SPEAKER_00: This scripture reading this morning is found in Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Encourage you to turn there.
SPEAKER_00: If you're using a Pew Bible, you will find the scripture passage on page 2 and 3.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to read, instead of what's in there in the bulletin, I'm going to read the first 15 verses of Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: I do want to make one note, the video there, if you many of you may recognize the name Charles Haddon Spurgeon, but if you uh aren't familiar with him, I want to encourage you to become familiar with him.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Baptist pastor in the 19th century in London, England, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: A prolific writer as well as a preacher, considered the Prince of Preachers, and his works are still in print today.
SPEAKER_00: One of his devotionals, morning and evening, if you're not familiar with him, that may be a good place to start.
SPEAKER_00: But I always appreciate pointing out significant historic figures like Spurgeon and seeing his name up there.
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to recommend him to you and encourage him to you.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3, and I also want to mention if you don't own a Bible, that Bible that uh that's in the pew, uh please take it home with you after the service.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we want you to have a copy of God's word and consider it uh an early Christmas present that you could have a copy of the scripture for yourself from us.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3, beginning in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made.
SPEAKER_00: He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, 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: 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, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
SPEAKER_00: Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loinclaws.
SPEAKER_00: And 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: But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Who told you that you were naked?
SPEAKER_00: Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
SPEAKER_00: The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done?
SPEAKER_00: The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, 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, and between your offspring and her offspring.
SPEAKER_00: He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_00: We're entering a time of year that is referred to as Advent.
SPEAKER_00: It is the four Sundays leading up to Christmas that the church recognizes as Advent.
SPEAKER_00: The word Advent really means coming or arrival.
SPEAKER_00: And so truly what it is is us contemplating and considering the reality that God Himself visited this earth, that God visited this planet.
SPEAKER_00: December 25th is the date that the church is historically settled on to be the day in which we celebrate the birth of our Savior.
SPEAKER_00: The date is not so important as the significance in which it represents.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to look at another passage just momentarily, and this is the basis of the next four weeks in Matthew chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: As the angel is appearing to Joseph to tell him what is about to occur, we're told in Matthew chapter 1 that Mary, who is engaged to be with Joseph, to be married to Joseph, was found to be with child through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph was a righteous man, and he wanted to put her away quietly because of this seeming indiscretion.
SPEAKER_00: And an angel appears to him to inform him of what actually is occurring.
SPEAKER_00: And beginning in verse 20 of Matthew chapter 1, it says this.
SPEAKER_00: She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if, because of familiarity, the shocking reality of what this passage says doesn't reverberate in our hearts and minds as much as it should.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the next four weeks, I want us to explore this reality and to and to think about uh the shocking nature of this and the implications it has for us in salvation, and and we'll take the next four weeks to consider that.
SPEAKER_00: But uh this morning I want us just to explore the question as we begin.
SPEAKER_00: Why did God have to send his son?
SPEAKER_00: Why did Jesus have to leave the glories of heaven, to come to this earth, to be born in humility, to be born through the agency of Mary, to take upon himself human nature to live this life that you and I experienced to die on the cross, to rise again?
SPEAKER_00: Why did God undertake this for us?
SPEAKER_00: Why did God have to come to die for our sins?
SPEAKER_00: And what is the significance of Christ dying for sin?
SPEAKER_00: Is sin that bad?
SPEAKER_00: What is the reality of sin that caused God in eternity past, in the uh wisdom of the of the Trinity, to decide in his creation that this was going to be his plan?
SPEAKER_00: What is the nature of sin that causes uh this to unfold?
SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted us to begin looking at Genesis and moving forward and thinking about this reality of God with us.
SPEAKER_00: And as I was uh as we were in this discussion, uh, this friend of mine said, he reminded me, and just the the obvious nature of it, that God was with us, and then God, in one sense, is absent from us, and then in the pages of the New Testament, with the advent of Jesus, once again, God is with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want us to begin by looking at creation of God with us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the Sunday school classes has been going through the book of Genesis, uh, and uh there's so much here that uh that can be commented on, and and uh I just want to highlight a few of these realities of creation.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a lot of questions that people have, and sometimes we can miss the forest from the trees and evaluating all of the different nuances of it.
