Lathem Postell: Good morning, Sam Jones. So good to be here and worship with you this morning. If, you weren't able to be here last week because of ice or snow, we're glad that you're back. Hope that you were able to worship with us online and still be able to participate as we have continued in this series together. Or ice this week.
I jokingly said to someone this morning, we'll know if it snows on Tuesday, on Tuesday. So we'll look out for that. I've been trying to Pay attention. There's a guy on Facebook I follow named Randy that does all sorts of, meteorology stuff. We're still uncertain.
So shouldn't impact us. But, we'll pay attention to that, but we're just glad to be here. Try. If you've been following the Bible, recap, read. You know that we're on the third chapter of Genesis today in our sermon, three weeks in the series.
And we're still on the first day of reading. We have skipped well past this in a lot of our readings. And I think it's an important point, to to make. Right? There's something very important about what's happening here at the beginning of scripture that's going to lay the foundation for what's to come.
And so we're walking a little slower here. You're going to find, as we go through our sermon series, that there's times where we'll speed up past the reading. There's other times that it'll speed past us. Way, again, as pastor Mark has said, you know, 1,189 chapters in the book or in the Bible. We're not going to get them to all on a Sunday.
And so it's important to to pay attention and slow down at those chapters that we need to. And today's is is one of those fundamental important chapters that we cannot miss what scripture teaches us here in Genesis chapter three. So I want to read that scripture together with you. If you have your bibles with you, it'll also be on the screen behind me. We're going to turn to Genesis chapter three.
Start there at the beginning, reading verse one and reading through together verse 13. Let us join together and listen to what
Lathem Postell: God tells us in Genesis chapter three. It's a story. And Genesis chapter three. It's a story. And listen to
Lathem Postell: what God tells us in Genesis chapter three. It's a in Genesis chapter three. It says this. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
Serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. The Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked.
So I hid. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I
Lathem Postell: and the the woman, the serpent, deceived me, and I and the
Lathem Postell: tough topic. That you just open our hearts and minds to to hear from you. That you open our eyes to see the places that we fall short. That, Lord, we might come to look more like
Lathem Postell: your son, Jesus. For it's in his name that we pray. And we pray. And we pray. And we pray.
And we pray. And we pray. And we pray. And we pray. And
Lathem Postell: Fritz and his name. And we're And we're So, for a moment, that you don't know anything else about scripture. You don't know what's to come. You don't know the stories that follow. You have No other knowledge of the Bible.
I know that's hard, but try for a if you don't know any more scripture. And then try two that you don't know necessarily much about life. Right? We've lived long enough to know that life isn't easy, that there's tough times, that things don't always go our way. So try and put all of that aside for just a moment.
Come to this scripture as if you are coming to it for the very first time that you open the book to Genesis chapter one and you're reading it through like you would read any other novel that you come across. If you do that, think for a moment and wonder how good the Adam and Eve meticulously create the heavens and the earth in six days. So much thought and planning goes into it. Every detail is fine tuned to perfection. Like a master craftsman, there's no expenses that have been spared and nothing has been ignored.
There's this beautiful and wonderful world. And in the middle of that world, on day six, to culminate the creation, God places us as people in the middle of the garden to be very good. What a wonderful world that they live in, right? These humans who are created in the image of God, who live in relationship with God, right? They're the very likeness and image of God who have been called to go into this beautiful and wonderful world and to create more, to live and to experience.
Right? Then we get to Genesis chapter two, which just puts icing on the top. Right? You've read this. We didn't talk about it in the past two weeks.
But here in chapter two, God hones in on his creation. He pays particular attention to the humans that he created, and he shows us the beauty that is in relationship. The beauty that's in our relationships with one another, humans to each other. But then also, more specifically, the relationship between us and God. He proves to us, he shows us that he's an intimate God who cares about us, who thinks about us, who walks with us, and talks with us.
And so he puts him in this garden where there's really no work to be done. It's an image for us of abundance, an image of paradise. The only condition Right?
