It's interesting though because
isn't that one of the hardest things for us to grasp? To get
our mind around the fact that we are loved by God. And then also to remember that
we ought to love one another and then learning how to do that. And the good days and the days
of sunny picnics and bright flowery blooms and birds singing and
kites flying, it's easy to love each other. But when conflict
or stress or change come, that is when the true test of divine
love comes to completion. That's when the true test of
our spiritual maturity begins to reveal itself. And beloved,
no matter how long we are in the faith, no matter how hard
we have tried, no matter how confident we are in grace, We
will be put to the test, and we will be found wanting. But
Jesus Christ, the God-man, shall never fail. He shall never fail. And because we will be found
wanting, it doesn't mean that we do not continue to strive.
For we see those things taught of us in Scripture, and as James
teaches us in his letter, we can expect nothing from the Lord,
nothing whatsoever, if we do not follow the simple instructions
given to us there. Though God works in His own way,
in His own time, He works through the means that He has prescribed,
found and revealed in His Word. We're continuing in Genesis this
morning. We're going to go through chapter
4 before we get into 1 Timothy. And today we're going to dive
into chapter 3. But at the end of what we know
as chapter 2, there is a phrase there, and this will be the focus
of our teaching this morning, and that is verse 25 of chapter
2, where it says, and the man and his wife were both naked,
and they were not ashamed. They were not ashamed. Verse
1 of 3, let's read together. Now the serpent was more crafty
than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He
said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any
tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent,
we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God
said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in
the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you
die. But the serpent said to the woman,
you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat
of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil. So when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food with her eyes, and saw that it was a delight,
And that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was
to be desired to make one's wise She took of its fruit and ate
it and gave also some to her husband who was standing with
her and he ate it Then the eyes of both of them were opened and
they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together
and made themselves loincloths and And then they heard the sound
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God
called the man and said to him, Where are you? The man said,
I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because
I was naked and I hid myself. He said, Who told you you were
naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you
not to eat? And the man said, The woman whom
you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and
I ate. Then the Lord said to the woman, What is this you have
done? And the woman said, The serpent
that you have made deceived me, and I ate. And the Lord said
to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above
all livestock and above all beasts of the fields. On your belly
you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and
you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will
surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall
bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary
to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam he
said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and
have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not
eat. Cursed is the ground because
of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall
eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you
shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you
were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return. The
man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of
all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife
garments of skins and clothed them. And then the Lord God said,
Behold, see, the man has become like one of us, knowing good
and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also the tree
of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him
out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he
was taken. He drove out the man and at the
east of the garden of Eden he placed a cherubim and a flaming
sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of
life. May we understand the word of
the Lord. It's interesting when you think
about the idea of what people call liberal. If you grew up
using recipes or doing woodworking, you know
that instruction. Liberally apply. Add a liberal
portion. That's like an unmeasured portion.
Just put it on there. Just stack it up. When you get
a to-go box, you want a liberal portion. You don't want, you
know, three nuggets and four fries. You want to feel and hear
that styrofoam squeak. you know, and snap. And it's
interesting because I consider myself one of the highest persons
of conservatism when it comes to things of spiritual knowledge
and the Word of God. Yet I get blamed for being liberal
more times than I would like to count. And the reason for that is because
we have put connotation on those terms because of political standings. Which, by the way, I could destroy
your political viewpoints in just about four or five seconds.
But that's not what the pulpit's for. To show every one of us
in here we are all liberal and we are all conservative in some
things. And none of us are right in anything. We are wrong in all things. So,
when I think of being called a liberal because of the way
God has written Genesis, and we read it according to its writing,
it bothers me. Why? Because I don't want to
be a liberal theologian. I don't want to be the fruity
guy who believes it's all about puppy dogs and rainbows. And
that, you know, this pretty little God and His pretty little garden
with His pretty little people, But I'll tell you it is extremely
imaginative to think, as I've said already, that science must
be understood in order to grasp the revelation of God's sovereignty
in the context of Genesis 1, 2, 3, and 4. I've said it over and over again,
this is week number 12 in our little Genesis introduction,
and I want you to know that without proper application and understanding
of this text, you and I, none of us, can understand the rest
of the letter, nor can we understand anything written whatsoever in
the Old Testament, and we find ourselves in need of some instruction. What we see here in Genesis,
in this outline, is clearly revelation. That's what it is. It's revelation. God is revealing Himself to us
through the pen of Moses, the prophet, who, by the way, was
not with Adam and Eve in the garden. Sometimes I think we just need
to be reminded of that. Here's Moses. Some millennia after Israel,
writing all of these things down by the Spirit of God. Genesis
is not an exhaustive history of life, of the existence of
everything. For if we were to get an exhaustive
history, scientifically even, of just the makeup of a cellular
structure, I don't know if any of you ever took organic chemistry,
but most folks don't find that very interesting, much less glorious. Yet some people love it. Some people avoid it. The Scripture
here in Genesis is to show us the details as much as needed
to see the sovereign power of God in His work and it's not
complete. It's not meant to explain and
expose everything. But one of the errors that we
find when we read this narrative, yes, this is an event that took
place in history. But the reason that it's one
paragraph is because it's not necessary to dive into the details. God is revealing Himself and
as He reveals Himself in the creation of things, He reveals
Himself in the creation of humanity. He'll reveal His sovereignty
in Himself in the sin of humanity and He'll reveal Himself in the
redemption of humanity. which is the point of Genesis,
which is the point of God's sovereign work with the people of Israel,
Abraham's seed. And then we see the Gospels,
and through the Gospels, then the teaching of the apostles
to live life according to the Gospel is the New Testament,
from which we get the lens through which we read the Old Testament
to understand the revelation of God from the beginning. It's
one story, one message, one God, one revelation. There are no
other stories in the Bible but the revelation of God and His
sovereignty to create a people for Himself that He has redeemed
justly through the life and the death and the resurrection of
Jesus Christ alone. That is it. There is nothing
else to learn. There is nothing else to see.
