Sermon Tone Analysis

I started off last Sunday with a joke about a little boy praying and asking God for a bike.

I will continue this morning with the little boy’s prayer life.

The little boy wanted $100.00 badly and prayed to God for a whole week, but nothing happened.

So, he decided to write God a letter requesting the $100.00.

When the Post Office got the letter addressed to God they forwarded it on to the Whitehouse.

The President was very impressed, touched and amused so he instructed his aid to send the boy $5.00.

He thought $5.00 would be a lot to the little boy.

The boy was, indeed, delighted by the money.

He sat down and wrote a thank you note immediately, which read:

Dear God,

Thank you very much for sending the money.

However, I noticed that for some reason you had to send it through Washington and, as usual, they kept most of it.

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of

Now continue with me in , ,

So, in this very familiar set of passages that many of us have seen numerous times, I want to point out a couple of things.

First of all, why did God say that He was going to give to Adam, a helper?

Because, God said that it was not good that man should be alone!

I’ll come back to that one in a minute, as it is the main point for today.

Next, What happened to Eve’s view of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and the condition of her heart, once temptation and desire was presented to her?

In verses 2-3 of this passage, upon the serpent asking Eve if they were not allowed to eat of ANY trees within the garden, Eve answered, “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/middle of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

There was no desire for this tree at that time and her heart was still bent towards listening to God.

Then, as soon as the enemy introduced ungodly desire to Eve, look how quickly the tree’s appearance changed and temptation entered into the picture, as in verse 6, “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.”

The word used here for “delight” actually means, “longing, desire, craving; a wish or want for something for the pleasure it brings”!

The only thing different about this tree then from anytime before, was that the devil presented that which God had placed OFF LIMITS, as desirable.

It was desire for the forbidden that lead to the temptation to eat.

Desire always precedes temptation.

We are not tempted by something that we don’t find desirable!

Isn’t that what tells us?

So, a desire for something forbidden, was placed into Eve’s mind and heart and thus her eyes now beheld the exact same object that she had seen numerous times before,

but differently!

She now was presented with the temptation to eat of the tree and thus gain something for pleasure that was denied her before!

Eve may have thought, “Obviously, I just misunderstood what God was saying.

I mean, the serpent seems to know about all of this and God created the serpent, so this must be alright!”

This is how the devil gets us.

He repackages and distorts the TRUTH in such a way, that it seems right and pleasurable in the eyes of men!

Ungodly knowledge, leads to ungodly decisions, without the guidance of Godly WISDOM!

And what was the INSTANT outcome of the first sin?

SHAME!

Adam and Eve didn’t have a clue of what shame was, until that exact moment!

Have you ever wondered why they felt shame because of their nakedness?

There was no law, or commandment of God about sexual transgression.

The only command was to not eat of the one tree.

So, why the shame of nakedness and the unction to hide their bodies from God?

Because, what the devil told Eve, had come true, but not in the sense that it was presented.

They now knew good and evil.

They already new about GOOD (God and their existence with Him was GOOD), but now they knew EVIL, which comes only from sin and transgression (a.k.a. the devil)!

And with the knowledge of EVIL, comes the full gambit associated with it.

They now knew SIN and felt the full effects of it, which instantly made them feel shameful and dirty; even for sins they had not committed yet!

The knowledge of sin and the effects of sin, bring the the full weight and condemnation of sin.

This is why people who are living with a certain sin struggle so hard to justify their sin in the eyes of other people.

The weight of that one sin, brings the full shame of sin upon them.

It doesn’t matter the degree of sin, if God says it is a sin and you still do it, then you are guilty of SIN, period.

“For the wages of SIN is death.”

Note that it doesn’t say the wages of a particular sin, but of ALL SIN, is death!

And in order to try and alleviate the weight of sin from their lives, the sinners try to get justification and acceptance from others for that sin!

This is why

This is why you are always hearing the question of, “Is homosexuality a sin” being asked to notable people all of the time.