Lathem Postell: If you go back and
Lathem Postell: read chapter two, you know the condition. The only condition was that they were not to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it tells us. Anything else they can eat. Right?
But but this tree, God says, if you eat from this tree, you'll die. Just stay away. Man, imagine if that
Lathem Postell: was
Lathem Postell: life? How good it would be to be in the garden, fruit hanging from the trees, walking among beautiful creatures. How good do they have it? But to use a baseball analogy, everybody is a hero when they're in the on deck circle. Right?
Here in Genesis chapter three, Adam and Eve step out of the on deck circle and come into the batter's box. Calling and purpose that God placed on their lives back in the first chapter. They're the image of God in the world. They're supposed to go and do as God said. Be fruitful and multiply.
Take dominion. Work on the land, be a part of God's creation. It's our turn. It was their turn as image bearers to do what God had called them to do. Sometimes I wish we could have just stopped in that second chapter.
If we could have just stopped there in Eden but the story continues. And it only takes us until the very few verses of chapter three when God has turned the world over to us to mess everything up. It's time for us to begin creating. We're not very good at it. And so here in chapter three, humanity's work begins with the image bearers in the garden.
Right? We go forward. And it's our job. And so the evil one, the serpent, that we understand to be Satan, Revelation kind of helps us with that later in scripture, he comes to to Eve and Adam is there with her, it says, and asks a question. Are you are you sure that what you think God told you, he actually told you?
Said that you couldn't eat from that tree? Well, of course, Eve says. We get to walk with him. We get to talk with him all the time. We can eat from any tree except for the one in the middle.
If we eat from that one, we'll die. You're his image bearers in the garden. He knows that actually if you eat from that tree, you'll become more like him. Perhaps you might even be better than And so Eve begins to do a little research of her own. She goes to the tree and she looks and she sees that it's true.
And we're already knew that from Genesis chapter one. Already knew that from Genesis chapter one. Everything God created was good. But she looks into a little further and she sees, well, that looks tasty. And the snake's probably right.
It looks as if it would be good for gaining wisdom and gaining knowledge. And so she does what God told her not to do, and she takes a bite of the apple, gives it to her husband, and he takes a bite as well. And the course of human history is changed forever. That's our creation. Turned our back on God.
We did the one thing that God asked us not to do, To eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. We chose ourselves over God. We thought our ways were better than his ways. Choosing to listen to the satan rather than God. And I love how the Hebrew demonstrates this.
I think we have a slide for this. It's gonna be really helpful to to help you understand this. This is obviously Hebrew words. These are not English words. And so, when we read it in English, we miss a little bit of what the writer is doing here with some word play.
And so what you'll see here on the left is the word, a room. A room. It's the word that we get translated as crafty, cunning, or wise. It's how the Bible describes the snake. Right?
The the snake was the most a room in all of creation. The wisest, the craftiest. And so the snake comes to eve and ask all these questions. We've already gone through all of that. Right?
And and the interesting thing is what this other word is. It's also a room, pronounced a room. In English, we call those homophones. Right? Eve comes to to or the snake serpent comes to Eve and says, don't you want some a room?
Aren't you looking for cunningness, craftiness, wisdom? And in the end, even though she does what God tells her not to do, she's actually successful if you read it in Hebrew. It comes to her and she does. She gets a room. Adam and Eve, they get a room.
Except this time, it's not craftiness. It's nakedness. Hebrew writers, they see this, or readers, they see it. They They got just this close. Going out on their own, they sought after wisdom, and what did they get but nakedness.
This close, and we're going to see that throughout scripture. When we try to do things on our own, we can do pretty good, but we're always going to fall just short. A few letters difference, and the whole story is changed. Seeking after wisdom, they got nakedness. Not just physical, but spiritual.
In pursuing creation, rather than creator, they created sin. Breaking the image of God within themselves, distorting it, smashing it, desecrating it, changing life forever, altering the course of history. As a result, we now live in this nakedness too. Not necessarily physically, but spiritually. We are children of Adam and Eve.
