INTRO:

“I'm going to start this morning with a question. The question is: do you know what is the most empirically proven Christian teaching throughout all human history?

It's a doctrine of sin.

If you want to prove something biblical and a part of our teaching is true, just look around through all of history, and this is proved out—our doctrine, our teaching, our understanding of sin.

In fact, this teaching is the teaching we most consistently live out. It's a painful thing.

But I would say that's absolutely true. I'll talk about myself. If I could live out all of my understandings, all of the teachings, all of the doctrines of Christianity as consistently as I live out this doctrine, I would, that would be a good thing. I'm kind of joking, but kind of not joking here.

There's a sense of discontentment, of unfulfilledness. Whether people admit it or not, I think there is a sense there seems to be something that's wrong inside, and most people won't admit it. They think all their problems are on the outside, but if you really got down, you would find that there's something wrong within and they would be correct.

And that's what we're going to deal with this morning—this brute and painful reality of the something that's wrong inside. Now in a strange way, I'm kind of excited to preach this message. I don't know what exactly what that's all about. Maybe it's a reflection of my own corruption within that I get excited to preach about sin, but maybe that's what God has given me to.

The question this morning is how is this church then established? How has this church come into being then? And we begin to answer the question today and it's through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But before we encounter the gospel as good news, we must reckon with the fact that there's bad news. That we live in an adverse reality, internally and externally as well. That adverse reality is that in our natural state, we are all separated from God.

Separation is something, that whether we know it or not, we have all experienced here— this adverse reality. We're born with a kind of terminal cancer or a mortal illness that only has one cure and we must face and we must treat this reality. It does no use to deny it exists … no use to ignore it, to minimize it. It's no use to just focus on the positive and try to put that other side out of our minds. If we want to experience the good news, we must begin here.”

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