Man’s Destructive Choices

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Transcript:

We’re going to be looking at passages in Genesis chapter 3 and Romans chapter 5 this morning. Genesis chapter 3 and Romans chapter 5. Last week I began a series of messages about God’s timeless story.

How God has from the beginning of time, and really even before time began, He’s had a plan in mind about how He was going to redeem humanity. How He was going to buy us back from our sins. how he was going to purchase us for himself, how he was going to draw to himself a people who would love him, who would choose to love him, who would choose to serve him of their own free will.

And this story of God also not only tells us what his plan was, but also tells us how he’s moved and how he’s worked throughout human history to bring this to pass, to carry this out. Last Sunday morning, I led you through parts of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. And in that we saw not only how God created the entire universe simply by speaking it into existence.

As I told you last week, He didn’t go to Lowe’s and get the parts to put together a universe. He spoke. And the universe left into existence.

But we also saw that He created man at the very end of that process. Right before He rested, we were the last thing He created. He didn’t create us as the very last thing because we were an afterthought.

Folks, He created us at the very end of that six-day creation process because we were the pinnacle of His creation, because we were the crowning achievement of everything that He created. So I want you to think of that next time you feel worthless or somebody tells you that you don’t matter as a person or matter in the world. I want you to think about the fact that you were just like Adam.

You were created in the image of a holy and loving God. That you’re the crowning work of all his creation. And you’re the thing that he’s most proud of.

I shared with you last week how God created us for a purpose. Our purpose in this life, despite what we sometimes tell ourselves, is not just to enjoy ourselves or see what we can accumulate or even to see what we can accomplish and achieve. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things if they’re kept in the right perspective and they’re done in the right priority.

But we shouldn’t sell ourselves short chasing these short-sighted goals that don’t last in eternity. God created us for something bigger. God created us for a purpose in His plan.

Three things that we talked about last week. We were created for something much bigger than the little concerns that eat up most of our lives. what we were really created for, according to the Bible, was that we were created so that God could love us just like He loved Adam and just like He loved Eve, and so that we in turn could love God.

Don’t get those two backwards. Don’t get them twisted. He loved us first. We love Him because He first loved us.

We were created so He could love us and so we could love Him. He loved them and He walked with them in a perfect relationship in the garden. of Egypt.

And that was His intent. That was His design for all of mankind. Second of all, we were created to serve God.

Remember, He didn’t need us. He didn’t need us to serve Him or do anything for Him. But He chose to design a part for us in His plan.

Think about that. God didn’t need you but He chose to design a part for you to play in His master plan for the world. He chose to call us out and He chose to equip us for a work that only He could make possible.

The things that God calls us to do are not things that we on our own or in our own power. And so we’re here to serve God in things big and small, just like Adam did. He began to play his role in God’s plan when he made care of the garden and the animals.

And third of all, ultimately we were created to glorify God. We were created to bring Him honor. We were created so we could show His handiwork so we could show how amazing and how mighty his work is to a world that needs to see that.

The world should be able to look at us if we do our job, if we do the thing we were created for. The world should be able to look at us and see how incredible God is to see that he is God and that there is no one like him. It’s just like how sometimes I can sit for, I enjoy art, and I can sit for hours and stare at Van Gogh’s painting of a starry night, or I can stare at his sunflower our painting.

And I stare at these and I think this man had to have been one of the greatest artistic geniuses of all time. People should be looking at our lives and saying the same thing about not necessarily artistic genius, but they should look at our lives and see the way we reflect glory back to him. See the work that he’s done in us and through us and glorify him, give him honor and praise, give him the credit that he deserves.

So we see that it was God’s design, we saw last week that it was God’s design, we should live in a perfect paradise and walk with him in an intimate relationship. He wanted us to be close to him. Yet we look around us today and that’s not at all what we see.

Where’s that perfect paradise? Where’s the peaceful, unheard relationship? It’s not here.

Instead, what we see around us is what Paul described in Romans chapter 1 when he said, men glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, their foolish heart was darkened. There’s a heart problem where we are distant from God. We reject Him.

We reject what we know about Him. It’s a heart problem that shows up in our behavior, in man’s behavior. A man’s heart is not bad because of his behavior.

His behavior is bad because of his heart. And Paul hit the nail on the head when he wrote to Titus and described mankind’s behavior as foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and in hateful and other. I think that pretty much sums up the way we act, the way mankind as a whole acts.

