Sunday School | Sin is an Exchange

Introduction

Because we are, I don't know, halfway through a very long series on every Christian doctrine in human history. And we've walked through the doctrines of the first, second, third persons of the Godhead. We've talked about man. Is that all we've done? And now we're in sin. Is that it? We're in number five of ten. So we're not quite halfway. We're in the doctrine of sin. In the last few weeks before Christmas, before we kind of messed up the schedule a little bit, we just kind of did, we spent, we spent a whole Sunday just kind of brainstorming. Where does the Bible talk about sin? We were to really develop a rich biblical theology of sin. What passages would we have to look at? And then now we're just walking through them one at a time. And this morning I want to ask you a question, and I have a passage of the scriptures we're going to look at that I think is a good answer to this, but before I show you where I think the scripture really defines this well, what is your functional definition of sin? We're talking about sin. What are we talking about? Give me a one sentence, two-sentence definition of sin, Gil. Anything that goes against the holiness of God.

Hearing Various Definitions of Sin

All right, that's not a bad starting point. How would you define sin? Yeah, Amy? Distance from God. Distance from God. Okay, it's almost defined, almost like the greater the distance, the greater the sin. Is there a hand over here? Gary? I just read an interview with a guy named Peter Teal, who's a super smart tech guy out in Silicon Valley. Yeah. Facebook. And PayPal. Palantir. Yeah. He was quoted as saying the essence of sin is short-term thinking. Essence of sin is short-term thinking. Not thinking about consequences. Yeah, okay. All right. Essence of sin. What do you guys have other functional definitions? Michael? Breaking the law. Breaking the law. Okay. And we're going to define the law. The passage was Paul, where you're like, I would not know sin, but by the law. And they're from sin as the transgression of it. Yeah. So basically, Paul's whole taking Galatians is he kind of unpacks this. So breaking the law, we could say, you know, ultimately the law of God rather than just the laws of the state of Virginia, although we are obliged to obey our authorities, right? But sometimes we're unjust laws. I feel like I saw an arm. Was it Nick? Nick. Let's hear it. Go loud, you guys. Missing the mark. Missing the mark. Okay. So this is often, this is a common kind of preaching illustration that sin is an archery term. And the idea is that if you miss the mark, this is the bull's eye, and you miss the bull's eye, then we would call that sin. What there's something about that that's helpful as far as it's, it's a failure to do what we ought to do. But what I don't like about that illustration is it makes it sound like, hey, you did your best. You just came up a little bit, you know, you were in the range. And I think oftentimes sin is more like this is the target and this is, you know, where we're aiming. Massey? Thinking God-given desires to an ungodly source. Taking God-given desires to an ungodly source. Yeah, there's plenty of things that it's okay that you want. He just wants you to find them in him and we go find all kinds of illegitimate sources for that. Okay. This is great. A couple more. One of the other missing. Catherine? When you know clearly well what God wants you to do and he simply don't. Yeah. It's a ton of life. What's his name? He ran off instead. Jonah? Yeah. Is that what you're thinking of? So, Catherine says, when you know, when you clearly know what God wants you to do and you just don't do it, right? Which is to say, it's just disobedience, right? Okay. Anybody sitting on attack? One more we got to say? Kelly? In the sense that it's dependent on the good and corrupts the good, it's a corruption at what was intended to be good and proper and right. Yes. It doesn't have power to exist on a set and it has to be a corruption at what it was. Yes. Okay. So Kelly says, sin is a parasite. This is actually an important insight that sin doesn't exist in its own self, right? You cannot have rape if you don't already have sex, right? You cannot have stealing if you don't already have possessions, right? There's something good and that's similar to what Massey was saying. It's a good desire but it's being misapplied and you're quoting from, I know it's a breviary of sin. Who is that again? Cornelius. Cornelius. I know there's two planning of brothers. One's a theologian. One's a philosopher. Cornelius planning a breviary of sin is a great kind of academic book and I think that's