Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - The Consequences of Sin

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis articulates three consequences of sin. In the life of a believer, we are no longer under sin’s reign, but we still face the consequences that occur as a result of our sin and still receive discipline from the Lord.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I want to thank you guys for continuing to listen to the show. It's been so cool to see how the Lord has used the Dial In ministry around the world with people and I'm thankful to be a part of it. As for me, I'm thankful just also for your guys' prayers. I get so many notes from different people that say they're praying for me and my family. We're getting settled into the Franklin, Tennessee area and over the last three months, it's been awesome for me as I've stepped into the role of teaching and lead pastor at Stonebridge Bible Church in the Franklin area, and it's been sweet to see the Lord grow and unify our church.

In this episode, I want to make three observations in Scripture regarding the consequence of sin. If you're a believer, you are no longer under the dominion of sin. You've been justified, which means to be declared righteous by God. You are no longer under sin's penalty in an eternal sense, and you no longer serve sin as a slave. However, there are still real and devastating consequences of our sin, even for someone who has come to Christ. And in this episode, I want to draw a few observations for us in order that we might hate our sin even more and be propelled to run to Jesus Christ and more fully rely on

His grace. Let's dial in. The first observation about sin that I want to make is that it is exhausting. It's exhausting. Sin is tiring. There is this scene in the book of Jonah where the rebellious prophet is on the run. He receives a call from God to go 500 miles east, but instead he goes 2,000 miles west to Tarshish. It says that he goes down to Joppa, down to the port, and down into the belly of the ship. And it says there he falls sound asleep. This word for sleep there in the middle of Jonah's rejection of God's word and departure from God's presence refers to far more than a mere cat nap. This isn't the afternoon nap that my dad used to take on Sundays after he preached. This is out cold. It's the same word used when God put Adam to sleep and

performed the first surgery on Adam's rib in order to create Eve. It refers to an anesthetic level slumber. Jonah is running from God and he has passed out. And the text wants you to see this. He's not napping. He's out. Now it's not just because the journey to Joppa was tedious. It's because of the first reality we are presently examining. Disobedience is draining. Sin is not life giving. It's life stealing. Sin promises peace. It promises joy. But in the end, it is exhausting. I want you just to consider for a moment another chapter that punctuates this very reality. In Psalm 32, there is this scene in the aftermath of David's sin with Bathsheba. He has committed adultery. He's gotten her pregnant. Then he murdered her husband. And for

nine months, he was living in sin until Nathan comes to him and says, you are that man. But in Psalm 32, David begins by saying, how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Then he says this, he says, when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. David details for us that there are physical consequences to spiritual rebellion. I remember when I was a boy, there were weeks in California where it would exceed 110 degrees. My dad and us boys were always working on the yard and Saturday was lawn day, palm trees,

rose bushes. I had to cut the grass diagonally. I remember someone asking my dad if he had landscapers to take care of his yard. And he said, wait, why would I need those? God gave me two boys. But no matter what we did during those heat waves, even if we watered the grass extra, it would seem as if the trees would always turn brown and the grass would die and the rattlesnakes would come out to play. This is what David says sin does to your soul. It's like dead grass. It's dead trees, tumbleweed in a desert. Sin sucks the life out of you. Sin is draining. Sin is depressing. It's exhausting. And it's so exhausting to the point that in the book of Jonah, we find the prophet

sleeping out cold because of the exhaustion of running from God. There is a sleep in Psalm 4 when David says he lays down in peace because he has a clean conscience. There is the sleep in Psalm 139 where David lays down and knows that while he sleeps, God's omniscient eye watches over him. And he says, when I awake, I am still with you. There's the sleep in Psalm 23 when David says, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leads me beside still waters and he restores our soul. But then there is the sleep of rebellion where we are running from God. Our conscience is screaming. It's not restful sleep. It's anxious sleep. How could anybody have peace when they are running from God? Are you running from God? Life becomes lethargic when rather than obeying God's word, we submit and obey to our sinful desires.

It's possible to be a converted person and be insensible and unaware to the dangerous spiritual condition of backsliding. That's one reason why there's these accounts in the scripture of even faithful men like David and Jonah who run from God and experience the exhaustion of sin. Whether it's David who feels like his bones were breaking or Elijah who sits down under a juniper tree and begs for death after he defeats 850 false prophets, he then runs and flees from a single woman. We see that it's possible for even faithful God's children to lose peace,

to lose vitality, and to lose all energy when they are operating in sin. In Psalm 51, the parallel passage of Psalm 32, David says, restore unto me, what? Not my salvation, but the joy of our salvation, because we lose that when we live in sin. Sin promises life, but all it does is steal it from you. So often in our sin, we can't see what is happening. We don't see the peril that we're in. We don't hear our conscience screaming to us. So first of all, sin is exhausting. But secondly, sin calluses your conscience. It calluses your conscience. At Hume Lake, where I worked for a number of years, every single Monday at 12 o'clock noon, there is an all-camp emergency alarm. It's a test. It's a massive siren of sorts. It's pounding. It rings in your ears. It stops you in your tracks. It disrupts your conversation. It's impossible to ignore. But what I found is