There is nothing else to establish that is beneficial for the church
at large, though we do enjoy digging a little deeper. And
sometimes we dig a little deeper and we don't realize we're just
a few inches from the sewer line. And if we stick that ax in the
wrong side, we get flooded with the wrong type of material and
then we are going to end up being in the same boat that Adam was
in and Eve was in and we would not be listening to what God
has revealed for our good. And we will be like God. that
we have wisdom that we did not have before. Naked. There's a segue for you. I mean, think about this. God
has created the world and everything in it according to its kind.
showing He can take nothing and make something, and out of nothing,
making something, this picture of chaos became a picture of
order, became a picture of life, became a picture of, if I can
go so far to say, I think it's very clear, separation. A word
for that is holiness. A word for that is sanctification.
where God is separating things according to His will, according
to His purposes, and according to His promises. And He's separating
everything. And all of these pictures, as
we've already seen, point to the one true image of God in
the flesh, who is Jesus Christ, the God-man. Not Adam, not Eve. They are statues of that perfection. They have never bore the image
in its reality. Jesus Christ is the only true
image of the invisible God. And then when we are in Him,
just as Eve was taken out of her husband as the same flesh
as one person, now two, together as one, again, so are the church
and Jesus Christ united through His flesh. This is for you. I
preached this last week and the week before. And now we see this perfect picture,
but it's not a picture of redemption, it's a picture of promise. It's
a picture of sovereign life. That when we are in Eden, that
means we are in the promises and the provision of God for
life. When we are with God in the cool of the day, we're walking
perfectly. And we see God showing that it
was not good for Adam to be alone, so out of Adam, only out of Adam
could there come another creature that was of equal standing with
Adam. So only out of Christ could there
come a bride that was of equal standing with Christ. Not of
her own righteousness, but coming from the body of the righteous
one. And so on and so forth. And we've proven through the
apostolic writing that this is not conjecture, this is not imagination,
this is direct didactics from the apostles who teach us as
Paul talks about in Colossians 3 and Colossians 1 and Hebrews
1 and Colossians 5 in the context of marriage. that the two shall
become one flesh. This is mysterious, but I say
that the creation of husband and wife in the first marriage
is just a microscopic picture of the complete macrocosmic reality
of Jesus Christ and the revelation of Himself as the God-man so
that He can make Himself a church, a gathering, a body, a bride,
as the husband, as the head. And then this sentence in verse
25, chapter 2, is a segue between this creation of this
great promise of a picture of a Savior that God says is not
good, that man should be alone. Beloved, if we are alone and
to ourselves, even in a state of innocence without sin, it
is just a matter of minutes before we fall into sin because that
is what the human condition consists of. That's what we do. When the resolve
is that the creature manifests commitment, and determination
to maintain his self or herself in life, even when life is right
there at our fingertips to touch and eat forever, we will always
screw it up. God purposed the fall. God decreed
the fall. God said, let there be light
so that there could be a fall, that He could be the Redeemer
of His people, proving He was the only one who is powerful
enough, and only good enough, and the only righteous one, and
that everything that exists, including and especially salvation,
is by His sovereign power alone. That's why Paul calls the gospel
the power of God in Romans 1 16. for which He is not ashamed.
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am not ashamed
of the good report, the story of goodness of Jesus the Messiah. That's what it says. When you
say gospel in your head, say good story, good revelation,
good report. That's what it means. Gospel
is a transliterated, discombobulated expression of a word that doesn't
exist in our world. It was made to sound spiritual. It means nothing in vernacular. It means good report. Digging through some old stuff,
I found some old journals from high school. Some of you have
talked about that. Reading some of my thoughts and
wisdom, you know. Nothing like a 17-year-old's
wisdom. Thankfully, there was no internet. There was no social
media because boy, I'd have blogged it all up. Logged it all up. Thank God there was none of that
even in my 20s. We thought cordless telephones
were the next awesome thing. But I found one of my report
cards. My junior year report card. I don't know where my senior
box is or my sophomore box. It probably got set on fire.
But that junior year, I found that box. Look at that. I found
my report card my junior year. I did very well. I had A averages
in all sorts of things. I did honestly, though, have
a very bad midterm geometry exam. I don't know why, because I ended
up with an A in the class. I love geometry. But that report card,
that good report, I remember always looking forward to bringing
that report card home, and on the back, there was a place for
my parent to sign that they had read the good report. And underneath
all of those signatures was a place for comments and thoughts and
concerns. The teachers could write some
things there. And there was never anything written there but, well
done, good report, keep up the good work. Talks a little too much in class. That was freshman year. A good
report. That's what the gospel is. It's
God sending a good report home to us. Revealing himself through
this good news. To say, hey, I am the creator
of all things. I have a purpose in redeeming
a people for myself. I have created all the necessary
means, every breath through every molecule of everything that floats
in the air. Even the very nature of the fact
that this dust particle right there. has a purpose in my design for
the redemption of my people. I am powerful over that and nothing
exists apart from me, especially your eternal life. Let me share
that report with you. That's called the gospel. The
gospel is not a group of magic words, a group of magic propositions.