probably what you're sourcing that. Okay. I don't remember, I think it's a privation of the will. A privation of the will. This I don't know. Sorry there. One of the classes I took, that was one of the definitions was like drilled and I can't remember. I think it was his definition. So a privation of the will, that's harder for me to connect that to sin. So I don't know. Find your notes. Evil actually. Okay. There's some, I know there's plenty of fragments in my brain too. Believe me. So, okay. So here's the passage of scripture that I think does a great job of encapsulating a lot of these things but actually adds another piece that we haven't mentioned yet. Go to Jeremiah 2:13. I don't know if this is one of these, this could feel some obscure little line in a major prophet or it could be like one of these things that got lifted off. Here it is. 13 says this. My people have committed two sins. Now right out of the gate, they could sound like as if we've done two bad things. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could say Roxanne Davenport has only sinned twice? Right? That's not what we're saying. We're not saying we've only done two bad things. Really what Jeremiah is saying is that every time we sin is a double sin. The very nature of sin is this double tap and here's the double tap. My people have committed two sins. Number one, they have forsaken me, the spring of living water. And number two, they've dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. I think that is probably the most insightful passage in the scriptures that I have come across explaining the nature of sin. Sin is always a trade. It's always an exchange. So in some regard, God is offering us Himself, right? The law is a reflection of His nature and His will. This is who He is. He is like this and He wants us to be like Him. And so He says, "Do this and you will be like me. Do this and you will have me." And we evaluate it and say, "No, I don't want that." "I don't want to be like that," which is to say, "I don't want to be like you." So we forsake Him, we say, "Not interested," and then we seek an alternative. Some we dig a mud puddle is what Jeremiah is saying. So all of sin is saying, God offers us His best. He offers us Himself. He offers us the opportunity to imitate Him, to be like Him, to pursue Him. And we find it wanting. We find it undesirable and we substitute it with another objectively less desirable thing, but subjectively more desirable thing. We're offered living water and we say, "Nah!" And we dig a mud puddle and lap it up. So here again, "My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me the spring of living water and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." So Matt, Mike, when you were saying that it's a godly desire pursued in an ungodly way, is that right? Taking a God-given desire to an ungodly source. So whatever it is that you want, whatever you're seeking, there's something good at the core of that that he wants you to find in himself. And then we're like, "But I don't want to find it in you. So I think I can get it quicker over here. I think I can get it more richly over here. I think I can get it at lower price over here, right, whatever it is. And so we forsake Him, the spring of living water, and we dig a broken cistern. And by the way, it can't hold water. It's not going to work. It might work for a little while, but it's not going to work ultimately. And you probably heard it said that the road to heaven looks like hell and the road to hell looks like heaven. Have you noticed this in life? The short term, and this kind of goes to this, ties in with the short-term thinking. The short-term solution, the most expedient way to get whatever it is that I want, seems like a pretty good deal. And it isn't. It just goes, just falls apart all the time, right? My people have committed to sins. They forsaken me, and they've dug broken cisterns. So what I want you to hear about that is not just this mechanics of how it works, but that from God's perspective, sin is personal. His language is they have forsaken me. When we choose the mud puddle, when we dig the mud puddle, when we reject the living water, this is so insane. But he experiences that as a painful rejection, right? He feels forsaken when we prefer something over him, right? This is it. So, just in your own mind, next time you find yourself sinning, so it'll be in the next five minutes, it'll be soon. You can test me shortly, right? Just ask yourself, what is it, and what sense is this a forsaking of God, and what sense am I digging my own mud puddle, and to see if Jeremiah 2:13 doesn't actually kind of describe this situation, okay?

