Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the August 30th sermon from Clifford Baptist Church, 635 Fletcher's Level Road in Amherst. Today's sermon is entitled sin 101. And the scripture is from Genesis delivered today by John Martin, our worship pastor.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Amen. Well, I tell you what, this is a treat for me. Hopefully you will get something out of the message today.
If you would please turn in your Bibles to the first book of the Bible, Genesis. And we're in chapter three today, as you're turning there. Genesis, chapter three.
When I was a kid, and maybe you are of an age that you will know what I'm talking about, we had a set of books in my house called the Bible story books. I don't know if you remember those. They had Bible stories for children. They had these beautiful paintings in them. And my parents, one of the few things we had as kids growing up because we were. We were pretty much just poor, flat out poor, was my parents bought this set. It was like 12 or 13 of these old and New Testament books. And they had these beautiful pictures. And as I think about this story, we're going to look at the first sin. I think about some of those images in my mind. You may remember, like there's, if you've ever seen the Bible story books, they used to have them also in like doctor's offices where you could, like, while you're waiting forever to get and see the doctor, you could thumb through and look at the pictures. There's like, of course, David and Goliath. And you see the little boy with the sling and the giant there. And you see the flood and you see all the water coming and the boat on top of it. When I think of the story that we're going to read about in Genesis 3, I think about first is the image of Eve. And you see the serpent slithering down out of the tree to talk to her. Or you see where Adam and Eve are hiding from God, literally hiding from his presence. And then you see, basically I remember one of the pictures or one of the paintings was basically the angelic guardian at the Garden of Eden when they were cast out. And so today we're going to be looking at the very first sin. That's why I call it sin 101.
When this country boy, West Virginia went to college, I learned real quickly what the labels for the classes meant. And one level or 100 level was the first class, 200 was the next, and 300. And so when I enrolled in, in music, I had to go to Theory 101 and Music History 101. And finally, when you got a little higher, you go to Music Theory 201 or Music Theory 202. And so they had all these things. Basically, we're going to look at the very first sin, and we're going to look at the foundational things of what sin is. And so now that you found your place, we're going to. This is a whole chapter, so bear with me. Lord willing, we're going to get through this. We're going to basically divide our three points, this chapter, into three points. The first is three dangerous deceptions. The second is going to be three immediate impacts. And then the last of the three points is three radical results.
And then we're going to tie it back to the scripture passage that was read from Romans 5, that this goes along with that as well. And of course, all the songs this morning have been about God's grace. But we're going to go to really the sin that led to the whole thing leading up to Christ's sacrifice for us and the grace that he offers. So first we're going to look in Genesis chapter three, verse one through six, at the three dangerous deceptions. And so if you would look there at Genesis, chapter three, verse one, it says now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he, the serpent said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.
And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it. Yes, ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Let's pray. Father God, as we look at your word of the very first sin.
Well, the first sin of. Of humankind, we know that the serpent, that Satan was a sinner before that. But Lord, this first sin. Father, we pray that you'll give our eyes us eyes to see and ears to hear, Lord, hearts to understand.
And that you will speak through my human tongue, Lord, the words. I just thank you, Lord, for this opportunity and just appreciate Pastor Jeffrey allowing me to do this, Lord. And I pray that you will be honored and glorified in our midst. We pray in Christ's name and Amen.
So as we look at this first point, the three dangerous deceptions we're going to look at what Satan, how? Well, there are three parts to that first part. The first is how the serpent deceived the woman.
Now, I'll keep calling her the woman because in Genesis she's not called Eve until later. So if you hear me call her the woman, it's not demeaning, it's just what Genesis 3 calls her. Anyway, so the serpent is going to deceive the woman. And so first, the first thing he does, as you see there first is he questions God's words. He said, he basically came up and said, hey, has God said this thing? Has God said that ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And notice the way he put it? He put it basically, hey, wait, this is such a wonderful place. Is God not allowing you to eat from every tree here? Is there a restriction on you?
And so first he questioned God's words, and then he.
Second, he questioned God's motives when she told him what the prohibition had been, that, well, we can eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but there's this one tree in the middle that we can't eat of. And God said, we can't even touch it, neither eat of it or touch it, lest we die.
The serpent said, well, you'll not surely die. So he questioned God's motives. And then he adds to it. He said, oh, because for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes will be opened.
