Well, good morning to all of you. How are you doing?
Awesome. Welcome, welcome to Hosanna. We like to take the opportunity to say that to anybody
that's here in our sanctuary for the first time or if you're joining us online for the first time, welcome.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
I am Pastor Nathan and today we have come to the fall of man in the book of Genesis.
After so much beauty and glory and hope and creation and all this wonderful stuff,
it all collapses in this chapter.
So we'll be looking at the fall of man actually in four parts.
Today we're going to look at the fall itself and then after that we'll look at the confrontation between God and man.
We'll look at judgment and the curse and then we'll look at judgment and grace.
But this section we're looking at today actually starts in chapter two verse 25
and we're going to go all the way to verse seven this morning,
which bookends this first part of this account of mankind's fall.
Both verses, verse 25 in chapter two and verse seven, both of them focus on the couple's complete nakedness
and that's why I see them as bookends to this section.
Because in the beginning of this section, it's Adam and Eve at the pinnacle of their innocence,
at the pinnacle of their intimacy with God and one another.
And they're in the perfect innocence of nakedness, just no shame, no hiding, no secrets, no nothing.
And then by the time we get to verse seven, we see them in the depths of their guilt,
in the depths of their shame and alienation from God and ultimately alienation from one another.
So this section is about the perfect couple's fall from innocence to guilt.
And as we study through this this morning, we have to understand that this is actual history.
This is not a metaphor.
This is not a story made up by somebody just to teach us a lesson.
This is a recount of what actually happened in real history.
And as history, it describes what has happened countless thousands of times ever since.
This lesson is universal.
And so today as we study this, I pray that we'd all be wise to listen, to learn,
and to apply the lessons we learn from the fall of mankind,
lest we find ourselves continually falling into the same sins.
Let's pray.
Father, we trust you.
We love you.
We thank you, God.
You've done so much, Lord.
And in the very beginning, God, you created this perfect earth and perfect universe.
You created a perfect man and a perfect woman in a perfect union of support of one another, God,
together ruling over a perfect animal kingdom.
And yet, Lord, you gave mankind a free will, God,
which was at the same time our greatest gift and our greatest curse.
And Lord, unfortunately, in the beginning, when you had given man everything
and one single prohibition to go with it, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
God, that one thing we did, thus bringing sin into creation, sin into our lives, sin into the universe,
and God ultimately destroying our relationship with you and our relationship with one another.
So, God, we know you came to fix all that, and we're so grateful, God,
that you came to be the atonement for our sin.
But today, as we study the details of what took place,
Lord, may we be encouraged today in our walk with you and our relationship with you
to not do what the original couple did,
but, Lord, instead to be in a place where we trust you in your word
and that, God, we really have the mentality that if God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.
So, God, we want to open up by worshiping you and just praising you, God,
because, Lord, we do today endeavor to live our lives trusting you,
trusting your word and living according to it, God.
And so, Lord, we want to bless you with our voices and our hearts, God.
We love you so much and we thank you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Let's worship church.
All right, we are in Genesis, chapter 2, starting in verse 25,
and we'll be going through chapter 3, verse 7 today.
But arriving at the threshold of the third chapter here,
Adam and Eve have been living in splendor, living in just a perfect garden,
in this perfect earth, in this perfect universe.
Everything was great, right?
This place had beautiful crystal clear waters and green forests,
and all the animals have eaten were just in perfect harmony, right?
Because at this point, the animals aren't killing each other yet.
They're all living together, right?
They're all living together in unity under the rulership of Adam and Eve, and it's just awesome.
The couple themselves, the Scripture told us that they share the same bones.
They share the same DNA.
They share the same flesh in just a perfect naked majesty,
because it tells us that they were one flesh together.
And their relationship that they were experiencing in the garden at this time
was a reflection of the eternal intimacy of God himself.
We understand that he was a trinity, and there's a trinity within,
as we have God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
all one God, but distinct personalities and people within.
And so, this whole reflection of the intimacy, the connection, is pictured here,
and it's also a foreshadowing of Christ and his bride,
as we learned in Ephesians 5, that Christ is the bridegroom and the church is the bride,
and that marriage relationship between man and woman is meant to be a picture of that,
and a reflection of all that.
So, what we've been experiencing through our study of Genesis in the garden
was simply the picture of what all was meant to be,
of how it was meant to be, and it will one day be again at the end of all things.
Now, although Adam and Eve were both equal in standing and value and worth
and importance before God the Creator, right?
There was also a structure of authority that was established by God in the creation order.
And so, he created Adam first, and then Eve was created out of Adam,
and we talked about the implications of all that, but it's important to understand that that order of creation
and therefore that order of authority existed before the fall of man, all right?
So, that's an important point as we get through all of this study in the fall,
but yeah, Adam was created first, Eve was taken out of Adam,
and that's really the basis of Paul's teachings in 1 Timothy 2, 13, 1 Corinthians 11, 8, and 9,
and so we talked about that. Eve was designated as Adam's helper,
not something that was denigrating, but something that was actually very, very valuable,
because her role, her function was essential, critical, necessary to God's plan for mankind.
And so, we studied how that structure of authority, it followed after God's very, very careful design
in creation where it was God who was authority over Adam, who was then authority over Eve, his wife,
who together they were authority over the animals of all creation.
Remember that structure there, because it was this structure that was tragically flipped upside down
as we're going to study today in the Word.
But as of chapter 2, verse 25, Adam and Eve had listened only to God,
they had been in perfect fellowship with him, they were at the height of their innocence and openness,
and that's what it says here in verse 25,
both the man and his wife were naked, and yet felt no shame.
Okay, there's a lot in that simple verse right there.
It's referring to both the physical nakedness, that they were naked, right?
