SPEAKER_00: To keep Genesis three open, that's where we're going to spend uh the next uh little while in uh thinking about a talking serpent, talking serpent.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're thinking, talking serpent, did that really happen?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Christianity is a bit of a supernatural religion.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in a guy that came back from the dead, so which is easier?
SPEAKER_00: Um is it easier to come back from the dead or for God to make a serpent talk?
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna take this uh that it is true, in fact.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but let's pray as we come to this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Father, pray that you would soften our hearts to receive uh your truth, that by your spirit we might be changed by it.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see our need of you and your provision of a rescuer that would restore all things.
SPEAKER_00: We ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: How's your family uh at dealing with conflict?
SPEAKER_00: How does your family do apologies?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: Do people try and justify themselves?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this happened to me, and if this hadn't happened, then that wouldn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you hadn't done that, then I wouldn't have.
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps people just refuse to apologize at all.
SPEAKER_00: Or you get the politician's apology.
SPEAKER_00: They, well, I'm sorry if you were offended, which is basically saying, I'm so sorry that you are such a thin-skinned creature that you couldn't take what I'm doling out.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry if.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry if I hurt you.
SPEAKER_00: People try to blame shift.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing that happens in my family, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is you just say nothing and you hope that it all goes away.
SPEAKER_00: There's just a kind, there's an there's an uneasy, thick sort of silence for a few encounters and then everybody moves on.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how you deal with conflict.
SPEAKER_00: How are you at admitting?
SPEAKER_00: So you've just kind of thrown your family mentally under the bus there, but how are you at admitting when you've done or said something wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Do you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes?
SPEAKER_00: Do you refuse to acknowledge the situation that you find yourself in?
SPEAKER_00: Do you deny any sort of hurt?
SPEAKER_00: Are you unwilling to accept responsibility?
SPEAKER_00: Uh Steve Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Like this guy was simultaneously a genius and a jerk all at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: If you've well read Walter Isaacson's autobiography, Well Done You, because it's about that thick.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I must confess that I I audibled it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so many a happy meal was cooked along to that.
SPEAKER_00: Not a happy meal, you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the things that keeps on coming up in uh Jobs' uh biography is this idea that he had what his people around him began to call Jobs' reality distortion field, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh where he would set unrealistic deadlines and goals.
SPEAKER_00: And then if they weren't met, he would blame shift, he would uh he would throw other people under the bus.
SPEAKER_00: And they called that jobs' reality distortion field, that he lived in an in his own little bubble that was separate to everyone else.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter three is the creation of the very first reality distortion field where things are no longer working the way that they should, and there are there's lies mixed into the situation.
SPEAKER_00: Because in this passage, no one sees reality the way it's supposed to be except God.
SPEAKER_00: No one is prepared to face up to the situation except God later on.
SPEAKER_00: There's a reality distortion field at work from the moment that the serpent shows up.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're going to do is we're going to work through this passage looking at uh at each of the characters.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the serpent, we're going to look at the woman, look at the man, and then finally we'll look at God and to see how each of those first three distorts reality to suit their own ends, essentially, and then how God creates reality and tells us what is true.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: Look firstly at the serpent.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to just look down at 225 and to note, first of all, the uh the quick transition, you know, two is idyllic, it's the first marriage, it's the first wedding ceremony, Adam's singing over his wife, and then we're reading, and the man and the woman were both naked together and they were not ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good day.
SPEAKER_00: But then 3-1 straight away.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the serpent, the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
SPEAKER_00: It's a quick change in tone.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of foreboding in the narrative, even before he speaks.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we know about the serpent?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we know that he's crafty.
SPEAKER_00: Some translations say coming.
SPEAKER_00: He's manipulative, deceitful, wormy.
SPEAKER_00: You see people talk about worming their way in.
SPEAKER_00: Can you have that kind of idiom in English?
SPEAKER_00: It's that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: So the serpent is going to worm his way into and between the relationship between God and the man and the woman.
SPEAKER_00: To say nothing of the fact that serpents in the ancient mind were always a symbol of chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Always a symbol that the things weren't quite right.
SPEAKER_00: Chaos has entered into the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And he speaks.
SPEAKER_00: Second half of verse 1, and he said to the woman, did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree that is in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: Two things there.
SPEAKER_00: How does he address God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's simply, Did God actually say?
SPEAKER_00: But if you look until now, it's even in the first part of uh of verse one, God is described as the Lord God all the way through chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just scanning down.
