Sin

James 1:13–15 ESV

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James 1:

Prayer

Introduction

We are continuing our study of the book Genesis in our study of the Pentateuch this morning. These five books of the Bible are very important and foundational to the way we read, understand and interpret the rest of Scripture. That is to say, they are important in how we relate to God. You may recall that Genesis breaks down into two general sections, Chapters 1-11 deal with the beginnings of everything, and chapters 12-50 deal more with the beginnings of a nation through one family. Last week, we saw that God created all that there is from nothing, and we spent some time looking at what the creation account tells us about God. This morning, our focus will turn darker as we consider the Fall and the introduction of sin into the created order that God made ‘very good’.

Passage

Since we are looking at major themes through the book of Genesis, we will look to various passages, but will give us a good starting off point. If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word and in recognition that these words are the most important that we could hope to hear today. says,

Genesis 3:1–13 ESV

1 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’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 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.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 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, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 8 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. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

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.” 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. 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?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Thank you, you may be seated.

Sermon

If you were to read Genesis chapters 1-3 for the first time, not knowing the story, you would likely read chapters 1 and 2 in awe amazed at how good things were and how awesome everything was going. At the end of Genesis chapter 2, it seems that all is right in the world – because at the end of chapter 2, all is right in the world. By the end of chapter 3, the creating, good, wise, powerful God who spoke creation into existence would be speaking again, but this time it would be a curse. What could be so devastating to this good creation? What could destroy and fracture it so completely? Sin. Sin is no small matter. It reverberates throughout the millenniums, twisting and distorting everything it touches.

Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, given God honoring work to do. To serve God and worship God through their labor and lives. God blesses them with the abundance of the Garden, giving them everything they could possibly need. But forbidding them to eat of one tree in the midst of the Garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Satan comes as a serpent and asks Eve an (oh so innocent sounding) question. Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” This is no good faith question. The serpent is not seeking to obey God, but rather to undermine Him. Because the serpent goes on in verse 5 and proclaims that God has forbidden eating the fruit because He is not good – God is holding back good things from you – knowledge, power. God is afraid you will be like Him.

Do we see what has happened in those few verses? Lots. Doubt has been introduced. God’s Word is now under suspicion. That was the first thing the Serpent attacked was God’s Word – has God really said? Now that Eve is questioning God’s command, someone has to decide if what God has said is true! In his book, Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness says this,

“Surely she needed to experiment in order to know, and so be able to decide between God’s Word and the serpent’s.”

Do you see the problem here? God’s Word which brought everything into existence was not longer absolute. I mean, it was still absolute, nothing about God or His Word changed, but Eve no longer viewed it as absolute. Eve would stand as the judge over God’s Word and decide what was real and what was a lie. Os Guinness goes on to say,

“Sin is the deliberate repudiation of God and the truth of His way of seeing things. If my way of seeing things is decisive, anyone who differs from me is wrong by definition- including God. No, especially God.”

Do you see? That’s what happened here. Eve made herself the arbiter of truth, when God was and always has been the arbiter of truth, but there is also something else sinister happening in this. Not only is she the decider, but necessarily, she has believed the lie, at least in part. God has been put on trial. The serpent questions God’s motives. The accusation is that God is holding back good things from Adam and Eve. That is blasphemy. The serpent has accused God of being not good. Of holding out. Of being two faced. Do you see what sin does? It twists everything. Everything that sin touches becomes twisted, and we can no longer see things for what they are. Our view of God, others, creation of everything is twisted and marred, and distorted by sin.

How can Eve judge rightly between God and the serpent? By tasting the evidence. But by doing that, she has already believed the lie that God wasn’t trustworthy. She no longer believed what God had said about the fruit, she had to decide for herself. But she had already decided. Look at verse .

Genesis 3:6 ESV

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, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

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.