And so at first he said, well, God didn't really mean what you say he meant. You say that you can't touch it. You say you can't eat of it and you're going to die. Well, you're not going to surely die. And the interesting thing is the word there in Hebrew, they translate it surely die. But basically when you look it up, it's die, die. He said, you won't die. Die, die. No, you're not going to die. Now, of course, Adam and Eve had no idea what dying meant. They just knew God had said, don't eat lest you die. And so Satan said, you're not going to surely die.
And we find in the Old Testament, especially when you use Hebrew, that when you really want to emphasize it, you just repeat the word.
So like when we see holy, holy, holy, to them it would mean most holy or the most righteous. And so here he says, well, he says moot. Moot. That's the word. The word for die is moot.
And when you Read it. He says, moot, moot. You will not moot, moot. You won't really die.
And then he says, because God knows that instead, that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil. And that's the third of the three deceptions. First, he questioned God's words. Then he questioned God's motive. The reason God is telling you you're going to die is because actually your eyes are going to be open. Something good's going to happen, and you're going to know good from evil. And then he questioned God's sovereignty. If you think about it, what would happen if Eve's eyes were opened? He says, you'll be as God's knowing good and evil. What would happen if Eve. Eve could know good and evil for herself?
Who would she not need?
God.
God would tell them what good and evil was. He says, don't eat from that tree because you're gonna die. And she's like. The serpent is like, well, wait a second.
God knows that if you eat of this, you're gonna actually. Something good will happen. Your eyes will be open, and then you will know good from evil. You'll be as gods. You'll be as if you were God. So he questioned the sovereignty of God. God had made the rule. And that's, you know, basically that God is wanting to be sovereign, but that they would become like God if they took and ate the word there. He said, you shall be as gods. That's Elohim. It's often used to describe God in the Old Testament. He says, you will know good.
It's the same word. When you look earlier in Genesis that was described each day of creation. It says that day's creation was good, and then the next day's creation was good. And then the word for evil is Ra. And that's the same word they used for. It says, as it was in the days of Noah. And it describes the days, how every man's thought was on evil continually. It's the same word as there.
The serpent said, you'll know good and you will know evil. So it brought up a question to me, and I'm an odd person. Anybody in the worship ministry at Clifford knows that I'm a little different the way I think.
And so it brought up a question. Maybe you've never thought of this, but maybe you have. Why did the serpent go after Eve instead of Adam? Why did he go for Eve first? Why did he approach her? Why did he tempt her? Well, to Me, as I've studied it, there's two sides to the same coin. One is, if you notice what she said and you know anything about Genesis 2, you know that the words she used to describe what God had said were not exactly the words that God told Adam. If you go back to chapter two, in verse 15, you read this, and the Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
Now, the interesting thing is that the serpent, when Eve says what she says, he says, you'll not surely die. He's actually going back to what God told Adam. But she said, we may not eat of it, we may not touch it, lest we die. And so, in a sense, she must. I mean, we can speculate how this happened. We know she had not. If you read Genesis verbatim, she had not been created yet. So you could say, well, apparently Adam told Eve what God had said. Instead of God going back to Eve and saying, hey, you know what I told Adam? Let me tell you what it is. Here's what I told Adam. That it's very likely that what Adam did was he was the one that told Eve what God had said.
So we go on the other part of the same coin. So she had gotten it kind of secondhand. And then the other part of it was that she was created to be a helper for Adam. And the word there is azer. Now, the word helper in Genesis is used not in Genesis, but just in the Old Testament. The word azer is used several times. And every time it's used to describe somebody who kind of reaches out to give a helping hand to somebody to pull them up or to rescue them. And so here God has made this helper to help Adam. Not to be an appliance, not to be a tool, not to be a maid, not to be.
I wrote this down. Not to be an Alexa, where you just go and ask questions, but to literally be somebody who could help Adam to make decisions. She could be an advisor, she could be a counselor.
You know, if they hadn't sinned, we can imagine that she and Adam had this perfect relationship where they could help each other and she could give him wise counsel. Well, here she is. So she is this one that Adam would listen to.
He's not just going to say, oh, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. But also on the other side of the same coin is she had gotten the information secondhand, potentially. So she was the one who could.
Who knew the least, if you compare it to what Adam getting the words directly from God, but she could influence the most.
If the serpent had gotten Adam, Adam would say, no, no, no, God said this, and we're not doing it. But he went to Eve, and Eve could get Adam to do what the serpent wanted. What did the serpent want? He wanted him to eat the fruit.
So here we see the second deception. And this is where, in a sense, the woman, she deceives herself.
It says in verse 6a, it says, and then when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired, to make one wise, she took of the fruit and did eat.