It's God revealing Himself to us. And it starts in the very
beginning, pun intended. Let there be light. Who is the
light? John 3. Jesus says, I'm the light
that comes into the world, but people love the darkness rather
than the light because their works are evil. He's talking
to the most spiritual man that lived on the earth that day.
The most devout Jew that was alive at the moment. Nicodemus. The one that loved the Word of
God to the point that he taught it. He had the moniker, the teacher
of all of Israel. That's what Jesus called him.
And he loved darkness. What does that mean? He saw the
Word of God. He had it memorized since childhood. And there was no verse numbers. Beloved, you ever went through
Isaiah without verse numbers? That's insanity. I mean, I read
every day a verseless Bible. Because I read it. The numbers
make me think, see. I segment things with numbers.
So when I read the Bible, but when I'm looking for something,
I need numbers. I need a GPS coordinate. I need an address.
Just go somewhere. Go west and find the place you're
looking for. West! I've got to wait until sundown
to figure that out if I'm not in my hometown. You read the Bible and you see.
You see this compass, you see this focus, you see this promise.
And if we look to ourselves, we are not prepared to live. And the intention of God is to
show us His power in the promises of the good report of this Gospel.
This amazing grace, this amazing love for His people that's perfected. Here is Adam and Eve, perfect,
innocent, sinless, but not righteous. For only God is good, only God
is righteous, and only that which God calls good is good. And God
said it is not good for the man to be alone because He knew that
if man were by himself, man would fall into death. And the funny picture about that
is, is that it makes us all a bride, beloved. We are all the woman
in the economy of grace. We are all the bride. Jesus Christ
is our bridegroom. Jesus Christ is our husband,
which the literal word for husband means head. Head. I'm not translating the word
head to Arabic here. Great. We're bilingual now. They're always listening, beloved. Did y'all get that? What was
I saying? Head, there we go. Our husband. And the identifying reality of
where these people were in the presence of God with the promise
of life and the provision of God in Eden, in the presence
of walking with the Savior, walking with the Creator, is that they
both were naked. And they both, and I want to
change the word here to make better sense, were not embarrassed. That's a better translation.
They were both physically naked. And they were both not embarrassed. Now think about that for a second.
There's a beautiful picture there. that in our world, we can't approach
it. Because for some people, nakedness
is not a place of vulnerability. We have nudie colonies, and nudie
pictures, and nudie books, and all sorts of ideas. But for the most part, in every
section of culture, to be completely naked is a place of vulnerability.
to be completely naked. I mean, you know the nightmare
that most people have? You're at school and you look down and
you've got no pants on. And then you can't run or walk.
It's weird stuff that our mind does for us. But it is an embarrassment. It is embarrassing to be caught
unprepared and unclothed. We are in a state of innocence.
We are in the presence of the life promises of God as our Creator. Everything that Adam and Eve
needed and everything that they were was good. And they did not
need anything because they were clothed in the goodness of God's
promises and provision. So they were naked, but they
were clothed in goodness. They were clothed in the place
where God was. They were in His presence. They
were under His wing, if you will. They had everything they needed.
They needed nothing. They were in a state of innocence,
evidenced by the fact they were not embarrassed. I mean, you
know, I've got a grandson now. That's weird to say. I don't feel like I should have
a grandson, but it's awesome. You get to love him and hold
him and send him home. I mean, he's not even three months
old yet and we're already in that mode. We get to send him
home, you know? No 2 a.m. feedings. But when you bathe him or change
him or change his outfit, he doesn't care. He's like, hurry
up, somebody's coming in here. There's no concern with a child
when they're outside and they need to go to the restroom, they
just pull down their pants and go. And we teach them, no, no,
no, no, we're living in the sound. We don't live in the woods anymore.
You can't pee by the mailbox, son, please. Because they're
unashamed. They're not embarrassed by that.
It's just, I have to go and these pants are in the way. Let's go.
That's what you do. And now that's like a criminal
offense. You go to prison for stuff like that. Become a registered
sex offender. I just had to go to the bathroom.
Well, now you're going to prison where you get no door for your
bathroom. They weren't embarrassed in their
nakedness. They needed nothing more. And what's incredible about
that is they desired nothing more. They weren't contemplating
what they needed. You know, we need to find some
socks for the winter and some clothes here. We need to figure
out a way. I just don't think I like the way this grass feels
to my nakedness. We need to find something to
sit upon. There was no concern. They didn't need a thing. They
were in no state, they had no condition to realize that there
was anything wrong because there was nothing wrong. And there
was never a time where they were aware that they were naked. See, being naked in the garden
was good because it is how God made them. So the new couple
were good, as they were supposed to be, not embarrassed by anything,
not in need of anything, and able to rest in the promises
and provision of God for life and happiness, for life and joy. This is a picture of sovereignty. So they were clothed in the goodness
of God as He had made them. They had no shame before one
another, and they had no embarrassment before God. But something happened. And I'm going to press this,
and then we'll get into it, and between this week and next week,
we're going to prove it. But there's one sin that took
place in the hearts of this first couple, and specifically Eve,
and that was suspicion. Suspicion. And that's what happened in the
garden. Eve became suspicious of God. She saw all that was
there. She saw the promises that God
had made. She saw the provision that provided life, but the serpent
added something to that. He told the truth, but didn't
finish telling the truth. See, that's how it works. That's
how it works. And our minds become suspicious. Ever thought about that before?
