Bulletin. It's also, if you're a note taker, there's a note page there, and the text is Genesis. It's actually three, one through seven, but I'm going to pick it up at the end where we ended last week in 225. So, hear the word of God, 225. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. After three, now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree in the garden, and the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that in the day 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, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed big leaves together, and made themselves coverings. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would come and you would send your Holy Spirit to open the eyes of those who are blind, and the ears of those who are deaf that we might see, and we might hear the gospel, that we might taste of it. I pray for me, I pray that you would forgive my sins for their many, that they would not hinder the proclamation of your gospel. In your name we pray. Amen. This is your first time if you're visiting, I think this is my 5th or 6th in a series in the book of Genesis, and I'm probably preach, I'm just going to keep going through the book of Genesis until Christmas, which may get us through chapter 5 or 6 at this rate. And if you remember, I talk every week about the purpose of the book of Genesis, and everyone who reads the book of Genesis sort of comes away with something different. There are all these agendas, and if you're a Christian, or if you're not a Christian and you're here today, you'll have to indulge me. If you're a Christian, you come at the book of Genesis, or any book, or anything in life actually, and you're looking in it for the gospel. So what is the purpose of the book of Genesis? I'm going to make the case, and I've made the case over the last several weeks, that the purpose of the book of Genesis was simply that it was written to remind Israel, and to remind us of this thing called the gospel. Now what was the gospel for Israel? The gospel for Israel was that God came to them while they were in bondage and in slavery in Egypt, and he said, I promise you, I'm going to get you out of Egypt, and I'm going to get you into Canaan. That's my promise. That's all they had to believe. That's all they had to do was to believe that promise. Now what is the gospel to you? The gospel to you is the exact same thing with a little twist. You see, Jesus says that you live in Egypt too, except instead of Egypt, He uses the word sin. And He says that my promise is that I'll deliver you from your sin and your bondage, and I'll get you to the promise land. That is heaven, that is freedom, that's new heavens and new earth, and you'll never be separated for me. I'll never let you go. So that's the gospel. The gospel is simply this. It's believing that when God says He is proactively out to do you good, that He means it. And that's where we find ourselves today. If you remember all the way up to this point, up to chapter three, we've talked about the gospel. We've talked about how Genesis one and two show us the gospel. Remember the earth at the beginning was formless and void and it was chaotic and it was sort of evil and creepy, if you will. And what does God do? God intervenes into that chaos and He brings light. And the New Testament says that's exactly what Jesus does to your heart. That your heart is chaotic and needs help and Jesus intervenes. And the days of creation what does God do, He continues to bring order where He wants intervene. That's what Jesus does for you. And we saw also that God created man and woman in His image and that everything was fine. Remember last week we left things and wood that we could leave them as they were last week. Remember God created Adam and Eve and they became married if you will. And they joined together and they were one flesh and the last line there says that they were naked and they were unashamed. And now this week is when things begin to get really dicey. Things begin to get really dicey because more players begin to come on to the stage if you will. If you look at this like a drama you know the stage now is Eden and Adam and Eve are there, their characters and everything is fine. God has said to them, get this. God has said to Adam and Eve, your job now Adam and Eve is to believe the gospel. He put Adam and Eve in the garden and he said Adam and Eve your job is to believe the gospel. What do I mean by that? Tommy Adam and Eve were perfect right? Well Adam and Eve had to believe the gospel. They didn't have to believe the part about being delivered but they certainly had to believe the part that God was proactively out to do them good. You see he placed them in the garden and he said I'm giving you all of this. I'm giving you everything. You're free to eat from everything in the garden except this one treat. Now for Adam and Eve to believe the gospel all they had to do was believe that and obey. And so anything that came into their life that contradicted that they had the opportunity to believe or disbelieve to obey or disobey and that's where we find ourselves today. So there are three things we're going to look at today which is basically the anatomy of sin. Today is sort of the sort of sin day at Grace Seattle. The anatomy of sin and the lure of sin and the results of sin. One of the great things about Genesis especially when you begin to hit these passages on sin is I hope that it begins to help you make sense of your world. Many of us go through life and we're wondering why things are like they are and why is my job the way it is? Why is my marriage the way it is? Why is everything the way it is? In Genesis 1 the Bible makes sense of that I believe and hopefully we'll see that. So let's look at the anatomy of sin. Look at verses 1 through 5. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree in the garden. Let's just stop there for a minute. There are a couple things going on here. First of all I know some of you are going, you know, what's up with the talking snake? What's going on here? Theologians have debated for history, poets have debated for ever. Was it the incarnation of the devil? Was it actually a snake that was possessed? And here's your answer, the one that I give you very often is I don't know. What I do know is that in the ancient Near East the worship and the veneration of snakes was pretty big deal. So in Canaan there were plenty of snake cults, if you will, the idols were snakes. Remember if you ever saw Conan, number of shorts and eggres first big splash on the big screen? What was Conan's first big challenge? There's James Earl Jones with that big snake thing on his head. So in the ancient Near East snakes to the Israelites would have been bad news. So that's one thing, the New Testament makes the case that this snake is actually Satan. That the serpent is actually Satan who is tempting Eve. So you know the bottom line is who knows what you have to deal with is the fact that somehow in the garden the snake communicated with Eve and everything went to hell after that. So that's where we are. What is up with the snake? And the first thing you have to see is the sin distorts God's command. Sin always distorts the intention of God's command. What does the serpent say to Eve? He comes up and he says, now it's actually pretty interesting here because it's put in your Bible, there's a question mark there but it's really a statement. And it's sort of like an adjaculation of surprise. The serpent comes to Eve and he says, you shall not eat of every tree in the garden. Can he distorts the intention of God's command? Because what did God say to Eve in the first place? You can eat from every tree in the garden. Just don't touch this one. From the day you eat it, you will surely die. So what does the serpent come and do immediately? He distorts the command of God. Instead of taking it from being positive, he begins to make it negative. And one of the things that sin always does is it distorts the command of God. I've not been a pastor for long, five or six years now. And one thing that I've always seen to be the case, here's a principle, you can remember I told you this, is that sin always comes before people begin to see God's commands as blurry. Does that make sense? That no one ever comes, no one has ever come to me. I've never seen someone read the Bible and say, man, this is really unclear about whether or not I should cheat on my wife. Since it's unclear about whether or not I should cheat on my wife, I'm going to just go ahead and do it. The Bible is very unclear. The Bible is sort of murky on sexuality issues. The Bible is murky on whether I should be greedy or be an adulterer or all these things. And since it's murky, I'm going to go ahead and do those things. In every case that I've ever seen, a man leaves his wife for another woman and then when you confront him, what does he say? Well, the Bible is not really that clear about this, is it? Doesn't God want me to be in love, doesn't God want me to feel emotionally attached to another human being and I don't feel it with this woman? The bottom line is that sin comes first and then it distorts the command of God. And so you've got to ask yourself, when you look at God's commands, when you look at what God asks of you, what God commands of you, how does that resonate with your heart? And if you look at all the commands of God and you begin to really rationalize them, why are you rationalizing them? Is there something that's there already? Is there something in your heart that's causing you to rationalize the command of God? You know, see as Lewis said that the greatest sin is rationalization because we all begin to sin and then what do we do? We begin to rationalize it and we begin to deal with it. And that's what Satan immediately does. We're going to see Adam and Eve do that as well. If he comes to her and he distorts the command and what do they begin to do? She begins to rationalize, you'll see. The next thing you'll see is that sin adds to and takes away from God's command. Look at verses two and three. It says in the woman said to the serpent, she answers him. And now it's very interesting to me as I studied this, that the serpent, he gets the credit for tempting Eve and the credit for being evil, but really he just asks a stupid question and lets her do all the hard work, okay? He asks her and the woman said to the serpent, we need to eat of the fruit of the trees and the garden, but if the fruit in the midst of the garden, God said, you shall not touch it, lest you die. Now here's what is interesting to me that all in the same breath, and the same sentence, Eve has firmly established herself as the first religious conservative on one hand and the first religious liberal on the other hand. Okay, and the same breath. Now what do I mean by that? Satan comes and asks Eve and Adam was probably there with her, he asks her, is God really said you can't do all this stuff? And now Eve has a chance simply to just quote God back. She can just say no, he said you need of all the trees in the garden, but not of this one in the center, or you will surely die. That becomes important. And what does Eve say? Eve is the first religious conservative, if you will, and this is a generalization because she adds to the command of God. God didn't say you can't touch the tree. You see, the nature of fundamentalism, or the nature of religious conservatism, if you will, is to add commands to God. You see God said you're free to do all this stuff and you're free theoretically, at least according to the text, they were free to touch this tree. They were free to use it to decorate their home, if you will. They're free to do anything. Just don't eat it. And what does Eve say? Don't even touch it. Now the question is, you know, who's responsible? Did Eve come up with that or did Adam? You know, I wondered did Adam sort of pull Eve aside, because if he was the one who would tell her that commands that Adam pull Eve aside, he just thought his wife was stupid or something and he said, all right, honey, you know, like I do with my kids all the time. I don't