SPEAKER_00: Let's uh let's see.
SPEAKER_00: Uh verse eight, the Lord God planted a garden.
SPEAKER_00: Verse nine, and out of the ground the Lord God uh uh put the man that he had formed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, verse 22, and the rib that the Lord God had taken.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God is the personal, relational title of God.
SPEAKER_00: He is Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh, Lord God Elohim.
SPEAKER_00: What's the serpent doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's depersonalizing him, he's degrading God, he's taking this personal caring relationship aspect away and saying, God, this generic spirit being, not the Lord God who provided for you generously, just God.
SPEAKER_00: Did God actually say?
SPEAKER_00: The question is designed to cast God as a tyrant.
SPEAKER_00: Did he did he really?
SPEAKER_00: Did he really do that?
SPEAKER_00: Did he really say that to you?
SPEAKER_00: That's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: Is God that much of a dictator?
SPEAKER_00: That he doesn't let you eat.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not eat of any tree that is in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: The serpent begins to reinterpret and distort reality.
SPEAKER_00: The sociologist Stephen Karpman has developed what he uh has called the uh the drama dynamics triangle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show it to you now, if I could get the next slide.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: Tech tech is working over time.
SPEAKER_00: Stephen Carbman has developed this triangle in terms of working out uh different relationships and how people operate in different contexts.
SPEAKER_00: And he says that there are three main relationship roles that people occupy.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that you can probably identify with them.
SPEAKER_00: There's the there's the perpetrator up there on the top left, uh, there is the victim down the bottom, and there is the rescuer.
SPEAKER_00: Most people tend to adopt the role of victim.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know those people?
SPEAKER_00: Those people who like to cast themselves in that sort of light.
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, it's really nice to see yourself as a victim.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're the victim, you never have to apologize and you never have to change.
SPEAKER_00: What's not to like about that?
SPEAKER_00: You never have to apologize and you never have to change.
SPEAKER_00: If you can't be the victim, the other one that people want to be is the rescuer.
SPEAKER_00: We know those people as well.
SPEAKER_00: Those people are uh are the fixers.
SPEAKER_00: They want to come in and I'll help you.
SPEAKER_00: Some women even marry men like that.
SPEAKER_00: I can fix him.
SPEAKER_00: Some uneasy laughter going on in the room there.
SPEAKER_00: What's a pastor?
SPEAKER_00: A pastor's just a fixer with a Bible verse.
SPEAKER_00: That's all I am.
SPEAKER_00: That's my bent.
SPEAKER_00: I like to be a fixer.
SPEAKER_00: What nobody wants to be, what nobody wants to admit to, is to be the perpetrator.
SPEAKER_00: The one who has hurt, the one who has caused difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Sound familiar?
SPEAKER_00: Can you think of relationship dynamics in your own life and in your own family where you see people running to those roles?
SPEAKER_00: Victim, rescuer, perpetrator.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is helpful because the serpent begins to interpret reality along these sorts of lines.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the perpetrator here?
SPEAKER_00: Did God really say?
SPEAKER_00: It's God, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: He's the tyrant, he's the dictator, he's the one who doesn't want good for you, Eve.
SPEAKER_00: And so who's the victim?
SPEAKER_00: The woman.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity.
SPEAKER_00: God's withholding something from you.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want good for you.
SPEAKER_00: You're a victim here, Eve.
SPEAKER_00: And tragically, horribly, who's the rescuer?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's Satan, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's the serpent coming along saying, let me tell you how it really is.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what's really going on.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll fix it for you.
SPEAKER_00: He reinterprets reality.
SPEAKER_00: And that's so appealing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: For someone to come along and to put their arm around you and to stroke your head and to say, poor you.
SPEAKER_00: You're the victim.
SPEAKER_00: Let me help you.
SPEAKER_00: God has given you a rule like this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me liberate you.
SPEAKER_00: And how often don't we operate like this in our relationship with God?
SPEAKER_00: Especially when we perceive that God has denied us the things that we long for, the things that we want.
SPEAKER_00: Particularly perhaps in the in the area of love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of implicitly say in our minds, God didn't, God hasn't, God won't, so I'll fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you find it so easy to justify your actions if you think that God is a tyrant?
SPEAKER_00: If you think that God is bad, or at the very least, disinterested in you, withholding from you something good.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reality distortion field of the serpent at play.
SPEAKER_00: The woman then responds.
SPEAKER_00: She responds in verse two and three.
SPEAKER_00: The woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit that is in the tree of the uh in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: What should have been Eve's response?