So in a way, she broke both of them because she said, we can't touch it and we can't eat of it, lest we die. And it says, she took it and she ate it.
So let's look at how she deceived herself. First, we've often heard this expression, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of Life. It's in First John 2:16, says, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. So here is it first happening. So the lust of the flesh. It says that she looked at the tree and saw that the fruit on it was good for food. So she's like, hey, that looks good.
It also says that she was tempted through the lust of the eyes. It says that it was not only good for food, but she saw that it was pleasant to her eyes. So whatever it was, maybe there's a special shine. Maybe Satan had even polished it up for her so that it looked especially good.
She sees that it's good for food, that it's pleasant to the eyes. And then the third it says, and it was a tree to be desired, to make one wise.
Wow.
So she wanted to be wise.
And then. And so the temptation seems so simple, really, just to eat a fruit.
I mean, I hear a lot of people who are unbelievers, they'll say that's unfair. God gave this silly rule that you can't eat this fruit. And then they ate the fruit. And then God punishes them for just eating a fruit. Why didn't he give them a harder thing that they could have been more likely to follow? Well, guess what? It was a simple task because that's all it took. Unfortunately, all they had to do was eat that and they had sinned.
So, and the third thing, and this one, she.
She had to go to Adam after she took and she ate. And then, so in verse 6b, it says, and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. Now, I don't know about you husbands, but me, sometimes my wife will just say, hey, here, do this. And I'll just go do it because I trust her.
But Adam, in a way, it could have been. I mean, there's three possibilities. Either she just said, hey, Adam, here, have this and eat this. And Adam said, oh, okay. And he starts eating it without even thinking about it. That's a possibility. There's another possibility. She could have said, hey, Adam, I just had this conversation over here with this wise serpent. And he said that what God said, you know, she could have just laid it all out and she could have convinced him to eat it. Or I guess there's a third one that's in between. Maybe she said, look, Elvis. And when he's looking, she switched the fruit.
Or, yeah, I know Elvis didn't exist back then, but anyway. Or she could have said, now this one, Husbands, you may have heard, if you love me, you'll eat this.
Remember, she had already eaten. So you could say, in a sense, she had already sinned. And you could say she could do whatever she wanted to try and get him to eat it anyway.
But the result was the same. Adam took and Adam ate. And so now they were both condemned, they were both in sin. And I can imagine Satan, the serpent that he was either saying, my work here is done, or mission accomplished. Satan had done what he intended to do. All he had to do was get him to eat. It didn't matter what he said. It didn't matter what he did. He just had to get them to disobey God. And so one of the main points that's going to come later is sin doesn't have to be any more complicated than just knowing that sin is disobedience to anything God says. That is sin. If you don't obey God, then you have sinned. All right, now I do want to compare it real quick to the temptation of Jesus we find in Luke's Gospel. I'm going to.
I'm going to basically read it. Luke 4. I don't have it up on the screen, but it says, and the devil said unto Jesus, if thou be the Son of God, command the stone to be made bread. So which one is that? The lust of the flesh.
And then Jesus responds, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Then he takes him up to a high mountain and he says he showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And he says, hey, I will give you all this. It's been delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou wilt worship me, all shall be thine. So he showed him all these things, so that could be the lust of the eyes Jesus is looking. Satan has somehow presented him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. It's all this wonder and splendor. And he says, hey, you don't have to go to the cross, Jesus, if you will bow down and worship me, you can have it right now.
And Jesus told him, you know, get behind me, Satan. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only. And then the third one, he took him up to the pinnacle of the temple and he said, if thou be the Son of God.
It's interesting too. He says, if thou be the Son of God, all three times, basically questioning if he is the Son of God. Basically, prove it.
He's telling Jesus, he says, if thou be the son of God, cast thyself down from hence.
And he basically quotes scripture, it's written, he'll give his angels charge over thee.
And so he's asking Jesus to do something. If Jesus had cast himself down from the temple and the angels had caught him up, guess what? Everybody would know right then who he was.
Because one, all these angels will appear, and two, there's this guy jumping off the pinnacle of the temple and. And he doesn't die, that he would be showing them who he was. So basically, it would have gone to his pride. And he tells him not to tempt the Lord thy God. And then Satan goes away.
So now we've gotten the three dangerous deceptions. Now we're going to go to the second point, which is the three immediate impacts. We see what happened right after.
Excuse me, right after they ate of the fruit, starting in verse seven. And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked and.
And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
And God, he said, who told thee that thou wast naked?
