SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll watch out for that mic.
SPEAKER_00: Well, for a number of weeks now, uh, we have been we've been listening to what God is saying in the early chapters of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: We've been trying sincerely to understand what that means.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been seeking to sincerely apply it practically in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reason why we do this.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this part of the service is for.
SPEAKER_00: To listen carefully, to gain understanding, and then to discern what to do with it, how to apply it to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the last couple of weeks, we looked at chapter two, an account of how God, actually, information about what God did on that sixth day of creation in chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: So evening and morning is sixth day.
SPEAKER_00: So certain things were said in chapter one, and then in chapter two, he expands on that, and there's a revelation of some further things about what God did as he created Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: So we learned that God had a home for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: And we called the first part of that chapter home in God's garden.
SPEAKER_00: This was God's garden, and he created it intentionally as a home for Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: We were meant to be home.
SPEAKER_00: We were created for a place.
SPEAKER_00: We were created to have a longing for home.
SPEAKER_00: At home in God's garden, not here.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is the results of what we're going to read in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: That's not that for which we were created.
SPEAKER_00: We were created to be home, real home.
SPEAKER_00: Then we saw last week that God created Adam and Eve to be home in God's garden, but not to be alone in God's garden.
SPEAKER_00: Home, but not alone.
SPEAKER_00: It was always God's intent that we be at home in the place that He has created for us.
SPEAKER_00: But it's always been God's intent that we not be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And that's talking about more than simply the marriage relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about something that goes to the core of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: We need others.
SPEAKER_00: It's not good to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is rooted in the very being of God.
SPEAKER_00: God is never alone.
SPEAKER_00: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a divine community.
SPEAKER_00: There's something in the Godhead that has to do with community, and he created us in his image, and it's not good for us to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: Home and not alone.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what we have in this chapter is incredibly important.
SPEAKER_00: And what we find as we move from chapter two into chapter three is that something shocking happens.
SPEAKER_00: Something absolutely unprecedented, unexpected, incomprehensible, unthinkable, scandalous, something that should never have been, something of cataclysmic significance for the whole universe as well as for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what has been called the fall of man.
SPEAKER_00: When sin enters into the world, it had not been there before in the experience of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: So we talk about a fall, a fall from the pinnacle of innocence and intimacy with one another and with God to the pit of guilt and alienation and estrangement.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're looking at verses 1 through 7.
SPEAKER_00: I had Deb read the previous verse, which is unfortunately separated by a chapter break, which hadn't ought to be there.
SPEAKER_00: So the last chapter or the last verse of chapter 1, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: And then something happens, and then we read verse 8 of chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: They heard the sound of the Lord walking the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a startling contrast.
SPEAKER_00: They were naked but not ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: They were safe with one another as they were intended to be.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing coming between.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't need to cover up and protect themselves from each other, and they didn't need to cover up and run away from God.
SPEAKER_00: They were in complete intimacy with each other and with their creator, and that was very good.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God has intended for us.
SPEAKER_00: But now we find that when they encounter God, they hide, and now they are a threat to one another as well, and so they cover up and protect themselves from one another.
SPEAKER_00: This is an astounding, shocking, unthinkable kind of a thing that has happened here.
SPEAKER_00: We're perhaps too used to hearing it that we don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Whoa, where did this come from?
SPEAKER_00: How did that possibly happen?
SPEAKER_00: And what we find, actually, is a simple, straightforward account of Adam and Eve going from the pinnacle of innocence and intimacy to the pit of guilt and estrangement.
SPEAKER_00: Now, chapter three of the book of Genesis is one of those passages that, well, let me take you back to a previous day before everybody had devices and screens.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we used to have old-fashioned Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: And old-fashioned Bibles would, if you used them long enough, and if there were portions of scripture that were special to you and you kept going back to them, then your Bible, after a few years, would kind of automatically open up to those precious, important passages.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way with electrons.
SPEAKER_00: Really a bummer as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3 ought to be one of those places that your Bible just kind of automatically opens to.
