Sermon Tone Analysis

The Fall of Man - Genesis 3:1-24.

Introduction & Review - Over the last several weeks, we have been in a new series using a Chronological Bible Storying teaching method; focused on the “Big Picture of the Bible.”

In week one, we learned about the spirit world that existed before Creation.

God the Father, God the Son, & God the Holy Spirit existed, 3 distinct persons, yet one God.

God is eternal, always has, always is & always will exist.

God at some point in eternity passed, God created millions of angels who served God.

There was one angel who was the most beautiful, intelligent & powerful angel who God put in charge of all the other angels named Lucifer.

One day Lucifer began to covet God’s position, power & glory for himself.

He recruited 1/3 of the angels to attempt a coupe against God.

Yet God is so infinitely great & powerful that God flicked Lucifer, aka Satan, & his followers out of Heaven where God lives with ease.

Week 2 - We learned how God created light & separated light from darkness, the universe, the earth, the sun, moon & stars, the water creatures, the birds, all animals and humans in six, literal 24 hour days.

God created by the power of His voice.

Mankind was the crown jewel of Creation that God made last; with God creating a male & female.

Most special of all was that God made mankind in His own image and according to His likeness.

Mankind is the only part of Creation to be an image bearer, a reflection of God, and God gave mankind authority to rule & subdue the earth on God’s behalf.

After God created everything He saw it was “very good” & on the 7th day, God rested from all His work.

It wasn’t because God was tired or exhausted, but as an example for man to follow, and God declared the 7th day to be Holy or set apart.

Last week, we learned about the first family God created by making Adam & Eve.

He formed Adam out of the dust of the ground.

One of the first things God did after He made Adam was give him a job, tend his garden & keep it as well as naming all the animals of Creation as God brought them to Adam.

Then God said “It’s not good for man to be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.”

God put Adam to sleep and performed the first surgery by taking a rib from Adam’s side.

God fashioned a beautiful female companion and helper for Adam and God brought her to the man.

We know Eve was drop dead gorgeous because Adam’s first words when he saw her were “Woa…man.”

God created a beautiful, lush garden home for the man and woman and placed them in the garden to tend to it and keep it.

God literally provided everything they needed.

God created the first institution called marriage & family with this couple.

God gave them access to eat of every tree of the garden, including the tree of life.

God only had one rule for man to follow, that he was not allowed to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and God said when you eat of it, you will surely die.

The Bible concludes that story by telling us the man and woman were naked as husband and wife and had no shame either before each other of before God.

(Slide) The story begins: Well that brings us to where we are today in our chronological Bible story series & the big picture of the Bible.

This story comes from Genesis 3:1-24.

Focus on listening to the story rather than taking notes as there will be review of the key facts and application for life at the end.

Think about the smartest animal you’ve ever had or observed.

If you’ve ever had pets or worked with animals at all, you know they can be very smart, sneaky, downright crafty.

You try to lock them in their kennels, and they are determined to get out of solitary confinement, they will figure out how to open the kennel.

We learned that with our little weiner dog Olivia.

She figured out how to open her kennel with her long snout for sweet freedom.

I remember as a kid, my uncle Jim had a boxer and I watched in amazement as that dog climbed the chain link fence of his kennel 6’ in the air to jump to freedom.

Our dog Wilson manipulates us by pretending to need to go outside just so he can get a treat.

If you’ve ever had a mouse problem, you learn pretty quickly those varmints are pretty slick in stealing your cheese 2 or 3 times before you catch them.

If you’ve ever been mocked by a mouse for several days, you know what I mean.

Now Adam & Eve were living in the paradise home & garden God gave them.

God had provided and given them everything they could ever need or want.

They fellowshipped and communed with God and each other in complete perfection and harmony.

This was reality for some period of time tending to God’s garden, managing God’s creation as God had entrusted it to them.

One day, a crafty serpent, a cunning serpent began to talk specifically to Eve.

The word cunning means subtle, skilled at achieving its goal & agenda by trickery & deceit.

The Bible says this serpent was more cunning, or crafty that any other beast in the field that God had created.