Hast thou eaten from the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And so the first and second points I want to get to, the first one was shame shaming. The first immediate impact was they immediately when their eyes were opened, they knew something wasn't right. They knew, hold on.
They didn't even know what clothes were, but they knew something wasn't right.
We're naked. Or as, of course, if you're from the hills of West Virginia, you're naked, okay, but you're naked. They knew something wasn't right and they were ashamed of that. And it says that they also hid from God. So the first immediate impact was shaming. Their perfect relationship with God was damaged. We can imagine before that if God had called their names, they'd be running to God, no shame, no fear, no nothing like that.
The second one, this is one that you find if you read the verses verbatim, is I call it maiming. And let me explain what I mean. When you maim something, you destroy it or you hurt it. Basically, it says that they took the leaves and they sewed them together. So what they literally had to do was go to a fig tree, start tearing off the leaves and then making their garments. You may say, it's so big deal.
Well, they're basically destroying creation.
So the first thing, their relationship with God was damaged because they were now afraid of God. They were shamed. They were in fear. And the second thing was, their perfect relationship with creation was also damaged. Cause now they're just ripping things off, trying to hide their nakedness from God.
You may say, well, what's the big deal? Weren't they destroying creation when they ate the fruit? You know, God said, hey, here's all these trees. Go ahead and eat. Well, first the fruit was made to be eaten.
And the second thing was, God told them to do it. So it was a command. So obviously it can't be sin if God tells you to do it. But here they're grabbing the leaves, which were live things on the trees. So you may say that's a quibbly little point. But the point was, is they were literally destroying creation now that they were sinners.
All right, and the third thing.
Yeah, and the third thing. And when we start in verse 12, this is the big one. And the man said to God, basically, after he says, we knew we were naked, we hid ourselves. And God says, did you eat from the tree? So in verse 12, it says, and the man said, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, which is the word nashah, which means deceive. He deceived me and I did eat.
So here we see that Adam, basically, well, first he blamed Eve. And then he said, and I ate. So he did say, I did eat. But he said, ah, this woman you gave me. In a sense, he's also blaming God. Hey, you gave her to me. She gave me to eat and I ate.
Then he goes to the woman and he says, what'd you do? And she says, well, the serpent deceived me and I ate. So she said, yeah, the serpent did this. And then I did this. Now notice God never went to the serpent because the serpent was already a sinner and he was responsible. So God didn't go to him. So the third impact, the immediate impact was blaming. They blamed each other.
Now imagine if God had asked the serpent. He'd just go and just kind of grin like, or like Urkel, you remember, if you're old enough like me. Did I do that? No. The serpent knew exactly what he was doing.
So their perfect relationship with each other was also damaged. So first their relationship with God was damaged. They were afraid of him. Now second, their perfect relationship with creation was damaged because they were ripping things off and basically killing plants to cover their shame. And then third, they were blaming each other. Now it is interesting that God ask these questions of them. Where are you? Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree? And what is this that you have done? Now, does that mean God didn't know what they did? Does that mean God didn't know where they were? Does that mean God didn't know? Now, of course God knew. But as we often find believer brother and sister in Christ, does God usually ask you about your sin because he doesn't know what you've done?
No, he asks you because he wants you to.
To say it. It's almost like a parent child. Hey, I'll talk about John Leonard because he's not here. Ha ha. Anyway, but with John Leonard. Hey, hey, John, we're missing this. Do you know where it is? When he was the only one? Oh, no, no, Dad, I don't Know what that is? You sure you don't? No, I don't. Yeah, we knew, but I was telling Jeremy this morning. We were talking about it. There's a video online and he knew about it, where this kid is sitting in his vehicle and he's got cupcake icing smeared all over his face. And his dad asked him, hey, who took the jack?
Did you eat the last cupcake? No, dad, no, I didn't. Are you sure you didn't eat? No. And he's got it literally covering from the top of his face to the bottom. And he's got the evidence of what he did, but he's not gonna tell his dad that he did. So the point is that God asked those questions to get them to say what they had done. It was for their benefit, not his.
And then the second question I ask myself is, why didn't God dispute what they said? Why didn't God say, you're a liar? When Adam said, this woman you gave me, she gave me the woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit and I ate it. Why didn't God say, you're a liar? Well, because in its essentials, that was true. God had given Eve to Adam, Eve had given the fruit to Adam, and Adam ate it. Adam was still responsible.