SPEAKER_00: Because it helps us understand what we see out there in the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: It helps us understand what we see in the mirror, the world inside of us, and it helps us understand the alienation and problems we end up having with one another.
SPEAKER_00: You can only underestimate the importance of this section of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We would not know this unless God had revealed it.
SPEAKER_00: We would be wondering, why is it like this?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I like this?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you like this?
SPEAKER_00: Yuck.
SPEAKER_00: Problems, confusion, conflict, alienation, needing to protect ourselves from one another, finding ourselves attacking one another, a hostile world, a hostile community, a hostile heart.
SPEAKER_00: And the explanation of that is in the Book of Beginnings, the book of Genesis, in this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And really, almost all of the rest of the Bible is an outworking of what we see and read here.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly the next chapter or two, and we'll be looking at some of that in the rest of chapter three and hopefully chapter four, and in a very real sense, the unfolding of all of the rest of Scripture, grows out of this fundamental, cataclysmic, atrocious, unthinkable thing that happened.
SPEAKER_00: Now, also in the rest of the book, something else is revealed.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that God meets us.
SPEAKER_00: He does meet us in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: And he walks with us and he talks with us.
SPEAKER_00: And he offers us a solution.
SPEAKER_00: A solution to the alienation, a solution to the problems within our own heart.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is progressively unfolded throughout the rest of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: God's resolution of this atrocious thing that happened here: redemption, forgiveness, restoration, renewal from within.
SPEAKER_00: A restored relationship with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And it goes further because there is coming a new home, a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: And heaven is our home, not this.
SPEAKER_00: And heaven will be on earth.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at this as we looked at the uh what really happens when you die a few months ago.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens opened and heaven came down to earth.
SPEAKER_00: There is a new heaven and a new earth.
SPEAKER_00: And many of the things we see in the original garden reappear in the new heavens and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: So much of what we understand is an unfolding both of the awful realities and consequences of the verses that we're looking at today, and the incredible gracious message of hope and assurance and confidence of what God is doing to restore us to our true home and to true community with one another and with Him.
SPEAKER_00: So this is often called Paradise Lost.
SPEAKER_00: Paradise Lost.
SPEAKER_00: That powerful phrase comes from the massive epic poem that John Milton wrote about 350 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I doubt anybody here has ever read the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult old-fashioned English.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it took Milton over 10,000 lines of difficult, unrhymed, iambic pentameter verse to recount what Moses tells us in ten simple, clear verses.
SPEAKER_00: Paradise lost, and in the gospel regained.
SPEAKER_00: The man listens to the woman.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody listens to God.
SPEAKER_00: That's at the core of sin.
SPEAKER_00: The woman listens to the man, the man listens to the woman, and nobody listens to God.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to try to unpack that thought with you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So what we want to try to do is to bring the text to light, to expose it, to bring it to light, and then apply it to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So it begins with verses one through five, which is a dialogue.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dialogue with the devil.
SPEAKER_00: A back and forth between Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Adam is there the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that the serpent says, he says in the second person plural, you, you both, y'all, you guys.
SPEAKER_00: This was not just directed to Eve, as though Eve was the only one there.
SPEAKER_00: She was the only one who spoke, unfortunately, and we'll talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00: But this was a dialogue between the enemy of our souls, the enemy of God, and the people who were intended to be at home and not alone in this perfect place.
SPEAKER_00: So what we have here, and I want to take a moment to emphasize this with reason, we believe this is actual true history.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just a myth.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just a fable.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just an allegory.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I totally get why you would see it that way.
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
SPEAKER_00: If we didn't have the rest of scripture, we probably would be inclined to say that's a wonderful tale that tells us some true things that is very morally enriching.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of the way we approach the Chronicles of Narnia and Aslan and Lucy and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: It's great stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us great truths.
SPEAKER_00: But it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is presented in the scriptures as factual history and truth.
SPEAKER_00: And how do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: When we go especially to the New Testament, there is regularly a direct link between Jesus, what he did on the cross, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and the consequences of that one act with what happened in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: In various ways, I don't have the time to go into it.