want you to go near it. I don't want you to even touch it. You just don't go anywhere around it. So maybe Adam was the first fundamentalist. But the bottom line is the Bible will not tolerate adding onto God's commands. You see, we tend to think, man, if I'm obedient, that's great. And if I'm super obedient, that's got to be even better. And guess what happens if you overdose? It's death. Think about that. The bulk of the New Testament letters are not written to address lasciviousness. The bulk of the New Testament letters are not written to address sexual immorality. They address it, mind you. But the bulk, I mean, complete letters are written for one purpose. And what is that purpose? It's because you, church, are trying to add to the command of God. Look at the book of Colossians, to the book of Galatians. Remember in Colossians, when I preached through Colossians, the Colossian teachers came and said, man, it's really great that you trusted in Jesus. But don't you think God would love you better if you've got circumcised? You know, if a little is good, a lot must be better. Do you think God would really love you better if you didn't eat certain foods? Don't you think God would really love you better if you didn't drink? If you didn't smoke, if you didn't eat meat. All of these things, and what does the book of Colossians say? The book of Colossians says that Jesus or the gospel plus anything equals nothing. That as soon as you begin to add to God's command, and think that somehow that police is God more, in fact, what you've done is you've offended him more. Because God's intention for you, what this book of Genesis is about, is about God's intention for you. And what is God's intention for you? God's intention for you is that you'd be naked and unashamed and that nothing keeps you from experiencing the full complete freedom that he's given you in Jesus. And so when you begin to add to the commands, you know, oh, I better stay away from that. In some sense, you're not trusting God. In the same sense, Eve here establishes herself, and she's going to establish herself as a first conservative. Let me go ahead and say she establishes herself as the first liberal as well. Because what does she say next? She says, he said, well, don't touch it, lest you die. Now it's important to catch the nuance here, because what did God say? He said in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. Now why does Eve the first liberal, I say, generalization? Because she takes away from the authority of God. She takes away from the seriousness of God's promise. You see, what she has done is she has taken the promise of judgment and the promise of death and she has made it into a threat. That's the force of her language there. Did he say you're going to die? Yeah, we might. Now we tend to think that's okay, because that's what kind of parent I am. You say I'm a threatiner. You know, I come home and if I hear one more kid scream, someone screams. All right, if I hear it one more time. One more time. It's what do I teach my kids that my threats don't mean anything? Now guess what? God is a better father than I am. When God says something, and he promises something, he will always come through. Now our problem is we love to think of the promises of God when they're positive. If we trust Jesus, he'll embrace us and he'll never let us go. But God also promises that if you are if you are in sin and you refuse to turn from it, that you die, that's a promise, that's not a threat. And so by making light of God's promise, Eve has undercut the whole nature of the gospel to them. So here Eve now is. She's both added to the command that she's taken away from the command. And what does this say? What does the surfeit do? He steps right in and helps her along. He steps right in and he helps her along. And what does he say to her? He says you certainly won't die. Look at first four. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will surely not die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So if sin distorts God's command and sin adds to God's command, the obvious one is sin just flat out denies God's command. And that's what the surfeit does here. The serpent says you're not going to die. When in fact God said that's exactly what will happen. And the lie still is the same. The lie today is still the same that sin will not hurt you. And the fact is that sin always kills you. And God's greatest desire is to deal with your sin one way or another. If you think about it, he comes and he says to Eve, you're surely not going to die. And in fact the day you eat of this tree, you're going to become like God. I mean the Hebrew here says you're going to become just like you. You are going to become, Eve you are going to become Elohim, mighty God. So here Eve is. With this great temptation. Now here's the wild part that I was thinking of this week. First he says she's not going to die. And then he says you're going to basically Eve going to have divinity. The God has somehow been holding things back from you. When you attain God's stature and God's power, then you will have arrived. Now the ironic thing of all this is that you and I are in a much better position than Eve was. You and I are in a much better position now to understand what's going on than Eve was because Eve was standing before the surfeit. And the surfeit was telling her these things. And she had no experience on which to base her decision. So as she looked out at becoming like God, she didn't really know what was out there. She didn't have a clue about, you know, for at all she knew it might have been a good thing. Certainly it was a transgression of God's command. But the temptation was very real. Now how are you and I better off the Eve? You and I are better off the Eve because God comes to you and he says the same thing. He says I want you to obey me. I want you to turn from your sin and trust that my son has done everything for you. And you and I are in a much better position than Eve because we know what it is like to have tried to be our own gods. You and I