SPEAKER_00: Eve's response should have been to quote back to the serpent what God had actually said in 217.
SPEAKER_00: But she embellishes it, she adds in the phrase, we're not even allowed, we're not even allowed to touch it.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe it?
SPEAKER_00: God never said that.
SPEAKER_00: How does she identify God?
SPEAKER_00: Start of verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: But God said she's beginning to depersonalize God too.
SPEAKER_00: She's beginning to depersonalize his good rule as well.
SPEAKER_00: She picks up on the serpent's language and begins to use it herself.
SPEAKER_00: And the third thing that she does, so she embellishes what God has said, she depersonalizes the God who said it, and she weakens the injunction.
SPEAKER_00: God said in 2.17, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
SPEAKER_00: But she says, the end of verse 3, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: You might die.
SPEAKER_00: Death has become, has gone from being a certain consequence to being a possibility.
SPEAKER_00: And what this does is this makes the creator, this makes the Lord God, a nothing more than another expert.
SPEAKER_00: Another expert suggesting possible outcomes rather than a creator declaring a command.
SPEAKER_00: It is so easy to ignore God if we just see him as another glorified expert in the pantheon of our lives, feeding in his opinion and his advice in a take it or leave it sort of way.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the way that God operates.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reality distortion field of the woman.
SPEAKER_00: God is not merely an expert offering his advice, he is a good Lord ruling over his creation.
SPEAKER_00: Satan wants Eve to believe that God is restricting her, that her being a creature is constraining, and that she should aspire to more.
SPEAKER_00: And so when she says, we can't even touch it, she is demonstrating that she is aware of that restriction.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Eve's already on the hook.
SPEAKER_00: Eve's already on the hook.
SPEAKER_00: So Satan begins to reel her in.
SPEAKER_00: Verses four and five.
SPEAKER_00: The serpent said to the woman, So we move now from distortion of what God said to outright denial of it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, but the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.
SPEAKER_00: For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: He goes from questioning God to outright deceit.
SPEAKER_00: God's a liar.
SPEAKER_00: Because somebody has to be lying, right?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has to be lying, somebody has to be telling the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And Satan's reality distortion field is always that God's the liar.
SPEAKER_00: And the woman then acts again in verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
SPEAKER_00: And she also gave some to her husband who was with her.
SPEAKER_00: And he ate.
SPEAKER_00: And the eyes of both were opened.
SPEAKER_00: They knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
SPEAKER_00: And so what the woman is doing is she said, hmm, I'll weigh up these options.
SPEAKER_00: It seems that I've got two to choose from.
SPEAKER_00: And I will objectively come and adjudicate, weigh them, and then decide which one to follow.
SPEAKER_00: This is itself a lie.
SPEAKER_00: There is no objectivity.
SPEAKER_00: Objectivity is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we were created by God in his image.
SPEAKER_00: We owe him our allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: We owe him our trust.
SPEAKER_00: And so this feigning of neutrality, well, I see that it looks good, and I know that God said this, but I'm weighing this one up over and against it.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lie.
SPEAKER_00: There is no neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: What should Aviv have done?
SPEAKER_00: She should have said, I am a created being in the image of the Lord God.
SPEAKER_00: He is good.
SPEAKER_00: He has organized things for my flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: And what you are doing is you are trying to deceive me, serpent.
SPEAKER_00: But no.
SPEAKER_00: She feigns objectivity.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are two stories in our world, two sermons, two narratives.
SPEAKER_00: The first is God and his truth.
SPEAKER_00: The second is the lie.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is the lie.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is telling the first alternative story.
SPEAKER_00: Life without God, flourishing without him.
SPEAKER_00: And she wants it.
SPEAKER_00: Because it says that she sees that it's desirable for making one wise.
SPEAKER_00: She wants to be like God, she wants that transformation.
SPEAKER_00: At the level of her being.
SPEAKER_00: She no longer wants to be a creature.
SPEAKER_00: She is aspiring to be like the Creator.
SPEAKER_00: She also wants transformation at the level of her knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: She wants to be able to determine for herself what is good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: Taken together, these two desires are treasonous.
SPEAKER_00: They are treasonous.
SPEAKER_00: It's what D.A.
SPEAKER_00: Carson calls the de-godding of God.
SPEAKER_00: Of wishing that his throne was vacant so that we ourselves could sit upon it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the essence of what the Bible calls sin.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is sin is not just a little bit of adult naughtiness.