Since we know that God’s design was for us to live in this perfect paradise with Him, in a perfect relationship with Him, in a perfect fellowship with Him, something clearly went very, very wrong. Something clearly went very, very wrong because that’s not what happened. That’s not how the story played out.

Something big shattered the beautiful existence that God created for us and replaced it. Took that perfect Garden of Eden and shattered it and replaced it with a world where terrorists, ISIS is shooting people all over the place. There’s rioting in the streets of our cities.

People who hurt nobody are victimized by monsters who are. Children are slaughtered before they have the opportunity to draw their first breath. Substances rob people against us.

Families are unnecessarily ripped apart. Disease and famine and war, they threaten millions and millions of lives. And too many people live in fear every day behind locked doors and windows.

You’ve got to know that. This world we live in, this was not God’s design. Now, he was not caught off guard.

He was not surprised. But this was not God’s best for us. This was not God’s plan A.

This wrecking ball that came in, came careening in and destroyed everything was called sin. Now sin is one of those words that if you’ve grown up in church you kind of understand what it means. But if you didn’t grow up speaking Christianese as a second language it doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Sin just basically is a biblical word for disobedience. Anytime God commands us to do something and we don’t do it, it’s sin. Anytime God commands us don’t do that and we do it anyway, it’s sin.

So whether it’s commission or omission, it’s sin. The Bible calls it sin. It’s disobedience.

It’s no laughing matter. It’s serious to God. And it’s serious to God because he realizes how destructive it is that it will hurt us.

Sin destroys everything. Hear me on this. Everything.

If you’ll turn with me to Genesis chapter 3, if you haven’t already done so, the Bible goes on to explain the next part of God’s redemptive story and how sin and man’s choice to commit sin has destroyed the lives that God created us, designed us for. Starting in verse 1, it says, Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

What we have here is not Satan asking a question because he doesn’t know the answer. He knows what God said. That old snake knew perfectly well what God had told Adam and Eve.

He’s not asking Eve about what God said to satisfy his curiosity. He is asking Eve, did God say that, to undermine God’s authority. Not to satisfy his curiosity, but to undermine God’s authority.

God, folks, is the creator and the ruler of the universe. He is well within his rights to set up the rules we live under. He has absolute authority to set up the rules we live under.

There’s no appeal process and there’s no majority vote. He says it. And that’s the rule.

That’s the way it is. And sometimes we don’t like that. Sometimes we’re like teenagers still living under our parents’ roof, and we say, I don’t like that rule, but it’s tough.

As long as we live in his universe, we’ll live by his rules. That’s sort of how it works. And so we need to understand this question as not Satan saying, oh, did God really say that?

He’s making a statement to Eve and saying, oh, God didn’t really like that. Verse 2, and the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God had said, ye shall not eat of it. Here it is, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

Okay, here Eve seems powerless to answer Satan’s accusation, to answer Satan’s claim. Jesus, when he was tempted by Satan years later, responded with the word of God. Eve couldn’t do that because it doesn’t seem like she even knows what God’s word is on the subject.

If you go back to Genesis 2. 17 that we looked at last week, God told them they could not eat the fruit that was on the tree. A very simple rule.

Just don’t eat the fruit of that one particular tree. And Eve here is apparently clueless. Unless I’m misunderstanding something, she’s clueless about what God actually said because she told the serpent, she told the devil, well, we can’t eat it or even touch it or we’ll die.

So this lack of clarity that she has about God’s word, this lack of clarity that we sometimes have about God’s word, gives Satan just the opening that he needs. We are susceptible to his tricks. When Satan begins to twist God’s word, we are susceptible to his tricks and falling for his tricks.

When we are not prepared, when we are not clear about what it is and prepared to stand on the authority of God. So she’s just standing on her own opinion and interpretation. Satan twisted God’s word into something he really didn’t say.

Exactly the same thing that happens to us on a daily basis is what happened to her. Verse 4. It says, And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. So here we have Satan, again, twisting God’s word and very skillfully mixing truth with lies. It was true that their eyes would be opened.

He said that and it was true. Their eyes would be opened in the sense that for the first time they would understand what sin was and what judgment was. But as far as them not dying, Satan was wrong.

And he knew he was wrong. He was lying to them. God’s word was clear on the fact.

God told them, if you eat the fruit of the tree, you will die. I don’t know about you, but if somebody says you eat this, you will die. I’m going to stay away from that.

And that wasn’t good enough advice for them. Even if I think there’s a chance they’re wrong, I’m not going to stay away from it. We saw previously Satan undermines the authority of God’s word, but he moves on from undermining the authority of God’s word and begins to attack God’s character.