But that was true. Eve didn't lie about the serpent. The serpent did deceive her. She did, and she took it and she ate. And so in essentials, the reason God didn't question what they said was cause in essence, it was true. But they still remained guilty. And so we go to the last point, which is the three radical results. And we look at starting in verse 14, the first radical result was punishment.
They were punished. You may say, well, that's not radical. Well, guess what? It starts with the letter R. So I use the word radical anyway. If I thought of another word that started with or, I might have changed it. But the first radical result was punishment. They all three got punished. Each punishment fit the crime. Each punishment was tailor made. And each punishment, if you want to imagine, like a two edged sword, each punishment had two parts to it. The first, he punished the serpent. It says in verse 14 and 15 it says, and the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. So basically, whatever the serpent was before, now, he was gonna go on his belly. Now he was gonna be basically the potential be run over by everything, stepped on by everything, kicked. And there was no way for the serpent. So he had gone from this being the most subtle, which could mean crafty, it could mean deceitful. It could also mean.
I forgot the other word. Anyway, I'm not going to turn back. But there were several meanings of the word subtle in the Hebrew anyway. But God said, you're going to be the lowest of the low. In fact, used to be. Maybe you've heard this expression. People would say, me, they would say, how you feeling? And somebody, if they were feeling down and low, they'd say, I'm lower than snake sweat in a wagon rut in Death Valley. And that's pretty low. Amen. Amen. Snake sweat in a wagon rut in Death Valley. That's about as low as you can be. So the serpent was going to be on his belly and the second part. So he was punished first.
The first of the three punishments, he was punished as a created thing. Now he was going to be the lowest of the low. And the second part of his punishment, verse 15. And I will put enmity, which means a profound dislike and almost like bitterness between. I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. And it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel. And so the second, the serpent was punished because he sinned against the woman. And so his seed, his offspring, his however you want to characterize that some people tie it to. The Antichrist would be defeated. Ultimately, his seed would be defeated by her seed. He would ultimately fail. And I put epic fail. The second punishment was the punishment for the woman in Genesis 3:16.
In the first part, it says unto the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply. Which means, increase thy sorrow, which is pain, labor, toil, and thy conception in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.
And so all the women said, amen. I mean, you know, if you have had children, if you have ever conceived or given birth, you know, not only from the conception to delivery, but you could say all through childhood, I got so many living in my house anyway. And they still cause you pain, don't they? They do. But anyway, he said that her pain would be multiplied and her sorrow would be multiplied. And we know that to be true also. And in the second half, it says, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And when I was younger, it was so interesting. I would think about this, and I'd think, wait a second. Don't I want my wife to desire me? How can that be part of the curse. But then when I got a little more into it, I discovered that the word that's used, desire, here, I won't necessarily say it in Hebrew, but it has the meaning of that she would reach out to grab hold of or to take. And you'd say, well, that still doesn't sound negative. Well, it's used.
So you take scripture to interpret scripture. If you look in Genesis 4, one chapter later, almost exactly the same word combination is used.
God is talking to Cain, and Cain is angry about his brother's sacrifice and his sacrifice. And in Genesis 4:7, God says to Cain, if you do well, shalt thou not be accepted. And if thou doest not well, sin lieth, or some versions say, croucheth at the door, and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And the idea there is definitely a negative one, that sin wants to take control of Cain and get him, but that Cain would have to rule over it, basically not allow that to happen.
Controversial to say, but what it seems to say is that now there would be a dynamic between the husband and wife, between Adam and Eve, that there would be a power struggle, literally.
Not that that was good, but that's what would be. And so Eve would at times want to basically take control. I know better than Adam. I know better.
But that in the end, Adam would be responsible in a sense. He would rule. Not that he should. Not that there should be.
How do I say this? Not that there should be abuse on one side, not that there should be, you know, just power struggle on the other. And all we have to do is look at the New Testament to see that when Christ came, there was an answer to that. Ephesians 5 talks about it. I'll read a little bit of it. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be subject to their own husbands and everything.
And then the husband, he says, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water, by washing of water by the Word. And so basically, in the new covenant through Christ, we can defeat that curse. Husbands and wives submitting to one another in love can restore what was supposed to be that relationship.
But the truth of the matter is, is that there.
It's almost like the old story. How the leopard got its spots. We're seeing how things were made. God said, because Eve, you took this response and basically what it was, she had taken her responsibility to be Adam's counselor, his guide, his helper. And she had in essence, misused that because she had encouraged him to sin.
And so she had kind of led him astray. And so there. God's saying, there's going to be this power struggle between you two. All right, last one.
