As we approach the doctrine of sin and we think about what sin means. I want to share with you just two little tidbits here. One is, I do have a love for words and etymologies. Like I said, make a man, son of man. Those kind of things always just fascinate me. Bond fires. Anybody know where the word bond fire comes from? Is that part of that one out? They're bone fires, originally funeral fires, where you would have bones on them. And that's why they were so tall. So remember that next time your kids ask you to go out and have a bond fire. There you go. I love also the origins of things like glue, y'all familiar with glue. It was originally created as really an accident. They were trying to invent a working plastic gun site for WWII. And somehow another out of that came glue. And it was pretty fascinating because it stuck to everything. In fact, in Vietnam, they kept it in first aid kids. And when you use it to seal wounds and things like that. And so it has this real usefulness to us. So duct tape is another one. It was originally a sealer for ammunition cases in WWII. But quickly they realized it could repair a lot of things. Airplanes. It could repair damaged NASCAR vehicles. And it currently holds several things up in my child's bedroom. So there you go. And I say all that because it's important sometimes to know where things begin. And one of the things I want to start with you tonight is to say that sin wasn't the original plan of creation. And if you go out and you read scientific textbooks, most of them start with the premise that whatever we got is the way it's always been. In other words, whatever we've got in creation, however it evolved, however it started, it started this way and it became this way. And this is it. But Genesis tells us a different story. It tells us the world was created good and it changed. The other thing I want you to see tonight that maybe you've never heard, even though when I say you'll go, well, of course, that makes sense. Is sin was not the creation of man solely, right? Because in Genesis 3, the serpent was more crafty than all the other animals in the garden and the serpent taught to eat. So that outside of me, sin becomes an option, right? And we know through Scripture, we talked about this last time when I did creation, that Satan fell from heaven before Adam and Eve. So that evil who want to use that word existed outside of my actions. And that's important because we live in a world where oftentimes we say, if you just fix yourself or if everyone will get together and fix ourselves, then it'll be okay. But actually, scripturally, the problem is bigger than just Jerry Harwood. And if you still aren't resonating with where I'm going with that, you'll meet people who say, oh, you're kind of born basically good. And then you make bad choices and do things. But everybody's really good at harm. But the Bible presents a different case that after the fall specifically, everything is broken. Just to review with you, we were made in God's image, which means several things, but among others it means we were central to creation, we were given dignity and responsibility. We were made to be relational, right? Let us make man in our image, you see, God says. He declares man to be made as a relational being. Last time I shared one of my favorite illustrations, and that is, if I have a dog over, sorry, you come over to my house and my dog bites you. You'll be highly offended and hurt, but not nearly as offended and hurt as if I invite you over, and I get down on all fours and bite you. To which case you'll be deeply troubled. Because I know better, the dog is just doing what dogs do, but I was created in the image of God to be relational, I shouldn't be biting your ankle. Got it. Point of note. And then I say all that to say, the relationship to God was the key to the garden. The garden's central component was the nearness of God, not the comfort of the garden. And you say, well, duh, okay, but we live in a society where if I could be brazen, I think we spend more time trying to recover the comfort of the garden. Then we do trying to recover the relationship with the creator. If you just look at our culture, if you look at how we live, don't we do that? Don't we spend more time trying to recover the garden's comfort level than we do trying to recover the God who walked in the garden? Think about that. But moving to Genesis 3 particularly, first in Genesis 2, verse 16 and 17, and I know that's on there. I'm like 3 point font, so if you have a Bible, you may want to just follow the verses in your Bible, but I wanted you to have the text as well. And the Lord God commanded the man. You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you will surely die. If you put in the garden with dominion, he is given the garden and told it to be its caretaker, to be its gardener, but he is not put in the garden to be God. You see, and the tree is a reminder to him that it's God who sustains him and protects him. God is still God. He's been given dominion over the garden, but I have dominion over you and I want to protect you. Don't touch that tree. Don't eat that tree. That tree isn't for you. Because God warns us where not to give our heart, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that desire to have knowledge, that desire to have a self apart from God, and you are going to see that temptation come out as the serpent begins to talk, arises. And if I could, the two biggest idols in our lives tend to be what we know, and what we think or can portray about ourselves. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, let me stop you there and say, I think right there is the first mistake. What has gone wrong? God said, I didn't read that far, you're reading too far ahead of me. He does say to the woman, but he said, he said, what is the problem? Snakes don't talk. I mean, how many of you all talk to a snake on the way here? I got bit by a copperhead once hiking, and we had no conversation. He got his point across pretty clear, not to be where he was, but we had no conversation. And I say this because a lot of people will challenge Genesis on the basis that it's got to be myth because a snake talked. But the point of Genesis is man had dominion over the garden, and he should have stepped in right there. You don't come to us as equals. Think about that. You don't have the right to stand here as a peer with me. But then he does go to the woman, and Adam should do what? This actually challenges your knowledge of Genesis 1 and 2 because it's not here in the text, it's right before it. God in the narrative, he creates Adam, tells Adam this, and then he realizes Adam is not good for Adam to be alone. You see, God has created all the things, the heavens and the earth, and the only time he stops and says it is not good is with the creation of Adam. He says, I need to build a helper suitable for him. But it's Adam's responsibility to communicate about this tree. He's the one responsible. That's why in Romans, when Jesus says, the first Adam lost it all on paraphrasing, and Jesus provides it all, I'm still paraphrasing, it goes to Adam and not eat. Adam is the corporate head, but he said to the woman, he says to the woman, and then it says, let me find my place, you're sorry, helps if I look at the notes in the right way. God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden. What is different about that statement that the serpent makes compared to the statement that the Lord made in 216? You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or when you eat of it, you will surely die. In it, yeah, did God tell you you couldn't eat from any tree in the garden? Your best, your best heresies are half true. You see, right? I mean, if you've ever been sold something and swindled, it was half true, wasn't it? I remember when we first got married, we had one of those vacuum guys come into our house. You know, the vacuum salesman, and so he's like, oh, your bed's got all these bugs and it and stuff, and he goes over and he starts vacuuming the bed, he shows you all the stuff on your bed, and he's like, no other vacuum will do this. What was half true? There was dirt on the filter. My wife would be horrified, I'm telling the story. There was dirt on the mattress pad, half true. The second claim, no other vacuum can do this. That one hadn't been tested yet, you see. Because we had never vacuumed our mattress. We need to cut that out too. It's all good. The woman said to the serpent, we may eat from the fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. Now, what did he do there? What did the woman do there? She changed the theological center to a geographic center. Because what does God say? You don't remember? You're free to eat from injury in the knowledge, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God does not tell him where it's located. Now, it probably was located in the middle, and we have no reason to disbelieve Eve on this point. But notice that she no longer thinks of it, theologically. She speaks of it geographically. Now, some of you are giving me puzzled looks. Let me put this in another way. I was with a gentleman this week who hadn't been to church in a while, and I asked him about. I said, you know, is your family attending church? He's not someone from this church, he goes in a different place. I said, is your family not attending church anywhere? He said, no, no, we don't. And he goes, I know we should go to church. And I said, well, yes, but the Lord doesn't just want you in the seat. The Lord really is interested in you going to worship. You see, let's change the geographic center to a theological center. And I said, because I got lots of people in my church who aren't there yet. You know, they're there, but they're not there. Sometimes I show up on Sunday, just being honest, and I have to get there, theologically. But Eve changes the dynamic. She says, it's in the middle of the garden. God told us not to touch it, it's in the middle. Don't touch the middle. Where am I? When the woman is at it, it's at it, it's at it, it's at it, it's at it, it's at it. All right, you will sure, in the middle of the garden, you must not touch it or you will die. You will not surely die the serpent said to the woman. Remember, Adam's quiet the whole time here. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open. And you will be like God knowing good. And if I could say this, if you've ever done a mission trip, or if you've ever been involved with people who follow a religious belief other than Christianity, you are working with people who have done this. They have said, I want to pursue God, but not on God's terms. I want to pursue God on my terms, or I want to pursue God this one. And you don't have to go far in Chattanooga to meet someone. I've stopped asking the question, are you a Christian? I asked people, are you spiritual? Especially if you're under the age of 35. And everyone under the age of 35 is spiritual. And very few of them know what that means, you see. They want, they desire to know God. Quote unquote. But there's no sense of looking for God to reveal Himself. There's no sense of what is God's instructions been. Because Eve could have very easily said to the serpent, well, God already know God. I mean, he's walking in the garden. He walks here every day. In fact, he told me not to eat that thing. I mean, but she's changing. She's changing her opinion here. And it says, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. By the way, this is a little counseling trick. I'll just throw out there for you. Especially if you have children, it's very helpful. When people come to you and they have an argument, like, I want to do something because, there's multiple reasons. The first one's usually the one they think is the most defensible. And the last one's usually the one that they think that's really the genuine heartfelt emotion. You know, so, Dad, I want to go to the wild, crazy party because, well, you know, so-and-so's parents will be there. That's the most defensible. And we'll be home by midnight. And that girl will be there. The least defensible, but the heartfelt emotion. So this desire for that knowledge, the desire to step away from God in order to acquire and to know what the fruit offers, as the serpent has kind of twisted the meaning. But look here also, she gave some to her husband who was with her. Adam was there the whole time. Okay? I remember being the second year of seminary and finally hearing that and going, I mean, he was there. Yeah, he was right there. And never spoke up. Never spoke up. Typical? No comment. Then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized they were naked. So what is the result? You don't get knowledge and power. You get, remember, God put the tree there and said, I am your God. It's a symbol that I am the Lord over you, Abdominian over you. My protection is represented by you not eating that. And as soon as you eat of it, you're no longer protected. You're naked. You see, you have this sense of vulnerability. You have this sense that you're no longer with me. You're on your own. And they hid, right? They make so big leaves together, made coverings for themselves. So instead of freedom, they gain vulnerability. And without God, they immediately have to fill the void with created things to cover their weakness. And then the text says, in the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord, God, as he was walking in the garden and the cool of the day. They hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to man, where are you? I find this statement right here very powerful because they've sinned. They've run from God. They've hid. They've intentionally run away from God. But when God calls, they still have to answer. This is actually a great text to take to someone you know who's running away from God. You take this one and then you take the one from Moses. When Moses is like, I don't want to go to Egypt. And God just basically says, but I do and that's the way that's going to play out. You know, Arjuna, right? I mean, the Bible's filled with these characters who run from God. But when God finally says, here I am, let's talk. You're going to talk. Because God's still God. Okay? That makes sense. It's a very powerful line in the narrative that says, sin separates you from God. But that doesn't mean that God no longer has permission to speak into your life. He's still Lord. He's still God. You don't want to ask questions, by the way. You know, if you all want to throw something out there, go ahead. He answered, I heard you in the garden, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. So I hid. And he answered, he said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? See, God takes it from a geographic center back to a theological center. Not did you eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, but did you eat from the tree that I gave instructions about because I'm your Lord? And Adam says, the woman you put here with me, she gave it, and I ate it. And then the Lord said to the woman, what have you done? And she said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. How do we deal with sin? There's three basic ways we hide. We sin, mess up. See, I'm very modern. I'm not going to call it sin, I'm going to call it mess up. We sin, and we just hide it. We just cover it up. No one will know. No one will know. I remember I broke something in our house once, and I taped it back together with Scott's tape, and then just put a rug over it. It was on a bookcase, so the rug kind of looked out