"Sin Is A Power" (1)

How do you picture sin? Do you see sin as an act one does? Listen to how it is described to Cain from Gen. 4:7, after Cain's offering to the Lord was rejected: "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." God paints sin to Cain as "crouching at the door."

Do you picture sin as something waiting for you to open the door so it can pounce on you and master you? Or do you just see sin as a mistake you make?

"Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness." (Rom. 6:16) Sin is described as one whom you obey. Sin is personified. It is pictured as a master that will enslave you.

Back to Gen. 4:7...God told Cain that "you must master it (sin)." That means you cannot open the door to sin because of the master/slave relationship that will ensue. If you present yourself to sin, you will become it's slave. We see it all the time. People take that first drink, and the door to a master/slave relationship has started. People find life so stressful that they want an escape. Here comes some type of drug and they become hooked. (Just look at the power of smoking that it has on people.) Pornography draws people in and are mastered by it, only to go deeper and deeper into that world. All the above becomes a master/slave relationship. Look at our rehab units that are over-flowing with people trapped in different things. For the majority, they have no clue why they are struggling with these addictions. It all started by people never looking to God but looking somewhere else and sin just waits for the opportunity. What this tells us is that sin is a choice! We choose who we will submit to as our master. We offer ourselves to whom we want to serve.

Only through the Lord Jesus Christ can one change masters. "But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." (Rom. 6:17-18) More tomorrow...