The Fall

What’s wrong with the world!?

The word sin means to miss the mark. God sets the mark that we should be aiming for, and we often miss it. Sin messes everything up. It causes pain where there should be joy. It robs us of God’s gifts. Worst of all, it separates us from God.

Isaiah 59:2 ESV

but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

Sin has brought terrible consequences on all of us, made us all sinners. Maybe you’re thinking, “I didn’t eat the fruit thought!”

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

You didn’t eat it, but when Adam and Eve did, they doomed all humanity to a sinful existence.

We’re going to look at Gen 3 tonight to see what happened and what we can learn about sin from it. Next week we’ll talk more about what it means that we are fallen, sinful people and what the result of that is.

read Gen 3

Humanity plunges into sin, but God immediately pursues sinners.

pray

God wants us to be full, Satan wants us to be hungry.

Do any of y’all remember like five years ago when there was a fad for people to lose weight by swallowing tape worms?

Sin is a tape worm in your soul.

verses 1-7

John 8:44 ESV

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 10:10 ESV

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

God wants us to be free, Satan wants us to run from God.

verses 8-10

If you sneak out of your house, you may have convinced yourself that you have freedom to do what you want. But you’ve got to hide what you’re doing. You have to make sure your parents don’t catch you. You have to cover up where you’ve been. This isn’t real freedom.

Satan thus turns the way of God upside down, making it seem a problem rather than a blessing. Today, he continues to insist that God is not holding humanity up but is holding us back, that rejecting God’s way won’t bring judgment from God but equality with him, and that rebelling against God’s way won’t blind our eyes but will open them to truly see.

Phillip Bethancourt

God knew what they had done, but He still pursued them.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God wants us to have order, Satan wants us to be in chaos.

It’s like me when I play Catch Phrase. I love to yell random stuff while the other team is going.

verses 11-19

1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

God is gracious towards sinners and Satan hates it.

verses 20-24

1 Timothy 1:15 ESV

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

1 Corinthians 15:21 ESV

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.