SPEAKER_00: If you're interested, make note of those two passages, Romans chapter 5, 12 to 21, profound truths, where just as in Adam all sinned, so also in Christ all are made alive.
SPEAKER_00: Through the sin of one, all of this other things happen.
SPEAKER_00: From the sin of the other, this came.
SPEAKER_00: And they're both presented on the same, the same nature, the same reality.
SPEAKER_00: They're both true.
SPEAKER_00: I could understand, I would actually respect you, I wouldn't agree with you, but I would respect you if you said, this is allegory, it didn't really happen, and this is allegory, and it didn't really happen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So if you just said that Jesus' story is a good story, moral man, wow, great.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve, interesting story, helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Take them both allegorically if you will, but to your peril, or take them both literally as historically true.
SPEAKER_00: You can't have, uh can't have it any other way than either it's true, it's true, it's allegory, it's allegory.
SPEAKER_00: So all I'm wanting to say is, just so that you know, um, I'm not usually unclear with what I'm trying to say, am I?
SPEAKER_00: So uh I believe this is absolute historical truth.
SPEAKER_00: There is a real Adam, a real Eve, a real body, real serpent, real garden, real tree, and a real sin.
SPEAKER_00: Just as there is a real Jesus in a real garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, on a cross who died in time and space.
SPEAKER_00: Both are true, literally true.
SPEAKER_00: This church believes the historicity of both.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, in Christendom, there is a constant tendency to begin to take this portion of Scripture figuratively or allegorically, and it logically leads to taking a whole lot of other things allegorically.
SPEAKER_00: I, and certainly this church, believes in the historicity.
SPEAKER_00: This really happened the way it's described.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of things we could say about it, but they go together.
SPEAKER_00: The work of Christ and the work of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the New Testament makes clear.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So what we encounter is a shrewd serpent who ends up being the mouthpiece of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, verse one.
SPEAKER_00: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God has made.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to the woman, we have here words, we have communication, we and the New Testament makes it really pretty clear that the serpent was the handiwork of the enemy, um, was the mouthpiece of that old liar, the devil, a murderer from the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: There's no truth in him, a liar and the father of lies, the devil, the deceiver of our whole world.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot more going on than just a snake.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't know how we should conceive this.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the snake was Satan possessed, just like people and animals can be demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But the point being, this is the enemy of our soul and the archenemy of God who is speaking now.
SPEAKER_00: The liar and a murderer, that ancient serpent, the devil.
SPEAKER_00: What's especially brought out in the details of the text, and I want to emphasize that, it's always the details of the text that are important to us.
SPEAKER_00: And we will see that's incredibly so in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: The details of the text.
SPEAKER_00: One of those details that's not so evident in our English translation is a play on words that we find with verse 25 of chapter 2 and verse 1 of chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: The man and his wife were both naked, and the serpent was more crafty than any of the animals.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't hear it because it doesn't have that same focus in our language, but there's a play on word between naked and crafty.
SPEAKER_00: In the original, it's almost exactly the same term.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds alike.
SPEAKER_00: It's when when one would say in Hebrew naked, and then one would say crafty, it there's a it would be as though we said Adam and Eve were nude and Satan was shrewd.
SPEAKER_00: Nude and shrewd.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: So there's it's it's it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: It is the insidious, sly, slimy, deceptive insinuation, questioning, is this really true?
SPEAKER_00: Did that really happen?
SPEAKER_00: That is woven throughout the incredibly sly, shrewd work of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And by introducing it with one was nude, the other was shrewd, we are prepared for what happens.
SPEAKER_00: But it's only found in the details of the text.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to keep coming back to the details of what the Bible actually says.
SPEAKER_00: Um we're prepared for this sly, pernicious insinuation, misrepresentation, half-truths that the tempter plants in the minds of Adam and Eve, and it's like a fisherman who baits his hook, dangles it in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: When that bait and that hook are taken, he then sets the hook and reels them in.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: It begins very attractive, very deceptive.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you don't see the hook in this, do you?