They weren't naked as some people call it, right?
But it was also a spiritual nakedness, right?
And this idea of nakedness carries the idea of absolute transparency, absolute vulnerability, honesty, openness, trust, right?
There was no doubt, no suspicion, none of that between Adam and Eve and between them and God.
It was this wonderfully beautiful naked open relationship.
There was no need for what we have today in our labor-intensive devotion to God, right?
We have to struggle every day to fight against our sinful nature, to obey God and to do what he's calling us to do, right?
We all have that struggle, but then there was none of that.
It was beautiful.
God came first in their love and in their thoughts.
There was no struggle to obey him, no struggle to talk to him, no struggle to hear from him.
I mean, living and breathing and serving and even working, all of it was just this beautiful, perfect devotion to God without struggle.
Now, yes, physically, domestically, I believe at this point, clothing had never occurred to them, right?
Remember, Adam just was one day and then Eve was one day and they were just created as they were.
And so there was no shame.
That idea of shame there, there was nothing to cover.
There was nothing to be embarrassed about.
There was nothing to be self-conscious about.
You know, my grandson, James, he's about a year and a half old now,
and I'm learning all kinds of wonderful stuff about God and creation through this little kid.
But one of the things he loves to do most is when we take off his diaper and he's naked and he just says,
I want to run around the house and enjoy and enthusiasm.
And I'm like, what is that?
You know, like if an adult tried to run around naked, we throw them in jail, right?
But a baby runs around naked, it's just this beautiful innocence.
There's no shame in it, right?
And that's how God created us to be.
And it's because in the garden, neither Adam or Eve were the center of their own life.
Neither one of them was the focus, the priority of their own life.
Sinful man, it's me, number one.
But in the garden that didn't exist, God and their other, their spouse, was the number one,
the center of their life, the center of their focus, the center of their priority.
Self wasn't the master.
God was.
Pleasing self wasn't the first priority.
Pleasing the other was.
And so to God and to each other, everything just was there.
Everything was just out in the open to be seen, to be known, to be loved.
It was just beautiful.
But then we come to chapter three, verse one.
Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
Now there's quite a bit here that is not said, but some of it that is understood by other parts in the Bible.
And so I want to address some of that real quick here.
With that word serpent in the original Hebrew, it literally means snake or a sea snake.
It's also, it could mean sea monster, right?
The Leviathan we read about in Job is this word.
It could also be translated dragon, right?
And we've talked about how like all the dinosaurs, they existed in the beginning.
God created them.
And so some people might have referred to giant lizard as dragon.
This word is also used in scripture to refer to an artistic representation of a snake.
You guys remember the story when the snakes were biting Israel in the wilderness
and Moses was instructed to make this sign that had the serpent on it, the bronze serpent.
Same word is used there for that.
So this word serpent used by itself, it's used both in positive and negative ways.
So the word serpent itself is not inherently evil.
So for those of you that hate snakes, I'm sorry, they're not a representation of evil in and of itself.
And we also have to remember that everything the Lord God had made at this point was good, right?
We read that already, that he made everything in creation, including snakes.
And he said it was good.
Now what's not directly said here is that this snake, this serpent was Satan.
But the New Testament connects the serpent to the picture of the serpent
and even a picture of the dragon with Satan himself.
In Revelation 12 verse 9, it says,
So the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan.
And then in Revelation 20 verse 2, it says,
And so there in Revelation, as we're looking at the end of all things,
I believe the reference to the ancient serpent is a callback to this moment in creation.
Now, it's likely that Satan possessed this snake or was somehow using this snake.
We have that in elsewhere in scripture where God used Balaam's donkey to talk to him.
You guys remember that?
So it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that.
But it says that this serpent was the most cunning of all wild animals.
Now that's a detail that's told to us because what that word cunning mean is clever.
It means tricky. It means crafty.
Now in today's language, that's mostly carrying negative connotation.
When we call someone crafty, we're not meaning they're a good person.
When we call somebody clever and tricky, we're usually not necessarily referring to a good thing.
But in the ancient language, the word in the Hebrew that's translated cunning simply means skillful or ingenious or shrewd.
The idea of someone being cunning or shrewd was that they acted very carefully as to avoid danger
or acted very carefully in order to maximize benefit to oneself.
So not inherently a bad thing.
This craftiness, this cunningness, in the Bible, inexperienced people are encouraged to develop this skill.
In Proverbs chapter one verses two and four, or two through four, the purpose of Proverbs, it says,
for learning wisdom and discipline, for understanding insightful sayings,
for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice and integrity, for teaching shrewdness.
Same word, to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man.
So it wasn't that it was a serpent. It wasn't that it was cunning.
It was that its nature was misused because later on in that same verse it says he said.
And the New Testament connects this idea to Satan.
So cunning, this craftiness misused, shrewdness misused becomes deceit.
Shrewdness misused becomes trickery.
Shrewdness misused becomes dishonesty, which is translated to cunning.
And that's why we usually see it as a bad thing today.
So this is what Satan is doing through this snake.
Now, I don't know if you ever asked yourself the question in reading this narrative,
but I asked the question, why wasn't Eve taken aback that a snake was talking to her?
If you guys today went somewhere and a snake pulled up to you and started talking to you,
wouldn't that be weird?
We'd all be like, whoa, snakes don't talk.
I believe it's because in the very beginning, Adam and Eve,
they didn't have the same perspective on animals that we have.
What I mean by that is we have hundreds and thousands of years of experience,
people experiencing different animals.
And so we just know as a culture, animals are incapable of speech.
We understand that.
Adam and Eve, remember, they didn't have a childhood.
They had no other humans to teach them.
And given that here in the narrative, they had probably only been alive for a matter of days
at this point, everything to them was new, right?