SPEAKER_00: No, sin is the settled determination that I will be God.
SPEAKER_00: That I will decide for myself how to rule my life.
SPEAKER_00: I will decide for myself what is true and false.
SPEAKER_00: I will create my own identity.
SPEAKER_00: I will live my own way.
SPEAKER_00: Like the poem Invictus.
SPEAKER_00: It matters not how straight the gate.
SPEAKER_00: It's the lie.
SPEAKER_00: And so they eat.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Satan distorts reality successfully.
SPEAKER_00: And where was Adam?
SPEAKER_00: What do we read in verse 7?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, end of verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: And she also gives some to her husband who was with her, and he it.
SPEAKER_00: The Puritans used to have a phrase that said, While Adam was away, Eve went astray.
SPEAKER_00: But he's right there with her.
SPEAKER_00: Doing nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Saying nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Adam was the first guy in all of history ever to say, Happy wife, happy life.
SPEAKER_00: It's the lie.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is what we do, gentlemen.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than taking responsibility, our preference is to abdicate.
SPEAKER_00: Our preference is not to deal with things head on.
SPEAKER_00: There's a snake in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And it's speaking lies.
SPEAKER_00: It's challenging God's authority, and the man is there going, I I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Netflix.
SPEAKER_00: I've just ruined that.
SPEAKER_00: This carpet slip.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, can somebody come and plug that back in?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Ben's on it, Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I broke it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna continue.
SPEAKER_00: And the buzzing will end momentarily.
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the man does.
SPEAKER_00: Eve's sin is one of initiative.
SPEAKER_00: She's she's kind of looking at her husband, going, Are you gonna say something?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna are you gonna lead?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna take response like the snakes talking?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna and so she goes, Well, somebody has to do something, somebody has to step up, somebody has to answer these questions, and so I will.
SPEAKER_00: And Adam does nothing.
SPEAKER_00: The result?
SPEAKER_00: What's the result?
SPEAKER_00: They know their nakedness, and so shame creeps in.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they sew fig leaves together and make themselves loincloths.
SPEAKER_00: Think back to 225 where we started.
SPEAKER_00: The man and the woman were both naked together, and they were not ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: It was a good and glorious thing, and now it is filled with shame.
SPEAKER_00: Sin always promises greater degrees of freedom.
SPEAKER_00: But what it delivers is shame and alienation.
SPEAKER_00: Because what's the next thing that they do?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I am the Lord God in my household, and I know that my children have sinned.
SPEAKER_00: And what do they do?
SPEAKER_00: They hear me walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they run and hide.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it tragic that we don't need to teach our children to hide?
SPEAKER_00: That they do it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: It has always been thus.
SPEAKER_00: They hide not just from God, they hide from each other.
SPEAKER_00: Their attempt to cover their shame with fig leaves is the first attempt at self-rescue.
SPEAKER_00: I'll save myself, I'll fix this, I'll I'll lift myself up by my bootstraps.
SPEAKER_00: I can solve this situation, I can I can make it better.
SPEAKER_00: You ever say that?
SPEAKER_00: Or the uh Kings of Leon song, Cold Desert, the very last song on that perfect album, Only by the Night.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Jesus don't love me.
SPEAKER_00: No one ever carried my load.
SPEAKER_00: Or Fun, the band Fun, say, I'll die for my own sins.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_00: But what is it?
SPEAKER_00: It's pitiful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.
SPEAKER_00: It's pitifully inadequate.
SPEAKER_00: The man and the woman were made to have dominion over creation.
SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to be in charge of the snakes.
SPEAKER_00: But who's in charge now?
SPEAKER_00: The serpent.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what sin does.
SPEAKER_00: Sin decreates us, it lessens our humanity, it distorts reality, it puts creation over us, it lessens us in terms of our image-buriedness.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of becoming like God, we become separated from God and from one another.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the saddest irony of this aspiration to be like God?
SPEAKER_00: What's so tragic about it?
SPEAKER_00: They were already like God.
SPEAKER_00: 127.
SPEAKER_00: 128.
SPEAKER_00: So God made man in his own image.
SPEAKER_00: In the image of God, he created them.
SPEAKER_00: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_00: They were already like God.
SPEAKER_00: But here's where the story begins to turn.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, the Lord God pursues them.
SPEAKER_00: See, even the narrative begins to place God back in his rightful place.
SPEAKER_00: The narrative doesn't call him God.
SPEAKER_00: The narrative calls him again the Lord God.
