WHY DID YOU WEAR CLOTHES TO CHURCH SUNDAY?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
I would suggest that if you took a poll of your fellow worshipers as they left church you would be queried as to why you are asking such a stupid question?  But, if you gently pursued those responses you would probably get a number of answers that would fall into one of several categories, which might be:
·        I did not want to reveal my aging, out-of-condition, sagging and scarred body to the public.  That would be a pretty good answer, as few, if any of us, have the Charles Atlas physique – a reference to an advertising icon not known to the under fifty crowd – that would pass the physical fitness test.  An unusual body shape is also one of the reasons that so many are particular about their clothing styles, colors and shapes.  A true project that is akin to a military camouflage program.
·        Other answers would deal with the need for modesty and to prevent erotic thoughts and images from distracting others while listening to the sermon.  Again, a pretty good answer, but still not the real reason.
·        A few people would claim that the weather had a bearing on their choice to wear clothes.  After all, none of us want to freeze, become drenched with rain, or even become toasted in sensitive areas.  Once more, a reasonable reason but they still have not hit the winning response.
 
So, since I started you down this twisted road of depraved  logic, I must reveal the real reason.  SIN!  Weren't Adam and Eve comfortable in the presence of each other before they sinned?  Didn't their bodies carry all of the beauty of the Lord's creation?  Wasn't their weather completely comfortable?   Before they chose to do the one thing that they had been warned not to do they were not subject to the debilitating causes of body degradation, nor were their minds caught up with ungodly thoughts, and their environment was that which would make most of us envious.
 
Too often when the affects of sin are discussed the subject matter is restricted to disease, death and destruction.  Even though we profess that we are totally depraved, we seldom connect that thought with what total depravity really means in our everyday life.  It means that we have to be subjected to one of many types of governments, most of which exist for the subjects to serve the hierarchy and not for the leaders to serve the governed.  It means that our communities, private enterprises and public facilities have to be under the constant surveillance of police and guards.  It means that we have to deal with public issues such as the prohibitive cost of medicine, failed education systems, exorbitant levels of taxation, loss of privacy, plus all of the more obvious sin issues like murder, rape, robbery, abortion and the list goes on.  We think of sin in legal terms according to man's law and not the underlying ungodliness that has infected our minds, bodies and souls.  While God knew all of this was going to happen, He still put forth all that we needed to know about sin.
 
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.  Genesis 1:31 - 2:3 (KJV)
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.  Genesis 2:16,17 (KJV)
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.  Genesis 3:7 (KJV)
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  Genesis 6:5 (KJV)
 
Starting with the original sin, the entire course of history has been a succession of cycles that start with man's increasing subjection to sin, followed by persecution and subjugation, pleading for forgiveness and finally God's acts of restoration.  The biblical sin-cycle accounts started with God purging the earth by a flood that would destroy all living creatures, except eight people and a collection of creatures.  After that God promised never to use that form of a cleansing action again. 
 
He then chose a special people and had to labor through a continual series of the sin/restoration cycles.  Israel could not remain faithful to their God during the restored periods of prosperity.  After each brief period of enjoying a good relationship with God, they would once again slowly sink into the mire of sin until God would allow them to be persecuted.  Following a period of persecution they would plead for forgiveness and God would restore them to a fellowship relationship.   Then Israel would go right back to the same cycle with regularity, as though they had never been through that process before.  Their corporate memory was so depraved that it was impossible for them to understand that they were once again on the same road and making the same wrong turns that would lead them to the very same destructive location. 
 
And, that cycle is still going on at all levels of man's endeavors.  The study of churches reveals that they stand with some degree of purity for only a short time before they start to fall away from the truth.  Schools, governments, nations, families and individuals all are caught in the same cyclic web of total depravity that is an active part of our human nature. 
 
Remember, Adam and Eve had only one rule, law or directive to obey plus a sinless mind and they could not make it through the day.  Following that, God set forth ten laws plus a number of minor directives in the book of Leviticus, but that was not enough to keep His people on the straight and narrow.  Christ condensed all of those rules/laws into two commandments, plus many principles put forth by the writers of the epistles, and we still cannot get our act together.  The United States has codified tens of thousands of laws and developed a tax code that probably contains ten times more verbiage than the Bible and the government still cannot find  leaders to enforce the code that know how to abide by it.  It is not the presence of the laws that are the solution, it is the condition of the heart which is the problem that defies a legal solution. 
 
As one considers all of God's creation, it becomes evident that only man is subject to this total depravity cycle.  Animals, which unfortunately for some of our more erudite leaders, are not on man's level, do not have man's ability to reason and are still doing the same thing that they have always done.  We might domesticate some of them but the lion still stalks its prey the same way it has for hundreds of years.  And it is still the same prey.  Birds still migrate as they have done for centuries.  Salmon still return to the river of their birth as they always have.  The salmon does not change the place of return because man has polluted the water, it just blindly follows its nature without knowing that its population is being reduced.  It is only man that God has blessed with the potential ability to understand his environment, to formulate corrective action and if necessary to change his method of living.  The animal kingdom, without the presence of man, goes through cycles where a drought will reduce the forage for the grazing herds, which will reduce the food supply for the hunting animals.  As the hunter animal population decreases, the grazer animal population will stabilize until the next wet season when they will again repopulate and the hunters will once again repopulate because their food supply has been replenished.  It is the presence of man that totally upsets those balance cycles by deforesting large areas and turning grazing land into urban centers.  These 'unnatural' interventions into the natural cycle lead to such things as the overpopulation of deer because man has killed off the natural predators and now is faced with undernourished herds that have grown to exceed the available food supply.  So, even with the animal, fish and bird kingdoms, man's propensity to follow his sin nature can be the unwanted and uncontrolled enemy of God's natural balance.   Again, man's sin is the cause for upsetting nature's natural cycles.
 
