The Fall

Intro

Good morning once again Youth Group!

Hope everyone had an amazing week some of you back in school!

I know school can suck at times, but isn’t it great to see each other again?

Isn’t it great to see each other at church again?

Last week we talked about God being a community.

Same thing for us, created in his image.

We enjoy company we enjoy having others around and giving and receiving love.

So even though school can be tough, I hope you guys are able to enjoy it.

Today we are on the 3rd part of our series Foundations.

2 weeks ago we talked about the Where.

Where did we come from? We come from a God that loves us.

A God that’s infinite and beyond comprehension.

But a God that wants to have a personal relationship with us.

A God that dropped down onto our level in order to save us.

Not out of probability or happenstance, because that would mean a world without love, justice or meaning.

In the second week last week we talked about the Why.

Why did God create us?

We learned that God is a community before the world even began.

God wanted to create us. God wanted to bring us into his circle.

He didn’t NEED us or didn’t create us by accident or as a byproduct.

He created us like an artist creating a masterpiece.

So that’s how we were created.

Today we’re going to talk about how we got to where we are today. 2021.

We’re going to talk about the fall. How humans on top of the world created by God in this amazing community

Fell down from grace.

We’re going to talk about sin another important fundamental to what we believe.

Intro 2

Have you done something embarrassing that you want to repress it from your memory like forever?

When you whiff in valorant or make a dumb decision in front of your friends.

I’m like let’s move on, let’s not talk about it, let’s pretend it never happened.

I bet Adam and Eve feel the same way right? Everyone in history up until now had to read about their mess up right?

God exposed them. Man why you gotta do that. Now everyone hates Adam and Eve.

But here’s the thing.

When we talk about sin, it’s not this magical force or curse that’s floating in another dimension right.

It’s also not something that only applies to Adam and Eve, we’ll talk about this in a second.

Sin is something that describes who we are deep down inside.

Today we’re going to talk about

(1) What is sin?

(2) What does it mean for us?

Let’s pray

Prayer

Lord Father God, thank you for another wonderful Sunday.

You are so so good to us and we come here today to just listen to what you have to say to us.

God we’re busy with school starting and sports and so many other things in our lives.

We pray that you help us manage all this through grace and as little stress as possible.

As we transition, we find peace and order and sense through you.

We realize that even though we have all these goals and ambitions, without you, there is no meaning in any of it.

Today we come before you in Genesis once again.

We talk about a pretty negative topic about sin.

God use your teachings about sin to help us understand our own hearts.

And by understanding our own hearts, help us understand that we are in desperate need of you.

Again like always be with us here today and speak powerfully through your word this morning.

We love you, we thank you and we pray all these things in your most wonderful Name.

Amen

Scripture Reading

Our Scripture reading is Genesis Chapter 3.

I’ll read it for us as you guys follow along:

A bit of a long passage, but bear with me here.

3 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.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 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.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Amen

What is Sin?

So #1 what is sin?

(1) sin is disobeying God

In verse 3 we read.

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.’”

This is important.

Some people put importance on the tree. Maybe the tree is poisonous or special. God imbued it with special magic.

There’s nothing important about the tree. It could have been a random tree similar to all the others.

But the thing is that God chose that tree. God told them not to eat from it.

Not because there was a problem with it, but because God asked them not to.

Sin is disobeying God. It’s choosing our own path despite God.

The God that we learned about for the past two weeks right?

The God who is all powerful beyond our imagination used his fingers to create the universe.

The God who is filled with love and community and decided to create us and invite us in.

Adam and Eve decided that it wasn’t enough and that they didn’t need to rely on God anymore.

Second aspect of sin is that it’s rooted in pride

Pride in the sense that we rely on ourselves. We make ourselves our own god.

If we look at the chapter before the tree is called the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Why do you think that is?

The serpent tells us why that is.

Verse 4-5

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.”

You will be like God.

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, Satan was right in a crafty way.

They did become like God. In a sense.

They started to determine for themselves what was good and evil.

Verse 7

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.

They started to determine what was good for them instead of relying on God. The creator of everything.

God created them perfectly in his image and Adam and Eve felt shame and wanted to cover themselves up.

They started to make their own rules for themselves.

We start to make our own plans and rely on our own knowledge of what’s right and wrong instead of relying on God.

This is the very essence of sin.

So sin is disobeying God and sin is rooted in pride, making our own way and making ourselves a god to ourselves.