of place, stating on the bookcase, but I just hit it. Or we blame others, that woman, you gave me. And notice that you're not really blaming the woman, who are you blaming? You're blaming God. I only ate it because you made me. Or we allow ourselves to be manipulated. In other words, I remember in fifth grade, sixth grade, I made my first failing grade on a spelling test. And I had to go get it signed by mom and dad. You know, you could do a whole lesson on sin, just with bus travel. Middle school buses. And I was on the bus, and this guy named Chuck convinced me that he could forge my mom's name. And I let him. At first I was like, no, no, no, you can't. But over the course of the bus ride, I allowed myself, and I'm not blaming him. I'm blaming me. I allowed myself to be manipulated, that he could fix it. And that's the other way we deal with sin, as we say, you know what, I can't fix it. But if I just give myself to this idol, if I just give myself to this, it'll fix it for me. It'll fix it for me. So the Lord said to the serpent, because you've done this cursor to you above all the livestock, the wild animals, you'll crawl in your belly, and you'll eat dust all the days of your life. By the way, just a little note there. Why, you know, in Genesis, if you read it, it goes through this kind of poetic, all the livestock, all the wild animals, all the livestock, all the birds of the air, all the fish of the sea. And here it's just the livestock and the wild animals. There's probably an implication there. I'm reading into the text a little bit. Probably an implication there, that the serpent was a wild animal. And so again, Adam is culpable. He's at fault because he let a wild animal into the farm. You see, he let the serpent not only talk, but he let the serpent kind of come into the domesticated animal area. Maybe, maybe. If I'm wrong, sorry. But I think it's there, I think it's there. But I want to communicate to you all that's me thinking, that's not me being definitive. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between you and your offspring and hers. He will, he being the offspring of the woman, will crush your head and will strike his hill. Who did Eve think would solve the problem? Her son, Kane. That's the whole point of the Kane-enabled story. Eve thought it was going to be fixed in one generation. See, here's my son, Kane. He's awesome. He's going to fix the sin problem. Talk about expectations for your son, right? That's a little worse than he'll get straight A's, isn't it? Or he'll get into med school. He's going to fix sin. But he doesn't. And the whole point of the story of Kane-enabled is sin is a worse problem than you think it is. The whole story of Noah is sin is a worse problem than you think it is. The whole point of the tower of Babel is sin is a greater problem than you think it is. Tower of Babel, God has to step in because we're using sin. We're actually using the sin of technology. Not that technology is sinful. But we're using our sin to build away, not to replace God, but to access him on our own terms. The tower of Babel is, we're going to go up and we're going to go to God whenever we want to. And God says, I've got to stop you. Otherwise you're going to hurt yourselves. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the guts of it. You can't do this. Sin is a worse problem than you think it is. And by the way, we still today use technology to fix sin. And it still doesn't work. My favorite illustration of this is if I went today to a major bank in town, pick your bank, and I showed up on a horse and pulled out my six-shooter and put a bandana over my face and ran in and demanded the cash. I'd be on America's dumbest criminals, right? Trying to steal money on horseback with a bandana and a six-shooter. Oh my goodness. You know, you can't even get the horse on time before the cops get there. Technology has prevented that criminal from being a hero. He used to be. They used to be Billy the Kid, right? Or Doc holiday. Or any of the others. But not anymore. Now to rob a bank, you have to become a CEO of major, fill in the blank. All right. But I mean, you can still do it. You just have to be more technical about it. So that sin, technology doesn't fix sin, it just covers up old sin and allows new sin to come about. Right? I mean, I used to, nothing. I'm going to do this by the way. But I used to be able to kill three or four people. Now I can build an atomic bomb and kill thousands. You see? But we continue to think, technology's the answer. It's not. All right. Now this is where it all gets personal for y'all. Okay? And me. To the woman. Oh, I'm sorry, one more thing about the devil. Just to remind you, spiritual forces exist. That sin is not just in my heart and your heart. The serpent is cursed. The devil is out there. There are demonic forces at work in this world. See, Genesis 3 says that. And we should remember that. Doesn't mean the devil's behind every rock. Do you remember my talk on creation? I think one of the greatest things the devil has done to the American mind is convinced us that angels are puffy little babies with Bible verses. You know, the little, if you get a life way bookstore, a