Adam had seen on the animals and named them, but everything was fresh.
Every experience was new.
Everything was just totally new to them.
So it's not unreasonable to conclude that maybe they were like,
oh, that's just one of the new things we haven't experienced yet.
But I mean, it's just so few details are given here.
So all of that is just speculation and presumption.
So what we know is that there was a serpent.
The serpent was created by God.
It was cunning, but then it speaks to her.
He said to the woman, and this is Satan working through the serpent,
did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
You see, up to this point, God's word was responsible for everything Eve enjoyed.
Everything, the sun, the moon, day, night, the blue sky, the beauty of the garden,
all these wonderful animals, the tree of life, everything, the singing birds,
not that it was like Snow White, but the birds singing in the air,
and the animals adoring them.
I just imagine that, like all the animals.
Lions were chilling with lambs, not eating each other.
You could just walk up to them and go, hey, what's up, Mufasa?
And it was good.
It was beautiful, including her atom.
It had been just created by God, right?
But it's that word that Satan attacks.
This question that he asks here, it demonstrates the cunning,
the negative side of shrewdness.
It demonstrates the guile, the deceitful intention of Satan.
And as I read it, I can almost hear the mock shock in its voice, right?
Oh my goodness!
Did God really say that?
Really?
Right?
That's almost how it reads to me, and in the original language,
it supports this idea of shock, right?
Now, Satan was very subtle here, and this is what we're going to walk through,
because he does the same thing to us today, all right?
He's very subtle.
When he started out, he did not directly deny God's Word at first.
You notice there what he did is simply introduce an assumption,
a possibility that still is held by mankind today.
And that assumption, that possibility is that God's Word is subject to our determination,
that God's Word is subject to our definition,
that what God's Word means is subject to what we think it means.
Right?
That's what he introduced here.
Did he really say?
It was just a suggestion, but this suggestion apparently got Eve pondering,
got Eve considering.
And so, I think such a thought had never even occurred at this point,
the thought that God's Word could be questioned.
I don't think it had ever even crossed their mind, but Satan then suggested it.
Now, additionally, Satan was subtle in how he carefully avoided God's personal covenant name.
You remember that?
In chapter one, it was God, Elohim, God Almighty, the transcendent, all-powerful one.
And then we get to chapter two, and it becomes the Lord God,
the covenant personal relationship God, right?
And that is the name that is used through the entire account of him creating man and creating woman, right?
Because he cares.
It's about him caring and being connected to us.
But Satan, when he says God here, he doesn't use Yahweh, Elohim.
He just uses Elohim.
Instead of referring to God as he's trying to deceive Eve as the close, personal covenant redeemer,
he switches to refer to God as this giant, distant, all-powerful, outside-of-the-universe person
that you can't possibly have a relationship with.
And Eve follows his lead.
And in her dialogue with the serpent, she now also refers to God as just Elohim, not Yahweh, Elohim.
So you have Satan's mockingly surprised tone in questioning God's word,
and then you have his disuse of God's personal name here.
That just leads to a very carefully crafted, yet almost imperceptible distortion of God's word.
Because if we go back to chapter 2 verse 16 and revisit what God actually said, this is what he says there.
And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden.
You are free to eat of any tree in the garden.
Now, God spoke this to Adam, and it appears that he then taught that or spoke that to his wife in what God's instructions were.
But what God actually said, it demonstrated his incredible generosity, right?
What he's emphasizing, you are free.
You have free will and individual determination to eat of any tree, any, all of them, except that one.
So God is saying, 99.999% is all yours in joy.
Just this one thing, just don't do.
And Satan says here, did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
That's not what God said.
But it was a very subtle, yet very radical distortion of God's word.
What it was is instead of focusing on the generosity of what God said, you're free to eat any.
He's focusing on a suggestion that God was stingy and withholding.
The suggestion is, didn't God say you can't?
Let's focus on can't instead of can.
Let's focus on can't instead of you're free.
Now, Eve could have set the record straight right in this moment.
She could have said, that's not what God said.
Get out. Shut up, snake, right?
But she didn't do that.
Instead, she unconsciously, and I say unconsciously because Scripture tells us that she was deceived.
So she wasn't intentionally trying to change what God said or what not as we go forward, but she did.
And so she unconsciously follows Satan's lead and she revises what God actually said in two and maybe three possible ways.
The first way is she diminishes God's word.
We're going to look at that.
The second one is she adds to God's word.
We're going to look at that, and the third one is she softens God's word, right?
These are three things we are tempted to do today, so please pay attention.
Genesis chapter 3 verse 2.
The woman said to the serpent, first mistake, we may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.
But about the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, you must not eat it or touch it or you will die.
Apparently, the serpent was speaking in a language that he understood, and so they began this conversation.
Now, this first one, diminishing the word, it's something that I see here.
Some scholars see this diminishing of God's word as I'm going to explain it.
Others don't, but I wanted to walk through it anyways just so you could see what I'm seeing here.
Now, what I mean by diminish, that she's diminishing God's word, is the amazing, abundant, generous, positive allowances
that God provided to them, she diminishes them to characterize them as less than they actually were.
You see, remember, chapter 2 verse 16, you are free to eat from any tree except that one.
What does she say here in verse 2?
We may eat the fruit from the trees.
God's words were any, you're free, without condition.
Like, do all this, there's no conditions, don't do that.
But all of this, just do it, no conditions, it emphasizes God's generosity in his provision for his creation.
But when Eve changes it to we may eat of the trees,
it's now focusing on the fact that God is telling us what we can and can't do.
It's not a focus on God blessed us so much, it's, well, yeah, God said we could, but he also said we couldn't.
And then she leaves out the any, right?