She had already decided it was good to eat before eating it. Because she believed a lie, that which she once viewed as deadly – the fruit, she now viewed as delightful. Sin changes our affections. Sin twists and warps everything it touches. We cannot and do not see the world as it is. God as He is. Truth as it is. Instead, our affections are twisted. We love that which is deadly, and we reject the truth. We reject God. We doubt Him and blaspheme Him by questioning His Word. This is the Fall. It wasn’t that Adam and Eve simply grabbed the wrong apple. It was a repudiation of God and His Word. It was the claim to self-governance. I know what is best. Adam and Eve put themselves in the place of God. And that attitude flows through the generations. Cain was angry because his offering wasn’t accepted – why isn’t my offering good enough? I can give God whatever I want- Who is He to not accept it? Who does He think He is?! The tower of Babel of – We will make a tower into the heavens and become like gods ourselves! We try over and over again to place ourselves on the throne.

I better get moving, because that was only the first point in the outline. We are now moving to the result. When we sin, we now have guilt and shame, and so we have to do something about that. There are three broad ways we tend to try to deal with our sin. They are not 3 distinct ways, but instead are interconnected and low from one to the other. They are covering, hiding, and justifying. What they all three have in common is that they attempt to deal with the guilt of sin but fail.

The first is that we try to cover ourselves. Immediately after eating the fruit, what do Adam and Eve do? Make themselves coverings. They try to cover their shame. Sin always brings shame, and we always try to cover that shame somehow. The covering will look different in different situations, but we always try to cover ourselves. It might look like celebrating the sin to try to pretend that there is no shame in it, or it might look like wrapping our sin in pious sounding language. Like when we gossip, but claim it is just because we are worried about the person.

Along with covering our sin, we often simply try to hide. Again, we saw that with Adam and Eve when they heard God in the Garden, they went and hid. It is as if we think that if we ignore our guilt, we won’t have to face it, but that is simply not true. Adam and Eve were not able to hide from God, nor can we hide our sin from Him. We might be able to hide it from others – at least for a time, but as says,

Luke 12:2–3 ESV

2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.

“Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops.”

Covering and hiding don’t work, but neither does trying to justify ourselves. There is a certain, sad irony that Eve was judging God a moment ago, and now she stands before Him being judged for her sin. Notice how Adam and Eve respond when confronted with their sin. They try to talk their way out of it. They try to justify themselves with their words.

I love my children, but if there is a tendency that they inherited from our first parents Adam and Eve that drives me crazy, it is this one. Laura or I will catch them doing something they shouldn’t be doing – I don’t even mean anything big, simply something we don’t want them to do, and the first words out of their mouths is, “Well, I was just…” I know what yu were just doing, that’s why I told you to stop doing it. Instead of yes sir, or I’m sorry or some other appropriate response, there is almost always an attempt to justify their actions.

I’m not picking on my kids. We all do this. We try to justify our sin and ourselves before God. Adam and Eve did it. The woman YOU gave me… The Serpent deceived me… The reality is that we chose wrongly. We placed ourselves on the throne and we decide what is best for us. We act as if we are the gods of our universe, and when we end up having to answer for our sinful choices, well, it isn’t my fault – how could it be? My judgment is always right. Do you see how sin distorts our thinking and the way we respond to God? Instead of fearful repentance, Adam and Eve doubled down. This is what sin does. Because we are guilty and shameful, we try to deal with that guilt and shame, but we are unable to do it because the only tools at our disposal are also sinful. And lest you think that it was only Adam and Eve that responded that way, how does Cain react when God asks where his brother is in which says,

Genesis 4:9 ESV

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

“Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

He tries to cover and hide his sin by lying about it, and then seeks to justify his “not knowing”.