SPEAKER_00: But what really strikes me as I read through Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3 was the reality of the created order that God was, the intention of creation was for God to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: That that is the intention of God to dwell among his people.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the incarnation, God dwells among his people.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the second advent of Christ, of Christ returning, but ultimately looking at the eternal state, and the ultimate goal is for God to dwell among his people forever.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we find in the created order, that God is dwelling among his people.
SPEAKER_00: And what did we have in creation?
SPEAKER_00: Think of the created order before the fall, before sin entered.
SPEAKER_00: What were some of the characteristics of that existence?
SPEAKER_00: Perfection.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible over and over again, as you read through Genesis chapter 1, says, and God saw it and it was good.
SPEAKER_00: And God saw it and it was good.
SPEAKER_00: That at the end of the six days of creation, God says that it is very good.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives his commentary on the creation that God created this world in perfection.
SPEAKER_00: There was no fall, no sin, no sickness, no sadness, no death, no pain, no suffering prior to the fall.
SPEAKER_00: People lived in harmony.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve lived in harmony after he created them.
SPEAKER_00: The created order was in harmony.
SPEAKER_00: The natural order, the animal order was in harmony prior to the fall.
SPEAKER_00: God created Adam and Eve, and there was a relationship between the two of them, and a relationship between them and God of absolute trust.
SPEAKER_00: There was no questioning of motives or intentions.
SPEAKER_00: There was a sense of tranquility and trust that existed between the creator and the creation, between God and Adam and Eve, and that gave them a sense of security.
SPEAKER_00: There was a sense of security that they had in that, in the perfection of that relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: That they were secure in who they were created in God's image.
SPEAKER_00: They were secure in the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: They were secure in the love that they had for one another.
SPEAKER_00: There was no questioning, there was no doubt, there was no worry.
SPEAKER_00: There was rest.
SPEAKER_00: There was transparency.
SPEAKER_00: They were unashamed, it says, at the time before the fall.
SPEAKER_00: There was shame that entered in with the fall, but they were transparent with one another, and there was an open transparency between them and God.
SPEAKER_00: They did not hide themselves at all any aspect of who they were from God.
SPEAKER_00: There was the perfection of fellowship in the creation.
SPEAKER_00: There was a level of fellowship and harmony that was unbroken and unhindered by anything between one another and between them and God.
SPEAKER_00: There was a fellowship of unbroken joy and bliss.
SPEAKER_00: Everything was God-centered.
SPEAKER_00: Everything was focused on God.
SPEAKER_00: There was no idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: There was no rivalry between God and anything else in the created order.
SPEAKER_00: God was central to all the created order.
SPEAKER_00: It was a God-centered existence that they experienced in creation in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: They had true knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: The lie that they would gain knowledge in a different sense that Satan told them, but they had knowledge already.
SPEAKER_00: They were not unaware of God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they had a clearer understanding of God prior to the fall than they ever would after the fall because of the influence of sin in their hearts and minds, affecting every area of their life.
SPEAKER_00: They had true knowledge and they had inherent dignity.
SPEAKER_00: Because they were created by God, there was a sense of dignity as a part of the created order, but there was an extrinsic dignity that God placed upon them because God's image was upon them.
SPEAKER_00: God placed it upon them, and so they had dignity of being created by God and having the image of God impressed upon them.
SPEAKER_00: They had responsible dependency.
SPEAKER_00: God had given them responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: They were to work.
SPEAKER_00: Work was a part of the created order.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a part of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: They were given the responsibility to tend to the garden, to care for it, to oversee the rest of the created order, to have dominion over it, in dependence upon God, drawing upon his strength and the relationship that they had with him.
SPEAKER_00: There was productive work, as I mentioned, independence upon God.
SPEAKER_00: There was hope.
SPEAKER_00: There was the hope of the reality of looking forward to and anticipating the future that they had with God.
SPEAKER_00: They had known nothing else but hope up until that time.
SPEAKER_00: And there was an inclination to holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it wasn't impervious because they did fall, but there was an inclination to holiness.
SPEAKER_00: That was the direction of their lives to be holy, even as God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: But beyond all of that, the most amazing reality that our first parents experienced was the direct presence of God in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know the exact time frame between the close of creation and the fall of Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure Lowell will tell you that in his Sunday school class if you're in there.