The Nature of Sin and Its Root Causes

Now, with it, okay, Catherine? I don't know if this fits in, but I keep thinking about how. Somebody else is not a sin, but God is showing me that to me, it's a sin, but I'm looking at the other people who, well, they get to do it kind of, that kind of attitude. And so, sometimes he calls me not to do something that someone else feels totally comfortable with him. I'm not sure of the exact situation, so here, I'll give you some examples, right? So, it could be that, how would I frame this, like, a married person has the right to enjoy their spouse in a way that nobody else does, in a way that somebody who's unmarried doesn't at all, right? So, that'd be an example, right that. Or if you're going to, eating is a big one for me. Okay. Like, skinny person over here can eat. Oh, sure. So, yeah. You know better. You need to stop. Yeah, sure. So, some activity in somebody's life would have consequences that wouldn't have in another person. It's right. We all have our own context. So, you know, a police officer can arrest somebody, but I can't, like, I'm not authorized to do this. We have different levels of authorization, that's true. And it's not just in these official categories, but in other things, it may be there's a consequence in your life. I don't know. Somebody who's diabetic is going to suffer a greater consequence, or I mean, the candy bar than somebody who's not a diabetic. That's true. And that, but there's, we got to be careful because there's things that are sinned that are violation of the moral will of God. But there's also things that maybe aren't morally categorized, but just, you know, having common risks with them. Both of those things are true. Yeah, there are, there are degrees to which sin is relative to the situation. And there are things that are transcendently, you know, not individualized. DFE? Well, kind of on this, this topic and the God told Samson don't cut your hair. Yeah. Sure. Well, there's no sin in cutting hair. There is sin in disobeying God. That's right. So, yeah, if God gives specific instruction and we violate that. Absolutely. That doesn't matter if everybody else can do it. Absolutely. His plan for you might be different from his plan for me or the circumstance in which he's placed us.

Sin as an Exchange

Okay. Very good. Now, bearing in mind this idea of thinking about sin, what is sin? I'm going to call sin an exchange, a trading end. You could have him, but instead you go after the mud puddle. With that in mind, maybe the most famous verse in the Bible, I don't know if you guys will agree with this, but well, give me, give me a shot, give me three guesses. Most famous verse in the Bible on sin. King David. What's that? A verse in the Bible, give me a quote me. Yeah. Give me a, what does this just to read my mind game? So, say it loud. Okay. Say it. How does it go? For the weight of the sin is death. That might be number one. Okay. So, how about number two? That's it. Okay. That's what I'm going after. Romans 3, 20. Romans 6, 23 and Romans 3, 23. Give us 3, 23, Dan. We're all in sin. We're all short of the glory. Okay. You guys know this one. Romans 3, 23. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, just hold on to that. This is a very, very well-known passage, often quoted in a kind of evangelistic presentation, and I don't like it because I think the translation is super unhelpful. Now, I looked it up actually. It is Tyndale. Tyndale started this, and I love Tyndale, so grace abounds, all right? But the phrase all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What do you think that phrase means? Fall short of the glory of God. What does that conjure to you? We're not God. Okay. We're not, so we're not as glorious as God. So all have sinned and are not as glorious as God. Okay. Great. Okay. conjure is like, you know, you're trying your best, but you know, you're just not as fast as the Olympic swimmers are, but you know, get out, you know, get on you, right? What do you think? Johnny? There was only one that was perfect, that was Jesus Christ, however, since he was said from God as God, it's good for us to use that towards, but we know we'll never achieve that perfect. Okay. Great. So similarly, you're just not as glorious as God is all have sinned and you're not as good as Jesus. Thank you very much, Paul. Okay. That's not what he said. And the phrasing, this is originally the first time the Bible was ever translated in English. This was the language all of sinned and false short of the glory of God. It is not what Paul wrote. Every translation since then has retained it. I guess because it's poetic and they don't feel the freedom to break from it, but it's literally not what it says. Okay. So let me just read you the verb here that is translated as false short. I'm going to read it to you in a bunch of other passages in the Bible. Okay. In 1920 says, "All these I have kept," the young man said, "What do I still lack?" Mark 10, 21, "Jesus looked at him and loved him. One thing you lack," he said, "Go so everything you have and give to the poor, you'll have treasure in heaven." Luke 15. After he had spent everything, there was this very famine in that whole