little precious moment figurines. You know, what does an angel look like? You know, an angel's kind of a fat baby and strawberries or something. And what are devils? Well, they're these things in horror movies that are just awesome. That's not entirely true. Angels are pretty powerful beings. And devils are not omnipotent, but they are out there. The devil and his minions. All right, let's get personal. To the woman he said, I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing. I usually don't use Hebrew and Greek when I teach. My professor, Dr. Robert Smith, told us that if you have to explain the Hebrew word, then you should be able to explain it, you know, and do that. But if you can figure out, he was an African-American preacher. And he said, you should always look to the analogy. But this word in Hebrew is a word that just has more breadth than our word child bearing. It's bigger. Child rearing. Okay. And let me give the analogy. We're at camp and little Scotty's, I think he's six. That tells you right there. The whole story doesn't it. And he follows off the swing set. And we hear the thunk before the first cry. My wife is off the porch and there. Somewhere around the 10th cry, I realize something's happened. And about the 15th cry, I realize it's calming down. And I go, cool. Because there's something built in, isn't there? In a woman that pain and suffering for their children? And look at the next part. Your desire will be for your husband. And he will be a jerk paraphrasing, of course. But not much. Not much. You see, she was man's helper. And the punishment in the fall is women. And again, I'm being general. We could talk four more hours and run a whole series on this. And get more specific. So if you think of an exception in your mind, okay. It's okay. But in general, women fear rejection. And seek acceptance. Because of the fall. Because of the fall. So that girls turn to things in their lives as teenagers, like anorexia, in order to find acceptance. They give themselves sexually to a boy to find acceptance. They wear their makeup and their hair a certain way. Because a magazine tells them that's what you do to be acceptance. Loneliness can be overwhelming. Low self-esteem. Results. And there's several root causes I kind of give there. Poor family relationships. Distant and missing parents. I can't tell you how many teenagers over the years I've taught to. I've got two. Dad's been gone and they've gone boy to boy to boy looking for someone to tell them. I love you. And they'll do what they got to do to hear those words. Over praising parents. I want to make you all feel like I do. It's like, well, what do I do? I don't know what to do right. You praise them too much. And they go out in the world and they hear criticism. And they don't know how to take it. Over critical parents. You don't know how to take that. Environmental factors, the message of their culture. I mean, you can't watch TV today as a woman and not be told who to be. Right? Radical shifts in geography. That was on your sheet. This one's free. But I think it's important we live in a mobile society where you and your children, if they're girls, are going to be a lot more like Naomi and Ruth. Women who live in an alien land, who move from one world to another and have to find their identity. Because we live in a society so mobile. Right? My aunt lives in the house, her grandmother built. I will live in who knows how many houses. By the time I pass away. We live in a mobile society where women, they may figure it out here, but then they go over here and they have to figure it out all over again. Specific acts of rejection. Right? The boy breaks up with you. You know, divorce, a sibling argument. Those kind of things. Lunchrooms, middle school buses, parties. I remember my wife as an adult got invited to a party at one churchyard. And she walked in and this lady told her her dress wasn't appropriate. And my comment was, well, maybe the woman wasn't appropriate. You know, move on. My wife carried that for a while with that woman, that relationship. The inability to communicate, the clumsiness of expressing yourself, and you meet girls who are afraid to say who they are. They have this thoughts front. The results from that. Hopefully the results, scripturally, is you find your acceptance in Jesus Christ. Right? In other words, you go, well, my relationship's broken. This is a result of the fall. I fear rejection. God will never reject me. My acceptance is in the person of Jesus. Unfortunately, oftentimes you find it in tight groups of friends. You pour yourself into one relationship and that's going to fix everything. You'll find your acceptance there. Use of language, substances. I had a girl this summer and we were talking and I said, what is the biggest challenge for you going back to school? And she said, last year, I cussed all the time because my roommates did. And I'm going to go back and have to change that. And I said, what does that mean? She goes, I'll probably have to lose my roommates. And I, knowing Genesis 3 said, that's a big deal because that's where you find your acceptance. She goes, yeah, I have no idea. I may have to transfer colleges. And start, I