1 Peter 2:24 – Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Hey all, new blog today. Dealing with the burden of knowing good and evil. Mankind has been paying for what Adam and Eve did in the beginning. We read in Genesis 2:16,17 – And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. The command was clear.

But Eve took and gave her husband also and they both did eat of the tree. She was allured by it, and deceived into taking of it, and Adam sinned and ate with her. Satan allures us into the pleasure and temptation of sin. Sin appeals to and gratifies our flesh. Sin doesn’t look like what it is, it deceives us and then betrays us, because the fun and pleasure of it goes, and then what is left is the price and consequence and STING of it. The tree looked good to Eve. Genesis 3:6 – And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Innocence was lost that day. They knew evil. What a horrible thing it is to “know” evil. People rejoice when children are born because they are so simple and innocent and new to the world at the start, untainted by evil, and as they grow they begin to show, experience, do and learn evil. Because we are born in sin, sin has been passed down from the first human, Adam, to now, all the way down. We are sinners by birth and by nature. Noone needs to teach a child to lie or to steal. It is in us to sin and do wickedly. But the child’s eyes usually have a brightness to them that an older person does not. You listen to an older person talking and they speak of the evils of life. The burden grows and grows, heavier and heavier as with time more and more evil besieges their soul and vexes their spirit. Even Jacob said to Pharaoh… Genesis 47:9 – And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. What a depressing outlook, the evils that he did, the evils that befell him raked his soul leaving the deepest wounds, deeper than any wild beast could’ve left on his son’s coat.

As we get older we all practically experience the good and the evil. The good comes from God. Jesus is the light of the world. His grace is present and thus good does happen in this world. And it comes from God. If you took Jesus out, just as if you took the sun out, the world would be in total darkness. Because we are totally dark, Jesus is the light source, it is no wonder he is called the “Sun of righteousness”. The only healing comes from him. There is one good, God. Humans have no good in them, the Bible says all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, we are all an unclean thing, there is none that doeth good, let God be true and every man a liar, the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things who can know it. It is by God’s grace that this world hasn’t gone insane, and in the future, the world will go insane when God removes his restraint of evil for a short time. The Bible says the whole world lieth in wickedness.

But we practically experience good and evil. And we “know” evil. If you have lived any period of time you have experienced evil. Bad things you’ve done, and bad things happened to you. Evils of life. Death, pain, suffering, sickness, abuse, maybe someone cheated on you, maybe you cheated on someone… all leaving wounds that scar the deep of our being. And as life goes along people just become darker and darker. The darkness, just like hell eventually, swallows people up. The burden of evil is unbearable. The weight and price and consequences and acts of sin are putrid. It is no wonder the Bible says … Romans 8:22,23 – For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

Knowing evil has had a terrible price. You look at human history, all the pain and suffering. The bitterness of it all. Wouldn’t it be great to go back to that place of innocence. As the Bible says, be not children in understanding… but in malice be ye children. It would be nice to be naive to the evil again, to not bear the burden of it, to not know it anymore. For there to be blessing only, good only, righteousness only. It all seems hopeless, life happens, the burden grows and grows both of evil to us and evil we have done, sin that has left a permanent mark, scars on the soul, wounds that seem incurable. Wounds, pain, scars that accompany us to the grave and haunt us forever.

There is one hope and only one. We only have one hope, because in the Bible, in 1 Peter 2:24 we read of the Lord Jesus Christ… 1 Peter 2:24 – Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. Jesus bore our sins in his own body. God himself became flesh and dwelt among us, born of a woman, and he lived a perfect sinless life, a life whose journey was to the cross to redeem humanity from the huge mess they had got themselves into. He took the evil of the world upon himself, in himself. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Jesus was made sin for you and for me. He was the pure, perfect, sinless, undefiled Son of God, the only person to have not sinned, his blood so pure it could atone for the sin and evil of human history. And he took the burden that goes with it of evil, all the pain, all the suffering, all the wickedness, the thoughts, the actions, the consequences, the misery all heaped on him in my place.

Anyone who has ever truly realized their sin as sin against heaven, against God, anyone who has finally come to themselves and their wickedness, as the prodigal son did, has a different attitude to sin thereafter. It is against God that our sin truly is. David sinned so horribly with Bathsheba, it was unspeakable, unpalatable, and the consequences of it ran very deep through his life and his family… but he did realize and confess that “against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight”. Nathan said to him from the Lord… 2 Samuel 12:9,10 – Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. We often look around at other peoples sin, we apply the Bible to everyone else. We read the Bible but it never hits home to us, it stays external, there is never the good seed planted in good, deep fallow soil of our own hearts. There is no deep root taken by the seed of the word, rather we are those forgetful hearers of the word, those ones that straightway forget who were were. But it is actually US that are the problem. It is you that is the problem. The problems of our nation are the professing believers. 2 Chronicles 7:14 – If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. It was David who was at fault. He brought a great curse upon himself and Israel, he cost his family dearly, his sin was putrid, he blasphemed God’s name so greatly, he lost the respect of his family, his friends, Joab had no time for him, he was the laughing stock in the bars of Israel as the drunkards cursed God for the hypocrisy and wickedness of his behavior.

Anyone who has seen the evil of themselves, just how alienated and wicked and at odds with God they are, just how nasty, and rotten, and selfish, and proud, and hateful, and spiteful, and uncaring, and unfeeling, and unloving, and untruthful they are, and repented and turned to Jesus Christ, whose very name means “He shall save his people from their sins”, is a changed person. And Jesus takes that burden for them, and his blood washes and makes them clean. Only his blood can cleanse the scourge, and stench and stain of sin.

John Bunyan’s book, the Pilgrim’s Progress, where Pilgrim had this big heavy burden he carried around… it was only loosed when he came to the cross of Jesus Christ. The old hymn goes… At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away, rolled away, it was there I first received my sight, and now I am happy all the day. Sin may have pleasure in the short term, and evil may seem to rule, but the fun, pomp, pleasure, and glory of it will pass away, and all that will be left will be it’s nasty legacy. Sin does have a sting, it is pure poison in the veins, the deadly bite of the serpent of sin. Thou shalt surely die, we did, we have, we do. 1 John 2:17 – And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. The lusts will pass away, the fun and pleasure departs and all that is left is who you are and what you’ve done, the barebone facts. Then… Revelation 22:11,12 – He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. The Bible makes it clear that the only ones in the holy city, the only ones will be those that are saved, made pure and righteousness in the blood of the Lamb. Those truly saved, truly righteous. Revelation 22:14,15 – Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

The burden and price and cost of evil is unbearable, but Jesus took it. And only those truly saved will have that heavy burden of evil removed. The Bible says in the end God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. That burden of evil is gone forever, because Jesus took it all upon himself and in himself. And we can go free. Romans 8:18,19 – For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. Isaiah 53:3 – He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The grief of evil, the sorrow of evil, is what he knows, because he took it in your place. He took your wickedness upon himself, he took that big burden of all the evil and sin of the world upon himself, we could never pay the price for our sin. The burden grows and grows, only by coming to Jesus will that burden of knowing evil be taken away.

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

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