country and he began to be in need. That's from Prodigal Son. Luke 22. "Then Jesus asked him, 'When I sent you without a purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" Nothing, they answered. Or John 2, "When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, 'They have no more wine.'" Lack, need, gone. That's what that word means. It doesn't mean to fall short of. The best way to translate Romans 3, 23 would simply be to say this. "All have sinned and lack the glory of God." Now, if you know that, if you're not being tricked by the translation, "All have sinned and lacked the glory of God," it might raise in your mind the question, "Well, why do they lack the glory of God?" Why do they lack the glory of God? Can you think about what preceded us in Romans, when we get to Romans 3, 23, we had to get there through Romans 1 and Romans 2 and the first half of Romans 3. What has been happening through Romans that leads us to Romans 3, 23? What are we doing? Dan knows the answer. Yeah, it's just basically, we're all hosed. It doesn't matter who we are, what we've done, what we've heard. We're just all hosed, aren't we? That is the technical term, "hosed." That's right. But how, what is the picture that Paul is painting that gets us to the state of being hosed? Do you know what's been happening repeatedly, Ellen? We're filling our self in the mud puddle. Yes, we are choosing the mud puddle and there's more, there's more, there's a bullseye coming here. Kelly? James, the glory of God for this, this, this. It's the exchange. Listen to this, listen, this is how, this is Roman, this is Jeremiah 2, 13, in effect. Go to Romans 1. We're going to walk through Romans on our way to Romans 3, 23, and Romans 1, 21. It says, "Although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and, 1, 23, exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. They could have worshiped the glorious God," and they said, "You know, that is an option. However, look at the statue of a lizard that I just made. Why don't we worship that?" They exchanged the glory of the immortal God to worship man-made things. They rejected the spring of living water and dug for themselves a broken sister. When we were created in the image of God, and we were made in His glory, and that fall marked that image, and we fell from that glory. That's right. That's right. We are made for living water, and we settle for mud pearls. We're made to worship God, and we worship statues of lizards. We are made to bear His image, and the acid got thrown, and we no longer look like Him. This happens over and over, look at this, Romans 1, 21 to 23, we just read that, then the next line here in verse 25, it says, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised." It's the same paradigm. They exchanged the glory of God. I don't want it. They exchanged the truth of God, not interested. And then finally in Romans 1, 28, "Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done." Right? So exchange the glory of God, exchange the truth of God, we exchange the knowledge of God. And then having said that three times, then Paul says, "All have sinned and lacked the glory of God." Why do we lack it? Because we traded it away, because we didn't want to keep it, because it wasn't worth a nickel to us, right? Whenever we sinned, what we are doing is we're saying, "I understand how you think I should treat my spouse. I've read Ephesians 5, but I don't want to. I got a better idea. I know what you said about how I should spend my money. I know what you said about living a life of generosity and being like you, because you are generous, but look at the things that I could buy if I just kept it. I know what you said about seeking justice and loving mercy, but I don't like those things. And so I'm going to do it this way." Sin is always an exchange. It is always a trading end. God says, "Be like me. Seek me. Pursue me." And we say, "That doesn't look as much fun. It doesn't look as much profitable. It doesn't look as expedient. It doesn't look as gratifying." So I have a better idea. And then at the end of the day, we look in our pocket and say, "Wait, what happened to the glory of God? When you left it over there, stupid? Like you traded it in, you exchanged it or something, you thought more valuable." And now, probably when it has become costly to you, you begin to realize, "Oh, I made a terrible exchange. That was a bad trade." Does that make sense? Just try me in this. Just this week. Listen, watch your life. Watch your spouse's life. That might be more fun, right? We exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Roxanne? I think what Kelly said, though, is very important. It always is. It's a conscious decision, and I think sin is very, at times, it's subconscious because it's built into our cold. But he's setting here breathing and taking oxygen from somebody else and choosing any little random thing that would be simple in nature because it's always putting myself in front of somebody else. And I never know what the ripple effect of that is. So, I can say why I committed a sin, but the energy that comes from my sin may be for eternity passed from one individual to another individual to another