mean, start off, she was thinking that big. Okay. Lies, secrets, becoming dependent into the suicidal thoughts. Again, you know, women who commit suicide tend to have these sorts of thoughts of no one loves me. No one accepts me. Avoidance of people and God. When I go home and I walk in the door and men, you all need to listen to this. When I walk in the door and my wife says, I've had the worst day ever and I have this argument with my boss and it's just horrible. And you know what I say? I say, well, what did he say? I'm such a good listener. And she goes, well, he said this and this and this about me. You know what I do? I say, well, here's what you tell him tomorrow. And that'll fix it. And you know what my wife hears? You don't accept me either. You say, you don't accept me either. You're telling me I'm broken. I need, and she'll, and my wife, if you know Heather, she'll look at me and go, no, no, no. Don't tell me how to fix it. Tell me you loved me. And I've had to learn that, guys, because that's the restoration of the fall for women. A fear of rejection. And a need for acceptance in Christ and in his body, the church. All right, guys, your turn. The Adam, he, our question's about that before I go on. The Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you. In other words, because you broke your role and dominion. You must not eat of it. Curse it as the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and pistols for you. You will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food. One of my friends worked with a team in Papua New Guinea translating the Bible. And he said they tried to translate that section. And no one there got it. Because in Papua New Guinea, you sweat sitting on the porch. And so they had to translate it, busting your gut. You know, kind of working so hard, you got cramps. But that idea that you're going to toil in labor. And until you return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust you are and dust you return. Let me paraphrase that, guys. Our drive is for success. Our greatest fear is a fear of failure. We're going to work with the ground and it's going to beat us. That's the fall. Because sometimes we read Genesis 3 and we say, when that interest in that God came out with these punishments and he created it. But they are directly connected to the roles we had in the garden and to the sin of eating of that tree. See, there's a direct line there of God giving punishment, suiting the issue at hand. For the root of our fear of failure. Why do we fear failure? In us because of the fall. We call that original sin that we're born in this state. But we also learn it by examples. We watch our fathers and we watch the men around us fail and we watch the responses to it. Our own experience. When my wife would come home with a 91 and her dad would say, where are the other nine points? She heard, are you rejecting me if I don't have those nine points? When I heard that, for my dad, I heard you're not a success. You see how I'm narrating that in my mind? Success and failure. Recognition you have no control. Success is based on control. You have to have it. At any cost. Recognition of your own limitations. The testimony I read at the beginning. That was when he realized he could no longer be successful in football. His identity fell apart because a part of his physical body gave out. And I can't tell you how many guys I interviewed for camp who have that testimony. I put my identity in this and then one day I couldn't do it. I realized I can't put my identity in that. I have to find my success not in what I do but what in Christ does for me. There's that sense of brokenness. False beliefs, I must be perfect. Things must go exactly as I want them to be for me to be in control and control is necessary. And I should use people for things rather than use things for people. And some of the women are nodding your heads because you've seen guys do that. We'll use a thing a person to succeed and use them like a thing. Results of our fear of failure. Hopefully you're captivated by your need to find your meaning in Christ that you're hopeless and utterly dependent on Jesus. And that's where you go. But sadly much of the world doesn't. And so there's actually physical effects. Guys will develop physical problems from it. You seek to improperly dull the pain by finding your identity in drugs or alcohol or other things. If you ask people why they got into drugs, oftentimes it's a way of finding an identity, a way of being successful. The kid who can't be successful at home, he can be a successful rebel to his parents. If he can't succeed to them, he can succeed pushing away from them. Sounds counterintuitive that you'll meet kids who do it. You'll meet adults who do it. Faulty thinking, I must meet other people's expectations and letting others define success for you. Or pulling away and saying, I won't let anyone put expectations on me, I'll push everyone away. I can't be a failure if I'm not doing anything. I had a neighbor once who he came home every day and played World of Warcraft till two of the morning. And then he woke up at four and listened to short-wave radio until he had to go to work. Totally