It's her diminishing God's gift to them, the generosity, and so this shift is her just minimizing God's provision.
Now, she minimizes the abundant generosity of God by altering his word, and then she expands the prohibition.
You see, Eve adds to God's words in the next part of her phrase.
She goes, he said you must not eat it or touch it, lest you die or you will die.
Now, God didn't say that.
If you go back to chapter 2 verse 16, you will not see God saying don't touch it.
He just said don't eat of the tree.
Now, this was a magnification of God's strictness.
This was Eve mischaracterizing how strict God was right after a diminishing of how much God gives in his provision.
It was an unconscious suggestion that God is way more harsh than he is.
It's almost like she's saying no, he said we could have all of this,
but then he said don't eat of that one because he said don't eat it, and if we accidentally slip and oops,
accidentally touched it, God will kill us.
Now, this is very typical of what we still do today.
I think it's part of our sin nature today.
You know, a dad might say to his daughter, no, your friend Chrissy can't stay the night tonight,
and then she runs crying to her mom, dad said I can't ever have Chrissy over.
You ever heard that?
I've been accused once or twice of using words like that, never and always, and never happens, but still.
But a boss might say to their employee, hey, I've noticed you've been late to work a lot lately.
Hey, we need to work on that.
And then that employee will go to the other employees and go, man,
that rigid slave driver said if I'm late one more time, I'm getting fired, right?
It's magnifying the prohibition.
It's something we do when we don't like a prohibition or a warning or we don't agree with a prohibition or a warning.
We tend to enlarge its strictness.
Now, we do that either intentionally or unintentionally,
but enlarging the strictness is us suggesting that the one giving the prohibition is somehow unjust,
that the one giving the prohibition is somehow unfair because, gosh, it's such a ridiculous prohibition.
And since the prohibition is unfair, you know, when we break it, we're really absolved of responsibility for breaking it.
It's not our fault because it was too impossible anyways.
And so Satan suggested this in his opening question.
Did God really say you can't eat of any truth and the free?
He's getting Eve's focus on what God is restricting.
He's getting her focus on what God said not to do.
He just suggested the can't.
And now she's going, well, yeah, we can't and this big gigantic thing is going to happen that God didn't say.
Every Christian, every believer needs to be careful that we don't misrepresent God's word to ourselves or to others in any direction.
Right?
Like, we might overstate God's teaching on purity.
And then right in the next breath say, well, his restrictions are so unrealistic, so it doesn't really matter if we fall, you know, come on, God understands.
Or we minimize his allowances.
God gave us all this. Yeah, no, but I want that.
And then we focus on what he said no to.
And then we start to think of him being bad in our minds.
We start to think of him being unfair.
Then we overstate his consequences.
God said I can't have that.
And so I can't look at it or God's going to ruin my life.
And then you start to become legalistic and phariseic.
And what do you do to other people?
You can't do that either.
That's legalism.
That's just like the Pharisees saying you need to follow all the rules and things we made up that God never even said.
Don't do that.
Don't do that, people.
Just take God's word for what it says.
Follow God's word for what it says.
Apply it in your life for what it says.
Follow the Holy Spirit in all that and do that with gladness.
Do that with acceptance and belief that if God said to do it this way, that is the best way to do it.
Or if God said don't do that, don't do it.
It's not for us to determine.
Is that fair?
Is that right?
Is that wrong?
No.
God's word is God's word.
Are you God?
No.
If you just answered yes to that question, we'll talk after.
None of us are God.
We are his creation.
So we saw Eve diminish the word, diminish the blessing.
We saw her enlarge the strictness of God.
And then she softens God's word.
And this is really ironic because in her telling of the consequence, she says, or you will die.
That's what God said.
Now if you go back to 2.16 again, what did God say?
He said you will certainly die.
It's a very, very subtle thing.
But God was not unclear about the absolute certainty of divine judgment.
There was no question.
There was no wiggle room, but she leaves out the certainty of death as a result of disobedience to God's word.
And thus she softened the consequence for breaking the law.
It was a suggestion in her own mind.
I don't think she was doing it intentionally, but Satan suggested focus on what can't.
And then she started to minimize what we could do.
And then enlarged the penalty of that, and then at the same time, that made the penalty not as bad as it really is.
She left out that certainty.
In one sentence, she diminished attitude and softened it.
And this type of approach to God's holy word is very dangerous.
It is very dangerous for all of us because although Eve was deceived, and we'll get to that in a future study,
it still put her in great danger.
And that's what we see in the next verse, verse four.
No, the serpent says, you will not or you will certainly not die.
The order is very important.
You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman.
In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So this is where Satan shifts from suggesting God's word could be questioned to directly contradicting God's word
and denigrating his goodness, all in the same sentence here.
So he directly asserts, God said, don't eat of the tree or you will certainly die.
Satan suggests, did he really say you can't?
And she goes, no, we can.
But of this one, she misstates it, misstates the penalty, misstates that, and then she minimizes the actual consequence.
And so that he comes in and misquotes God again, you will certainly not die.
Satan started with a subtle perversion of God's word, and now he's asserting that God is certainly wrong, certainly wrong.
He's given Eve all kinds of reason to question what God said, and Eve took the bait.
She begins to question it herself as evidenced by her kind of altering the word as she restates it to the serpent.
And like Eve, when we diminish the blessing of God's word, we think, oh, it's not really as magnificent as it really is.
When we add to the prohibitions that God says for things, we build them up bigger than God ever intended,
and then we soften the consequences of disobeying God's word, we put ourselves in a place to be further deceived by the enemy.
We put ourselves in a place to believe in outright contradictions to God's word.
It's a very dangerous place to be.
