This morning, as I prepared my breakfast, I picked up a beautiful, shiny red apple. The label confirmed that it was one of my favourite types. I smiled. I would enjoy this, I thought to myself, as the previous brand had been a little tough. This one I knew to be softer and sweet. With one of our dogs eagerly looking up at me in the hope of some free samples, I sliced the apple in half, ready to extract the pips for a future planting and to dice up the interior. But instead of a luscious pale yellow interior offering itself for my breakfast, I was faced with a ROTTEN CORE. Half the apple was inedible.

A lot of people, nations and cultures are like that. They possess a beautiful exterior with the processor's guarantee mark of authentication and superiority but inside is pure rottenness. I scoured out over half that apple and was left with a thin edible outer layer about half-an-inch thick only. Just about enough for breakfast, at any rate. That is precisely what Yahweh is doing now. He is cutting open for all to see every individual, every family, every institution, every nation and every culture. Oftentimes we have to be disgusted enough by the reality of sin to be willing to have its rottenness cut out. If the seeds have not rotted, hopefully they can be replanted too.

You cannot see inside the apple until you wound it, as it were. Before then we can only judge it by its external appearance. Before the blade of exposure is applied, what's inside we must judge by faith alone unless we have x-ray eyes. My breakfast apple this morning reminded me of that segement of society which is sweet and polite outside but inside is diseased and dying. Have you ever met someone like that? The answer is yes, of course, because everyone who is unsaved is like that to differing degrees. It is hard, even though it is inside, to conceal rottenness at all times. Rotten eggs float in water, caused by the gasses of decomposition being released inside its sealed shell, and that is evidence enough to alert us that it's inedible even without having to see what's inside. Sometimes rottenness is concealed by an otherwise usually sweet-natured person on a superficial level but occasional 'uncharacteristic' negative hehaviours have a way of surfacing when you break the illusion by pushing them hard enough. And when Yahweh pushes us, often by means of adversity, it is often just to provoke any hidden rottenness in ourselves which we may otherwise be blind to...or are in denial about. It's then that a soul has the choice of repenting or letting the rottenness spread further by ripening further in sin.

That rottenness is in all the unsaved, be they nominally Christian or anyone else. Last sabbath we saw that Isaiah had a rude awakening when he was admitted into the Throne Room of Yahweh, didn't he? The exposure to such purity and holiness threw a mirror at him so he could see his uncleanness, causing him to cry out, "I am undone (ruined)!" (Is.6:5) He saw the rottenness in himself and could not perform his service to Elohim (God) until it had been burned out of him by a coal from the altar.

Sin is a disease of the soul, of the spirit, the inner man. Its symptoms manifest in various forms of unsavory and antisocial behaviour. Sin does not sit naturally in the human soul because we were not created for it. It's presence in us is unnatural. It's presence is disquieting, causing uneasiness that can progress, if left untreated, to full-blown, out-of-control, rage. The word 'disease' contains within it that sense, doesn't it? Dis-ease, or not being at ease, or 'dis-comfort'. And a fruit of disease is pain and suffering.

Most who are struck by the disease of the soul - sin - see only the pain and suffering it brings within and seek to treat the symptoms rather than the cause. So they treat the symptoms by reprogramming their thinking with lies. One of the most common self-reprogramming that I have come across is the conscious demonisation of guilt (and by extension, personal responsibility toward Yahweh). Guilt, they say, is negative, so let's eliminate it by denying there's any such thing as 'sin'. Sin, according to the Davar Elohim - God's Word - is the violation of His rules - His mitzvot or commandments - the Torah. So they have to either deny the necessity of absolute truth with its rules or otherwise modify them until the guilt disappears. This is how all delusions begin. Deny reality, observe the symptoms of sin diminish or disappear for a while upon mental reprogramming, and thereby convince yourself that the rules were somehow 'bad'. That's how rottenness in the core of the spiritual apple begins, and the more the truth - reality - is suppressed, the more the rottenness spreads.

On the surface all seems well. The apple looks fresh and vigorous. Society stamps the apple with its label of approval and the self-deception goes on...until, one day, the rottenness hits the surface and the illusion of freshness and vigour can no longer be maintained. That beautuful apples starts to shrivvel up and turn brown and then black as it disintegrates. External bruising can be cut out with no real harm done other than maybe an embarrassing scar to remind us of our former folly, but once the apple is rotten, it's altogether too late for that apple to be saved. It's fit only for compost. Our own efforts to make that apple healthy again are hopeless. No amount of 'good behaviour' - obeying the rules again - are of much use in rectifying the situation. Rules are needed - obviously - to maintain healthy life but once disease has carved out and destroyed 90 per cent of life, it's essentially too late. First health has to be restored by means of resurrection power. We can loose limbs and survive but once essential organs start dying, like the heart, lungs or kidneys, our very existence comes under threat.

