories. So God’s question ‘Who told you?’ challenges the ideas we have based our lives upon and confronts us with the possibility that we may be believing and trusting lies. There is only one voice that can guide us safely through this world, and that is the voice of our gentle Shepherd, the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even an agnostic like Bernard Shaw recognised this. He once wrote: ‘I am no more a Christian than Pilate was, or you, gentle brother or sister, and yet, like Pilate, I greatly prefer Lord Jesus to Annas and Caiaphas who is a high priest of the Jews who presided over the assembly that condemned Jesus to death and also a son-in law to Annas, Annas and Caiaphas are the two High Priests mentioned during Jesus' ministry; and I am ready to admit that after contemplating the world and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world’s misery but the way of Christ’s Will...’ By hearing, practicing and holding to the truth as Lord Christ tells it, we are set free to be loving, truthful parents, brothers and sisters, teachers and friends. To paraphrase a famous theologian, P.T. Forsyth, it has cost us much to find our way so far. And we have yet a long way to go. But we believe we have found the true and magnetic North. A voice is ringing in our ears: ‘Follow Me ... I am the way and the truth and the life’ as seen in John 14:6. ‘He who has ears, let him hear’ as seen in Matthew 11:15. So if you allow yourself to be deceived or misled, you have yourself to blame because amid all other voices, the Voice of our Lord Jesus Christ is loud and clear calling on us with all seriousness to follow Him!

As we are beginning to see, there are many voices in this world calling our attention –voices that spell out ideologies and thought chains which often run counter to our heavenly Father’s will for us; and as such we have got to be very careful. At a more personal level, think of how some of the voices you may have listened to have influenced, shaped and perhaps dramatically changed your life pattern from what your heavenly Father intended. Has the voice of a teacher at school sowed in you permanent sense of shame? The voice still rings in your head, telling you, “You will never be any good, you’ll never make anything of yourself.” What about some strange voice you started hearing since you dinned and feasted with friends or colleague or even siblings or parent or both? Telling you strange and fearful things which you cannot even share with anybody? Some of these voices are the reasons why our lives have been turned upside down and Christ bid us come unto Him all ye that are troubled and heavily laden and I will give you rest! Or perhaps the voice of a parent made you feel rejected, worthless, a waste of space. Perhaps they made it clear to you that their goal was for you to be good or successful so that your success or goodness might reflect on them. This might have contributed to you being a driven person or a people-pleaser. The novelist frank Kafka once wrote to his father, ‘I was a mere nothing to you ... in front of you I lost my self-confidence and exchanged it for an infinite sense of guilt’. Some studies show that many students who commit suicide do so because they can’t stand the pressure of living up to expectations. Many parents tell their children over and over again, ‘We want you to be happy’, but fail to give them no moral guidelines. The pursuit of happiness in itself, without God’s clear direction, is a recipe for self-centred pleasure –seeking that leaves the soul deeply unsatisfied. How good it is when parents say to their children, ‘We want you to love God and use the gifts and abilities He has given you to bless others.’ Blessed is the father or mother who tries to ensure that the chief voice a child hears in his or her head is the voice of their heavenly Father. So as from today seek to hear the voice of your heavenly Father for that is the only time it will be well with you in the real sense of it!