The third one was that there would be. Of the punishments was Adam's punishment. And so in 17 through 19, it says, and unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.
Thorns and thistles. Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee. And thou shalt eat the herb of the field. And so first Adam would be punished as caretaker of creation. No longer would it be easy for him just to go and pluck something, maybe trim a few things here or there. He would literally have to basically dig in the ground and work hard to get it.
And all the men said amen. Because just as women have had sorrow, it's the same word he said that he would have sorrow in the eating of it.
The woman was given sorrow in labor and child rearing, and the husband would have sorrow in getting the food from the ground. And then the second part in 19, he says, in the sweat of thy face, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Because Adam had sinned against God, that special relationship he had was now going to be severed.
And so even he would have to go back to the dust from whence he was made. Now, the great thing is that I'm going to skip some stuff because of our time. So I'm going to go now. Jeremy, if you just go to Romans 5, we're going to go to what now in Christ. We have.
I'm going to skip over a few things. I'm going to skip over another radical result. I'll just say it was provision. God provided them animal skins, and Eve got a name from Adam, and God literally clothed them. Those were their three provisions. And then the third one of the radical results was protection. God literally shoved them out of the Garden of Eden, but for their own Good.
And here we see it in Romans, chapter 5:18 through 21. It says, Therefore, as by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience. And if you're confused at all, that's Adam.
For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. That's Moses, the Mosaic law. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
21. What was read this morning, that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. So if we look on the screen, in Adam, offense, disobedience, sin one, meaning the one man, condemnation, judgment, and made sinners on the other side through Christ, righteousness instead of offense, obedience instead of disobedience, grace instead of sin, to the many, all men working out those who come to him in faith, justification of life, free gift instead of judgment. And all can be made righteous. So here is the final thing. I call it landing the plane. Three challenges for you or three things. Sin is persuasive. It is something. It is disobedience. That's as simple as it can get.
Second thing, sin is pervasive. Everybody sins.
If anybody ever tells you they don't, they're lying, which is a sin. Ta da.
If anybody said, yeah, so I can quote the scripture, pervasive. Romans 7:15 for that, Paul saying, I do what I don't want to do and what I don't want to do, that I do. So, sins of omission, sins of commission. Basically, sin is persuasive.
Sin is pervasive. It's everybody. Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Romans 6:23. Sin brings death, for the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So Christ offers all those wonderful things on the right.
Adam and the sin that came in sin 101, the very first sin brought all that bad stuff on the left. Praise God.
All that good stuff on the right is available to anyone who would believe. And so I offer this invitation, this challenge. One is, if you're here today and you are not a believer in Christ, and you either may have been really confused what was shared from Genesis 3, or maybe it makes sense and you're thinking, but hold on a second.
I've never.
I'm still. I would say I'm still in sin. I'm still in that original state of being a sinner. Well, guess what?
It's as easy as what we learned back.
And you may have heard it. It's as easy as ABC1. You have to admit that you're a sinner. That's how you come to faith in Christ. B. You believe that Jesus is God's son and that his substitutionary death on the cross paid for your sin, and that then he rose from the dead. Rose from the dead on the third day. You don't have to understand all of that. But then you confess it and you say, you know what? That sounds pretty good. I can have my sins forgiven. I can have the promise of eternal life. So maybe you're here today and that's what you need to do.
Second, maybe you're a believer, and right now you're in continued sin.
You need to know that you can resist the tempter. You don't have to do. And you may say, well, my sin's a lot more complicated than what you just read from Genesis 3. That was just eating a fruit. You. You don't even understand what I'm going through. I know, but Scripture also says that there's no temptation that we can't get, that we can't resist and we can't get out of through Jesus Christ our Lord. So I encourage you today. Maybe you need to do some business with God about something you're going through. And third is you need to make sure that you seek forgiveness because we all still sin. You can seek for God's forgiveness for the sin you're currently in. So I'm gonna ask if we'll pray together and then we're gonna have our invitation. Let's pray. Father God, we ask that you would now use this time of invitation.
Maybe people feel led to come forward. Maybe they pray in their seat.
But Lord, that they would see that there's this grace, this unmerited favor that they've been given, Lord, through your son, Jesus Christ, that they can see that their sin all these thousands of years after the first sin of Adam and Eve that is paid for on the cross by Jesus Christ. And it does not have to control us. Father, I pray that you'll help us to do business with you as we respond. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Clifford Baptist Church invites you to join us for worship every Sunday morning at 11am for more information about our church, please call our church office at. At 434-94-605 55.