individual. Yes. I think we have to realize that this isn't -- those are the easy -- oh, I consciously, I did that, I remember doing that shape on me. My cold was inherently bad from the very beginning, right? I don't think subconsciously all the time, but I don't even know what I'm doing. Yes. Okay. So this is so great. So Roxanne was -- you couldn't hear it. Roxanne is saying, we have to be careful when we're talking about sin as if everything that I do is an intentional choice. There's more going on here than meets the eye, right? To Catherine's comment about, you know, eating food, and I wouldn't -- I'd be slow to equate like eating with sin, but there are circumstances where that could be the case. But how many times have you found something in your mouth and you're like, how did this happen? Right? You know, you just drawn back to the fridge. You just drawn back to the pantry, you're not hungry, you're just bored. And you're going to your constant, your greatest, most reliable source of happiness in life, right? And then you're like, oh, I didn't mean to do this. You know? That happens all the time. And when the Bible talks about sin, it's actually -- we're going to -- I'll show you another example of this -- it's incredibly sophisticated in as much as it really makes plain, there are a lot of things going on here. Sometimes, it is simply me, all by myself, just making a terrible choice. But the Bible very frequently speaks about sin and it kind of anthropomorphizes it and treats it like an outside foreign agent that is acting upon you. And indeed it is. And in fact, here -- I'll show you one of these, Romans 7. What are this? Sin gets personified in Romans 7 as this great enemy. And you use the language Roxanne of being -- of our subconscious. And I think there's an element of that, too. This is more of almost as if it's a foreign agent, right? So it is both, it is -- which is why we have this great triad and Christendom of the world, the flesh and the devil, right? So the flesh is just the me. It's just this is the problem and I don't need anybody's help to screw this up. But then there's the world, there's the environment, there's the environment that we live in and we do live in a toxic environment. And then there is the devil, there's personal personified evil. And at the very least, there are those three aspects that are, you know, impacting me. Here's how Romans 7 describes it. I'll start in verse 7. Let's do this. It says, "What shall we say then, is the law sin?" Certainly not. Indeed, and this is actually -- who just mentioned of this, somebody -- we talked about this a second ago. "Is the law sin?" Certainly not. Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except for the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was, the law had not said, "Do not covet." But listen to this, sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. Do you see how he's just attributed to sin, like thought, will, activity? It's personifying it. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire, for apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive, apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life. Again, like it's a living being, and I died. And I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me -- again, who can deceive? You've got to be a living intelligence to deceive. Sin afforded the opportunity -- seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me and through the commandment put me to death, right? That he's describing this in this way as if we are, here I am, maybe not innocent. But nevertheless, I can actual individual and there's something outside of me that is impacting me. That is not the only way, but it is one of the ways the Bible describes sin. Adam? The other example they're talking about, I think, is in Psalm 19 when David's talking about this intentional and unintentional sin of 1812, says, "Who can discern his errors to clear me innocent from my hidden faults?" Even from also his presumptuous sins. So he's like, just identifying in the reality that there's stuff that I do that I may not be fully aware of or God hasn't opened my eyes to, maybe. >> One, two, as opposed to things that I'm just actively choosing. >> Absolutely. And funny, when you mentioned this idea, there are these categories. We're not omniscient beings and we don't all know everything that's wrong. We have done things that were wrong, but with some measure of maybe not innocence, but with some measure of, you know, unknowing. I remember, I was disciplining a kid at Penn State years and years ago, the name was Jeff, and he had just come to Christ and we were meeting for an early follow-up and just training him to walk with Jesus, basically. We met, I don't know. Let's call it on a Tuesday. And I'm like, "How was your weekend?" He's like, "Oh, it was great. I went to this party." He's just telling me, "Well, he's getting hammered." And he said, "Great time." And he wasn't embarrassed. He wasn't ashamed. He was just telling me what he did this weekend. And I'm like, "So about that. Do you?" And he wasn't 21. I'm like, "So do you know that you're not allowed to drink before you're 21?" And he was like, "What?" You know? He