SPEAKER_00: You don't see the barb.
SPEAKER_00: You don't see this is going to be your destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And it gets more and more explicit.
SPEAKER_00: That's the strategy of the enemy that we will see here.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians warns us against the schemes of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: There is no better text in all of Scripture to analyze the tactics of the enemy than in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: So what he does is cunningly insinuate, he doesn't say it quite outright, that Adam and Eve should perhaps reflect on what God is doing here, as though maybe, you know, did God really say that?
SPEAKER_00: And even the grammar, the details of the grammar here, it's it's slippery.
SPEAKER_00: It's half a question and half a statement.
SPEAKER_00: Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: A question.
SPEAKER_00: And what you begin to see is that Adam and Eve started saying, uh huh.
SPEAKER_00: I never thought about that.
SPEAKER_00: You see, never before.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Never before has the text disappeared.
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, friends up there.
SPEAKER_00: Um but it's very sly and a half question, half reflection with a tone of incredulity.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: Did God really say this?
SPEAKER_00: Planting questions.
SPEAKER_00: It had never occurred to Adam and Eve to question God before.
SPEAKER_00: Why would they question God?
SPEAKER_00: And with that questioning, there's we begin to place ourselves in judgment over God, his character, and what he does.
SPEAKER_00: It puts us in a high position where we begin to question what God says and what God does.
SPEAKER_00: That is a result of the sly, slippery insinuation and misrepresentation of what God said that we read here.
SPEAKER_00: Did God actually say, You should not eat in any tree of the garden?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder why he said that.
SPEAKER_00: And Eve goes, yeah, that's really a good question.
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't thought about that.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder why.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what should have happened at this point, actually, is that as these seeds of doubt were being planted, he, Adam or Eve, instead of toying with these deceptive, seductive thoughts, should have probably run away and said, No, no, no, a thousand times, no, I don't want to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: One of my questions is, where was Adam in all of this?
SPEAKER_00: He's there.
SPEAKER_00: It clearly says Adam was with her.
SPEAKER_00: Verse five or six.
SPEAKER_00: Six.
SPEAKER_00: Um and Adam probably, he should have probably manned up.
SPEAKER_00: He probably should have said, but wait.
SPEAKER_00: And you see, that's exactly what God does when I seem to be out of sequence here.
SPEAKER_00: It's right, I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So what we find is in uh.
SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He said, It is written.
SPEAKER_00: He was tempted again.
SPEAKER_00: And what did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He said, It is written.
SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He was tempted again, and he said a third time, it's written.
SPEAKER_00: He went back to what God actually said.
SPEAKER_00: And you see what is portrayed here in the words of Satan is not what God said.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, what we read is the Lord God commanded them, saying, You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for the day in which you eat it, you shall surely die.
SPEAKER_00: What's going on here is that Adam and Eve are hearing a message that is not at all what God was actually saying.
SPEAKER_00: So did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what God said back in chapter 2?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You may eat of every tree in the garden save one.
SPEAKER_00: So focusing on the negative, ignoring the gracious provision of God, selectively choosing a thought here, a word there, and coming up with a conclusion and an intimation of who God is and what he's doing and why, that is absolutely not correct.
SPEAKER_00: So he slyly, with malice aforethought, with premeditated purpose, misquotes and sows seeds of doubt in the mind of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Now, unfortunately, instead of running away, protesting, Adam manning up, as Jesus did, there we go, as Jesus did in Matthew chapter 4, she now, in turn, begins to misstate and misrepresent what God actually said.
SPEAKER_00: Satan began it, and now she's misstating and misrepresenting what God did say.
SPEAKER_00: So in verses 2 and 3, the woman said to the certain, We made of may eat of every fruit of the trees in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And what he actually said as you may eat of all of them except one, but she says, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You may eat of all of the trees in the fruit of the garden, under or minimizes what the generosity, the gracious provision of God, and then says, But God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: Where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00: That was not what God said in chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: So she goes along and she minimizes God's provision.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just in the day that you eat it, you will die, which is what she said, but what he said is in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die.
