Sin is great, but God's grace is greater.

Sin is great, but God’s grace is greater.

Genesis 3

Grace, peace, and mercy unto you all in the name of Jesus, the Risen Christ. Amen.

I am Steve Garrabrant, and I am blessed to serve as a vicar here at Gloria Dei, and I am blessed to serve as the Head of School at Lutheran South Academy.

This morning we are beginning a new series—the 40 day Forgiveness Challenge. The Forgiveness Challenge is for sinners to experience freedom. That freedom begins with the admission of your sin.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we have been lied to.

This morning I’m not talking about the greatest lie that there is no God.

Or, not the great lie that God does not love you.

Or, not the great lie that Jesus was not God the Son or not that He conquered sin, death, and the devil through His own death and resurrection.

No, not those great lies.

But the other great lie. The sneaky and too often accepted lie that undermines God and God’s design of His perfect creation.

It’s the lie written in obituaries. It’s the lie that someone died from natural causes.

Yes, that great lie. The lie that death is natural. You see, God never intended for the life He created to die. Death is not natural. Death is a result of sin.

God who created all things saw that His creation was right and good and perfect.

And God made man special from the rest of His creation. He personally fashioned man from the dirt of the ground and breathed life into his nostrils and thus Adam was created right and good and perfect with a heart and soul and mind with which to love God.

And God gave man all he needed in the garden.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:15-17)

And then God in His infinite wisdom sees that it is not good for man to be alone. Man needs a helper.

And then God performed the first surgery. He caused man to sleep deep and took one of his ribs and fashioned woman from such. And thus Eve was created right and good and perfect with a heart and soul and mind with which to love God.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

“Did God really say…” It should have been a simple “Yes” answer. But the crafty and deceptive serpent—the father of lies—made it not so simple due to the wretched foul smelling poison of the question being disguised and masqueraded and deceptively hidden by an alluring and irresistible sweetness of temptation.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

Man and woman did the one thing that God said not to do. One rule. One law. One command. Broken.

Sin now had just entered the world.

I wonder if a dark cloud saturated the once perfect sky when sin entered the world. It really doesn’t matter what the sky looked like because sin caused a darkness to veil the heart and mind and soul. Sin changed everything.

Sin—such a small word with such a powerful punch. Sin is great—destructively great and destructively powerful.

So, what is sin?

Sin is a disobedience against God. Sin is when we are not as God wants us to be, namely, holy and right and good and perfect.

There are two kinds of sin—original sin and actual sin.

Original sin is our inherited sinful condition. It is the total corruption of our whole human character.

When Adam and Eve fell into temptation and sinned, the whole of the human race to be born from these two have a total corruption of the whole human nature that is passed on from parents to children. Original sin is not a sin that we do or commit. It is a condition of our nature. It is the corrupt spiritual condition of our soul.

Actual sin is every act against a commandment of God in thoughts, desires, words, or deeds. It is what we do that we should not do—known as sins of commission, or what we do not do that we should do—known as sins of omission.

We commit sins of commission in our hearts by having evil thoughts and imaginations…

…with our mouths by cursing, swearing, blaspheming, and bearing false witness

…and, in our deeds which come from the evil lusts of the heart.

We are guilty of sins of omission when we do not fear and love and trust and praise God with all of our heart and soul and mind, or when we do not love our neighbor.

The problem with sin is that sin changed God’s right and good and perfect creation. Sin changes everything. It’s like the time my sister Amanda was learning to play basketball.

When my sister was in high school, she broke our school record by making 8 three-pointers in a single basketball game. Sure, she had talent—she went on to have success playing basketball and softball in college. But, I’d like to believe I had something to do with Amanda breaking that scoring record. You see, I taught her how to drive. No, not drive down the lane in a basketball court to score an easy basket. But rather, I taught her to drive a car.

You see, Amanda needed access to our basketball hoop—or as the Texans say, “a basketball goal.” But our cars were always in the driveway blocking it. So, unbeknownst to our parents, I taught Amanda at the age of 12 how to drive a car so that she could move the cars out of the way and practice basketball. We lived on a farm out in the country after all. It had to be ok.

One night while I was in my college dorm room, the phone rang. When I answered it, all I could hear was my mother screaming at me. When she calmed down a bit, she was able to angrily tell me what happened.

You see, as my mother was doing dishes at the kitchen sink and was looking out of the window into our backyard, she saw our Honda Civic flying in reverse as it crashed into our dog pen and shed.