Now, you'll notice here that the very first doctrine to ever be denied in all of creation is the doctrine of divine judgment for sin,
that divine judgment will happen, that God will judge sin and disobedience, that God will do it.
It's absolutely certain. It's the first doctrine to be denied.
Satan attacks it here in the garden in the very beginning, and he still does so today.
He attacks it all the time. It sounds like this.
God loves you. He won't actually send anybody to hell.
I mean, God is a loving God. You know, even if you haven't confessed Christ, I mean, if you're a good person, right?
Isn't God a God of love? Well, yeah. But he's going to judge sin. Ah, no.
Or you say, yeah, you can call yourself a Christian and that you went forward at the altar, call your good,
and still live in habitual sin without thinking it's wrong.
To look at things that God says and go, nope.
To look at what God says about sexuality and go, nope.
Looked at what God says about marriage and go, well, I want to change all of it.
But I could still call myself a Christian.
The whole world is denying that God even exists.
Or if he does exist, that his judgment on sin and sinners without Christ, that's not what his word says.
That's not what his word teaches. And so they continue on in great sin, denying the reality of judgment.
And that all started here in the garden.
Now, Eve should have run off in horror at this point.
God is certainly wrong.
Eve should have been like, I'm done.
We're not having this conversation anymore.
She should have ran back to Adam and said, hey, the serpent said this.
I'm starting to think some things.
And he should have stepped up with the true and good word of God and said, no, this is what God said.
He should have said that to her. He should have said that to the serpent.
But instead, she stayed.
And she contemplated.
She thought about what he said.
She was buying what the serpent was selling.
She was starting to, hmm.
Now, emboldened by Eve's own revisions of God's word in the beginning, right?
I think Satan just here, he's going after God himself and he's going after his goodness.
He's just attacking him outright because then he says, in fact, in fact, and then he spouts this outright lie.
Directly denigrating God's goodness.
He isn't good.
He's saying God is actually a repressive, dishonest God.
He's obviously jealous that you will become like him in the face of the thousands, thousands of good things of creation.
The gift of each other.
The rulership of Earth.
All that God had given to them.
This blatant attack on God's character was beginning to be believed by Eve.
This lie that he spouts to her, it possessed the draw of Godhood for Eve, right?
Oh, you will be like God.
Oh, gosh, who doesn't want to be God?
Right? I mean, he created all this. He's so powerful.
Man, that would be fun to have, right?
Just snap your fingers. Not even that. Just think a thought. Poof.
Got all the money in the world. Poof.
Every car you could ever want. Poof.
That guy, that girl. Poof.
Whatever it may be.
This lie that you will be like God, this is where the Mormon cult came from.
This is a foundation of Mormonism that you will become a God of your own planet if you do the right stuff.
All she had to do was reach out, stretch out her hand, take the fruit, and everything God was, she would be as well.
The lie that Satan gave her possessed the draw of moral autonomy.
Individualism outside of and apart from God, without him.
You will have the knowledge of good and evil.
You will be like God, knowing these things.
The implication of what he's saying here is you won't need God anymore.
You won't need him. You won't need his laws. You won't need his rules. You won't need his restrictions.
No. You'll be wise, just like him.
You'll actually be like God. You will get to decide what's right and wrong. Not him.
You will get to come up with it for yourself.
You will get to re-establish genders and come up with an infinite amount.
Not God. You will get to redefine marriage. Not God.
How exciting, right?
Well, Satan attacked God's word, then Satan attacked God's goodness,
and Eve stood right there for all of it, standing right on the edge of the abyss.
In verse 6, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at,
and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it.
And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
So remember, Moses is writing this account, most likely while they're wandering in the wilderness.
But just like the writers of the New Testament, Moses was inspired by the Holy Spirit as he's writing down all of this.
And so it's interesting, this verse, he's able to give us a glimpse inside of his mind, right?
He gives us a glimpse to what she is thinking. We get to see her thought process and her fall as it happens.
Her reasoning for justifying doing what God said not to do.
Her contemplating and starting to believe the lies suggested by Satan.
Maybe she was thinking about what she had said herself in response to him and was going,
yeah, yeah, it's not that great. And oh my gosh, you know, maybe he is.
Yeah, maybe God was being stingy. Because, I mean, he said any tree. Why not that one?
Maybe God's blessing to us, it really isn't that great because that one thing's got to be better than all of this if he said no to that.
Maybe he was really trying to just control us and limit us and restrict us. Right?
She saw that this tree was good for food. Well, it can't be physically harmful.
We get to eat from all these other stuff and this looks good too. It looks nourishing. It looks like it would be good for me.
Physical need, physical pleasure, physical wants. It's delightful to look at.
It can't be something bad because it's pretty. How many humans has that gotten trouble over the years?
It's so pretty. It's so beautiful. It's so pleasing in form. It's aesthetically pleasing, right? The emotional.
This will be physically good for me. This will be emotionally good. It'll make me feel good.
And desirable for attaining wisdom. Wisdom apart from God's word. We won't have to listen to him anymore.
This offer of God-like moral autonomy, it drew her in. And then so it tells us she took some of the fruit and she ate it.
Now, it says fruit. We don't know exactly what kind of fruit it was. It could be an apple, right?
The stories always say it's an apple. Maybe it's not an apple. But for those of you who like apple products, look at the logo.
That's how you know iPads are the devil. No, just kidding. I'm an Android user. So, okay.
But she took some of the fruit and ate it. Moses records this universe-shattering, eternal, cosmic cataclysm so plainly.
So plainly. It was the eternal element of them that was cataclysmically destroyed. But on the physical realm, nothing happened.
The narrative picks up its pace here as everything just starts tumbling into the black hole of sin led by Eve.
She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Excuse me.
