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Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!
What was I thinking?
It was our first house. It was brand new.
It had all the new smells. It was awesome.
The carpet, however, we didn't get to pick that and it,
and the color of it, it was a little too close to white.
And you add to that equation, three small boys,
we are not building a recipe for success or clean carpet.
One day we decided to, uh, get takeaway food. I think it was from Wendy's.
What was I thinking? But being good parents,
being good parents.
We didn't opt for soft drinks because we didn't want to
sugar 'em up and ruin any opportunity that they would take a good afternoon nap.
So what we did, we opted for them to have fruit punch,
which would later be known as red drink
in our house. What was I thinking?
So we get back to the house and, and all the boys,
they get their bag of stuff in their, in their, their their red drink.
And we come into the house and the middle one,
you know about those middle ones straight through the kitchen,
storms right into the living room and proceeds to spill his red drink all over
the couch and on the two close to white carpet.
What was I thinking? I'm not exactly sure what red drink is made of,
but I can tell you this for sure. It leaves a significant stain,
a significant stain. And we cleaned and we cleaned and we cleaned.
We emptied our arsenal on cleaning products.
We went to the store. We are up and down the roads looking at,
is there anything else? We're looking at online remedies.
We are trying everything. And you know what? Nothing worked.
Despite our great efforts and our fierce attempts,
the stain remained glaringly obvious.
So , we did what any great parents would do.
Get ready to write this down.
We did what any great parents would do.
We flipped the cushion and we scooched up the couch,
we flipped the cushion and we scooted up the couch.
Now the stain remained, there's no doubt that it was still there,
but we felt like we did the best that we could and it felt good enough
so we deemed it done.
Has there ever been an event a moment,
maybe it was a weekend,
maybe it was a season that if you looked back,
if you look back on that time in your life,
you wish you could just flip the cushion
and scooch up the couch because there was an experience,
there was a decision that you wish that could just go away.
But my question is sort of a question behind that question.
Where does that feeling come from?
Where we think that there are decisions and actions that we, we should cover up?
Where does that come from? And so that's what I want us to talk about today.
So if you have your Bible,
go ahead and grab that and meet me in Genesis chapter three,
Genesis of the first book of the Bible.
So you're just right in the front end of this thing.
Ben got us started last week with chapters one and two.
So we are in this series that we're calling foundations of the Faith.
And we're basically looking at some of the core beliefs,
some of the core beliefs that will help us understand our faith and help us
navigate life and help us to understand what's going on in the world.
And I love the way that Ben summed this up last week when he said, he said,
we are created, we are broken, we can be fixed,
and that we're on our way towards something better.
And so today we're gonna take an honest look.
We're gonna take an honest look at our brokenness and we're gonna
evaluate how did we get here?
How did it come to this?
And we're also gonna look at the role that we played in that
and the role that we played in that. So when we come to Genesis chapter three,
we are diving into a conversation that's underway. So beginning with verse one,
we see now the serpent was more crafty than any other
beast of the field that the Lord God had made. Now here crafty.
Crafty is not necessarily a negative term.
It can just mean speaking to wisdom and cleverness.
So it's not necessarily a negative thing,
but we need to understand who are the players here? Who is this the serpent?
And for that information, we continue to look at scripture. In fact,
we'll go all the way to the end. We're gonna go to the Book of Revelation.
So we're in Genesis,
but we're gonna look at Revelation and find out what do we need to know about
this person, the serpent. Revelation 12, nine, this is what we find.
And the great dragon was thrown down that ancient serpent.
There's what we're looking for, and this is pointing back to Genesis,
who is called the devil and Satan,
the deceiver of the whole world. So we now have clarity on who this is.
The serpent is Satan, it's the devil, it's the deceiver.
And none of these descriptors should give you any confidence
or any evidence to think that any way that this is a good person or that he
wants it to go well for you. He is a deceiver.
And notice in our story that we're just one verse in,
he comes in disguise and he's asking questions.
He's raising questions and planting doubts.
And you know what? That's still how he works in our lives today.
He shows up in disguise raising questions
and planting doubts. But come on, can we at least be honest for a minute?
For a minute,
the most massive red flag that we've encountered so far is what
a talking snake. I mean, come on,
right? Does that not give anybody pause? Nobody.
To me, this is a massive problem.
We have ways for dealing with this in the south.
So he's raising questions and he's planting these doubts that are ultimately
about trusting God's word.