You see, my sister’s shoe slipped off and got wedged on the gas pedal and stuck under the floor mat. The velocity of the car ran into the dog pen fence and up and over onto a cement cinder block. The back wheels were just spinning and spinning as the rear-wheel drive vehicle continued to have its engine revved as the gas pedal was fully pressed down by the wedged shoe.

O how my sister got in trouble. O how I got in trouble—and I was 3 hours away in college!

A few months passed when I thought it might be safe to come home. During my visit I wanted to go out and see some friends. But my Geo Prism—O what a car—got stuck in the dirt driveway as heavy rain that day turned everything to mud. I needed to go. Time was a wastin’!

Only me and Amanda were home. I told her to drive the car while I pushed it out of the mud. She wanted nothing to do with that. She was scarred from what had happened. I said, “Ok, we’ll have the windows down so you can hear me and I’ll push. It will be ok.”

Well, it wasn’t ok. I pushed and she hit the gas and mud from the front tires was flying into my car with all of the windows down. And me, well the mud from the rear tires was spraying all over me. When it was all over, you could only see the whites of my eyes. No, there was no going out with friends that night. And I never really got the inside of that car cleaned.

You see, that’s a lot like sin. Sin changes everything. Sin ruins everything.

Just like how I and the inside of my car was caked in the filth of mud, sin makes us dirty. So dirty we can never on our own get cleaned.

Just as my sister was scarred from her experience, sin scars us. Sin leaves deep wounds. Sin leaves us hostage to fear and guilt and shame.

Fear. Guilt. Shame. That is exactly what Adam and Eve faced in the garden when they sinned.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:7-10)

Afraid with fear. Guilt so they hid. Shame because they were naked.

The problems that Adam and Eve faced in the garden is the same that we face today. Our sin leaves us hostage to fear and guilt and shame.

But God loved His creation so much that He would not let the destructiveness of sin reign supreme. No, God provided the solution to the problem. He promised Jesus.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

Jesus, at the right time in accordance with God’s plan would bruise the head of Satan even though Satan would bruise his heel. As great as sin is, God’s love is greater. As great as sin is, God’s grace is greater. Jesus’ heel would be bruised as he went to the cross, but Satan’s head would be crushed by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

And God lays out to Adam and Eve the consequences of their actions. The consequences of their sin.

For women, there will be great pain in childbirth, but He still gifts them with children. Yes, sin is great, but God’s grace is greater.

For men, they will work the cursed ground. They will toil all of the days of their lives. But He still gifts them with production and with food. Yes, sin is great, but God’s grace is greater.

And then, because of sin, men and women will die and return to the dirt of the ground that they came from.

No, death is not natural. God never intended for death to enter His creation. Death is a result of sin and the fall of man.

And so, to atone for sin, death is needed. A sacrificial death is needed.

And God in His love for Adam and Eve, even though they sinned, He performed the first sacrificial death.

And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)

God took life, a precious life, a life He said was right and good and perfect in His creation to now become a sacrifice as a garment of skin for clothing to cover Adam and Eve’s shame. Yes, sin is great, but God’s grace is greater.

Just as the problems of today’s fear and guilt and shame are the same as found in our text, the solution for today is the same as our text.

God promised Jesus in Genesis 3:15. God gave us Jesus in John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)

Going back to my story of teaching my sister to drive and being covered in the mud as it sprayed all over me…God sent His Son to rescue us from the dirtiness of sin. Jesus is unafraid of our sin, and He is willing to step into our mess to lift us out.

Psalm 40:2 declares, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”

Our God is a rescuing God. Our God is a conquering God. Sin may be great, but our God is greater. Our God’s grace is greater.

You see, in the greatness of God’s grace, God took life, a precious life, a life He said was His Son with whom He was well pleased. And God took this perfect and blameless and sinless life to become the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus took our sin and He took our fear, our guilt, and our shame to the cross. Jesus took His perfect and blameless and sinless life to the cross so that we sinners would be forgiven and that our sins, our fear, our guilt, and our shame would be covered. Yes, sin is great, but God’s grace is greater.

Yes, sin changed everything. Everything that is but God’s love.

Sin can ruin you, but it doesn’t have to. Are you looking to take the next steps in this journey of freedom…freedom from the destructiveness, and fear, and shame, and guilt of sin? Then take the next step to admit your sin. The acknowledgement of sin begins the process of freedom that God so desperately wants to give you and wants you to receive.

Lord, we admit that we are sinful and unclean. We admit that we have sinned against You and others in thought, word, and deed. We admit that we have not loved You with all of our heart and have not loved others as our we should. Please forgive us. We thank You for Your grace. We pray this in the name of Jesus, Your Son, and our Lord and Savior. Amen.