We are children of sin. The hard reality that's so easy for us to just ignore from time to time is that the same problem they faced is still the same problem we face today. The same temptations they had are the same ones we have over and over again to do things our way. To seek creation rather than creator. And the truth is, we do it almost every time.
Whether it's the pursuit of wisdom or success or any number of good things. God would even say wisdom is a good thing. The pursuit of wisdom is a good thing. But when we do it our way instead of God's way, we further our nakedness. The other day, I had a chance to sit down with some of our our confirmation students.
Wonderful thing that we've started doing. Hattie and I will sit down with them and just hear from them. It's an opportunity to to to have them ask questions if there's any kind of burning questions on their heart before confirmation, which is February 2. Hope that you're gonna be here for that. I think we have 12 students that are being confirmed, which is fantastic.
So so we're hoping that you'll come and support them as they take that step in their faith journey. But we're meeting with them and I I don't remember which student Hattie might would remember. One of them asked a question that that a lot of people ask and maybe it's a question you're asking today. Why why did Adam and Eve eat from the tree? It's a good question, right?
They only had to not do one thing. And I thought about it for for just a moment and, you know, it's a tough question. It's a good question. And then I said, look, I can't tell you why. There's a lot of things as we go through scripture you're gonna find that we may not know why.
And this is one of those. I don't know Adam and Eve. I never met them personally. Right? I can't speak to their personal intentions.
Instead, my answer to them is perhaps an answer to you. Why do you not do what your parents ask you to do? Right? I've got a daughter. I think she's watching online right now.
Why don't you do what I want you to do? Right? It's kind of a joking answer to them but it's also a real one. Why don't you do what you're supposed to do? Continue over and over and over to do the things we don't want to do?
To do the things God has told us not to do? To do the things that we know are wrong. They were just first. They're an example and a reminder that we are inclined to sin, to turn away. That it doesn't matter how perfect our conditions are, how great our circumstances, we will fall short.
When we pursue anything other than God, nakedness and destruction will follow. Satan's greatest lie in chapter three was that we could become God. That God wasn't looking out for us. That God was looking out for himself and that we needed to do what God couldn't. And perhaps that we could even do it better than God.
Satan continues to lie to us today and it's a similar lie but it's slightly different. The lie today that the enemy uses and that we convince ourselves of is that we're really not that bad. Might call it rationalization. Right? Well, I'm not that bad.
Look at what this person does. I would never do that. Or wow, did you hear what so and so did? I mean, can you believe that they fell into that? Or we convince ourselves that we're we're just not that bad.
At least, I'm not them. What I'm here to tell you is given the opportunity, had it been us rather than them, every single one of us eats from that tree. This because each and every one of us eat from the tree every day. We do what we don't want to do, and we don't do what we do. Satan, the world, anybody, convince you of that lie that things aren't that bad.
That's why scripture here at the very beginning sets it in place for us, sets the foundation, a reminder that we are broken people, we are sinful people, and we cannot fix that on our own. I can't speak necessarily to the sin that particularly plagues you. You know those. Of us have one, or two, or three. Each of us are broken.
We're sinful. We live separated from God. We choose to take a bite from the apple each and every day. Adam and Eve started our creation and we continue it, which is sin. Adam and Eve brought into the world that which we do every day, turning our backs from God.
This script is showing us that from time to time we need to be reminded of that. We need to be reminded that we're broken, that we're sinful, that we don't get things right. I'm sinful. You're sinful. You aren't outing yourself as a bad person if you say that.
In fact, we're all bad people. We've always been bad at fulfilling the role and responsibility that God has placed in our lives to be his image in the world. We've been bad from the very
Lathem Postell: beginning, and we've been bad
Lathem Postell: till God redeems us. And we're bad till God redeems us. Scripture wants you to see that you need help. You cannot do this on your own. You actually cannot overcome the problems in your life by yourself.
That's contrary to what any self help book will tell you. That if you look inward and get enough strength that you can overcome your problems. No. Scripture says that that's baloney. There's no amount of goodwill.
There's no amount of good intention.