Of course you haven't. That's why I planted it in your
head. Now you're suspicious of me saying
suspicion. All it takes is a word. All it
takes is a negative connotation. All it takes is a suggestion. And then next thing I know I
can have some of you barking like dogs. Meowing like chickens. You ever seen a hypnotist? It
wasn't hypnosis, it was just a thought. See, y'all are not
paying attention. If somebody did jump up and start
barking right now, I don't know what I'd do. This is something the flesh desires.
This is why suspicion is so common among us. We are suspicious of
the promises of God. How do we know? Because we don't
believe them. We believe them when all is well and when we're
focused, when we're together. Yes, the promises of God, the
Bible says, yes. But then our faith is tested
when we are tempted by our flesh. And we'll talk about that in
a minute. And so Adam and Eve seek to find wisdom and perfection
and completion in something outside of God's provision. All is well
with the world, naked, not embarrassed. Everything you ever need, you're
going to live forever. Do not eat of that tree. And then the
temptation comes along. That's all it takes. Now, we're
talking about Genesis 3, but we want to bowl on over to James
chapter 1 real quick. And we want to look there and
realize that there is some important things we need to understand
about this temptation of this first couple. First, we need
to know that God does not, nor has He ever, tempted anyone in
the whole history of creation. God cannot tempt someone. Because for God to tempt someone,
it would mean that God would have to offer evil. or promote
sinful behavior in that context. But God does put people to the
test. In other words, there was a test
taking place in the garden, one that was proven to fail because
God had decreed the fall in order that the point of creation could
be fulfilled and that to the praise of His glorious grace,
He would redeem a people for Himself. This is difficult for
us to grasp, and I think the Scripture in and of itself will
teach us these things, but it's not supposed to cause us to go
so deeply into our thought that we miss the point. In James chapter
1, in verse 12, which is sort of where we are midweek, blessed
is the man who remains steadfast under trial. For when he has
stood the test, he will receive the crown of life. Now this isn't
a condition of receiving the crown of life, This is a condition
of the fact that the test is coming and we're going to get
through the test. And eventually the season of
testing will be over because the crown of life is ours guaranteed
in Christ Jesus. Because God has promised the
crown of life to those who love Him. But let no one say, verse
13, when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God. For God cannot
be tempted with evil. And He Himself tempts no one.
God doesn't lure us in evil. But each person is tempted when
he is lured or enticed by his own desire. And I want you to
see that for a second. That's important to know. We
read Genesis through James, see. We read Genesis through John.
We read Genesis through Luke. We read Genesis through Paul.
We don't read them through Genesis. So here we have this first couple
and in the garden God sent the serpent. Now how did the snake talk? Folks,
the picture of the idea of serpent is a depiction of the enemy.
The enemy operates as God has willed him to operate. We see
in Job, which is the oldest writing of the Bible. Of course, creation
is the oldest account, of course. But Job is the oldest document
of our canon. And the scripture starts out
with Lucifer, with the enemy, with the fallen angel, in the
presence of God, for nothing can escape the presence of God.
And God asks questions to the devil, just like He asks questions
of Adam and Eve, not because He needs to know, but because
He wants to engage so that it can be recorded for our instruction
in the revelation of His nature and character. He says, you know,
what are you up to? And the devil says, you know
what I'm up to. It's like Isaiah. You think these
bones can come together? Well, you know, Lord. Why are
you asking me? You're the Lord. I mean, you
know. What are you up to? The devil's like, you know what
I'm up to. You threw me down here to prowl around the earth
to see what I can destroy and devour. I'm eating up stuff. I'm tearing up stuff. But you
know that. And then God says, what do you
think about Job as a target? I mean, I want to put this in
perspective for us. Have you considered my servant Job? Or
King James? Have thou considereth Jobeth?
No! I'm not considering Job. God,
you know what I'm doing. You know Job has got all your
protection. You've got him in your right
pocket. What is this? I'll tell you what I'm going
to do. I'm going to show myself faithful by allowing you to destroy
everything but Job's physical life. I want you to kill his
children. I'm gonna let you kill his friendships. I'm gonna let you destroy his
marriage. I'm gonna let you take his money. I'm gonna let you
tear down his houses. I'm gonna let you destroy everything
he has. And at the end of it all, he
will praise me for it. So it shall be. Now see, people
have a hard time with that revelation. because we have pigeonholed and
blocked up, really. We've sort of put God to a square
or to a hole and we've cemented Him over into our own ideologies
that this is who God is and this is how God is and there's nothing
that's going to change that. No, God reveals how He is and God
has revealed that He is sovereign even over evil. And He has purposed
it and decreed it for His purposes to the praise of His glory because
what He does is righteous. You understand? And I won't say
what's next in my mouth because it'll cause a lot of confusion.