SPEAKER_00: He's reestablishing his position.
SPEAKER_00: And what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: He comes.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 9, the Lord God called to the man and says, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: He pursues us.
SPEAKER_00: He asks them questions, not because he doesn't know the answer, but in order to elicit repentance, in order that they might apologize.
SPEAKER_00: Back to our introduction.
SPEAKER_00: He's seeking to draw them back.
SPEAKER_00: But how does Adam respond, verse 10?
SPEAKER_00: I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where both the man and the woman begin to do their own reality distortion.
SPEAKER_00: Back to Stephen Carpenter's triangle.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at Adam's reality distortion field.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the perpetrator?
SPEAKER_00: According to the man, verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: The man said, The woman you gave me, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate it.
SPEAKER_00: So who's the perpetrator?
SPEAKER_00: The woman.
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, the woman you gave me, God.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the victim?
SPEAKER_00: Oh like I was just I was just standing right there.
SPEAKER_00: And she gave me this fruit, and like I was hungry, and so I ate it.
SPEAKER_00: And who's the rescuer?
SPEAKER_00: It kind of goes unanswered.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of his self-rescue from the fig leaves.
SPEAKER_00: What's Eve's reality distortion field?
SPEAKER_00: It's there in verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord God turns to the woman and says, Why have you done this?
SPEAKER_00: Or what is this that you have done?
SPEAKER_00: And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ain't.
SPEAKER_00: So who's the perpetrator?
SPEAKER_00: The serpent.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't me, God.
SPEAKER_00: If you hadn't made the snakes, if we'd been in Ireland, little uh St.
SPEAKER_00: Patrick's joke there.
SPEAKER_00: The serpent is the perpetrator.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the victim?
SPEAKER_00: Well, me.
SPEAKER_00: Like I just kind of fell into this apple.
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't an apple.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the rescuer?
SPEAKER_00: It goes unanswered.
SPEAKER_00: In casting themselves like this, they are both casting themselves in the role of the victim, and neither is claiming responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: And so God has to respond.
SPEAKER_00: God has to respond and begin to re-establish what is true and what is right.
SPEAKER_00: And so how does God respond?
SPEAKER_00: He responds in two ways.
SPEAKER_00: He responds both in judgment and in mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment and mercy for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: They're not wiped out immediately, they're not killed instantly, though life will now be much harder.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed things like childbirth will be painful and sometimes tragic.
SPEAKER_00: And death will be the end.
SPEAKER_00: Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
SPEAKER_00: That's why at every graveside that you have ever stood at.
SPEAKER_00: What is it they say?
SPEAKER_00: Ashes to ashes.
SPEAKER_00: Dust to dust.
SPEAKER_00: Sin always leads to death.
SPEAKER_00: It might not lead to it immediately, but it always leads to death.
SPEAKER_00: And yet there is mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The man and the woman had sewn fig leaves together to try and clothe their nakedness.
SPEAKER_00: But what does God do?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, animal skins, and clothed them.
SPEAKER_00: You see, while sin always leads to death, it is only God who can fully cover our shame.
SPEAKER_00: He addresses the serpent.
SPEAKER_00: He addresses the serpent, and in doing so, there is simultaneously judgment and a promise for us.
SPEAKER_00: He pronounces humiliation over the serpent because you have done this, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed are you above all livestock and above the beasts of the field.
SPEAKER_00: On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
SPEAKER_00: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_00: There is both humiliation for the serpent and the promise of his final destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one who finally tells reality the way it is.
SPEAKER_00: Who are the perpetrators?
SPEAKER_00: It's the serpent and it's humanity.
SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who are culpable for this treasonous rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the offended party?
SPEAKER_00: Who truly is the victim here?
SPEAKER_00: It's God.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is always an offense ultimately to God.
SPEAKER_00: You just read Psalm 51 to know that.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, her husband killed.
SPEAKER_00: And what does he say in Psalm 51, verse 4?
SPEAKER_00: Addressing God, he says, Against you, God, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of think, well, I remember reading the story, and you know, sexual abuse that seems to have sinned against Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: And he got Uriah bumped off.
SPEAKER_00: He corrupted the military in order to do it.
SPEAKER_00: You can scarcely think of somebody that David didn't sin against.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he is profoundly right.
SPEAKER_00: Sin ultimately is an offense against God, and something that only God can deal with.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why he promises the rescuer.
SPEAKER_00: That is the hint in Genesis 3.15.
SPEAKER_00: This promise of a man, your offspring who will crush the head of the serpent, though he himself will be struck.