SPEAKER_00: And all the other questions you have, I'm sure he'll answer them as well.
SPEAKER_00: But during this time, whatever time frame it was, they experienced absolute bliss, a felicity, a tranquility, an enjoyment of God that was complete and unhindered.
SPEAKER_00: They walked with God.
SPEAKER_00: God walked and dwelled in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: His fellowship with God up until this point was so close that it's described in this language in Genesis chapter 3 of God walking and dwelling among his people, dwelling there in the midst of the garden with Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: And then we see the tragedy of the fall.
SPEAKER_00: And the separation that occurred in the fall.
SPEAKER_00: It was God with us.
SPEAKER_00: And in a very real sense, and we're going to explore this in even greater detail than we can just this morning, of the absence of God, of God separated from us because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: But in the fall, God separated from us.
SPEAKER_00: The radical nature of the fall, and we we read over this passage and we we saw the sin that uh that Adam committed knowingly and willfully.
SPEAKER_00: He was not deceived like Eve was, and he bore the responsibility as our representative in his choice.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we question what is the nature of sin?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I want to share with you a quote.
SPEAKER_00: It's also in the study guide on the back page of the blue study guide that's in your bulletin.
SPEAKER_00: A quote that I read a number of years ago from a book by R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Sproull called The Holiness of God.
SPEAKER_00: And in this book, he paints the picture of what sin really is.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to read that to you, and you have it there, and so you can look on.
SPEAKER_00: It's a longer quote.
SPEAKER_00: But notice the first sentence and what he says, and I want us to sense the weight of what sin is in the fall.
SPEAKER_00: This is what R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Spro writes in his book, The Holiness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is cosmic treason.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is treason against a perfectly pure sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: It is an act of supreme ingratitude towards one to whom we owe everything, to the one whom, to the one who has given us life itself.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever considered the deep implications of the slightest sin of the most minute piccadillo?
SPEAKER_00: What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey him at the slightest point?
SPEAKER_00: We are saying no to the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are saying, God, your law is not good.
SPEAKER_00: My judgment is better than yours.
SPEAKER_00: Your authority does not apply to me.
SPEAKER_00: I am above and beyond your jurisdiction.
SPEAKER_00: I have the right to do what I want to do, not what you commanded me to do.
SPEAKER_00: The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority.
SPEAKER_00: It is a revolutionary act, a rebellious act where we are setting ourselves in opposition to the one to whom we owe everything.
SPEAKER_00: It is an insult to his holiness.
SPEAKER_00: We become false witnesses to God.
SPEAKER_00: When we sin as the image bearers of God, we are saying to the whole creation, to all of nature under our dominion, to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, this is how God is.
SPEAKER_00: This is how your creator behaves.
SPEAKER_00: Look in the mirror, look at us, and you will see the character of the Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: We say to the world, God is covetous, God is ruthless, God is bitter, God is a murderer, a thief, a slanderer, an adulterer.
SPEAKER_00: God is all of these things that we are doing.
SPEAKER_00: We don't recognize the full weight and implications of what sin is.
SPEAKER_00: And his term cosmic treason, when we think of treason, and I think of uh some of the cases over the last 20 years, uh, but even beyond that, from Benedict Arnold forward, of people who betrayed their country and the high crime that it was rebelling against and going against the authority that they are to submit to and to be under.
SPEAKER_00: And sin is cosmic treason to God.
SPEAKER_00: Any sin and every sin is an act of rebellion and independence to the authority of God and an affront, as R.C.
SPEAKER_00: Sproul says, to his holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Sin affected every area of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: There is not a part of our lives that escaped the impact of sin due to the fall.
SPEAKER_00: When our first parents fell into sin, it affected every area of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: As our first parents, Adam, as our first parent, Afron, Adam represented us, and the consequences fell upon him.
SPEAKER_00: That fell upon him fell upon us also.
SPEAKER_00: Adam was our federal head, representing the entire human race, and plunged us all into the consequences of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, we are born under sin, we are born with a sin nature, and we have a bent towards rebellion and independence towards God.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the dire consequences of sin in the fall, of what we described earlier in the created order.
SPEAKER_00: In place of perfection, we have sin, degeneration, and death.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of harmony, we have chaos.
SPEAKER_00: We have disharmony, we have discord, we have disagreement.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of trust, we now have mistrust and insecurity.