He's questioning whether God's word is reliable. And the problem that we,
when we begin to have questions about God's word, see,
small seeds of doubt can bloom into great believable and damaging lies.
And the serpent, when he shows up, he's focusing on the negative.
That's what he's accentuating.
He's pointing out what God prohibits rather than what God provides.
And that's how he works in our life too.
This is the narrative that he's trying to get us to buy into.
That God's trying to limit you. That God doesn't want what's best for you,
he's trying to undercut it. He, he doesn't want you to be all that you can be.
The conversation continues. And then we have to see, well, who's he talking to?
Who is the serpent talking to? Because understand, at this point in history,
there are only two people in the world, Adam and Eve, man and woman.
And so you got the serpent in the garden talking to Adam and Eve.
We see this in verse two. And it says, the woman that's Eve said to the serpent.
So they're having this conversation, she's talking to a snake
and she says that we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.
But God said, this is verse three, but God said,
you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden.
Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
And so we, as we look at this,
we see that there's a subtle shift that takes place.
There's a subtle shift here.
She even minimizes the provision that God has given and she adds to the
prohibition. We can't even touch it.
And then she weakens the penalty because she says, lest we die. Now,
for us to fully understand what's going on with that, we have to look back,
well what did God actually say about this tree? And we find that in chapter two,
verse 17. And this is what God says,
but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it,
you will surely die. No question,
no question, no wiggle room here And now when you, when you look at this tree,
I don't get a sense that there's anything magical about the tree in comparison
to the other trees. But God has pointed out this tree, this tree is a test.
This is a test. And then in verse four,
the serpent responds to Eve's comments. And this is what the serpent says.
Ah, that can't be right. That can't be right.
You will not surely die.
You will No, no, no, no, no.
And here is the lie that has Allred and derailed humanity forever.
Satan is basically saying there is no consequence or
punishment for sin. He's saying there's nothing to worry about. Keep on going,
keep on doing that. You look like you're, you're good at it. Keep going.
The serpent is challenging, that there is punishment or consequences for sin.
And for some of us, this is good news. This is exactly what we want to hear,
that we can have all the pleasure that we desire with no consequence.
And for that we would say, amen. There's, there's,
there's nothing to lose that we can de define and determine what's
right or wrong. Myself,
I get to decide that. I get to decide that. But here's the problem.
'cause sin is so shortsighted,
the lens through which sin operates is super clouded.
And it doesn't even notice the inevitable end that's on the horizon at
the end of the day, sins basically, it just shrugs at God.
It's not a problem, it's not a problem. The Puritan Thomas Brooks,
this is what he says about this. This is very good. He says,
A di device of Satan is to present the bait and to hide the
hook, to present the bait, but hide the hook to present the bait.
Because the bait is what is appealing. It's what's a, a compelling,
it's what we desire.
And we are so focused on the bait that we don't even see that there is a hook
there. And listen to me,
we've all taken that bite at some time. We have all,
we have all
clumped down on that. So you see, sin is always a bait and switch.
It is always a bait and switch. Now, John,
recording the words of Jesus reminds us of who we're dealing with.
I don't want us to lose sight of who we're dealing with because he's still
active today, active in trying to mess you up and trying to derail you.
This is what he says, recording the words of Jesus. This is in John.
He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth
because there is no truth in him. When he lies,
he speaks out of his own character,
for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So when he's in conversation with you, how is he gonna interact?
He's probably not gonna tell the truth.
Satan will go to great lengths to keep you from God's word and to keep you from
trusting God's word. His mission is clear.
This is how Jesus describes his mission. He said,
the thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy.
And Jesus, in contrast to that says,
I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.
One comes bringing life, one comes bringing havoc.
Satan's goal is to help you train, wreck your life.
He would like nothing better to see you in a big heap of rubble.
And so he tempts you and he nudges you and he provokes you.
And he gives you this idea that it, it's okay, it's okay.
He's planting seeds of doubt in your mind so that you won't trust God.
He's trying to offer what will appear to be something better.
And here's his argument. Here's his argument. Look at this in verse five.
For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and mm,
you'll be like God. You will be like God,
he offers something that appears to be better.
He offers something that appears to be more satisfying.
But what a big whopper of a lie that we get here.
You will be like God. And what he's saying is, see, God is restricting you.
He doesn't want you to eat this because he doesn't want you to have what he's
got. He's trying to hold you back.
And so we're like, yeah, that doesn't seem right.