Sadly, it's only when sinners reach such a desperate condition where life itself is threatened, that sin suddenly starts not being quite as offense to us as it was before, at least not once we realise that our demise and all attempts to deny its reality have proven not only ineffective but positively harmful and even deadly. Then the psychologists' attempts at redefining man in the image of some secular philosophy, whether atheistic or religious, are suddenly seen to be a terrible, destructive lie. What is the rôle of psychologists and psychiatrists in society anyway? It is to adjust people to whatever the cultural 'norm' happens to be at any one moment in time, even if that is total anarchy or totalitarianism. In their world, 'right' and 'wrong' are constantly changing.

By contrast, the purpose of the minister of the Gospel is to adjust the unwilling carnal man to Yahweh's absolute truth and to the rules that reflect it by pointing him to Christ for deliverance. And so it is nowadays that people talk openly and increasingly impersonally about crimes such as rape and murder because it's become so prevalent in the society round about us which seems unable, or unwilling, to prevent it so that at length we all become insensitive to it, accepting it as 'inevitable' and a permanent part of the sociological landscape. We make statistics of our adulteries, unwed pregnancies, and divorces. We trivialise greed, selfishness and lust and even elevate them to the level of 'cultural values'. We demonise whole races, deny history, gender, even objective truth and reality itself, such is the desperate state of postmodernist society today. But calling all of these things 'sin' makes people either uncomfortable or uncontrollably angry.

You see, the word 'sin' implies the violation of an objective and absolute standard or code of behaviour created by a supreme moral Being. We almost instinctively feel this to be an 'infingement of our rights'. Yet such an attitude displays a terrible misunderstanding of sin and an underestimation of Elohim (God). When a doctor correctly diagnoses a disease in our body, we do not accuse him of impinging on our freedom. Rather, we are grateful because we know diseases can destroy our lives. The Bible teaches us that Elohim (God) is concerned about sin - not to limit our freedom and enjoyment of life - but because sin is a disease of the soul that destroys our lives and leads to spiritual death...and sometimes to premature physical death too. And remember this: all sin hurts someone - first of all the one committing sin but invariably others living with or around the sinner who are impacted by his negative behaviour. It spreads to communities, nations and into the whole world. Sin destroys.

Salvation is Yahweh's offer to deliver us from sin and its harmful effects and to give us new life - eternal life. But:

• 1. First we have to embrace emet/truth - the reality of our situation and the reality of Elohim's (God's) design for us;

• 2. Second, we have to regret our sinning by repenting of it - forsaking it completely, doing a 180 degree turnabout. And the issue isn't just your well-being down here on earth, but your well-being in eternity too because what we choose down here in mortality determines our future in the hereafter and the kind of resurrection we inherit. Earth life isn't all there is; and

• 3. Third, we need to realise, like that rotten apple good only for throwing away, that we cannot fix our sin issue ourselves - it requires a supernatural action from Yahweh Himself. We need to be reconciled with our Creator and get into right relationship with Him. He has provided one - and only one - way to do that, and that is through the atoning work of His Son, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) on the cross:

  "For Elohim (God) did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (the Lord Jesus Christ). He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him" (1 Thess.5:9-10, NIV).

Salvation or being spiritually regenerated or newly born again - it means the past gets properly and permanently healed and your debt to Elohim (God), because of sin, gets freely cancelled; but once that is done "you should consider yourselves dead to sin and able to live for the glory of Elohim (God)..." (see Rom.6:1-11). Maintaining your salvation can only be done by living the way Yahweh intended you to live, so that you do not sin again, and that means living the Torah lifestyle by obeying the rules - the commandments (mitzvot) of the Creator given for your well-being and happiness. In short, it means becoming a voluntary citizen of Yahweh's Nation - Messianic Israel - and obeying its laws, just as we do in our earthly countries.

Yah'shua (Jesus) died for our sins - mine and yours - and is the only way to go, the only source of absolute truth, and the only means of obtaining eternal life (Jn.14:6). He loves with a perfect love and wishes to impart that to you too so that you can love Him and others as He does, and be fully loved as well. Frank Sinatra's 'I did it may way' has to die as your personal philosophy and be replaced by 'I did it Christ's way'. That's my invitation to you today.