He accused God of evil motives by telling Eve, God didn’t tell you this wrong. Good, you’re not going to die. Just put that rule there to keep you dead.

He wants to make sure you don’t know all the things he knows so you don’t become like him in his possess. To attack in God’s character. And so being unprepared to stand on the authority of God’s word, she fell for it.

And so did her husband. So did her husband. Verse 6 says, And when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And there’s a tendency at this point to want to blame Eve for all of this. I talked about that earlier.

And throughout the centuries, there have been some in Jewish-Christian circles who’ve said, See right there, women. Women are to blame. Women are at fault for all the ills of society.

No. Sin is to blame. Not women.

Sin. Eve is certainly not innocent here. She was disobedient to God.

but she’s not solely to blame either. Adam, her husband, had the job of leading his family. I know that’s not politically correct to say but he had the job of leading his family.

He had the job of leading his family to hear God’s word and to obey it and he fell down on the job. Men, he fell down on the job and he let his wife down every bit as much as he let God down. He joined her in her disobedience and you know what it says a lot to me that their eyes were open to sin after Adam ate the fruit.

It was when Adam ate the fruit that their eyes were open. Verse 8 says and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife this is just funny to me sad and funny all at the same and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden and the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him where art thou? Now be sure you understand here God is not asking this again because he doesn’t know the answer.

Just like when the snake asked, did God say that? This is just one of many examples in this passage of a question being asked where the questioner already knows the answer. Adam is trying to hide himself because he knows he’s disobeyed.

He knows he’s guilty and he feels guilty. He’s sort of like my dog. When we leave the house and he gets into the trash can and he tears up all the trash and digs through it and then he scatters trash all over the house and then we come home and he hides because he thinks, maybe that, who else would have done that?

It’s just you. He won’t see me and he won’t know I’m guilty. They were trying to do the same thing with God.

He doesn’t see us. If we hide, he won’t know what we just did. And God knew.

Folks, come on, God knew. So for God to step into the garden and walk around as he was used to doing with Adam and Eve and say, Adam, where are you? God knew.

He was letting Adam know that even though you think you’re hidden and you’re out of sight and out of mind, you are still on my radar, boy. Verse 10. And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

And he said, who has told thee that thou was naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? Again, God knows the answers to all of these questions that he’s asking.

And God’s omniscient. He knows everything. If it’s true, he knows it.

So why is he asking all these questions? Well, we know that questions can be used in different ways. When my family first moved to Seminole a few months ago, I was asking questions like, can someone please tell me where this Walmart is that’s supposedly here?

Because I couldn’t find it. I asked because I didn’t know and I needed somebody to tell me where Walmart was. So we can ask a question to get information, but questions can be used in other ways too.

Like when my wife asks me, did you get into those cookies? She’s not asking because she knows exactly what happened to those cookies. She knows and she’s letting me know that she knows.

God is doing the same thing here. Who told you you were naked? Did you eat that fruit?

God knew. Don’t kid yourself. God knew.

He was never in doubt. He was letting Adam know that he knew exactly what happened. Adam’s best effort to hide.

There’s a lesson for us in that. Sometimes we’re Willing to be disobedient because we think we can hide it or get away with it. We think we can hide things from God.

Think about how silly that is. He sees your heart. There is no amount of fig leaves that you can sow together that are going to hide your sin from God.

No amount of fig leaves are going to be able to prevent God from finding out what we’ve done or what’s in our life. Verse 12. And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? and the woman said the serpent beguiled me and I did eat. They’re just digging themselves in deeper aren’t they?

At first they think okay we’ll get away with it. Then they think we can hide it. When hiding their sin isn’t working they go to shifting the blame.

We’ll just blame somebody else. They don’t seem to realize that God knows everything they’re doing. He knows everything that’s in their hearts.

And so they think it’s going to work when Adam blames Eve and indirectly in this blames tries to blame God too. He points out and says well it was that woman oh by the way you gave her to me.

okay so it’s everybody else’s fault okay so Eve then in turn tries to blame the snake oh he made me do it, the devil made me do it as I heard a preacher say one time Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake and the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on guys what makes this pitiful scene is that it’s way too familiar I I do the same thing we business is, I do the same we try to hide our sin from God we try to hide our sin from God as stupid as that is and then when that doesn’t work we try to shift the and we try to justify ourselves once we know you know what God is not any more impressed with our protests of innocence than he was with God told the prophet Samuel years later that God doesn’t see the same way man sees for man looketh on the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart God knows our hearts he knows them better than we do And if God knows what’s in our hearts better than we do, then there’s not a defense we can offer that he hasn’t already heard and obliterated.