The serpent is tempting Eve with a better menu.
He is offering her autonomy and self-sufficiency.
And man, does that feed into our desires because at the end of the day,
we all want to be in charge. We all want to be the boss.
Some of you may even said it today to somebody, you either said,
I'm the boss or you're not the boss of me. Come on. That's just where we go.
And Satan makes us promise that we could be divine.
Boy, yeah, that's compelling. You are telling me. So let me get this straight.
You are telling me that I could be like God,
and he's smooth because he doesn't present it as rebellion.
He presents it as this quest for wisdom.
Oh man, that's smooth. That's smooth. But what he, that and, and, and,
and that's bait. But the hook is that this is autonomous wisdom that requires no
reliance on or submission to
God.
He's offering the bait and hiding the hook.
And just remember he's a liar and he's very good at what he, at, what he does.
And so let me just ask you and push into your business a little bit.
What are the lies that you're su susceptible to?
What are the ones that you are prone to believe?
What is the bait that you are anxious and interested
in biting down on? Because at the end of the day, some of this,
this language begins to look like this. It begins to look like, yeah,
I should do it. It's no big deal. Yeah, I, if I do it,
it is not gonna hurt anybody. What's the problem?
This is not gonna hurt anybody. And I'm pretty smart. So I, I mean,
I don't, I don't think I'll get caught.
I other people who are less smart than me, they,
I mean they'll probably get caught, but not me.
And then when you take it to even another level, people begin to say, this,
I deserve, fill in the blank.
I deserve.
And this is where it gets dicey because when we begin to minimize sin,
listen, when we begin to minimize sin,
we begin to minimize our need for grace.
When we minimize sin,
we then dismiss the idea that we need help, that we need a redeemer.
So think of it this way, when we minimize sin, we minimize a savior.
This is where it gets dicey. And this is why we need a robust
doctrine of sin.
This is why we need a robust doctrine and understanding of what sin is.
If we have this big view of sin,
then we'll understand and appreciate and respond with worship and gratitude to
a God who can deliver us from some big mess. If we have a low view of sin,
we'll have a low view of a savior.
Paul David Trip says,
we are either reminding ourselves of the seriousness of sin
or we are working to convince ourselves that our sin
isn't that sinful.
After all.
Hmm.
Temptation is tricky. It it,
it's tricky because it's so, it shows up in surprising places,
in surprising times,
it comes in disguise and it blurs the lines between right and wrong.
And it's always promising something better. And come on,
our hearts are thinking, you know what? I deserve something a little better.
And then in Eve's example, we see that there's this pattern,
this pattern to sin that we all seem to fall into. When you look at verse six,
it says, so when the woman saw,
she saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took, She saw, she took,
she ate, she saw, she took, she ate all of this flowing into our desires,
the things that we desire and that we want to do.
Satan appeals to our physical and our emotional and our spiritual senses.
And these are good things in they're God-given.
But how and where and who are we gonna turn to to
see these desires fulfilled? And this is challenging right here.
Brian Chapel would word it this way. He says, we sin,
not because we don't love Christ at all,
but because we don't love him above all,
for many of us. Come on, many of us, this religious stuff, this church stuff,
the Jesus stuff, it's an add-on.
We try to do all the things and do all the stuff through life.
And we're trying to do it busy, busy, busy. Oh, and on Sunday or on Thursday,
we just attack this on and add it in to ease our conscience, to ease our mind.
But do we love him above all or is he just part of what we're doing?
And then what we see is that Eve took and she ate,
and then it says, and she gave to her husband who was with her.
And then my experience, and maybe it's not yours,
but sinning with others helps us justify our actions.
And so we have to ask the question, who are you hanging out with?
Are they encouraging you towards Christ's likeness?
Or are they enabling you
to excel at your pet sins?
And then husbands and fathers, I'm looking at this and I'm like, what the heck,
Adam? What's going on here? You are startlingly silent.
You are noticeably quiet. Where is your head?
He's failing to lead. He's failing to, to interrupt. He's failing to,
to protect in this situation. Why doesn't he speak up?
Because to me, when he fails to lead, he's failing to love. Come on husbands.
Come on dads. Are we failing to love because we're failing to lead?
Are we not modeling the way that we should and setting the spiritual tone for
our families and for our homes and we want our families to thrive?
But it it it comes to you. Will you lean in?
Will you own your responsibility as a dad and as a
husband
to set the spiritual thermostat in your home?