SPEAKER_00: We have lies and politics.
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's redundant.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of transparency, we have hiddenness.
SPEAKER_00: We hide ourselves from one another, and we hide ourselves like Adam and Eve did in the garden from God.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of fellowship, we have separation, we have this distance, emotional distance, relational distance, spiritual distance, separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: In place of God-centeredness, we have self-centeredness.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of true knowledge, we have distortion and lies.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of dignity, we have shame.
SPEAKER_00: Shame of who we are, shame of our sin, shame of our past, shame of what it says about us.
SPEAKER_00: In place of responsible dependence, we have irresponsible independence.
SPEAKER_00: In place of productive labor, we have toilsome work that doesn't produce what we would hope for and long for.
SPEAKER_00: In the place of hope, Hope, we have no hope.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in Ephesians chapter 2, in a slightly different context, but the application is to us when Paul is talking about the difference, the separation between the Jews as God's people and the Gentiles in the Old Testament, he says this remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And for every person who does not know Jesus Christ, that is their state today.
SPEAKER_00: They have no hope, and they are without God in this world.
SPEAKER_00: What is true of the Gentiles in comparison to the Jews in the Old Testament is truly the situation of everyone who does not have a relationship with God through Christ by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And in the place of our inclination to holiness, we have a bent towards independence and rebellion to God.
SPEAKER_00: And surely some sins are more heinous than others, and yet we recognize that no matter how seemingly small and insignificant any sin is, any and every sin is, as Sprohl said, cosmic treason against a sovereign God, and it's in a direct affront to his righteousness, his holiness.
SPEAKER_00: It's a shaking our fist at God and telling him that we will do it our way and not his.
SPEAKER_00: He talked about the Deus Absconditus, which is God absent.
SPEAKER_00: And because of our sin, God is hidden from us, and we're unable to be in God's presence to experience his glory.
SPEAKER_00: God must hide himself from us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there is a sense in which God is omnipresent.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches that God is everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: But there are times in which God manifests his presence, he makes his presence known in a particular way, in an unusual way, but even then, when he does it with sinful humanity, it is still in a veiled sense.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just give one example of this, and uh we'll cover others in a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Remember Isaiah chapter 6?
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah chapter 6, it says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple, and he saw these angels, these seraphim crying out to one another, crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: And he and the temple, the heavenly temple shakes in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah immediately is gripped with the reality that he's in the presence of God, and he says, Woe is me, for I am undone, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that nobody can dwell in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: That God has hidden himself from us, and we'll look in future weeks even at Moses when Moses asks to see the glory of God, and God says he cannot see the glory of God because you cannot see God's glory and live.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this cataclysmic nature of God visiting his people that is over and over again in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's shocking when we come to the pages of the New Testament that we see that Jesus is Emmanuel, God, with us again.
SPEAKER_00: It's a startling statement.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus Christ, in a very unexpected way, is God Himself visiting earth.
SPEAKER_00: And I want us to talk in future weeks about how can God be in the presence of sin and what are what does this tell us about who Jesus is and his nature and character, being fully God and fully man.
SPEAKER_00: But this morning I want us just to capture a glimpse of this reality of the phrase Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: God with us.
SPEAKER_00: God was with us in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: When we sinned, when our first parents sinned, there's a separation that occurred.
SPEAKER_00: And in a very real sense, God has been absent in the way he was during the garden.
SPEAKER_00: But in the coming of Jesus Christ, everything is going to be made right.
SPEAKER_00: And that we will have, and in the same and even in greater measure, the reality of God being with us than in the created order.
SPEAKER_00: And the breaking in of human history of the second person of the Trinity, as Jesus takes upon himself human, uh human nature while never giving up his deity.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the next four weeks, as we examine Emmanuel, God with us, we're gripped with what we've lost.
SPEAKER_00: But we have hope for what Jesus provides.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray as the musicians come and we close our service together in song.
SPEAKER_00: Father, this morning, even as we just uh scratch the surface of this reality of the cataclysmic fall into sin and all of the implications of that, Lord, that you in your mercy hid yourself from us and removed us from your presence, and yet the very plan of salvation from before the foundation of the world is that we will be with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: And you did that through Emmanuel, through Jesus Christ, God with us.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.