He’s not impressed. Now, when we disobey, we stand before God guilty. We’re guilty.

He says, this is what you’ve done, and we have no defense to offer. We can try to hide what we’ve done. We can try to explain, well, God, you don’t understand the circumstances.

We can point God to all the other people doing exactly the same thing we’re doing or worse, but it doesn’t change the fact that’s in, whether we’re alone or whether other people join us. And so for the remainder of this chapter, you know, God is not impressed with their innocent, their pleas of innocence, because they weren’t innocent. And for the remainder of the chapter, God laid out some punishments that they were going to face for their disillusionment.

But none of those consequences, none of those consequences compared to the spiritual consequences. I mean, the pain and the struggle and the things that they were going to go through for the rest of their lives. The spiritual consequences of disobedience are far worse.

They’re far worse than any physical consequence of obedience because they cost a lot more and they last a lot longer. In Romans chapter 5, if you’ll turn there with me, the Apostle Paul, in just a few verses, lays out what some of those spiritual consequences are for sin. Starting in verse 12, he says, Guys, sin changed man’s relationship to God forever.

Forever. It was never the same. Adam and Eve were no longer God’s innocent, loving children.

They were disobedient rebels who rejected God, and they rejected God’s love, and they rejected God’s care. They were sinners now, and they passed that trait onto their own children. We get how this works.

I have brown hair and blue eyes. My kids, Benjamin and Madeline, both have brown hair and blue eyes. I’m Choctaw, so Benjamin and Madeline and the tiny person yet to be named are all Choctaw.

I’m a little bit of a smart mouth, and Benjamin is a little bit of a smart mouth. We understand how traits get passed from one generation to the next. So it’s not hard to see that Adam and Eve being sinners would pass that trade on to their children.

That sin nature would be passed on. Their children would be sinners. And their children would be sinners.

And their children would be sinners. On down through the generations, all the way to us. And man has been separated from God and wallowing in sin ever since.

Verse 13. It says, For until the law, sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offense, so also is the free gift.

For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace which is by one man Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification.

That first sin was devastating. It was destructive to God’s perfect creation. And even though they tried, they tried hard to say the devil made them do it.

God laid responsibility for their sin, for their disobedience, right at their own doorstep. Like I tell my children almost every day, choices have consequences. Choices have consequences.

And man’s choice to obey God is destructive every time it happens. Doesn’t matter if it’s in the Garden of Eden or if it’s in your living room today. The choice to disobey God is always destructive.

Adam and Eve brought destruction into the world, and we keep making it worse. We keep bringing more of that destruction into the world every day. These few verses, we’re almost finished.

These few verses lay out the spiritual consequences of sin, and they explain the role that sin and its consequences play in this story we’re looking at over these few weeks of God’s redemptive plans for man. First of all, sin ruined everything by separating us from God. We had this perfect creation and sin ruined everything by separating us from God.

Verse 12 describes that horrible moment when sin first entered into the world. What’s the big deal about sin? Why is it such a big deal?

Can’t God just be reasonable and look the other way? Can’t He just ever happen sweeping under the rug? He can’t do that when you realize who God really is.

Of course, God is loving. We know that. He loved us before we were ever born.

He loved us even though He knew before He created us how much trouble we were going to be. He still loved us. But God is also holy.

He doesn’t have any kind of imperfections. He doesn’t have any kind of flaws. He doesn’t have any kind of sin.

Sin is, in fact, the complete opposite of everything that God is. There are many places where the Bible uses the contrast between light and darkness to explain this. We know that darkness and light cannot exist in the same place.

One is going to defeat the other. One is going to drive the other one out and destroy the other. And the Apostle John says that God is light.

him is no darkness at all. Just like the light and the darkness, God and sin cannot cause. They cannot, they can’t just hold hands and be there in the same room.

That’s why the prophet Isaiah wrote that our sins, our iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you. Our sin separates us from God like a huge canyon standing between us and him that we’re powerless to get across it. God intended us to walk in a perfect loving relationship with him and our sin carried us right out of his presence.

Destroyed that relationship. Ruined everything. Second of all, sin ruined everything by initiating suffering and death.

Brought suffering and death into the world. Verse 12 also points out that death accompanied sin when Adam brought it into the world. It says, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

People like to say, and I’ve probably said this too, that death is natural or it’s just a part of life. Let me ask you this. How natural can it be when it wasn’t what God designed us for?