SPEAKER_00: So she's playing around with the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: We always get in trouble, friends, when we play around with the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: So then in her turn, she actually adds to what God actually said.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the progression here?
SPEAKER_00: How insidious this is.
SPEAKER_00: The question had never arisen in their mind to question God, and suddenly they're standing and they're making judgment over God, and now they're, along with the enemy, misquoting what God said, and now she's adding to what God said and making it something quite different from what God's actual commands are.
SPEAKER_00: The intimation of all of this is that God is withholding something, something good.
SPEAKER_00: You're not allowed to have that, not even supposed to touch it.
SPEAKER_00: And so the woman listens to the serpent, man listens to the woman, and nobody's listening to what God actually said.
SPEAKER_00: And what God actually says is found in the details of the words.
SPEAKER_00: Not just the general message, the very words of God which were spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Part of what's happening here is that first Satan and now Eve begins to play fast and free with God's words by ignoring certain things, not emphasizing other things that are there, and then stating things that are not there at all.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we easily get led.
SPEAKER_00: So the serpent then, um, the serpent does something that is bold, it is shocking, there is a frontal contradiction, an outright denial of the truth of what God said.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: She said, You shall not eat of the fruit.
SPEAKER_00: God said you shall not eat.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the middle of the garden, neither should you touch it lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: Added, touch it.
SPEAKER_00: That was not part of what God said.
SPEAKER_00: But then what does Satan do?
SPEAKER_00: He says, No! No! You shall not surely die.
SPEAKER_00: Now he didn't begin with a direct contradiction with what God said.
SPEAKER_00: Began by sowing seeds of doubt, then taking liberties with what God did say, and then finally the baited hook has been taken, and now he sets that hook and reels them in.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, 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: There is in this passage a blatant denial of God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear what he's saying?
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually withholding some good thing from you.
SPEAKER_00: Shocking, except it's all part of our thinking if we're not careful.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this blatant denial of God's goodness and care.
SPEAKER_00: There's a blatant denial in this of so many verses and texts and passages of scripture that tell us of the goodness of God, of the faithfulness of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not only on the throne this day, he is good, and he is trustworthy, and he does well, and he is good.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a denial of Psalm 119, verse 68.
SPEAKER_00: Good he is and good he does.
SPEAKER_00: That's what David said in the midst of his despair and at his deepest moments.
SPEAKER_00: He declared, Good you are, and good you do.
SPEAKER_00: And so Satan, in effect, is saying, selfish he is and abusive he does.
SPEAKER_00: He's withholding something from you.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that if you just took of that fruit, then you would have something he's withholding from you, and it would be good for you.
SPEAKER_00: The prohibition is turned into something that has an evil intent to it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when our minds begin to move in these directions.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 50, verse 20, Joseph said to his brothers who had done him such evil, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
SPEAKER_00: Satan, in this sense, would turn that around and say, God meant it for evil.
SPEAKER_00: He's withholding something good from you.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you this for your good.
SPEAKER_00: Just the reverse of the way things are.
SPEAKER_00: Or Jeremiah 29, 11, I know the plans God has for you, plans for good and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.
SPEAKER_00: The tempter here would say, I know the plans God has for you, plans for bad and not for good to keep you from your future and your hope.
SPEAKER_00: Just follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Just an utter black is white and white is black.
SPEAKER_00: Blatant denial of God's goodness and care.
SPEAKER_00: This is an enticement to autonomy.
SPEAKER_00: Do what you want to do, say what you want to say, go where you want to go, do what you want to do with whoever you want to do it with.
SPEAKER_00: Mamas and Papas, 1967, I think it was.
SPEAKER_00: The call to autonomy, it's very deeply ingrained in me.
SPEAKER_00: Do what you want to do, go where you want to go, be what you want to do, do whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Don't restrict yourself to these horrible strictures, these horrible prohibitions.