This was no ordinary animal!

This was none other than Satan/Lucifer in disguise.

The name Satan is a transliterated word of the Hebrew word that means adversary.

Most of the time this word is used in the OT it is used with what English teachers call the definite article, for me and you that’s just the word “The” - as in “The Adversary.”

Not just “A Adversary” - The Adversary, the biggest adversary of them all!

That is an appropriate word to describe Satan because ever since he rebelled against God with his miserably failed attempt to over-throw God.

After God flicked Satan out of Heaven like a gnat, Satan as been opposing God ever since.

Sometimes that word “adversary” is used in a legal sense, describing someone who accuses.

Again, this is an appropriate term describing Satan who accuses God of not being good to Adam & Eve.

One day Satan asked Eve a question: “Did God really say you must not eat of the fruit from any of the trees of the garden?”

Earlier I said Lucifer was the most beautiful, intelligent & powerful angel in charge of the millions of angels God created until he fell from grace.

You might say he was skilled in what he did; after all he managed to convince 1/3 of the angels of God to rebel against God.

So his appearance to Eve was not something that caused her alarm, she didn’t scream to Adam to come rescue her from this snake.

Not at all.

Satan was using his beauty and intelligence to be attractive to Eve when he asked her that question.

That most certainly was not what God had said!

It was a whopper of a lie but its purpose was to make Eve question what God had said and maybe, just maybe plant a seed of doubt in Eve’s heart and mind that God was not really good.

Eve answered him back: “Well of course we can eat of fruit from all the trees of the garden except one, the tree of knowledge of good and evil that is in the middle of the garden.

God said you must never eat of it or even touch it, because the day you do that, you will die.”

Satan scoffed: “You will not die!

God knows when you eat of that tree, your eyes will be opened, you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.

PROBLEM: Now if we’ve been paying attention to what we’ve learned in previous stories, we can see a glaring problem can’t we? Satan lied and twisted God’s words accusing God of withholding something good from Adam & Eve.

Yet God had given them access to every tree including the tree of life.

God only had one rule, one restriction, with a serious warning and the consequence of death if He was disobeyed on this one rule.

God didn’t say anything about not touching it.

Eve invented that or most likely, when Adam was giving Eve a tour of the Garden after God brought her to him, when they got to the trees in the middle of the Garden, Adam told Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good & evil and he added to what God said: “Eve, don’t even touch that tree.”

Well why Adam?

Because God said so & I said so.

RISING TENSION: Well the next thing you know, Eve got to looking at the fruit on the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

She’d never really looked at it that closely before because there were so many other trees to eat from, it wasn’t a big deal until Satan pointed it out to her.

In any case, she could see clearly it was in fact producing beautiful, delicious looking fruit.

She began to desire the wisdom it would give her.

Rationalization: After all, why shouldn’t we know what God knows?

Maybe God is holding out on us.

What’s He hiding from us anyway?

The serpent sure seems to know what he’s talking about.

He said I won’t die.

What’s the harm in a little taste?

So she took of the fruit and ate of it.

It was in fact delicious and she offered some to her husband Adam who was standing there next to her.

It seems Adam was present with Eve the whole time the serpent was speaking to her.

Well the taste of the fruit had barely left their tastebuds.

Instantly, Adam & Eve looked at each other differently.

Their innocence and lack of shame died immediately.

They were overcome with guilt!

They realized they were naked and ashamed of how they looked to each other and to themselves.

They began scrambling around trying to collect fig leaves and they sewed them together in order try and cover themselves to hide their shame.

Suddenly, they could hear God walking in the garden as always when the gentle, refreshing breeze began to blow, they knew God was close by to them.

They weren’t finished with their fig leaf costume yet, suddenly they are afraid of God; so they quickly hid from God among the trees of the garden instituting the first game of hide and seek…and it wasn’t a good game!

Now in their shame & desire to hide from God, they knew they had done exactly what God had told them not to do!

But they forgot God is all powerful, all knowing & ever present & it wasn’t like God couldn’t see them.