The problem is that sin does not stop with Adam and Eve, or even with Cain. When Adam sinned, as the representative of mankind, we fell with him. All humanity spirals into sin. The extent of sin is extreme. It took only one generation to see the first murder - that of a brother. I said earlier, sin twists and distorts everything it touches. The problem is that it touches everything. Everything is tainted by sin – other than God because as we noted last week, God is transcendent, holy and separate. But all of creation is now broken. Even the heart of man is totally marred and distorted by sin. Look with me at . It says,

Genesis 6:5 ESV

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Do you hear that? Every intention of the thoughts of your heart and my heart and your sweet neighbor lady’s heart is only evil continually. Because of this wickedness of the heart of man, God decided to flood the earth and kill all but Noah and his family. Surely a righteous man and his lineage will correct the sin problem. But it doesn’t. – after the flood, God proclaims basically the same thing about the heart of man. And, frankly it doesn’t take long for us to see that Noah sins, his sons sin, the whole tower of Babel happens. The extent of sin is pervasive. It touches everything and pierces deeply. So much so, that we cannot even trust our own faculties. To put this in another way, we live in a world that is upside down and topsy-turvy. Sin has so distorted our view of reality, that we reject and suppress the truth even though it is actually clear. That is what Paul is saying in which says,

Romans 1:18–25 ESV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. The problem is a willful rebellion against God. The problem isn’t that we can look at creation and not worship God, the problem is that we will look at creation and worship anything but God – whether that be false religion of idols, or the false religion of human reasoning. The problem isn’t that we sin sometimes, the problem is that we embrace our sin. Our problem is that we reject the truth so that we can embrace a lie – any lie, so long as I get to decide what fruit is good to eat.

So, what is the extent of the sin and the Fall? Extensive. There is no part of creation that it doesn’t touch, and no aspect of our humanity that it hasn’t distorted. All of all of us. Our bodies, our intellect, our emotions, our will, our desires – everything is distorted. Deceitfully wicked.

I know I have painted a dark picture. But really I haven’t, Scripture does. I know the temptation to downplay sin. To not take it seriously. To think, “Well, this sin isn’t that big of a deal,” or “people aren’t really that bad.” I would humbly suggest that you are doubting the Word of God when you entertain those thoughts.

There is good reason to pay attention to how dark sin is. How blind we are because of the darkness that surrounds us and inhabits us. The stars shine brightest in the darkest night. Having a clear, biblical understanding of sin serves to make Christ more glorious. So, quickly we now turn to the Hope. is sad, and depressing. It should shock us, what our first parents did, and we should be shocked by our own sin too. But we are left with hope. For all of Adam and Eve’s attempts to cover and hide and justify, their sin against a pure and holy God was too great. They could not deal with their sin on their own. So God covers them with animal skin and God tells them of the future seed of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head. And so, God gives hope. We will look more at the promised seed next week, but even here, God makes it clear that nothing Adam and Eve could do would justify them. Only an act of God could cover them. Their attempts at covering their sin were insufficient, but God offers hope.

Ultimately, we know that the hope and promise is fulfilled in Christ Jesus. It is only by being clothed in Jesus’ righteousness, by God, that our sins are covered. We know that salvation is not something that we can do, but we must humbly repent. Recognize our sin for what it is, humbly agree with God that He is God, trusting in Christ alone, and not our own faulty methods of dealing with sin.

Conclusion

In a moment we are going to transition to a time of response. We believe that any time we hear the word of God, we respond. Either in rebellion by believing the lies, or in worship by embracing the truth of what God has said. When we get to that point, I will be on the front row worshipping with you, but if you have any questions or need someone to talk to, I’d be delighted to do that. Or if you’d like to pray up here, you’re welcome to do that as well. Whatever you, respond to God in humble worship.

If you are here this morning, and you realize that you have been believing lies. Lies about God, lies about yourself and your goodness, lies about society and humanity, I want you to know that you can see clearly. If you will reject your interpretation of the world and embrace God’s – trusting Christ alone as the only one who can cover your sin, you will be saved. God will place His Spirit within you, and help you to see things as they actually are.

Believers, we are so often tempted to believe falsely. We are just as easily tempted as our first parents, and we often – even though we trust Christ – we often swallow the lies of this world. When that happens, we need to repent and turn from it. Brothers and sisters, let us take sin seriously. When we do that and repent from our failures, Christ is glorified. The darker we realize sin is, the more glorious we realize Christ is. Let’s pray.