had no idea. Now, he knows what the law says, but he didn't know that you were supposed to obey the law, per se. And I'm like, "Yeah, no. So let me show you this. We walked him through how Christians are, how to obey the law." And he was like, "Oh." Well, okay. And then he stopped drinking because he wasn't from one, right? And he just didn't know. He just, God bless him. He just didn't know. Once he knew, he was there. And then there's plenty of other students who know full well and don't care, right? So there's these two different categories that they both exist. Watch this. The sense of sin is a personified thing. It's outside us. It acts upon us. It seizes the opportunity. It seeks to deceive us. Sometimes the Bible will talk about it still in a personified way, and yet it's more internal. It's a little bit harder to, like, distance ourselves from the culpability. Go to James 1. Look at this. James 1.13, James says, "When tempted. No one should say, "God is tempting me, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone." But listen to this. This makes it more internal here. Verse 14, "But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed." Do you hear the dualism here? You're getting dragged away and enticed, so there's this sense of some personal thing acting on you, but what is dragging away and enticing you? Your own evil desire. So you can't be like, "Hey, it wasn't my fault." Well, it is your fault. But it's your own fault that is injuring you. Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. And then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. Do you see how clear this metaphor is of a living being? Living beings are conceived, living beings are given birth to. And then in sin when it is full grown, this thing grows up, it itself gives birth to death. And so we just have to grapple with the reality of sin as an active agent and something internal to ourselves by our own evil desires or dragged away and enticed. And just for a second, can you think of this happening to you? Can you feel the trance that comes over you? You're in a conversation at the office and somebody's talking about somebody that you just don't like and you know that you're not supposed to gossip. But you also think you know what would be so fun right now is to just like dog pile on this person and you're like, "I should do it." We have this cartoonish vision of like an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other shoulder and which one do you listen to? That's not exactly accurate, but it's not that inaccurate because there is within you your flesh and there is within you the Holy Spirit and they are at war and you find yourself feeling like I should, I shouldn't, but it would be fun, right? That thing, that's what he's describing, what James is describing there is this act of being dragged away and enticed, all of which, Charlie, you want to say something? Yes, okay, Sid is crouching at your door, right? It desires to have you as the same thing, Genesis 4 when he's talking about the whole Cain and Abel conversation. So we have, there's a very rich thing, the Bible describes sin. Here's what I want you to get from all of that. As if you're in an unfair fight because you are and here's the thing. The point about being in an unfair fight is not to say, "Well, it wasn't a fair fight. I'm not culpable," but rather to say, "What would you do in real life if you were in an unfair fight?" Like if you knew that when you walked out that door, there could be people with baseball bats coming after you, what would you do, right? You might flee, the Bible's going to call us to flee from temptation because you know once the fight begins, they've got bats, right? You might, you might, Gil? You might ask for help, you might be like, "Hey, can you help me before I go outside because I know this is going to go badly once I get there?" If you knew that you were a werewolf and you knew that the full moon was rising tomorrow, you better chain yourself to the barn, right? Because you know what's going to happen with this. The Bible describes our battle against sin in these kind of terms, not to give you a sense of an excuse plan to say, "Well, I'm not culpable, it wasn't a fair fight," but so that you will say, "All right, I know me, I know what it's like to get dragged away and enticed, I know that there is something crouching at the door, I better prepare for the fight." Because if not, I'm going to lose the fight, right? The Puritans were pretty good at this. The Puritans were very earnest about fighting against sin and not just like coasting with sin. You notice, you go to the beach and the current comes in and it's kind of moving this way and you're not trying, but you're just getting moved. You know this, right? You're just getting moved down the beach because the ocean's pushing you that way. This is what this is telling you. It's like, you're in a fight. There's an agent seeking to change you, pulling you away from what you naturally, what you know you should do when you're in your right mind. And if you're not being honest about that and if you're not planning for the current, then it's on you, man, because you know that this is how this