Do you notice the very important detail in that part? Man in particular, please pay attention.
He was with her. He was there. Some people go, no, the snake was gone at this point. He wasn't with her.
But if you go back to verses one through five and you read where Satan kept saying, you and you and you, the word in the Hebrew is plural.
Use. So Adam was there with her. And he said nothing. He passively just watched, listened, didn't do a thing.
The Bible tells us very clearly that as Eve was deceived, Adam was not. He wasn't tricked. He wasn't manipulated by the servant.
He very clearly understood that what the Satan was saying was not true. No way. That's not even possible.
Maybe he understood when Eve was going, no, he said this. Adam's like, you left out something, but he didn't say anything.
Now, you've got to remember that back when Adam named all the animals, right, we talked about that, how it wasn't just like as they flew by, duck, elephant, rhinoceros.
The language there implies that he studied them and he, you know, exercised intense intellectual evaluation.
So this skill had been honed as he was naming all the animals. So he knew he wasn't, you know, some naive, he was very perceptive.
But Eve, she was deceived. And that affected so much for women ever since.
And we'll get to that when we get into the judgments and talk about what that means.
But in Paul's instruction to Timothy about church structure and elders, where he says, I don't permit a woman to teach or have authority over men,
that's adult men in 1 Timothy 2.13, his reason why? In verse 13, he says, for Adam was formed first beneath.
And then he says right after that, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed.
But Adam, he heard the serpent. He watched his wife take the fruit and bite into it when he should have smacked out of her hand or something.
Instead, he made no objection when she ate. And then she handed it to him. And as the text recounts here, without hesitation, he ate himself.
I think Adam did something here that a lot of guys, especially in today's culture, do. He used her as a guinea pig.
He was hiding behind her as a human shield. So a lot of men do today that should be stepping up as leaders and providers and protectors.
Men who should be stepping up, doing what God has called them to do instead, they hide behind their wives.
They cower behind women in their lives and, oh, no, no, no, you do it. You do it. You do it.
And women, I'm not saying you don't do a good job doing things, but the guys, this is what Ron was talking about last week at Father's Day.
We have a call. We see here Adam just hiding behind her. He watches her take the fruit. He watches her eat it.
And he's like, man, nothing happened. Oh.
You know what I see in that? He was willing to let her die.
You eat the fruit. Right? You go in first. And he just watched.
In that moment, the full knowledge of eating that fruit for Adam, he knew it was disobedience.
He absolutely knew it was wrong. Eve, she was deceived. She was contemplating. She was going, well, that kind of makes sense.
Adam straight up was like, nope, everything you said was wrong. Everything that serpent said was wrong.
But let's see what happens. And then he sinned willfully, intentionally.
I think because she didn't drop dead immediately that he thought, oh, well, I'll have no consequences either.
You know, I used to have a business mentor who talked about this thing called the slight edge. Right?
If you just do a little bit more than someone else, that seems insignificant over time.
You'll be farther ahead than them. You know, like reading books, doing cold calls, that kind of stuff. Right?
And the example he always uses, we all know Big Macs are bad for us. We all know that.
If you saw someone eat a Big Mac and drop down dead, you'd be like, whoa, no Big Macs for me.
But because it takes 10 years for the Big Macs to kill you, we all still eat Big Macs. Right?
Now, again, if you're a fan of McDonald's, put any other restaurant name there you want. OK?
I still eat Big Macs from time to time, so I'm in the same boat. All right.
So, yeah, the whole thing was upside down. Right?
Instead of God the creator and his word having authority over Adam, who is the head of his family,
his authority was over Eve, and then together their authority was over the entire animal kingdom.
That was how God set it up. Instead of that, it's upside down.
We have the created snake speaking through the power of Satan words.
That Eve then starts to believe and contemplate.
And then she leads her husband by handing him the fruit.
And nobody was listening to God. It was upside down.
And the result created a reality that only God could fix.
The intended order of everything flipped upside down, and the result of all that was very bad.
And that is the reason for all the bad in our world today, all the evil, all the wickedness, all the sin.
Every broken relationship, every harmed person, every lie, it's all because of this sin.
Because that knowledge of the tree of good and evil brought in the knowledge of sin.
What could be done and all the bad.
So Adam and Eve had now fallen from innocence and intimacy to guilt and separation.
Verse 7, then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked.
So they sewed fig leaves together and made the coverings for themselves.
That phrase, the eyes were opened, it's another way to say their understanding was opened, right?
They understood good and evil.
They understood everything that man could do in his free will.
They understood the pleasures that could be sought.
They understood the full extent of obeying God, but now they had the whole picture in front of themselves.
Good and evil, right, wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, it was all accessible to them now.
And the first thing they noticed, we're naked.
The first thing they noticed, we're naked.
Suddenly, self-consciousness was priority.
Suddenly, I don't feel comfortable was priority.
Suddenly, I need to close myself off from you because of me, I feel bad.
I don't like it, I'm embarrassed, whatever it was.
Suddenly, that openness, that honesty, that transparency was gone.
What was once innocent and acceptable and normal was now embarrassingly inappropriate.
Now it's interesting, what Satan had told them was kind of half true.
They didn't certainly die that day.
And I'm sure that went through their minds.
Adam physically went on to live another 930 years, but he did one day die.
Their constant communion and fellowship with God died.
Their innocence died.
Their peace, their joy, their contentment died.
That open, honest transparency between one another and God, it died.
And all of it was replaced with guilt and fear and justification
and selfishness and everything we see today.
And now from this point forward, they're living out their devotion to God.
That acting in just service to him out of love, it was no longer effortless.
It was no longer as natural as breathing.
It was no longer just, yeah, that's what you do.
Now it has become a struggle.