Even though the question has been answered numerous times from true Christians, as a resounding, “YES, IT IS A SIN ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE”, they keep asking others, because they are looking for absolution of the sin, rather than repentance and forgiveness and release from the shame of that sin!

The prognosis of living in sin is death.

That is the wages that are earned by living in sin! Sin is the spiritual disease of the soul and death is the prognosis.

PROGNOSIS NOT GOOD

A woman accompanied her husband to the doctor’s office.

After the checkup, the doctor took the wife aside and said, "if you don’t do the following, your husband will surely die."

1. "Each morning fix him a healthy breakfast and send him off to work in a good mood."

2."At lunch time make him a warm, nutritious meal and put him in a good frame of mind before he goes back to work.

3."For dinner, fix an especially nice meal and don’t burden him with household chores."

4."Satisfy his every whim."

On the way home, the husband asked his wife what the doctor had said, she replied "you’re going to die."

On the way home, the husband asked his wife what the doctor had said, she replied "you’re going to die."

Without the Blood of Jesus Christ covering you and washing you clean from all sin and unrighteousness, your prognosis is spiritual death!

I have said this before, but I personally, do not believe that there was anything special about the tree called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”.

It was just a tree that was set as a boundary for Adam and Eve, because God knew that satan was loose and that he would bring ungodly desire and temptation into the picture, as God is omniscient.

So, God placed a boundary, one simple command, within the garden that identified that God was both watching and expecting His creation to adhere to His will and to His will only!

If there is no sin, then there is only the knowledge of GOOD and there is no knowledge of EVIL.

And so the tree, itself, didn’t give them this knowledge, but rather going against God’s command brought into their lives, the knowledge of evil.

The more you sin, the more of the knowledge of evil you gain.

And let me say this in at this point, about confronting the adversary, Satan, and of how we are to deal with his temptations to sin.

When you are approached with the temptation to sin and you know what God has said is right and what is wrong, then you had better make sure that you speak accurately and with belief in what God has said, because, the devil knows God’s words also!

I will come back to this in a few minutes!

Why?

Because the devil both knows and even speaks God’s words when is suits him and his plans, BUT, when those same words are spoken in belief and faith against the devil and his lies, they become the Sword of the Spirit and they destroy the works of the devil.

Anyway, just a thought or two about the whole garden account, that I find interesting and wanted to share with you guys!

One more thought here, prior to fall of mankind in sin, Eve was not yet given her specific name.

In other words, when God formed Eve from the rib of Adam and presented her to Adam, he called her, “isha”, (WOMAN), because she came from within the “ish” (MAN).

Adam, basically did as he had done with every other created thing that God brought before him, he assigned a name to her as part of God’s creation and called her, “WOMAN”.

After they sinned though and God gave the spoken proclamation that there would be a man who would come through the seed of a woman who would crush the devil, then Adam gave her a specific name, “ḥǎw·wā” (Eve), which means, “life, to give life”!

There was going to be one who would come through Eve, who would return or give life to all!

And now, to my original question from these verses, that I said that I would come back to, “Why did God say that He was going to give to Adam, a helper?”

Because God looked at man and said and that it was NOT GOOD that man should be alone, right?

God gave to man, a helper who would assist him in his role as the authority in keeping the garden.

But not just one created for him, but also Created from him.

For this reason, she was called “isha”(woman), because she was created from the anatomy of the “ish” (man).

As Adam said, “She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman”, because she was taken out of man.”

The two were created FROM ONE FLESH, only to be spiritually rejoined through God and become ONE whole unit again!

This was the original will of God and it has never changed, as God and His will are immutable!

Throughout the Old Testament, it is God who tells His chosen people that if they would obey His laws and keep His commandments, He would prosper them and bless them and that He would never leave them and never forsake them.

Moses recognized the need to have God with them at all times, as he said to God, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.”

And David recognized the same thing with the continual need for God’s presence as found in ,

And it was God, Himself, who said to Israel, “Be strong and courageous.

Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you.