So he's silent and they had to be thinking at this moment, you know what?
'cause we all get here, don't we? This seemed like a good idea at the time. And
then usually after that, you know, do, do, do. What was I thinking?
What was I thinking?
Because what you need to know is what just happened is what is known as the
fall of man. This is where sin enters the world.
This is the epicenter of the mess that we find ourselves swimming in.
Sin has entered the world and it has touched and affected
everything.
Everything is broken and dented and dinged because of this moment.
And let me be clear with what I mean by sin.
Sin means that we have missed the mark.
It means that we have fallen short of God's standard.
Sin is self-centered in itself, absorbed.
If you're unclear of my view and what I think the biblical view of sin is,
it's bad.
Verse seven in the eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked
and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loin claws.
This is not what they expected.
This is not what they thought that they were saying yes to.
Sin never delivers the satisfaction that it promises.
And so here are Adam and Eve and here is their response.
They thought that they were getting this. And then the next thing you know,
they're going, ah, we're naked.
And they're feeling vulnerable and they're feeling exposed.
And what we see happen is they sowed fig leaves together.
What is going on here is this is their feeble attempt to cover their sin.
This is them flipping the couch cushion and scooching up the couch.
That's what's going on right there.
And before we're too judgy on them.
You need to understand that's what we all do.
It's what we all do.
We come from a long line of cushion flippers and couch pushers
all the way back to this moment.
If you're trying to figure out where it came from, this is the moment.
And so then we begin ask, well now what? Because this is not good.
What happens here? Well, come on, think about what is your instinct?
What is your instinct when you,
how do you respond when you get caught and when you've done something wrong and
you know it's wrong? We try to run, we try to hide,
we try to like get away.
But the problem is how do you run and hide from God?
I mean, he's all knowing. He's all powerful. He's all present.
And then here you are. But Adam and Eve thought, well,
let's give it a shot and see what happens in verse eight. And it says,
and they heard the sound of the Lord God. I mean,
just think about what's going on in their head.
Just think about what's going on in their head. Oh, you hear him? I hear him.
What should we do? I don't know. I think we should hide. And then you, I mean,
come on, put yourself in the moment. And they're crouching behind a tree.
And maybe one says to the other, no, I was here first. You go get that tree.
Come on.
Our thinking gets massively skewed when we're trying to cover up our sin
and they're trying to hide themselves from the presence of God.
And then in verse nine it says, and God called, oh, we hear him walking.
And now he's calling.
He.
And he ask, where are you?
And let me just interrupt the story. This is grace right here.
This is God coming and looking for them.
This is grace. He's asking this question not for his benefit.
Like I don't know where they are. He knows exactly where they are.
He knows exactly what they've done
and he's coming anyway and he's coming anyway and he's looking for them.
This is an opportunity for them to come clean.
This is an opportunity for them to fess up.
How often do you pause
and evaluate your life and maybe ask the question, where am I?
Where am I? And by where am I? I'm asking like,
what about your trajectory? If your life continues in the current direction,
in the current course that you're moving, where will you be in five years?
Where will you be in 10 years? And wherever that place is,
is that where you want to be? That's what I mean by I'm asking, where are you?
What is your trajectory?
And God offers grace amidst brokenness.
So whether you're trajectory is you're in the middle of trying to cover sin and
you're flipping cushions like crazy and is stained on both sides,
that God comes looking amidst our brokenness. And in the middle of our shame,
in the middle of us trying to run,
Adam responds, well, we heard the sound of you
and we were afraid because I was naked.
And so I hid. And then God,
the creator of the universe, begins asking questions,
how comfortable do you think this conversation was?
Um, who told you that you were naked? Did you guys eat of the tree?
I told you that, that not that one.
And then we see something that we are super familiar with.
We recognize what happens next.
The blame game starts,
God and Adam are talking and, and then Adam says,
you know what the problem is here,
the woman that you gave me.
And you know all the animals are going, Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm mm-Hmm m bad idea.
Like, mm-Hmm, what are you thinking? And you know, Eve's over there like,
and then it comes to Eve. And then she's seeing how you know,
the the way has been modeled. And so then she passes the buck as well.
She says, well, is that, you know the serpent? The serpent deceived me.
And then it gets serious.
Because what we see next is that a just God begins to bring justice.
And we learn.
We learn in this moment that the consequences of sin are real.
In verse 14, the serpent is cursed above all livestock.
It says that he's gonna crawl on his belly and he's gonna eat dust.