It would be a laborious struggle because their nature was now wicked.
Their nature was fallen, and they would have to fight and struggle and try to do the right thing.
And then just that love expressed toward their creator, well, that would be a labor as well.
So the New Testament tells us in 2 Corinthians 2.11,
it says don't be ignorant of Satan's schemes.
This true historical story of the fall, it teaches us that sin takes hold of us
when we begin to question God's word, when we let the suggestion that maybe you know better
than what God said, maybe he was wrong, maybe this terribly negative thing about God is,
it might be something to believe, the moment that enters into your mind,
you say, hmm, his word, maybe his goodness isn't what his word says it is.
That leads us to revising God's word.
That leads us to changing God's word.
That has led people to come up with false supposed translations, right?
The Jehovah's Witnesses, they have this translation called the New World Translation.
It should be the new wrong translation because it was purposely changed, not translated,
changed to say what their doctrine is, that Jesus isn't God, and on and on and on.
Or another one is the Passion Translation.
Have you heard of that one today?
Mike Winger has done a bunch of work on this,
but it's a favorite among modern progressive Christians, and it's garbage.
But we question, and then in our own mind we start to revise it,
and then we minimize his great promises, we minimize the wonderful blessings,
all that God has given to us, and instead we start to focus on what it takes to be a part of those blessings.
We start to make the study of God's word this unexciting chore
instead of the wonderful communication with our God that it is.
And because we've said, this is a chore, this is too hard, we start to ignore it
because his word isn't living and powerful and alive to us anymore.
We inflate his prohibitions.
We make what God said not to do bigger than what he said.
We inflate his consequences by adding to it and exaggerating and misrepresenting it in our own minds and to other people.
We turn his commands into ridiculous parodies of what he said that nobody could ever follow.
And we misrepresent them to ourselves and others, which then leads to very poor spiritual conclusions.
Then our minimizing and our exaggerating could lead to us subtracting from the word.
And that's when we start to say things like, well, that doesn't apply to us today.
Disregard that part of the Bible.
We start to change things in the sense of like, no, we could take that out.
No, we don't have to listen to that. No, that's not important for us.
We say, he didn't really mean that. That was just a figure of speech. He must have meant this.
And then after all of that, we doubt his goodness.
We question the intention behind his words.
And that is the beginning of a descent into the pit, the pit of sin.
You know, Moses called the Israelites to put God's word at the very center of their existence.
He said this in Deuteronomy 32 47.
Speaking of God's words, he says, for they are not meaningless words to you, but they are your life.
They are your life.
This standard was present. They didn't live it well, but it was present.
And then you get to the New Testament.
And God the Son comes on the scene, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, as he is called.
And he then followed God's word perfectly.
It was his life. God's direction, God's everything.
He did it perfectly, something we could never do.
You guys read that when he was tempted in the wilderness, unlike Adam and Eve here,
Jesus defended himself by clinging to God's word.
Satan's like, oh, well, he said this. No, he didn't.
Well, didn't you say this?
You're twisting it. You're distorting it, Satan.
And this is what I find really interesting.
The eternal word of God, Jesus Christ, is the word.
The eternal word of God resisted temptation by turning to the written word of God.
If that's what he did, do you think it might be good for us to do that?
Absolutely.
So Moses, who's considered the earthly savior of Israel, the one who delivered them from slavery in Egypt,
he said the word of God is life.
And then we have Jesus, the eternal savior, the word of God.
He said the word of God must be our food, right?
He called it bread of life, the very means of sustenance, the very means of life.
And his example that we read in the Gospels to us is one of living and leaning on God's word.
He demonstrated to us is this is how you resist the temptation of the flesh.
This is how you don't do the bad thing when the serpent is whispering into your ear saying,
hey, did God really say?
If you don't study God's word, how on earth are you going to know when he's twisting it?
Did God really say, well, I don't know. I don't read it ever. No.
That's why we always encourage study of God's word and reading and devotion every day by taking his word as it is
for what it says and living according to it, knowing and believing that it's the very best means of living.
When we do all that, we find life and we rest as God intended in peace.
When we rest everything on God's word, we find ourselves truly resting on the good God of the word.
And that's what God wants for us now. And then one day through Jesus Christ, we'll be back in that place where there is no temptation.
There is no Satan whispering into our ears. There is no sin nature trying to drag us down.
But instead, it will be just like it was intended to be before the fall.
We wrestle with sin today because our original parents made the wrong choice.
We are saved today not by anything we do, but what God did for you, dying on the cross to pay the price for your sins.
And we live today through studying God's word and knowing God's word and asking the Holy Spirit who dwells within us,
help me obey the word of God. Do we stumble? Yeah. Do we trip up and fall? Yeah.
But that's why Jesus died instead of us. Because we can always go back and plead that blood.
God, that blood forgave me of all sin. And God says, yep, let's keep going.
It's a grace. It's a mercy that God has given to us. We have to cling to it to live the way he is calling us to do.
But if you don't know him, if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have no access to that.
You are living within the fall, within the sinful nature.
You don't even have the spirit within you to give you the knowledge that what Satan is suggesting to you is wrong.
Instead, you just go along with the flow like everybody does on this planet.
So I want to give you the opportunity now, today, this moment, if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,
you need to know him today. Because although the world wants to deny the doctrine of the judgment of sin,
I'm telling you the world is wrong. God's word is right. Judgment will come on those who have broken God's law.
And then God said, you can't do enough works to pay for it. You can't put the fruit back on the tree.
And so he paid the price. He suffered the death penalty for you.
So that you could have life now in the hope of eternal life with him when you pass from this earth.
Let's pray. Father, we love you so much.
I know, God, we don't always show it. We don't always live it.