But we know what is righteous by knowing what God does. God
is not bound to a set of parameters in which we deem righteous. He
is righteous in all that He does. And so here is Job then destroyed
and Job says some amazing things. The Lord gives. The Lord takes. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Now how could Job do that? Because God in His Spirit granted
Job divine faith. Job wasn't strong. Job wasn't
stoic. Job doubted. Job played questions
with God. Job wanted to know all the answers.
And then all of a sudden, by just a mere turn of a thought,
God granted Job to see, to savor the promises and the provision
of God. Though you slay me, I will praise
you. That's gospel. That's a good
report. And it's been going on since
the very first people ever walked this earth. The good report is
that God will keep us from death. Who's us? His people. When we are enticed, we are enticed,
James 1.14, by our own desire, then our own desire, when it
has conceived, gives birth to sin. What is sin? Missing the
mark of God's righteousness. You want to put that in a real
layman's term? Put it in the second grade? Sin
is not being God and not doing what God wants
to be doing. No one is good but God. So only God can make us like
Himself. And we know that that is through
imputation. He credits us His righteousness.
He doesn't make us righteous. And when sin has grown up completely,
it brings forth death. And I love what James says in
the very next sentence. Do not be deceived, my brothers,
my beloved brothers and sisters. Every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no change, no variation, and no shadow. of His own will. He, the God in heaven, our Father,
brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a
kind of first fruits of His creatures. Do you hear Genesis 1 and 2 in
that? Fruits, the trees planted in the presence of God, are those
who have come because of the love of God eternally for knowledge
in Jesus Christ to His promises. So Adam and Eve separate themselves
from the provision of God by desiring what naturally is desirable
in their flesh before they ever willfully sin. We talked about this in our first
week or two, I think, but Genesis is really set up into five sections
broadly. or in two halves, but the first
half of Genesis up through the end of chapter 11 deals with
the condition of God creating and promising and man messing
up that provision or denying or rebelling against that provision
and that the consequence of that comes by the righteous justice
and wrath of God and then the promise of redemption comes through
that consequence. The gospel is seen there. And
so in creation, the first three, we see that fall that we are
here today to look at. And then God promises the Redeemer,
the seed of the woman will crush the head of the snake. That's
how we know what He's talking about. And then in chapter 4,
as you'll see what happens in chapter 4, these first siblings
are worshiping God according to His commands, and they're
both doing it identically well. But God rejects one and accepts
the other. God is separating and redeeming. God is bringing justice and mercy. Murder. And by the time we get
to chapter 6, the totality of the world is murderous. Matter
of fact, that is one of the reasons that God tells Noah that he's
going to destroy the earth and kill everybody in it but eight
people. And the ark was created in such a way that it would only
house eight people. But yet Noah preached, get on
the boat or die. Stay in the garden or die. Eat
of the tree of life or die. And then in chapter 9, we see
a man worshipping the world, worshipping the moon on a ziggurat
in Ur, which still stands today if you've been over there. I've
not been over there, but I've got a lot of brothers and friends
and others who've been over there, and when they first see that,
they always text me. Pastor James, is this what you've
been talking about? Yes. Isn't that neat? Go climb
it. No, I don't think I'm going to do that. Here's Abram worshiping
the moon, and in the midst of all his satanic worship, God
says, Abram, you belong to me. I want you to go here. Where? Go here. Go this way. And then God granted Abraham
the faith, the trust in his promises. And then Abraham was a faithless
servant for a long time. And, I mean, his wife was a faithless
servant. They didn't believe God. I mean,
one day, yay! Next day, whatever. We're going
to have to take these matters into our own hands. We're going
to have to find our own provision. And by chapter 11, we see the
promise of the true Redeemer, the very one who is the seed
of the woman in Abraham. And then the remaining chapters
of Genesis, chapter 12 through the end, are the story of Abraham's
family. Abraham's interaction and the
expansion of Israel, which is a picture of God separating light
from darkness, separating those who have rebelled against his
provisions into the covenant of grace, and putting the promises
of the true image of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, the God-man,
as the pinnacle and power behind this good report. Because death
is separation from God. Let's look at this text. Let's
just walk through it for a second. The serpent, they were naked and
not ashamed, and now they're about to be embarrassed. Now
they're about to be embarrassed. The serpent was more crafty than
any of the beasts of the field the Lord God had made. Now some
people say, see that's why snakes are evil, kill them all. No,
they're not evil. Snakes do exactly what God has called them to do.
But God had purposed that the serpent would be the embodiment
of the work of the enemy. And that's the end of it. If
Balaam's ass can talk, so can a snake in the garden. If an
angel of the Lord of glory, an elect angel can speak through
an animal, so then can a reprobate angel speak through an animal
if the Lord wills it. It's a simple expression, but
we don't need to make much out of it. We just know that here's
this snake in the garden talking to Eve. She was slithering. Y'all didn't get that. And he asked questions of her.
Did God actually say? Now see, if Eve were to lie and
say yes, she would lie. She doesn't know
what God said. Where was she when God said,
don't eat of the tree? Inside of her husband's rib.
She was a rib. She was a rib, you know. Oh,
it's my brain over there. I just jumped off a cliff here.
Hold on. So we ask, did God actually say,
you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? You see what he's
saying? See what he's doing? He's creating
suspicion in Eve's mind. No, this is sales techniques. That's all it is, salesmanship.
It's good stuff. Andrew Carnegie probably got
his props from the devil. Socrates and the rest of them.