And then to the woman, he says, you will have pain and childbearing.
Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.
There's this challenge that you're gonna have.
You're gonna want to be in charge and it's gonna bring tension to the
relationship. So relationships are gonna be hard.
And then to Adam, he cursed is the ground,
cursed is the ground in pain. You shall eat.
And the gist of this is work's gonna be hard.
So our relationships are gonna be hard. Our work life is gonna be hard.
Thorns and thistles, come on.
How many of you working with thorns and thistles don't call out their name,
but work can be difficult.
And then we get the ultimate consequence of sin.
And it's this the verdict of death. Look at verse 19.
By the sweat of your face,
you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken.
For you are dust.
And to dust you shall return.
Paul writing to believers in Rome sums up that this way.
He says, therefore,
just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin,
so death spread to all men, because all sinned,
it goes back to this moment that we're talking about, this moment,
the fall of man. And we're learning that sin is serious.
The consequences are die dire.
The ultimate result is death. There's alienation and fractured in relationships.
And when we look at this, we begin to say, well, is this, is it fixable?
Because my goodness, when we look at this,
it certainly seems like death is justified.
But when we back up a little bit, there's a glimmer of hope,
a glimmer of hope in verse 15. And this is God speaking to the serpent.
And he says, 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 hill.
And the glimmer that we get here is that death can be reversed,
but it will come at great cost because God
out of his love and his grace is going to send a true and better
Adam,
who will resist temptation and remain sinless and thus be qualified to pay the
penalty that we deserve. And he will die in our place.
And the curse will be reversed. But in this moment,
that's in the future. And again, Paul expanding on this, this idea
says four by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners.
So by one man's obedience,
the many will be made righteous and that
that is good news.
But consider Adam's perspective after this day,
we're back to chapter three, verse 21.
And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments and notice the word and
skins, and he clothed them.
We see provision in this moment at the expense of life.
For the first time, something had to die to cover,
something had to die. And it's alluding to here, I think,
I think pointing to a substitute,
pointing to a substitute.
God is expressing grace in the face of sin and judgment to us.
To us death
is familiar. But to Adam,
he recognized death as a punishment for sin.
Every time he got dressed, every time he got dressed,
he knew that something had to die so that he could be covered.
The fall is fatal,
but the good news is it's not final
this moment, this worst moment in history, you talk about a very bad day.
This is that day. And because of this,
we get exposed to and experience sin all the time. And it drains,
sin disrupts, it, disorients, it destroys,
it motivates and moves us to run and to hide and to try to cover things up.
And the presence of sin is so familiar to us.
It's around us all the time that it doesn't make us afraid.
And as sad as it should,
it's just just normal. But it shouldn't be.
There's a better way. There's two responses to sin.
There's two responses to sin. And you will choose one,
you'll choose one. And David, one of the heroes from the Old Testament,
provides us examples for both. And here's the first.
The first is the one that we tend to go to. We try to cover sin ourselves.
We try to cover sin ourselves.
But look at how David describes his experience when he tried to cover it up
himself. He said, for when I kept silent, when I kept silent,
my bones wasted away through my groaning all day
long for day and night. Your hand was heavy upon me.
My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
When you try to cover sin, you're just miserable.
You're just miserable because there's never quite enough material or
cloth or cushion or couch to cover it up.
There's something that's always hanging out. And so we're always exposed,
but there's a second way to respond to sin.
And this is the one that I would commend to you confess sin to God
and let him cover it. David experienced this as well. He said,
I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity.
I said,
I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity
of my sin. And then he says,
blessed is the one whose transgressions
is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
And the question that you have to wrestle to the ground,
the question that you have to wrestle to the ground is who will cover
my sin? The fall is fatal,
but it's not final. We are fixable. We're fixable.
And Jesus invites us into the unhidden life of faith.
And for more on that,
you'll have to come back next week. Let me pray for us.
Dear heavenly Father. Lord, help us
not to overlook the seriousness of sin,
but have a healthy understanding of what it is so that we would have a good
appreciation for who you are and what you've done for us.
But I pray that you would work in our heads and our hearts,
that we would not be moved to try to cover our sin,
but realize that there's a better way And a better one who can cover it.
Lord, help us,
help us to be wise and dependent and
not buy into the lies of the enemy
and think that we can find something better apart from you.
We ask for this in the strong matchless powerful name of Jesus,
our substitute and our savior. Amen.