works, right? When I was dating Kelly, we wanted to live sexually pure lives. We didn't sleep on the same bed. We had a curfew. I was like a grown up. My parents weren't there, but we said a curfew because I just knew like, I'm relatively stupid at midnight, but I'm stupid at two in the morning, right? And I'm stupid at three in the morning. And so we said a curfew and it's like time to go home because if you stay up all night or if you're falling asleep on the couch or if a roommates are gone and you just, you know, like you guys, one thing leads to another. And if you don't, if you're not being honest about it and you end up in a place, well, what did you think was going to happen, genius, right? You build, you've got to build barriers in your life if you understand your circumstance. Johnny. So here in what we've been discussing, the current exchange and things like that, like Revan 26, with the persistent, persistent looking to glory, it's a persistent cause and a fine as you kind of brought things to the current. And so I guess, I guess my question or my thought process here is beginning the day in the day and in the morning. The daily inventory. Yes. I went out and spent this morning, I shouldn't have, that wasn't the wisest thing. At the end of the day, kind of acknowledging it and then being persistent in the following day. Yes. That kind of ties back to what we've done, the two, six in our own. Yes. Okay. So what Johnny is pointing out is Romans 2:6 has this language. He says to those who by persistence in doing good, seek glory, seek glory, honor and immortality God will give eternal life. There's a lot more, it's a little bit late for me to like, I can't fully impact what's going on there. But there is some idea here, you look up in Romans 2, six, we might need to start there next week because it could be misunderstood, but there is an invitation, maybe we'll start there next week, but there's an invitation to be persistent in seeking glory, right? Now normally what we do is we exchange glory, wait, we trade it away. We don't have it because we didn't value it. But if we are going to be persistent in seeking glory, if we are to have any hope of becoming what he wants us to be, it cannot be, it's not going to happen automatically, it's going to require swimming against the current, it's going to require us to say, man, this seems like such a better idea right now, but I'm going to try to think long-term, not short-term, not just about the immediate gratification, but the ultimate value, and to remember that he is living water as delicious as that mud puddle looks to me right now, and it is going to take a considerable amount of effort, right now. More to be said about that, we'll pick it up there next week because we've got to stop, but there are two hands, I'll give you, you get quick, go. So the difference between Cain, I was just thinking about God saying the Cain that sin is crouching at the door, and then Peter in his first episode says that Satan is like a roaring lion. Yeah. Is there any difference in between those two thousand? Okay, that's interesting. So Gil is saying that we've got Genesis 4 that Charlie mentioned, sin is pictured crouching at, which one is the bad one, Cain's door, sin is crouching at Cain's door, desires to master it, and then you've got Peter's language that the devil is like a roaring lion, you know, that prowls around seeking whom he made devour. I think those are very similar images, and so I don't think that sin is always directly Satan, but sin and Satan are like, they go hand in glove. So I think that probably the same idea is meant there that we are, we have a multiple set of enemies, they almost like, you know, I'm not sure if this is right, but maybe you'd say that sin is the enemy of Satan, is the weapon of Satan, right? And so whether it's the sword that's waiting for us or the one who wields the sword is waiting for us, we're in a tricky situation here, and we need to recognize that and plan for it. Okay, Catherine. Two things. I like what Bill said before about getting help. That has been a real good habit of finding somebody who's totally accountable. So, that really works. I mean, anybody that's ever been in part of a 12-step program, right? Anybody that's been part of, you know, CR or Alcoholics Anonymous, like, the whole, that is central to the whole thing. You need help. You need to be able to go to somebody and say, how would you, how would you, how would you phrase that, Charlie, in the CR community? Is there language behind that? Realizing we're powerless. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll do it again next week, right? So this is, this is absolutely true, right? We need, if we're going to recognize that sin is something that acts upon us in a quasi-internal external way, we would prepare and we would get help, there's a number of different strategies we would employ. We'll get to those as we go. All right, we're going to continue our, our walk through all the Scripture next week, but I'll start. I'm going to take, I'm going to double click off Romans 2:6 and when I forget that, anyone and everyone can say, no, no, no, no, you said 2:6. We'll start there. Okay? That's all for now.