SPEAKER_00: They're only keeping you from that which is good, whereas God gives prohibitions for our good.
SPEAKER_00: We talked last week or the week before, I don't remember, about uh going down the Autobahn 160k an hour in Germany, going across a bridge with a chasm about a thousand feet there, and you could go a hundred miles an hour across that bridge with confidence and security because you had a good car, but also because there was a guardrail.
SPEAKER_00: You knew exactly how far you could go.
SPEAKER_00: Remove those guardrails, which are for our good, and then if if I were there going across that bridge without the guardrail, I would hug the center line and go about two miles an hour and creep my way across.
SPEAKER_00: With those guardrails, you have protection.
SPEAKER_00: The limitations are for our good and not for evil.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we begin to think that what God is doing in our lives, does He love us?
SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't He do good for us?
SPEAKER_00: And we fail to recognize even the things that we don't like and the things that hurt may well be precisely what we need and that are truly good.
SPEAKER_00: So it's just this is a horrible, horrible story.
SPEAKER_00: And what he's doing is as cruel and as enslaving as offering this nice stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We call it crack cocaine, but we're not going to mention it to you as a 10-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: Utterly, utterly enslaving and damaging and abusive.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Satan is doing in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Let's uh quickly spend just a make a couple of comments about the descent into the pit in verses six and seven.
SPEAKER_00: Um what I want to say, well, let me first just read that.
SPEAKER_00: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight for her eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what God said, that's what the enemy said.
SPEAKER_00: So when she was so enlightened, she took of the fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
SPEAKER_00: Then both of their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, they sewed figs leaves together and made themselves loinclaws, and then in the very next verse they run from God and hide.
SPEAKER_00: That's the result of being so wise.
SPEAKER_00: A couple of thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: Uh two very brief observations.
SPEAKER_00: Uh first of all, I've said it before, but this is very clear in the second part of verse six.
SPEAKER_00: She took, she ate, she gave to her husband, and he ate, and none of them paid any attention to what God said.
SPEAKER_00: After all, the words of God had been watered down, the words of God had been taken not literally and seriously, and the purposes of God had been called into question, the goodness of God had been called into question.
SPEAKER_00: Um Eve followed the serpent, Adam followed Eve, and nobody here followed God.
SPEAKER_00: A lot more I could say.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six.
SPEAKER_00: First part of verse six.
SPEAKER_00: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to their eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took eight and gave it to her husband.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's going on here is she has come to the conclusion that something other than what God has given her was what she really needed and really desired.
SPEAKER_00: That's what sin does within us.
SPEAKER_00: It causes us to think that what God has given us is not enough, that who God is is not enough, that God is not as good as he ought to be for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: And God hasn't provided what I think I need.
SPEAKER_00: That goes to the core of sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sense of I know better than God, I know what I want when I want it, and I want what I want when I want it.
SPEAKER_00: And I ought to have it.
SPEAKER_00: And so I do it.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, at its core, um it is an understanding that there's something other than God's gracious provision that is really better than what I have now.
SPEAKER_00: Um what do you do with that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I uh a practical thing comes to my mind in this.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I have a uh a picture in my mind of myself someday in the future.
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting older.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you would say, buddy, you're really old already.
SPEAKER_00: Getting older, and things aren't working the way they should, and so I project this into the future.
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm not careful, here's what I do.
SPEAKER_00: I project myself in room 306 in some healthcare facility, incontinent, unable to get out of bed, can't see, can't remember what happened this morning, and that man in 306 is a grouchy, crockety, crotchety, angry old fill-in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: And no one on that floor, none of the caregivers, want to go into room 306.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if I keep holding on to what I don't have and what I can't do that I think I ought to have and I think I ought to be able to do, then that's what I turn into.
SPEAKER_00: What I want, what I want is for God to so work in my life, if it comes to that, that I could be, it's almost embarrassing to say it, sweet.
SPEAKER_00: Have a sweet spirit, it could be pleasant, it could be someone that the caregivers actually enjoy being around.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm willing to see that I want this and I don't want something else I've got, but God, you are good.
