(Apologies to those who have heard me give some of this material in past sermons.)

In Telling the Truth (ed. by D.A. Carson) there's a chapter by Colin S. Smith on the Ambassador's Job Description. It's a great chapter, and a great book by the way. He says something interesting about how sin is understood in our culture. "It seems clear that the manufacturers regarded sinful as a word that would be attractive to most people. Instead of being a degrading thing that leads to the judgment of God, sin is perceived as an enjoyable things that only the stuffiest people would avoid... The gospel says, "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor 15:3), but if our sins are not perceived to be a problem, the gospel will sound like an antidote to a remote disease from which few postmodern people suffer. For most people in our society, the word sin has been emptied of its true meaning and filled with another meaning that renders it harmless." (185)
In Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J.I. Packer tells us that, "to preach sin means... to measure their lives by the holy law of God. To be convicted of sin means, not just to feel that one is an all-round flop, but to realize that one has offended God, and flouted His authority, and defied Him, and gone against Him, and put oneself in wrong with Him." (61)
One of my favorite passages over the past few years has been Isaiah 6. If I were to ever sit down with someone and only talk about the gospel this is where I would turn. Isaiah has a vision that He is before the throne of God, and what unfolds is so profound that much of the gospel and Bible can be summed up in 8 verses. I'm going to go through the 8 verses in my next few blogs.
The first 4 verses have to do with God's holiness. Here are the famous seraphim with eyes and wings and their eternal chant about how Holy God is. I will return to this, only note for now that God is amazingly holy.
Verse 5 reads, "And I said, 'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!'" (ESV)
Isaiah was a family man- he had a wife and kids. He also had a high place in the king's court and was part of the king's major decisions. More than that, Isaiah was a prophet- he spoke the very words of God. In fact, we have the most writing of any prophet from him. Many of the Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus are found in his book. Some have gone as far as to call him the Paul of the Old Testament. It would be an understatement to call him a man of God; indeed he was a man of integrity and divine inspiration.
That being the case, Isaiah's first words before God's throne should be of extreme importance to us. We find in the Old Testament that it was death for anyone who saw the face of God. But Isaiah was one of the holiest men of God that could be found, and he still cried out. When Isaiah saw who he was compared to who God is he saw his own destruction.
It is here that we see how devastating sin truly is. Sin is any thought or action that attempts to glorify creation above the Creator. It is to put oneself before God. Every act of sin boils down to this simple concept. It is rebellion, purposeful disobedience. Essentially, every sin is a (false) declaration that we are above God, be it dishonesty, lust, drunkenness, idolatry, or whatever. Sin is an action against an eternal God, and thus incurs eternal consequences on the perpetrator. Romans 3:23 tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Isaiah saw this has clearly as possible in the unbearable light of God's holiness and glory.
The bad news for sinners is that we have no hope in and of ourselves. This is the nature of sin that has been lost to our culture. This is the message that must be restored. Sin is in no way attractive, it is the very thing that will condemn us before our Creator if we are not pardoned for it.