It works! Did God say you couldn't eat
of any tree? Don't eat of any tree! Of course He didn't say
that. And Adam didn't tell Eve that,
but Adam added to the Word of God. Didn't he? God said to Adam, Do not eat
of this tree, for when you do eat it, you will die. And that's
prophetic. And then the devil said, did
God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And the woman said, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in
the garden, but God said, and she quotes her husband. They
talk about whisper down the lane. Remember that gang, you know?
Bag of potato chips, and at the end of it is, I hate Mustangs.
I mean, what? How do we get so bad? You shall
not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,
which is true, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. See, that's how I raise my children. Not wash your hands before you
go to the bathroom, wash your hands after you go to the bathroom,
wash your hands when you come to my kitchen under any circumstance. If you touch the refrigerator
door and you haven't washed your hands, I'm gonna cut them off.
And see, what we do is say if you don't wash your hands, you
get a bacterial infection and you will die in your sleep. Why? Because I am obsessed with
washing my hands. Ask Trey. I drove 20 minutes
last night to wash my hands. Thank you brother cleanliness
is next to godliness. I can't help it. It's just me.
I Can't help it So I tell my children you're gonna die if
you don't wash, you know, what's gonna happen. I'm gonna die.
They don't wash your hands I'm psychotic about that. I just
can't help it. It's just me. I've always been
like that. So Adam told Eve if you eat of that you're gonna
die and But if you touch it, you're gonna die. I don't want
it anywhere near. I'm scared to death of dying.
I don't even know what that means, but I don't want anything of
it. You know, what's death? I don't want anything of it.
So don't touch it, woman. Please. Flesh of my flesh, bone
of my bones. Don't touch it. God said, don't
touch it. Oh, He did. Because she's probably
saying, well, what's wrong with it? Is it poisonous? I mean,
you know, I bet I could make a flower arrangement out of this.
We can't eat it, but can we make a flower arrangement out of it?
Can we put it in the house? Can we feed it to the animals?
I mean, can you see this? I mean, this is what we do, OK?
I digress. He said, don't touch it. Because
if we touch it, we'll die. And the serpent said to the woman,
you will not die. And he was telling the truth.
In two ways. You won't die if you touch it. Because that ain't what God said.
I still think touching it would have been sinful. Would have
been selfish. But if you're able to touch it,
you surely will eventually taste it. It's like those years ago when
Abigail was a year and a half old, you know, and there's this
thing on YouTube where you put a bunch of candy in front of
a child and you leave the thing running. Now, if you don't eat
it, you can have all of it. And Ruby did that with Abby,
and it's the most adorable video. And she does it, but she does,
she puts it back. The cutest thing in the world.
She tastes it, but she doesn't touch it. I mean, she doesn't
eat it. I mean, 30 seconds, one minute, and you think it was
the end of the world, this child sitting there about to go nuts
and just push her face in like a cookie monster or something,
to eat this candy. This is what the human condition
is. We're told not to do something. It's what we consume about. And
now suspicion has been established in the heart of Adam and the
heart of Eve. And he says, you're not going
to die if you touch it. And the second part of that truth
is when she did eat of it, she didn't just crap. You see? And that's the way I
feel about not washing hands in my house. You won't die today,
but eventually. You might be 106 years old, but
if you nasty hands, you're probably going to die of something one
day. You see? You don't play with stuff like
that. God says, be clean. I'm going to be clean. God says,
don't eat it, don't eat it. You're not going to die immediately.
She did die immediately. She introduced death into her
body, introduced death into her soul, and introduced death into
the world. Because that is the consequence of sin. Not being
perfect like God is death. Well, who is He? Elohim. The Righteousness. The Holy One. and you wanna really settle your
spirit against sovereignty and fairness, that's like comparing
sand to Mount Everest. A grain of sand, Mount Everest,
I got a piece of a mountain too. I call this pieces of the Berlin
Wall back when they tore it down, it came up on the market. It's
not a wall, it's just a piece of rock. God's sovereignty, if
you wanna read Romans 9 and see just how it works. He does what
He wishes. The prophets say that. He does
what He wishes, and what He wishes is always right, and what He
does is always good. The serpent said, you shall not
surely die. Suspicion, for God knows. Listen to these words,
they're very tactful. God knows that when you eat of
this fruit, you're going to see what you've never seen. God did
know that, right? They're going to see death. and that in seeing what you've
never seen, you're going to see what God has seen and what God
knows, and then in that way, you're going to be like God.
It's reasonable, logical, rational. It's a good argument. It's a
very good argument, and it's true. So here is the enemy, by the
sovereignty of God, tempting Eve, who was innocent, And then the devil says, you're
going to know good and you're going to know evil. He told her exactly what
it was. So the woman saw that the tree
was good for food. You know what? It does have some
good fruit on it. It looks very familiar to the rest of the trees
here. I'm of the opinion it wasn't any different. It wasn't a different
species. It was just set apart. Sitting
in the center where all the other trees were everywhere else. Because now all of a sudden she's
looking at it with a different eye. Not the eye of, I don't
want to touch that or I'll die. The eye is something special. You ever had junk in your house
that had been handed down from generation to generation? It's
junk, and you find this junk. Let's just throw this junk away,
and you get online, you look on eBay. That junk's worth $1,000.
Now it's precious. Now we're buying a new container
for it, not the old box that great-great-granddad had it in.