We’re all our own mini-Gods. We like to determine ourselves what’s right and what’s wrong.

What does it mean?

Now second.

What does it mean to me. What does it mean to us.

I mean I didn’t eat the fruit. I didn’t disobey God. What’s the deal.

It’s Adam and Eve’s fault.

But you see Adam and Eve are just a representation of who we are in the inside.

Verse 12 and verse 13.

Adam points the finger to Eve. Eve points the finger to the serpent.

When we say it’s Adam and Eve’s fault, we’re doing the same thing.

Sure we didn’t eat the fruit, but we would have in the same position.

If we look at our lives right now we’re the same if not worse.

We’re chasing after our own desires and passions whether it be school or sports or games or relationships.

Now I’m not saying to stop studying and stop doing anything, but it’s the reason behind it.

If it’s only for fame and money and respect, it’s going to fall short for us at some point.

But we choose these things over God.

Sin is so ingrained into who we are

Listen this is important.

A lot of people think that if we live a good life right? we’ll be okay.

Hey I haven’t really been mean to that many people. I didn’t lie or cheat or hurt anyone.

But here’s the thing, we’re still sinful at our core without God.

Let’s take honesty for example. We talked about this in the Friday Bible Study too!

There’s two reasons why people tend to be honest.

(1) What goes around comes around right? We know that if we lie it can backfire on us pretty easily.

So we’re honest because it benefits us.

Telling the truth is beneficial to our lives so that’s why we do it.

You don’t stress out about lies. It doesn’t come back to bite you.

It benefits us.

(2) We don’t want to be like other people who lie.

Right? This is probably a bigger one.

We tell the truth because of our pride we don’t want to be like those guys or girls at school who lie and cheat all the time.

We don’t want to be seen as liars. We don’t want that perception.

We want to be seen as an honest person and respected because of it.

But again it all comes back to me. What’s in it for me.

That’s our motivation. What’s in it for me.

You see sin is rooted so deeply in who we are, even if we try to be good, even if we try to be honest.

There is sin even in the “good” things that we do.

We still fall short of who we were meant to be.

(1) what is sin? Sin is disobeying God, throwing God away and is rooted in pride.

(2) what does it mean for us? even if we weren’t Adam and Eve, sin is obvious in our lives and who we are. We can’t escape it. There’s always this ulterior motive behind even our best intentions.

Conclusion

Pretty depressing stuff right? But this is so crucial to understanding who we are as Christians.

So crucial to understanding why Jesus died for us.

You see a lot of people even Christians focus on different types of sin.

And unfortunately we as Christians even fall into this pattern of judgement.

Westboro Baptist Church right? Probably aren’t Christians based on their actions.

But that’s the church that hates on LGBTQ people right with hate signs and go around saying they’re going to hell.

Everyone is focused on what’s good and what’s bad and you shouldn’t do this and do that, but sometimes they’re falling into the same trap.

Sin isn’t about focusing what’s good and what’s bad.

At the core, sin is about being away from God.

Not following God and following our own desires or desires of others.

And we’re all following our own desires in one way or another.

It’s just who we are.

We are all sinners in the every way of the word.

This is the fall.

Hope Conclusion

I’ll end today with this thought for today.

We can’t escape sin. We are just inherently selfish and prideful.

Feels hopeless and depressing right?

Here’s the thing.

This whole thing. This whole bible.

From beginning to end. From Genesis to Revelation.

Is one big love story.

Here’s the amazing thing about God.

As we read here in Genesis 3, God is being pretty blunt of how things are going to be.

But the thing about God is he just can’t help but want to shower us with his love.

He just has this incessant desire to just love and redeem us and forgive us and bring us back.

See, even in the middle of this mess that was created, God is already planting the seeds to bring us back.

In Verse 15, this is God talking to the serpent

15 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.”

Enmity, another SAT word. It means hostility or animosity right? putting them against each other.

Does that mean God is creating a war between snakes and women?

No.

The serpent here we learn later is Satan, but even more than that the serpent represents sin.

God is declaring war on sin here.

God is saying there’s going to be offspring, generations of people who fall into sin. The serpents offspring.

Well, God says well I’m going to raise up a new generation.

A generation that hates sin.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

Even in the very beginning of the Bible, we have the gospel preached. We have hope.

Jesus is going to be the one that wrestles sin and wins.

See God can’t help but already plan out our rescue plan.

Let’s pray.