And Lord, your word tells us it's because we're weak. We're weak.
That after Adam and Eve sinned, after they upended the order of creation and the order of who is supposed to listen to who in that sense, Lord.
After they misinterpreted, misrepresented your word.
After Eve was deceived. After Adam ate, knowing full well what he was doing.
After all of that, God, you still came to this earth and died for us.
You came to set us free from the control of sin.
Lord, your word tells us that while we're here on this earth, unfortunately, because of what Adam and Eve did, we still dwell with our sinful nature.
But Lord, you told us in Romans, it's whichever one you feed, just like two dogs, right?
Whichever one you feed is going to be stronger.
And so, Lord, you've not only forgiven us through your blood, you've enabled us to obey through your Holy Spirit.
But God, you've changed our very nature from one of being enslaved to sin to really being able to master sin and tell it, no, that's not who I am.
That's not who I want to be.
But God, in that process of living here on this earth through all of that, Lord, we stumble, we fall, and yet you keep forgiving and we're so thankful.
While we're praying, heads bowed and eyes closed, I want to give opportunity to anybody in this room.
If God has spoken to you this morning about your need for Him, that you want to be forgiven of your sin, that you want to be set free from the control of sin,
tired of sin, leading you to hurt yourself and others.
Instead, you want freedom to do the good that God created you to do, to be the good that God created you to do, the good you can be only through Jesus Christ.
You want to be free from the drugs, you want to be free from the alcohol, you want to be free from the abuse.
God can change your heart if you accept Him.
And so while we're praying, if you want to receive Jesus Christ today, just raise your hand where you're seated and let me pray with you today.
If you're watching online and God is speaking to you, just let us know in the chat.
Just say, I want to receive Christ today, and then we will connect with you.
Anybody here in this room, Jesus is speaking to your heart.
The Bible says that today is the day of salvation.
No one is guaranteed tomorrow.
If something should happen to you today and you pass without Christ, your opportunity is gone.
And I don't say that to threaten you or to scare you.
I'm simply talking about the reality of the world we live in.
So please, if you know you need Jesus today, the Spirit is speaking to you right now.
Just raise your hand. Let me pray with you.
I see you in the back. God bless you.
I see you in the back as well. I see you in the back on the side as well.
Anybody else, God is speaking to your heart today. God bless you.
All right, let's pray. Father, I pray for those who have, Lord, raised their hand to reach out,
to say, I need salvation, to say, I need freedom from sin.
Lord, that they've recognized they can't do it on their own because maybe they've been trying to do it on their own,
and it's not working.
Lord, they believe you. They believe your word. They believe in your salvation.
They believe in the hope and the joy that you could bring.
We thank you for them. And for those of you that raised your hand,
those of you that are watching online that want to receive Christ today,
I just want you to pray this prayer with me.
And I want you to understand that it's not the words you say and the order you say them.
It's the meaning it from your heart.
It's the true desire and say, God, I mean this. So pray with me.
Say, Jesus, I know I've sinned. I've sinned my whole life.
Sin has hurt me. Sin has hurt others in my life. And I can't stop it.
God, I repent. God, I say sorry for my sin. I'm sorry.
I ask you, Lord, to forgive me of all my sin, all the sin I've ever done and all the sin I ever will do.
God, even if I don't understand exactly what parts of your word mean,
Lord, I believe them today because you are God.
Save my soul. Change my heart. Give me a new life.
I know, Lord, that that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
But, Lord, I believe you that I will be able to get through it
and to choose to obey you, no longer being a slave to sin,
because I put faith in the blood of Jesus Christ.
I put faith in his death on the cross, and I put faith that he rose three days later, defeating death.
God, thank you for loving me so much. Thank you for coming into my life.
Teach me, God, how to live for you.
Teach me, God, how to tell others about you.
Thank you for setting me free. I love you so much.
It's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Yeah. If you prayed that prayer today, congratulations.
You've become part of the family of God, and that's huge.
Not only has your eternity changed forever, but your life has changed now.
But because we still have that sin nature now that we live with,
you've got to study the word of God and read the word of God and believe the word of God
and let God, who dwells within you now through the Holy Spirit,
change your behavior, change your thoughts, because he has changed you forever.
So to help you guys on that journey, if you raised your hand or if you're watching this online,
we have a packet that's up here in the front or out in the foyer as you leave.
We call it our New Believers Packet.
I just want to encourage you to pick one up. It has a bunch of resources in there to help you,
to help you start to develop this relationship with God,
to start to learn and to understand what he has for you,
to be able to saturate yourself in worship and just praising him for who he is.
They're free. Please pick one up.
And if you're watching online and you're not local to us here in Bellflower, California,
please let us know in the chat. Don't put your address in the chat,
but let us know and our moderators will make sure to connect with you so we can mail one out to you,
again, free of charge. We just want to help you on this journey.
For the rest of us, yeah, I'm sure you would agree with me that we struggle with all this stuff
and have struggled with it.
And like me, I'm sure you've been in a place where you're like,
God, please take it away. I'm tired of struggling with sin.
We'll get there. We'll get there.
But here and now in this earth, it is a laborious struggle because sin entered into the heart of man.
We have the opportunity through the word of God to struggle against it.
Be in his word. Listen to his word.
Believe his word. Don't question his word.
But yeah, learn what it means and apply it to your life.
I guarantee you the more Jesus you have in your life, the more peace you will have in your life,
the more Jesus you have in your life, the easier it'll be to just simply be and do what God wants you to do.
But it all starts with this word.
I pray God blesses you guys. I pray he sets all of us free from those doubts, those questions.
I pray God brings answers that you would understand his word.
And I pray that you would stand and walk firm and walk strong on the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Amen. God bless you guys.