Now we're putting it up on Facebook. Look what I got, $1,000 doohickey. Let's sell it. No, let's not
sell it. It's valuable. The point? So the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and she saw that it was delight to the eyes,
and she saw that the tree was to be desired. to make one wise. So, this temptation tempted her
because in her flesh, she desired to know more. She desired to
have an opportunity to be like God. And separation, in one sense,
holiness is to live, to be separated from death, and to be separated
from the flesh is to live, to be in the presence of God, but
to be separated from God, to be separated from Eden, to be
separated from the Gospel is death. So the woman saw, she was tempted,
she desired it. The devil lured her and there
was nothing he did to make her do anything. She did it of her
own volition. And it was a very crafty way. And what it says? The servant
was more crafty. This is good stuff, y'all. The
enemy is brilliant as a being. So she took it and she ate it. I want you to picture this. And
she gave it to her husband standing with her. That's what it says.
She didn't eat it and go, hey Adam, this is delicious. And
he was like, no, no, no. What have you done? I mean, she's
like, okay, here Adam. Adam, all it took for him to
die was just a woman giving him something to eat. And he's like,
whatever! Flesh of my flesh, bone of my
bones, simple-minded man, by the will
of God. And immediately, their eyes were
opened. They weren't blind. Oh no, we
can see. No. Spiritually, they were innocent. And then their eyes were opened.
And they saw they were naked. Adam, you don't have pants on.
Neither do you. Oh my gosh. I mean, imagine that. Because
the connotation of nakedness throughout the entirety now of
the Old Testament is negative. What happens when Noah's son
He mocks him in his nakedness. He's cursed. What do the other
sons do? They moonwalk in with a blanket
to cover their father up so they don't gaze upon his nakedness.
Out of respect. Because public nakedness was
shameful. It was an embarrassment. When
do we see that? Streaking at the ball game or
the drunken publics, right? or they're drug addicts. That's
what we see. And it's embarrassing. So all
now, from the point, the rest of the Bible, in the Old Testament,
there may be some exceptions, but for the most part, the idea
of being naked is an embarrassment, is an exposure, is a vulnerability. They were naked and not embarrassed
and they were not vulnerable because they were clothed in
the goodness and the promises of God. Now their eyes are opened and
they see that they're naked because they are embarrassed and they
are ashamed. Death has entered into the world and into the human
race and from this point forward, from Adam until forever, until
the day of glory, every person born in the world is a sinner
because of Adam. And before anyone ever sins personally,
they are guilty because of Adam. So we are guilty because of our
father Adam in sin, we are propagated and perpetuated in progeny, our
children and our children's children, we're all sinners, we're all
guilty, we're all justly under the wrath of God, not just because
of Adam, but then also because of our personal sin. We are innately
sinners, therefore we will sin continually. They were naked, and what did
they do? They covered their own shame and embarrassment through
their own hands, through the means that they could have at
their disposal, trying to take the things that God has made
and use God's creation to cover themselves up. It's just loincloths. They covered their nakedness. And then they heard the sound
of the Lord. We're going to get more into
this next week, but I want you to think about this for a second.
I've been here. I've been in trouble before and
hear daddy's car drive up. You ever been there? It's like that 45 minutes you
wait, mama says, well, when your daddy gets here. And you're like, oh, I hope he
has a flat tire. I hope he has to leave out of town. And the
other day, dad, yay, daddy's home. It's like, oh, I hear the
car, every car that goes by. You're quenching up. You're going,
I'm going to get it. I'm in trouble now. I'm going to die. Daddy's
home. I mean, this is where these people
were. They were hanging out, walking with God in the cool
of the day, naked, not embarrassed, didn't even know anything was
different, didn't even know things were... They were supposed to
be naked. They were clothed in the goodness
of God in His presence. Now they could see it clearly. And they
heard the Lord and they hid themselves. They hid themselves. You can't hide. You can't cover
your own shame and you can't hide from the righteousness of
God. There's only one answer. And that is that God Himself
must provide a way to put together that which is separated. In the
marriage, what God has put together, no man can separate. In the gospel,
what God has put together, no man, even that man, can separate
himself from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. See? I'm not making this stuff up.
Death is separation from God. Separation from God. happens
because we add to His promises. We add to His conditions. We
add things in our own suspicion that this must be the case. We
make conditions that are not taught to us simply in the sovereignty
of God. Faith and repentance are not
external or internal abilities. Faith and repentance is a supernatural
condition that are affected by the divine power of God. So when
we come to see our sin and trust in Christ, and sometimes it's
not always in that order, and to believe in the promises
of God is because God has effected faith in us. That's repentance. How do I know if I've repented?
That you believe in the Son of God. Your mind has been changed
by the power of God. See, humanity will always forget. Adam and Eve had faith, believed
everything God had provided for them, and all it took was just
one doubt and one idea of suspicion that God was withholding something
good from them, and they bit it, hook, line, and sinker, just
like that. And if you don't think the enemy
is still at work today, pressing the very things that our flesh
desires, and imagine this, in our fallen state, our desires
are much worse. What in the world are we doing
when we hold to the idea that we can affect our own righteousness?
We forget that only God can do that. But what about obeying
the Bible? Yes, obey the Bible, but don't
credit it as righteousness. Obey the apostles for your joy
and as a means to understand the faithfulness of God in sovereignty.
so that we're not doing in the flesh what we can't do in the
flesh, which is to make people see and reconcile things with
God in any efforts, because God is the only one who can do it. But we forget. Even Adam forgot
very quickly that God had given them all life. God does not get credit for causing
them to sin, even though He decreed their sin, God gets credit for
throwing them out of the garden. Because that's righteousness.