SPEAKER_00: Good you are, and good you do, and I leave it at that.
SPEAKER_00: I embrace where you have me and what you have for me now.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm not doing that now, if you're not doing that now, why will you do it differently in room 306?
SPEAKER_00: You see, we don't really believe that God knows what's best for us.
SPEAKER_00: We really believe we need to help God out.
SPEAKER_00: And when God doesn't uh accept our help of giving us what we think we need, then we get ticked off at him because we think he doesn't love us.
SPEAKER_00: This is as much in my heart as I know it's in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Don't, don't, don't look at me as though you have no idea what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: I know better.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's there for me as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's at the core of sin to come to a conclusion that I want something or need something that God and his goodness has not chosen to provide for me.
SPEAKER_00: Can I or can I not accept that God does things I don't like for my good and for his glory?
SPEAKER_00: Can I or can I not accept that?
SPEAKER_00: And if we can't accept that here, peer into room 306 of your own.
SPEAKER_00: Two things by way of application.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't my application, really.
SPEAKER_00: Two simple thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: One, we must be careful to pay minute attention to the actual words of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: The actual words.
SPEAKER_00: The meaning of what God said is found in the words, the grammar, and the context of what he has said.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we spend our time in the Bible, not just superficially, but what is God actually saying?
SPEAKER_00: And the more we can mind the truths of that and understand it correctly, the better off we are.
SPEAKER_00: We must have a firm commitment to the details of God's words.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm making that plural because the word of God consists of the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if we start playing fast and free and we don't pay attention to this and we add that, we go the way of Satan invariably.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of sin.
SPEAKER_00: So that's one reason why I am a firm believer in Bible exposition.
SPEAKER_00: I don't do it as well as I would like to.
SPEAKER_00: But in saying, what is God really saying here?
SPEAKER_00: And if he's saying some hard things, then it's my commitment to say those and try to figure out what I'm to do with them.
SPEAKER_00: Bible exposition, paying close attention to the text, staying close to the text is not popular in evangelicalism today.
SPEAKER_00: We've probably had, I don't know, 70 or more uh applicants for the role, and it is so hard to find somebody who believes in simply staying close to the text and bringing what God said for.
SPEAKER_00: It's just so hard.
SPEAKER_00: It's not popular.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make for exciting growing churches normally.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you're a Chuck Swindoller.
SPEAKER_00: There's only a few of those around, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: God has chosen to reveal Himself verbally.
SPEAKER_00: We live in an image-driven society, and God has chosen words, not pictures.
SPEAKER_00: Word pictures, oh, rich indeed, and we ought to learn to get those out of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're not careful, we're so we want to have clever exciting illustrations and diagrams, clever quips, and in entertaining stories and slick videos and flashy graphics.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a place for all of that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to make this boring and uninteresting.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're not careful, this gets pulled aside, and we're so enticed by something other than the words of God.
SPEAKER_00: There ought to be a huge warning for us from Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, we must personally, at all costs, hold firm to the deep and absolute conviction of the goodness of God and the rightness of his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: We must personally, you and I must personally, at all costs, hold firm to the deep and absolute conviction of the goodness of God and the rightness of his ways.
SPEAKER_00: That's what was undermined with Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: I want to close with an illustration of this.
SPEAKER_00: I have a good friend who is an incredibly gifted pastor.
SPEAKER_00: You've never heard of his name.
SPEAKER_00: His flock is scattered all over the world, and they work in other countries and they work in difficult places in the world.
SPEAKER_00: He ministers to vocational missionaries and he shepherds them around the world.
SPEAKER_00: And most of the people he works with are in very difficult places in difficult circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: And my friend Scott has had many difficulties in his own life, no surprise.
SPEAKER_00: Let me recount something he wrote to me.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Do you remember the peanuts cartoon as a kid?
SPEAKER_00: The old television versions had a scene that played out rather often.
SPEAKER_00: Lucy would take a football.