experientially know that you don't have what it takes to be God. You experientially know what it is like to have followed idols. You experientially know what it is like to have chased money and finances and have it fall out from underneath you. You experientially know what it is like to have chased sex and have it fall out from underneath you or to idolize relationships and have someone dump you. You know all these things. You know what it is like to be broken and guilty. So now when the decision comes to you, you look out in the face of temptation and say, do I disobey God? Do I not trust him? Do I do all these things? And if you really think about it, it's quite silly that we still sin. Other than it's our natural bent because experientially we know. You know that it gets you nowhere. You know that it kills you. You know that it hurts you. And the gospel says that God comes to you and he takes care of all that. Notice what happens next, the lure of sin in verse 6, as we keep moving along. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food that it was pleasant to the eyes and the tree was desirable to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate and she gave to her husband with her and he ate. Notice what she says here. It says the text says that, you know, okay, Eve is in this position now. She's tempted and she looks at the tree. Now she focuses on the tree. There's nothing wrong with the tree, by the way. It's not a magical tree. And she, what does she say about the tree? But it's good for food. It will please my appetite. It's desirable to my eyes. It was obviously very beautiful and it was desirable for a taining wisdom. It will make me like God. It will make me powerful. And I thought about this and I labored over this. And I thought, where have I heard this before? You see, here's the tragedy. You know, when I was in college, I went to Florida State University. And when I was in college, I lived in one of the poorer neighborhoods. And in my neighborhood, there was a dollar theater that would always play horror movies. And you know, the fun thing for us to do every weekend was to go on Friday nights and pay dollar and go in and listen to the, to the, you know, sit in the back and listen to the indigenous dwellers of my neighborhood scream at the screen. You know, it's the horror movie would come up and they would scream to the character and they would tell them what to do and tell them to duck and tell them to watch out. You know, if this were a movie and we were all sitting here, what will we be saying to Eve? You'd be screaming, don't do it. You're going to die, you're going to fall. You're going to screw up everything from now on eternity. Just don't do it. You'd be screaming that. What does she do? She takes it and she eats and it does screw up everything. It's this tragedy. It's this terrible catastrophe. And I thought to myself, I labored all week thinking this is just grim. How do I make something good out of this? And then as I thought about it, I kept thinking, you know, I've heard this story before. This sort of threefold temptation where someone looks and they say, oh, it's pleasing for the eyes, it's pleasing to the appetite, and it's pleasing to give you power. Where have I heard that? You hear it with Jesus, you see. You see, there's a sense of which I was talking to a guy in the phone this week. He said, Tommy, could not have won Eve 8th of fruit. Could not have, did not Adam have the opportunity to be the first Jesus? Could Adam have stepped in and said, Eve sinned and now I'm going to die for her God because I am perfect still. I'll take all of her punishment on my back. And I thought, I guess he could, but he didn't. And so instead of having the first Jesus, we need the second Adam. You know, we need an Adam to come along who looks at these temptations in the faith and who does it right. We need an Adam who comes along. And when someone says, you know, don't eat of the tree because it's pleasurable because it will fulfill your appetite because it will make you give you powerful. We need an Adam who can resist temptation. Guess who you've got. Jesus. Look at if you have your Bible, turn to Matthew 4 very quickly. You know what happens in Matthew 4? Imagine the same stage as Eden only opposite to the desert. It's the woods. Jesus has been out in the wilderness for 40 days and he hasn't had anything. You see Adam and Eve were in the state of perfection, in the state of perfect satisfaction when the serpent came and tempted them. Jesus was in the state of terrible surroundings and he was completely hungry. He had been 40 days without food. And many of you have told me tell stories about ranger school of guys walking up and you know, after going several days without food, a few days without food and putting quarters into trees because they thought they were vending machines. Because being hungry will make you do anything. Now imagine not having food for 40 days. Now having the serpent come to you and what does he say? I'm just going to read through it so you could see. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterwards, he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up into the holy city and set him up on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written. He shall give his angels charge over you. Notice how he distorts the command the same as he did with the eat. And in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone. And Jesus said to him, it is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Verse 8, and again the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to them, said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. And Jesus said to him, away with you Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. And then the devil left him and behold angels came and ministered to him. You see the Bible, we are going to talk more about this in future weeks. But basically the sad part about what happened in Eden is that when Adam and Eve acted, guess who they acted for, for you. The New Testament says that when Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, they were our federal heads, they were the representatives of all mankind. And so whatever happened to them, what happened to you, whatever they experienced would be transmitted to you, whatever guilt they experienced would be credited to your account. And so when Eve ate of the apple, when Adam ate of the apple, guess who got the credit for it? You did, and I did. And the beautiful thing of the gospel says that Jesus came, the second Adam, and he faced the same temptation and yet he was victorious. And what does the second Adam do? The second Adam says, I will give you my complete and perfect record of righteousness. You've got Adam and Eve's perfect, complete record of guilt, and I'm going to give you my perfect and complete record of righteousness. The bottom line is, are you going to accept it? Are you going to believe the gospel? Are you going to believe that in and of yourself you've got nothing? And in and of me you've got everything. Do you believe that? You see it's the same, whether you're a Christian or not, you've got to look at Jesus and say, you know, am I good enough to be my own God? Am I good enough to run my life? Do I believe the gospel? What is the gospel that God is proactively out to Jimmy Good? Do you believe that? Only you can answer that. If you notice what Eve did as well, it's very interesting here, is that Eve focused on the lure of the sin without focusing on the bad part of the sin. And that's what will kill you every time. She looked at the sin and saw the good part, but she didn't look at the bad part. You know, as a pastor for years, I've seen this happen over and over again. One, for example, you know, whether you're a Christian or not, the Bible makes it very clear that a Christian should not marry a person who is not a Christian. Okay? And what I see over and over again, for example, is a woman who will fall in love with a man who is not a Christian. And what does she do? She begins to look at all the good side of it. But the bad side of it is guess what? If he's not a Christian, he's not going to commit to you. He's not constrained to. And you see that in every area of life, you know, people who buy their stocks, they know they know a good deal and so they buy on margin. And then guess what? Everything falls out the bottom and they're totally in debt for the rest of their lives. Because they looked at the good side of something, but they didn't look at the bad side. I got to ask you, if you're here today, do you look at the bad side? If you're not a Christian today, do you have you rarely ever stopped to contemplate the bad side of things? You know, I was telling my community group the other night that we have. I went to see a movie called Your Friends in Neighbors. And if you've seen that, it's a very interesting movie. And there's one guy in there who basically is the incarnation of evil. He sleeps with women left and right. He's just hideous. He abures his people. And there comes a time when one of his best friends looks at him. And he said, don't you feel like you're going to be judged someday? He makes some interesting comments. He says, yeah, I guess so, but we're on my time now. You see, are you on your time or God's time? Because the bottom line is it's all God's time. What does Romans 1 say? It says the wrath of God is being revealed now by turning you over to your sin. And so when God promised that in the day you eat of it, you'll surely die. Now when you sin, you're dying. You're killing yourself. You've got to ask yourself, is somehow my sin taking care of it? Only you can say that because only you know whether or not you trust your Christ. Let me finish up here. Look at the result of sin in verse 7. It says they ate, and then in verse 7, the eyes of both of them were open, and they knew that they were naked, and they sew big leaves together and made themselves coverings. What was God's intention for Adam and Eve? It was that they'd be naked and unashamed. And how did Adam and Eve end up naked and ashamed? They ended up like you and I are naked and ashamed, and they did the same thing that you and I do. What do we do? You spend a good part of your life either sinning or covering up for your sin. You spend a good part of your life either either being sinned against or dealing with by covering up how people have abused you and hurt you and dealt with you. And what is the gospel saying? The gospel says, you know Adam and Eve may have been successful of covering themselves from each other. Let me think about it. They may have big leaves. They couldn't see each other anymore, but guess who still sees you? Guess who's still sees into your heart? Guess who sees all your brokenness, all your guilt, everything. Jesus. And what is the point of the gospel? The point of the gospel is to restore you back to what you were created to be and you were created to be naked and unashamed. So what does the gospel continually do? It calls you back to that. And there's only one way that you can be naked and unashamed. That's trust, Christ. That's the bottom line. It may seem too simple, but the bottom line is that Jesus comes to you and he says, I will take all of your sin from you and I live the life you were supposed to live and I died the death you were supposed to die and now you're free and clear. Are you going to believe that? Do you believe that? Think about that. Let me pray. Dear Jesus, I pray that you would come and you would apply the gospel to our heart that in fact we would look at the fall and we would see what an opportunity is to be redeemed. We would see your love and your grace. We praise you and thank you and your name. Each week at Grace Seattle, we take an offering. And the reason we take an offering is simply to give people who are members here, regular attenders. If you own this church, it is your opportunity to worship through giving. If you're just visiting, please use this time to take something. If you're looking at your bulletin, there are several prayers of meditation. Use this time to take Christ, please.