That's justice. Sin brings shame. For the sake
of time, go to Romans chapter 6. And we'll close here today. Abigail asked me Tuesday morning what a wage was from this text. Oh, I went to Romans 3 by instinct,
sorry. For the wages of sin is death,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in the Messiah, Jesus our
Lord. That was her memory verse for
this week. She's like, Dad, what is a wage?
So I explain it like this, and I'll explain it to you the same
way. Our kids work at the grocery store, and when they work at
the grocery store, they punch in and they punch out. And when
they get through the end of the pay period, the hours that they've
worked, by law, requires the company to give them money. If
the company doesn't give them money, it's a crime, because
they have earned that money. No matter how hard they work
or that they were there, federal law requires you to be paid if
you're present. That's a wage. You earned it. So when we sin, we have punched
the time clock of death and we deserve it, we owe it. God, being
good and always righteous, must pay us. We will and must die
because we are sinful. It is beyond fair, it is perfect.
However, if I never got a job at the grocery store, and no
one ever worked at the grocery store, and then all of a sudden,
just out of the blue, the grocery store started sending everybody
in the entire household a check every week. For what? Did we earn it? No. What's it
called? Free money, she says. But why? I don't know. It's a gift. It's a gift. So all we do in
life is earn death, but God for us, His people, has given what
we earned to Jesus, death. And given who Christ is, righteousness,
To us, grace, gift. I said, so if we're getting all
the checks every week and never set foot on the property, somebody's
got to be earning that money. Imagine if they sent us, every
time somebody worked, they sent us their check. Jesus got paid death for the
sins of His people. And that is how God is good in
saying, you're forgiven. You're forgiven. Life. My provision
for you includes the payment of the wage. See, that's what
the Scriptures teach us. God is sovereign in this. So
all mankind fall short of the righteousness of God, and are
outside Eden, and there is no way back in. The fiery cherubim
will not let you in. Eden is gone. It's a shadow of
that which is to come, which is Jesus Christ the righteous.
So all mankind walk in the naked shame of Adam and in his guilt
before God. And they all want their own way,
not God's way. They're all suspicious of the
promises of God and each other. And they want to make themselves
to be like God, sometimes by using the very Scripture that
shows the promises of God to their own peril. And they don't
like to do it alone. They like to hand it to the man
standing with them. Drag them to hell with everybody
else. twisting the scripture by making
it break the promises of God's good provision, which is the
gospel. And beloved, I have been in ministry for now 23 years. Today is the 10th year Sunday
of meeting as a church, by the way. It's all on Facebook. Ain't that funny? Facebook knows
more about me than I do. From that first meeting, ten
years ago. And even years before that, I've
always seen the fact that people don't really want clear shepherding
in the truth. We want to be right. We want
to know more than the guy next to us. We want to have more human
confidence and call it being mature and discerning, but really
it's all about being like God. We want to be like God. We want
to have more knowledge than what God has provided on everything. And the Scripture promises us
that there is life in His promises. That it is a gift of grace. The
Scripture warns us that we will all desire to be right in our
own eyes. And that is proven the case when we ignore the simple
instruction of the basic commands of living together as a people.
Establishing our own way of righteousness, our own way of measuring, our
own way of judgment. of saying, no, I know what you're
saying is right, but this is the way I'm going to approach
it. It's sowing fig leaves. It's establishing our own hope
and ignoring the promises of God to create our own paths of
sanctification. To create our own paths of spirituality
or maturity or godliness. And in the end, all these things
lead to the same place, the grave. So God the Spirit helps us. He
keeps us. We're not becoming like Jesus.
We've been granted the grace to be counted righteous like
Jesus. One day, we will be together in the true holy of holies again,
forever. And until that day, we hold fast
to the sovereign promise that God has said, I will send a Savior. who will crush the head of the
lying, suspicious, bringing serpent who entices you out of your own
weak flesh. You will not die. You will not
die because Christ has died in our place. Christ became naked
and ashamed so that we could be clothed in His righteousness. Let's pray. Father, as You teach us through
Paul's writing to the Romans, that we are debtors, not to the
flesh, but that we are debtors to righteousness. And that we aren't to fear Your wrath, because there is
no condemnation. That we have the privilege of
walking into Eden this very moment, walking into the Holy of Holies,
touching the Ark of the Covenant, knowing that the blood of the
Lamb that you have sent has been poured out for us. And we can
call you Papa. And you look at us with an eternal
love, and you like us, and you're glad for us to be in your presence.
Because your righteousness has been satisfied in your wrath. and in your justice that was
poured out on Jesus Christ. Father, keep teaching us this
great Gospel, this good report, and help us to interact and relate
to one another because of this goodness. Lord, that we don't
shy away and hide from You. And Father, that we should not
shy and hide from one another. Help us to learn to love and
to live in intimacy with the greatest of faith given by Your
Spirit. Because we are heirs with Christ. We are heirs to life. We are
heirs. And in this present day, Father,
we are going to suffer. Because Christ has suffered,
we too shall suffer. Father, we thank You that this
suffering does not end in death, but it ends in life eternal. by Your sovereign grace that
is completely free. In Jesus' name, Amen.