SPEAKER_00: She would encourage Charlie Brown to attempt to kick the ball while she held it for him.
SPEAKER_00: So Charlie would buy into this, he would back up, make his run for the quick kick, and just as he got to the ball, Lucy would yank it out of the way, and he would land on his back and he would stare up at the sky.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say here, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to a speaker, and she made a comment in passing that immediately created an emotional reaction in my soul.
SPEAKER_00: God is not Lucy with the football.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes on to write, that's it, that's how I'm seeing God right now.
SPEAKER_00: And this is this incredibly gifted pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And he's reflecting on his own life and in this case, long-term pain and chronic illness.
SPEAKER_00: He said, That's how I'm seeing God right now.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I was rather shocked.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's not true.
SPEAKER_00: I know God does not do a bait and switch on us.
SPEAKER_00: I know he doesn't set us up to let us down, but I was feeling duped.
SPEAKER_00: My emotions portrayed, did not portray reality, but they revealed the reality of my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Very important thought.
SPEAKER_00: Our emotions do not necessarily portray reality, but they reveal the reality of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: The problem was not his emotions, the problem was the reality of his heart.
SPEAKER_00: As I have struggled into the beginning of my fourth year of chronic fatigue syndrome, and this was written seven years ago, and he still has it, and I hear from him regularly.
SPEAKER_00: But at this point, I have wrestled deeply with God over it.
SPEAKER_00: I know he can heal me.
SPEAKER_00: I know he can resolve this.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously he hasn't.
SPEAKER_00: It does not appear that he will.
SPEAKER_00: I have felt varying degrees of crummy for the past 1,000 days in a row.
SPEAKER_00: No exaggeration.
SPEAKER_00: Chronic fatigue stinks.
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday I sat with a man and I spoke candidly about my deep desolation over my chronic illness.
SPEAKER_00: And the first comment he made after I had spoken for several minutes was I have never seen profound spiritual growth apart from suffering.
SPEAKER_00: I have never seen profound spiritual growth apart from suffering.
SPEAKER_00: He went on and he talks and he said, I know what I'm facing in my life, and I know that I'm in the middle of God's will for my life.
SPEAKER_00: God has not taken this illness from me nor been mean to me.
SPEAKER_00: God is not Lucy with a football.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, if we're not careful, we get shaken or beginning to absolutely deny the goodness and the purposes of God.
SPEAKER_00: Others may mean it for evil.
SPEAKER_00: God means it for good.
SPEAKER_00: Good you are, good you do.
SPEAKER_00: What Job's wife told him was a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Curse God and die.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, How can I not take the bad with the good that comes from the hands of God?
SPEAKER_00: Everything that a loving, righteous, holy, sovereign God who is on the throne allows in your life has a good purpose.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel good.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality of our emotions.
SPEAKER_00: And they reveal a heart that is not willing to submit to a God who knows what he's doing, and we make him into a Lucy with a football.
SPEAKER_00: My deep heart's desire is that through all of the Milton wrote 10,000 lines, I've probably spoken 10,000 words this morning, that through all of this we would come back to a deep conviction of the goodness of a sovereign God who knows what he's doing in your life, and what he's doing is good.
SPEAKER_00: Good he is, my friends, and good he does.
SPEAKER_00: Today is whatever the date is, Sunday, the 5th of February, 2017, and God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: March.
SPEAKER_00: I'll leave that.
SPEAKER_00: He is still on the throne, he is still good, he knows what he's doing, and you can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: You can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: And at the core of sin is a refusal to accept what God has said and an undermining of the goodness and the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you stand, please?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, let me just uh give the benediction.
SPEAKER_00: My friends.
SPEAKER_00: Go into the world in peace.
SPEAKER_00: Have courage.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to that which is good.
SPEAKER_00: And honor all men.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen the faint-hearted, and that may be you.
SPEAKER_00: Comfort the grieving, and that may be yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Restore the wandering, and that may be you.
SPEAKER_00: And share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Love and serve the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
SPEAKER_00: And amen.
SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.