SPEAKER_00: And essentially the rest of the Bible, brothers and sisters, the rest of the Bible is a searching for the man.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the man who will crush the head of the serpent?
SPEAKER_00: And so four, chapter four, verse one opens.
SPEAKER_00: With Eve saying, I have brought forth, in our English translation, it says, I brought forth a man with the help of the Lord, but she thinks she's got the man.
SPEAKER_00: I got him, I've given birth to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna get this is gonna end here.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna crush the head of the serpent.
SPEAKER_00: I've brought forth the man.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the man?
SPEAKER_00: Cain.
SPEAKER_00: You're laughing because it's like not a great start.
SPEAKER_00: Because he kills his brother.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible is constantly searching for the man.
SPEAKER_00: Is Abraham the man?
SPEAKER_00: Now he's cowardly.
SPEAKER_00: Sends his wife out like a prostitute.
SPEAKER_00: Is Moses the man?
SPEAKER_00: No, he's a murderer.
SPEAKER_00: Is David the man?
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, as we just saw, no, he's not.
SPEAKER_00: He's an adulterer, a murderer.
SPEAKER_00: Where is the man who will slay the dragon?
SPEAKER_00: Where is the man who will crush the head of that ancient serpent?
SPEAKER_00: And that question hangs over humanity for thousands and thousands and thousands of years until on a hillside some 2,000 years ago, the angel announces, I bring you good news of great joy, born today in the city of David, is the man.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is our better Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who bears creation's curse upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: What is Adam told in Genesis 3:15?
SPEAKER_00: Look down at verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: And to Adam he said, This is God speaking, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
SPEAKER_00: Cursed is the ground because of you.
SPEAKER_00: In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth from you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus bears the curse of creation as the soldiers twist together a crown of what?
SPEAKER_00: A crown of thorns.
SPEAKER_00: You see, they were torturing the man.
SPEAKER_00: But the sovereign Lord God was bearing on his brow the curse of creation in order to liberate it.
SPEAKER_00: He is creation's liberator because he took upon himself creation's curse.
SPEAKER_00: He bears for us the curse of death.
SPEAKER_00: Sin always leads to death, and Jesus had none of his own.
SPEAKER_00: He died for ours.
SPEAKER_00: He died for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: My dying breath, his dying breath has brought me life.
SPEAKER_00: I know that it is finished.
SPEAKER_00: He is the better Adam.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who stood in another garden.
SPEAKER_00: And where Adam said, Not your will, but mine be done.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Not my will.
SPEAKER_00: But yours.
SPEAKER_00: He is creation's liberator.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who speaks truth into the lies that we believe.
SPEAKER_00: There really is only two choices.
SPEAKER_00: The truth or the lie.
SPEAKER_00: The lie leads to separation, shame, and alienation.
SPEAKER_00: The truth restores us, restores our humanity and brings us back to the God who made us.
SPEAKER_00: The lie brings death and decay.
SPEAKER_00: The truth causes life and flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: The lie incites rebellion and treason.
SPEAKER_00: The truth stirs trust and love in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: The lie denies the creator.
SPEAKER_00: The truth re-enthrones him.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Lord God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the truth is that we aren't always the victim.
SPEAKER_00: That is not to diminish.
SPEAKER_00: That is not in any way to diminish.
SPEAKER_00: The ways in which you have been sinned against and the things that you now deal with in this broken world.
SPEAKER_00: But it would be a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: It would be a mistake to think that any that we're anything that we have gone through has led us to a place where we no longer need to apologize.
SPEAKER_00: To change.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is we aren't always the victim.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that human beings aren't part of the solution.
SPEAKER_00: We're part of the problem.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that God has seen our alienation and has come in search of us.
SPEAKER_00: He has come and is saying, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Stop hiding.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that just as animals were slain to clothe the man and the woman, Jesus is our better sacrifice, who clothes us with his perfect goodness, who covers our shame, and brings us back into relationship with one another and back into relationship with the God who loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Will you follow the truth?
SPEAKER_00: Or will you persist in believing lies?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, give us The clarity of sight, that we might see our need of you.
SPEAKER_00: Father, give us the courage from your spirit to acknowledge that we are not perfect, that we are also part of the problem, in need of your rescue.
SPEAKER_00: And remind us, Lord, of the great love of the Lord Jesus who bore our curse upon himself, who took our sin in his own body on the tree.
SPEAKER_00: We ask these things in Jesus' name.