disengaged his family. And you say, why? Well let's go back to the illustration. I come home, my wife's had a hard day, I need to tell her I love you. A couple years ago I was in the garage fixing our weed eater. It was broken and I'm out there figuring out I'm getting frustrated. And my wife knows it. And she comes out and gives me the biggest hug and she says, watch wrong. And I say the weed eater's broken. And she goes, I love you honey. And I said, love does not fix weed eaters. And she went back inside. But I say that because those are funny but here's an illustration. You come home, man. Fear of failure, drive for success. Result of the sin in the garden. And your wife, you're coming home late. And your wife, fear of rejection, desire for acceptance says, why haven't you home one time? See, what she's really saying is, am I not as valuable as whatever you were doing? And you hear, I'm not being very successful here. But I'm pretty successful at work. I'll just stay there longer. Because that's where I get my kudos and my praise. Well the next day you come home later. Well now there's a greater fear. But it doesn't come out. I have a great fear. So I want you home. Six. And now you say, well now the line's harder. There's no way I can succeed. But you know that secretary at work, everything I do is good for her. And it destroys us. And you can paint that picture a thousand ways. But I say that because a lot of times we think of sin, oh yeah, do wrong things. Shouldn't do that. But at the very heart of Genesis 3 says, not only a sin everywhere. And it is pervasive. And it destroys us. That it affects us. Men and women differently. So that without Jesus Christ, reconciliation to each other. You see, we were built as suitable help mates one to another. We were built with marriage as part of the created order as God did it. And without his hand in us, restoring us and redeeming us. We can't return to that state. Remember where I started this? I said that the biggest problem of the fall, or the, I'm sorry, the biggest issue in the garden was not the comfort of the garden, but the accessibility of God in the garden. And the biggest loss of the fall was not the comfort of the garden, but the God who walked in it with us. But as a culture, we spend more and more time trying to retrieve the comforts of the garden than we spend seeking the creator who built it. Right? We do that over and over again. And the rest of the Old Testament is people not trying. God's people in the rest of the Bible, you read the whole Bible. God's people are not trying to reclaim the comforts of Eden. They're trying to reclaim rightly and sometimes wrongly the presence of God. That's the drive because in the presence of God, the effects of sin can be fixed, but only in Christ who's ultimately the one, Eve's son, who dies and pays the penalty for sin and allows salvation. But I get there into other topics for other evenings, and I don't want to do other people's work for them. Finish here quickly, the source of sin. Individual, I can punch you. You can punch me, the individual sin. The devil, spiritual sin. We've talked about that. The serpent is cursed. There is evil in the world, but also the entire earth groans under the pains. If you are born into sin, and I am born into sin, it's not something we choose. We are born in a state of fallenness. If you're born and your father has left the family and moved to California, no matter what you do or don't do, he's not there. The difference is we as humanity moved to California, not God. That's the story of the prodigal son, God's still there. He's still there, waiting for us. Questions? Really and truly, if you have relationships here, if you're married, if you have children, think about these things. For a man, the drive for success, the fear of failure, for a woman, the drive for acceptance and the fear of rejection. Think about how that's played out. Be honest in some of your conversation with each other, forgiving, loving, apologetic. It's hard for my wife and I have to sit down and do that. And I have to realize how many times I've tried to make her successful and in doing so, I let her feel less accepted. And how many times she tried to help me feel accepted. But what she told me was I'm accepted in my failure rather than being someone to help me be successful. Questions, thoughts? That's in. Don't go do it. All right, let me pray. You have a question, individual, I'll hang up here for a while. Father, you know, sin is serious. It is ever pervasive. It destroys our families. It destroys our lives. Lord, it torments our souls. Father, we run everywhere to fix it. It seems except the foot of the cross. Lord, I cling to the verses and Genesis where Adam and Eve hide. But when you show up and say, where are you? They are compelled to come out and talk. It is as if they have no choice to come out and talk. Lord, compel us to confess at the foot of the cross, where we might find restoration, reconciliation, and salvation. Lord, in many ways, our view of sin is the greatest doctrine we hold because the deeper we understand our sin, the more we understand the depth and greatness of our safe. And it is his name we pray. Thank y'all.