Unfortunately for us, not only is our entire being – body, soul, mind and heart – plagued with a bad case of death by sin, we are also emerged in a culture where sin has almost completely replaced any semblance of righteousness.  The dominant presence of sin in our life and our culture has the affect of lowering our sensitivity and disgust towards that which is an offense to God.  We, tend to become more friendly with what we believe are the minor sins, while trying to hold at arms length those we consider to be more egregious and hopefully excluding from our lives those sins considered to be either heinous or atrocious.  Regrettably, that strategy is just the type of slippery slope that has been at the heart of every downfall by Israel and today's once Christian bodies.  My slippery slope theory can be verified by visiting with any senior citizen who remembers the difference between their 1950's world and today in such categories as safety at home and on the street, civility and respect for fellow citizens, respect and patriotism for our nation and its laws, the presence of God in cultural events and dialogue, and finally the number of children raised in homes with only one of the two, different sex, parents working.  Then fast-forward to your own experience and consider how you would make the same comparisons, to include personal freedom and liberty, between the beginning of the 21st century and today.  It is not difficult to see that the rate of change from a predominantly personal freedom culture to a government controlled culture has increased rapidly, as well as the rate at which the culture is falling from honoring God to not only removing Him from view but now equating Him to be just one of many such holy beings.  
 
There are a few barometers that will forecast where we, as a nation, go from here.  Verses 18 through 31 of the first chapter of Romans reflect a very accurate picture of the prevailing American climate and the consequences God will permit to happen.  The nation has seen the meanest step against the protection of babies in the womb and survivors of abortion that the nation has ever witnessed.  What was once a main-line protestant church just conducted an overcrowded funeral for one of the most vile abortionists in the nation and used saintly suggestions that he would be a folk hero in heaven.  Even though the mainstream media fawned over his death, is that any reason for a – and I have to say it like it is – once Christian church to sanctify a practitioner of baby killing?   That sounds to me like that church has already been given over to the reprobate mind mentioned in Romans 1:28.  The current administration is taking steps towards making the homosexual and transgender lifestyles fully equal, except they will be given unprecedented legal protection, with all of the benefits provided to those living in traditional marriage.  That codifies God's warning in Romans 1:27 and puts into place the final step for God abandoning America.  May He have mercy on us!   
 
Original sin has been likened to the weeds, or tares, amongst a cultivated crop.  The battle with weeds is a never ending process because the presence of seeds will always defeat the purging process.  One cannot rest comfortably from fighting dandelions because of a good and proper application of 'Weed-B-Gone'®.  That application might last the rest of the season but you can be assured that if nothing else is done there will be another dandelion next year someplace in your yard. 
 
After a farmer prepares a field for summer fallow, one can look out across the vast expanse of earth and see only soil and no greenery.  But, come back a month later and there will be green sprouts throughout the toiled space because while the farmer destroyed the plant he could not destroy the seed that would resurrect another plant.  The Pennsylvania Amish used to use large steam engines to sterilize their fields in an effort to go a step beyond summer fallow.  While that additional process provided a longer period for the soil to rest, it still was not a perfect solution because the sterilization process did not reach far enough into the soil to kill those seeds that were deeply imbedded.  Israel had the same problem and we today, even with the atoning grace of our Lord, still share in the same affects of the disease of original sin.
 
A very wise preacher friend has frequently reminded me not to go where there is no evidence to support a 'what if' supposition, but I have been known to fly in the face of wisdom.  If Adam and Eve had not sinned and the world had not suffered through six thousand years of the consequences, would we have the joy of knowing a loving Savior who was willing to come into our world as a man and to suffer crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection for our atonement?  I cannot give you the answer to that because the sin did come first.  But, I do know that because of our sin God did send His one and only Son to provide a means for our redemption and that is the Blessed Hope that will eventually completely conquer and cover my sinful nature.  For that, I give thanks to God while I will continue to struggle in a world that is doing everything it can to defeat me and to ridicule my Savior. 
 
Yes, we do wear clothes because of sin and almost everything else that we are confronted with is for the same reason.  The arguments in the political process are either based upon how to cure sinful conduct or how can we make that sinful conduct a little more tasteful or less sinful.  We must remember that all of our decisions rest upon various choices that reflect sinful options, consequences and hopefully victories.  Sin was an issue before I was born, it has been an issue throughout my life, it will be an issue after I die and only when the last chapter of Revelations is fulfilled will it no longer infect the human race.