Lathem Postell: There's no amount of whatever good
Lathem Postell: thing you're thinking of to whatever good thing you're thinking of to fix your problem. Later in the story, we're going to find the only solution to this problem of sin. We're not there yet, but we'll get there. God's going to send his son, Jesus, to die on a cross. Lot of this story, God demonstrates to us his character, which is a character of mercy and grace.
Even before
Lathem Postell: Jesus has become incarnate, he reveals to us here that his desire is for this image that has
Lathem Postell: been broken to be restored. And is for this image that has been broken to be restored. And the drawers and the drawers and the drawers and the drawers the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden Of Eden to work from the ground from which he had been taken.
At face value, this seems like punishment. Right? Banished from God's presence in the garden. They're sent out away from God. But what seems like a punishment, I'm telling you, is mercy.
God knew what happened when they ate that fruit. The relationship had changed. It had been severed. The image had been broken. Sin had entered the picture.
Recognizes, right, if they reach out and they eat from the tree of life, well then they're gonna be broken forever. They're gonna have to live without me forever. And so like a parent who punishes their child out of mercy, God sends us away. Yeah, it means life's gonna be tough.
Lathem Postell: And I have to
Lathem Postell: go through some things. It's not gonna be paradise like it was before. But we'll have a chance. We'll have a chance for a savior to come and redeem us and to restore us back to full health. God's character is one of mercy.
Even at the beginning, right, that that very first time we messed up, God continues and will continue to show us throughout scripture that he puts a path in place for us to be restored. God's gonna spend the rest of scripture, the rest of our lives until he comes again, trying to renew us, to root out in us the guilt and power of sin. That's God's prerogative. The question is, will you let him? Will you let God work in your life?
Or will you continue to eat the forbidden fruit? Let's pray. Gracious and loving God. Lord those words are not enough to describe who you are. Lord, I I come today with with humility, but certainly not enough.
There is no amount of humility that's enough to to kneel at your throne. Lord, I I come today with humility recognizing that I am a sinful man. I come on behalf of of the people gathered in this room and those watching online as we come before you as sinful people. Lord, descendants of Adam and Eve, humans made in your image who choose every day to tarnish it, who choose every day creation over creator. Lord, we know if we're honest with ourselves that if we were first, we'd have done the exact same thing because each and every day, we eat from that tree.
Lord, root out within us whatever it is that causes us to turn from you. Lord, we want nothing in our hearts, nothing but your presence. Lord, we ask for forgiveness because that's where it starts. Lord, we ask forgiveness for all of the times that we've ignored you, turned you aside, Lord, that we have chosen to sin. Lord, we ask for forgiveness for even those times that we don't know that we've been sinful.
Lord, we're so broken that we can't even see all the ways that we are. Right now, this very day, oh Lord, begin to restore within us your image. Create in us new hearts. Call us back to you, to a life worthy of your calling. Lord, you have made us in your image, and every time we tarnish it, we turn our backs.
Help us, oh God, slowly and surely to turn our eyes to you and you alone, forgoing all other and instead pursuing you. We thank you that there at the beginning of time you showed us mercy, grace, and love. We didn't deserve it. We had just turned our backs. We had just created sin, Lord, but still you made a way for us.
From the very moment we turned away, you didn't. Something that we know will come to fruition and culmination in your Son, Jesus. Help us to see that path now. Help us to follow you today and forgive us, oh Lord, for the times that we fail. We pray all this in the name of your son, Jesus, our Christ.
Amen. Amen. As we worship together, you know, it's one of those this is not an easy topic. I think anytime we talk about sin, it's good to be in prayer. And so I invite you as you feel led, the altar is always open but it's particularly open today.
If there's something on your heart that you need to confess before God, I invite you to come forward and do so. And look, you don't have to come forward to do that. An altar can be wherever you make it. So even if you don't come forward, perhaps you feel like you need to do that today, but even there in your seat, have a heart of repentance. Ask God, confess your sins before Him knowing that He is good to forgive.
Let us stand and and worship that forgiving God. Will you stand and worship with me?