The Sinfulness Of Sin - Preach The Word

The Sinfulness Of SinRalph Venningclosed up, and besides that, it is kept against him with flaming swords. Ever since,it has been every man's lot to come into and go out of this world naked, to showthat he has no right to anything, but lives on the alms of God's charity and grace.All we have or hold between our birth and death is clear gain and mere gift. Godmight choose whether he would allow us anything or not, and when he has givenhe may take back again, and none of us has cause to say anything but what Jobdid: 'Naked came I into the world, and naked shall I return; the Lord hath given,and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord' (Job 1.21). All wehave, our food and raiment, is only lent to us. We are only tenants at will, andtherefore, seeing we deserve nothing, we should be content with, and thankful foranything (1 Timothy 6.7,8).To show that man by sin had lost all, when our Lord Jesus came into this world forthe recovery of man, and stood as in the sinner's stead, he had not where to lay hishead. 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hathnot where to lay his head' (Luke 9.58). This plainly shows that the sin of man hadleft the Son of man nothing. Though Christ were Lord of all, yet if he will come inthe likeness of sinful flesh, he must not go like the Son of God, but the Son of man,and be a man of sorrows, destitute, forsaken and afflicted. Though we fare thebetter for his suffering, he fared the worse for our sin; and among the othermiseries he underwent, he had not where to lay his head.To add yet another evidence of the venomous nature of sin in this matter, it is nota little remarkable that God did not take the full forfeiture, nor strip us so nakedand bare as he might have done, but allowed us a competent subsistence andaccommodation. Also, as the first fruits of his goodness, he made the first suit ofclothes which Adam and Eve wore. Yet sin is against that good which God left us,and fills it with vanity and vexation, with bitterness and a curse. God left Adammany acres of land to till and husband, but he has it with a curse, sweat andsorrow; many a grieving briar and pricking thorn stick fast to him (Genesis 3.17-19). God left him ground enough (v. 23), but, alas, it is cursed ground! So sin isagainst man's temporal good, either in taking it from him, or cursing it to him. Sinis so envious, that it would leave man nothing, and if God is so good as to leavehim anything, sin's eye is evil because God is good, and puts a sting in it, viz. acurse. To be more specific:a. Sin is against man's rest and ease, of which man is a great lover; and, indeed,he needs it as a great part of the well-being of his life. It is a sore travail which thesons of men have under the sun. What hath man of all his labour, and the vexationof his heart wherein he laboured? for all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief(Ecclesiastes 1.13; 2.22,23). This is so whether he increase wisdom andknowledge, or pleasure and riches. He takes no rest in the night, but is hauntedwith vain and extravagant, if not terrified by frightful dreams; and his fancies,which are waking dreams by day, are more troublesome than those of the night.Man's ground is overgrown with thorns, so that he has many an aching head andheart, many a sore hand and foot, before the next year comes round, to get a littlelivelihood out of this sin-cursed ground. Man's paradisical life was easy andpleasant, but now it is labour and pain, such as makes him sweat. Even hisrecreations fall short of his labour, for pain and sweat (Ecclesiastes 2.1-2). The oldworld was very conscious of this, as may be gathered from Genesis 5.29: 'He called15