There was no death before sin. It’s hard to imagine, but there was no death. There was no suffering.

But that day in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, they died spiritually because they were separated from their God. But on that same day, they began to die physically. Their bodies began to age and eventually their lives came in.

All the suffering and all the death in the world are the result of sin. Sometimes we suffer because of a sin we committed. Sometimes we suffer because of a sin committed by someone around us.

Sometimes we suffer just because there’s sin in the world. I don’t want you to think that you go outside and get a flat tire, that means you did something wrong. It’s not necessarily that God’s going to say, okay, you stepped out of line, I’m going to zap you.

You got cancer, you did something bad. There’s sin all around us, and it has consequences we cannot even imagine. It can cause suffering for people years down the road and many miles away from us.

My wife learned this lesson just this week, how one person’s sin can cause another to suffer far away and a long time down the road. Friday night, we were watching cartoons with the kids. And Adam and Eve happened to be, their depiction of Adam and Eve happened to be on this cartoon.

And Charla pointed out to the kids that Adam and Eve needed clothes after they sinned. So Benjamin, thinking about it, realized, okay, if there was no such thing as sin, we wouldn’t need clothes. I personally am glad there are clothes, but he realized we wouldn’t need clothes if it weren’t for sin.

And Charla, while she’s sitting there folding laundry, looks up with her eyes wide and says, Laundry is part of the curse. Think about it. Think about it.

I’m sure a lot of you ladies can agree with that statement. Laundry, it’s right there. Laundry is part of the curse.

You know what? You have Adam and Eve to thank for that. Don’t complain to your husbands and children.

You have Adam and Eve to thank for that one. Now that’s a funny way to look at it, but the sobering fact is that all suffering of whatever kind was brought into the world by sin. Without sin, there wouldn’t be war, there wouldn’t be cancer, there wouldn’t be terrorism, there wouldn’t be death.

There wouldn’t be suffering of any kind. God created us for a life of blessing. We rejected that, and every day we bring more suffering into the world by rejecting God and embracing sin.

And third of all, this morning, sin ruins everything by earning us eternal judgment. Sin earns us its money. You know, God didn’t design us for hell or design hell for us.

I found that out a few years ago. When Jesus taught on the subject of hell, he called it an everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Hell was created for Satan, not for us.

He created us for eternal life in his presence. That’s why Peter wrote that even now, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repent. Our sin, though, didn’t catch God by surprise.

And he warned us that there’s a price to pay for disobedience. Verse 16 says, for the judgment was by one to condemnation. When the infinite law of an infinitely holy God is violated, it requires an infinite penalty.

And that penalty is that we’re condemned to an eternity separated from God. And even though hell was not designed for us, God is just. He’s a just judge. He follows the law that He set up.

And our sin has to be punished. And so man has rejected eternal life. An eternal life of blessing in the presence of God and chosen instead to be condemned.

Revelation calls the second death, where we die physically and then we die spiritually. As I’ve already pointed out, sin is incredibly destructive. I don’t think it would be too much of an exaggeration or really any exaggeration to say that sin is the most destructive force in the universe.

Now I know tornadoes and hurricanes. Sin destroyed everything for the whole world. It destroyed our relationship with God.

It destroys our lives. It has the power to bring us to judgment and ruin in eternity, and judgment and ruin from which there’s no escape. Last week, we looked at the perfection God created.

This week, we looked as His redemptive story unfolds further, and we see how our desire to disobey Him, to reject Him, and to follow whatever temptation happens to strike us at the moment, we see how that completely obliterated that perfect creation, And any chance we had to experience that joy He created us for. And you know what? I know just as well as you do that that would be an incredibly depressing place to end the story.

But fortunately, folks, that’s not where God’s story ends. That’s not where God’s story ends. Next week, we’ll take a more detailed look at God’s plan to rescue us from this fate that we earned.

God created us for a perfect relationship with Him, knowing that we were going to mess it up spectacularly. Not just a little. We’re going to blow it up.

but also knowing he was the only one who could fit. And that’s why the Bible tells us in Romans 5 just before the verse we turned to originally in 5. 8 that God commendeth his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners.

We’re going to look at that more in detail next week. But folks, Jesus Christ came to earth and took responsibility for my sins and yours. Those sins that destroyed everything.

He took responsibility for them when he didn’t have them. He took our punishment. He went to the cross.

He shed his blood. He gave his life. He paid the penalty and he wiped the slate clean so that he could rescue

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