that after weeks and weeks and years and years of camp, I hardly even heard that siren at all. It wouldn't deter what I was doing and what was once alarming had become a low hum. This is what sin does to your conscience. Your conscience is a God-given alarm that warns you when your soul is in danger. And yet today, many, including those in the church, turn the volume down on their conscience. They lull it to sleep by justifying the very things that were once loud sirens have now become low hums. And after hitting the snooze on the alarm so often, we suppress our conscience and callous it in the process. This is what sin does to our life. Sin is exhausting. But the reality is our disobedience, once our conscience becomes calloused, continues to evolve and our conscience

is seared. So we no longer even feel that sting in our conscience that we once felt. As long as sin breaks our heart, there is hope. But when our conscience is dull to the fact that sin is an offense to God, and when our sin is rationalized, our soul is in great danger. I remember my first guitar lesson when I was just a boy. I could hardly press down on the strings. It was as if those steel strings were sharp wires that were cutting right through my fingers. But I remember my instructor Tavi telling me that I needed to develop calluses that will harden and numb and essentially cauterize everything that I was feeling so that what was once painful is no longer anything at all.

This is what sin does to our souls. It cauterizes and calluses our conscience so that the things that would once ping and sting us no longer prick us at all. Calvin says, though, that this torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. We need to keep our consciences sensitive and not let sin dull them. Proverbs 3 says, keep sound wisdom and discretion so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck. Then you will walk in your way securely and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. And when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. There is a sleep that is sweet, but it is never experienced by the person

that calluses their conscience. We need to keep our consciences sensitive by informing them by the light of Scripture. We must stay away from even morally neutral things that would desensitize our conscience and make sin normal to us rather than appalling to us. Today's culture seeks to aggressively silence the conscience by saying that it is the product of tradition or misinformation. But the warning that the conscience gives is as real to the soul as pain to the body. Can I just tell you, it's a scary place to no longer be pricked by what once alarmed you. Is it possible that I'm speaking to someone even now? Have you curb stomped on your conscience and in process endangered your soul? Many people sin and think,

well, oh, God will forgive me. But those who continue to sin and trample on God's grace and cauterize their conscience and use God's grace as a divine credit card with unlimited credit, not only misuse and abuse the grace of God, but they desensitize their soul and they condemn themselves in their own conscience. The prods that used to once awake you now dance off your heart and conscience like a gnat flying into a large building and there's no longer any effect. One old Puritan put it this way, if we do not keep short accounts with God in our conscience, it will not be long before our once sensitive spirits will fail to respond to the touch of his hand or the sound of his voice.

This is Paul's prayer throughout his ministry. Paul says this in Acts 24 16, this being so, I always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men. In 1 Timothy 1, Paul says, now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart and from a good conscience. We need to keep our consciences clean and not let sin have its detrimental effect on our life and in our conscience. So the first effect of sin is that it is exhausting. The second of which is that it calluses our conscience. And the third effect, an observation and consequence of sin, is that it foils our fellowship with God.

When we are unwilling to part with sin, we blunt the keen edge of our prayer lives. Our fellowship with God is hampered when we continue to live in sin. The psalmist says in Psalm 66, 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. In 1 Peter, we read the same thing in regards to sin's effect on our prayer life. It says in 1 Peter 5, 7, the end of all things is at hand. Therefore be controlled, self-controlled and sober minded. Why? For the sake of your prayers. It's not always true that a hindered prayer means sin is present, but it should be understood that sin does indeed affect our prayer life. It creates a fog that obscures,

a curtain that blocks, and a darkness that blinds us from seeing and knowing God. Every time we choose to sin, we choose sin over our intimacy with God. Maybe you've struggled to pray, and the reality is the more you choose to sin, the more sin will drive out and choke out prayer in your life because it foils your fellowship with God. Maybe you're asking at this point, what should I do then? What should I do? Well, first, you need to confess your sin and know that God is faithful and righteous

to forgive us of our sin. Right after David acknowledged the exhausting nature of iniquity, he says this in Psalm 32, verse 5. He says, I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord, and he forgave the guilt of all my sin. Maybe you have found sin to be exhausting. Then listen to the words of Jesus,

who says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest for your souls. The most tired people on earth are those who are running from God, pursuing their rebellion and living in sin. Sin is exhausting. So come to Jesus Christ and he will give you rest for your soul. Maybe you know that your fellowship with God has been foiled by the presence of sin in your life and you've confessed that sin and you feel that God has forgiven you of that sin, but you still feel the ping and the sting of a dirty conscience. Then you must listen to the words of Hebrews 10.22 that says, Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Understand that in the gospel, God not only offers us the forgiveness of our sins, but he offers us a clean conscience

sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ. Are you living in sin today? Then know this, that sin is exhausting. It calluses your conscience and it foils your fellowship with God. It's not worth it. So confess your sin to a God who is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sin and to not only give you a clean heart, but will give you a clean conscience. Stay dialed in.