What sits lurking to attack every baby born into this world?

sin

Sin can destroy us, rob us of our power, confuse us, cast us upon the mercy of Satan, and ultimately damn the unregenerate to an eternal hell. The greatest problem facing man, the one great blight on human life that curses us all, is sin. ... Because of sin there are tears and pain. Because of sin there are war and fighting, anxiety and discord, fear and worry, sickness and death, famines and earthquakes, and other manifestations of disharmony in nature.

Sin disturbs every relationship that exists in the human realm: that between man and God, man and nature, and man and man. You read Genesis 3 and you find that the curse came violating each of those relationships. First of all, man was separated from God when he became subject to spiritual death. Second, man was separated in a sense from nature, insofar as he had to toil by the sweat of his brow and fight against a cursed earth. Third, man was separated from man as the curse upon Adam and Eve brought conflict into their own marriage and between their sons. Sin waits lurking to attack every baby born into the world. David said, "...in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5b). Sin rules every heart as the monarch of man and the lord of the soul from whom nobody ever escapes. All who die--whether from heart disease, cancer, war, murder, accidents, or any other cause--die as victims of sin, regardless of age, for Roman 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death...." Every person on the globe has been infected with the virus of sin, and only one person ever entered this world and passed through it without the stain of sin...and that was Jesus Christ. Every other human being is captured under the fearful power of sin.

...Sin is a destructive thing. This is vividly illustrated in a story told many years ago about Leonardo da Vinci. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his great masterpiece known as The Last Supper, he sought long for a model for Jesus Christ. At last he located a chorister in one of the churches of Rome who was lovely in life and features, a young man named Pietro Bandinelli. Years passed, and the painting was still unfinished. All the disciples had been portrayed except one--Judas Iscariot. After all of those years, da Vinci began the search for a face that had been hardened and distorted by sin...and at last he found a beggar on the streets of Rome with a face so villainous he shuddered when he looked at him. He hired the man to sit for him as he painted the face of Judas on his canvas. When he was about to dismiss the man, he said, "I have not yet found out your name." "I am Pietro Bandinelli," he replied. "I also sat for you as your model of Christ." The sinful years had disfigured the face, and that's the way of sin.

...Sin attacks everyone at birth and before it's done it degrades, debases, and destroys in an eternal hell. Every broken marriage, every disrupted home, every shattered friendship, every argument, every disagreement, every pain, and every tear can be attributed to sin. Referred to in Joshua 7:13 as "the accursed thing," sin is compared to the venom of snakes and the stench of death. Anything that is sinister and powerful must be faced and dealt with...and sin is such. We cannot ignore it, gloss it over, or change the label--we must face the reality of sin, and that is exactly what Jesus is saying.

...[Sin] is to the soul what scars are to a lovely face, what stain is to a white silk cloth, or what smog is to an azure blue sky. It makes the soul red with guilt and black with sin--it defiles.

...people go to hell sweating...they really do. They work hard at being sinners. That's why the Bible says that when you come to Jesus Christ, there is rest: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Mt. 11:28). Rest from what? For one thing, from the work that sin is. What a wretched thing! The evil of sin is so wretched that millions of people are damned by its power, and so wretched that it took the very death of Christ Himself to remove it from the life of man.

...The Christian must realize as well as the non-Christian that sin is so deep in our nature it's like a sleeping lion and the least thing will awaken its rage. Our sin nature smolders like a flaming fire ready to be ignited and the slightest wind of temptation fans it into flame. Therefore, if you are an unbeliever, you need to run to Jesus Christ to have it covered, and if you're a Christian you need to be sure you don't do anything to induce it to wake from its sleep. So, though sin overpowers us it is a power that can be broken by Christ.

...Satan can make a man think he is free when he really isn't. But when somebody comes to trust in Jesus Christ, he finds true freedom. Jesus said in John 8:36, "If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Why did He say that? Because Satan sells a phony freedom.

...As a Christian, if there is the slightest taint of indifference toward sin and the victory Christ offers over it, then you have lost some of the sense of gratitude that you ought to have in your heart for what God has done for you.

..."How do you say no to sin?" By saying yes to God. Sin will fight against that which you know is righteous. But, depending upon whether it is sin or the Spirit of God who dominates your life, you will say yes to one or the other.

What does a man or woman do about sin? They come to Jesus Christ so that it can be forgiven. Then, as believers, when we face temptations and sin, we can stand on the confidence that it's already been forgiven. We don't need to get into some emotional guilt trip. And then we move to the strength provided for us in the power of the Spirit of God, the Word of God. We must become so saturated with the Word that it dominates our thinking so that when the temptation comes, we react in accordance to the righteousness of the Word, rather than to sin. (Think about how Christ handled the temptations in the Wilderness)--Man's Biggest Problem