Steps (Week 1) The Genesis: Creation and Fall

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1 Steps (Week 1) The Genesis: Creation and Fall Michael Snetzer September 4, 2013 Lord, we pray in the name of Jesus and according to your goodness that you, Lord, would gather the people here you desire to speak to and, Lord, that you would do what you have been doing from the creation, that is speaking. Lord, in that speaking you're gathering a people; you're separating. Lord, you are doing miraculous things. So Lord, we come before you tonight humbly, and we ask that you would do what we can't do, Lord, that you would speak to our hearts in such a way that that truth would take root and begin to change and, Lord, that there would be good fruit that would come from our time together during this very short season. So Lord, I pray you'd bless our evening here together tonight. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, it seems like everywhere we go I don't know about you. For a lot of us, it just seems like somebody is always trying to introduce us to somebody. Right? I mean, I don't know if you have a mom or a dad and they're like, "Hey, this would be a really good person for you to meet," or maybe it's that business acquaintance, or maybe it's through advertising. "This would be a really good person for you to know." Maybe it's a politician, maybe any of these kinds of things. What's happening here in the opening pages of the Bible is something very similar. Usually the person who's introducing you to this person believes it would be really good for you to know the person. Maybe you're like a few of us. Nobody is ever introducing us to anyone. Nobody hardly ever notices we even exist. For both the person who is always being introduced to someone and those who have maybe never been introduced to anyone, God has gathered you here together to introduce you to somebody very, very important, very worthwhile for you to know. God is about to introduce himself to you. The Creator of the universe, the One who has your heart beating right now He wants you to know him. He is a personal God, and he wants you to know who he is. In the opening pages of Genesis 1, we see God's self- disclosure of himself. We don't have

2 to speculate as to who God is or how things came into existence. There are some really crazy things that go on as far as that speculation. You've heard of all of the different ideas man has come up with about how the universe was created. God is speaking through his Word. The question is Are you listening? Are you listening to what God has to say? Can you hear? If you're having a hard time hearing what God is saying, ask him to speak to you. Ask him to open your heart to be able to hear from him. I was talking to my wife today. Some of us talk to God a lot, but we don't hear from God a lot. In other words, God has revealed himself through his Word. He has spoken to us. We pray a lot, but we don't read the Bible a lot. What happens in that is a very one- sided relationship, where all I want to do is the talking, but I'm not really wanting to hear the other side from the other person. God wants you to know so much. He wants to give you truth that will set you free. How can we enjoy God, how can we love God, if we don't know God? He has disclosed himself in his Word. One question we might ask is Why do we start with Genesis? Well, because that's where God starts. In his starting in Genesis, he starts with himself. We don't start with the problem, as some programs do. We don't start with the tendency to start with depravity. We have to understand our created design. It's hard to understand what it means to function as a human being, what dysfunction is, unless we understand what it means to function. It's hard to understand what a disorder is unless we understand what order is. It's hard to understand what depravity is until we understand God's created dignity for mankind. Now everyone in this room has a story. Every single person in this room has a story, and maybe tonight you had an opportunity to share just a bit of your story in your group. I hope that's true. I hope if you haven't had a chance to give a little bit of your story in your group that's coming very soon, that you would have the courage to begin to be open and honest about what's going on currently in your life. Not just what's going on in your circumstances, but really what is going on in your heart before God. Guess what? This is a safe place for you to begin to open up and talk about distrust, to talk about doubts, to talk about your skepticism, to talk about whatever is going on in the midst of your circumstances. Everyone has a story, but no one will fully understand their story They will not find meaning for their story unless they understand their story in the context of the greater Story, and that is God's story. So that is where we will begin tonight.

3 If you will open your Bibles, if you have them, to Genesis, chapter 1, starting in verse 1 I know you guys have been there this week, so this should be kind of a celebration of what you've already studied this week as we reflect now and remember all God has done. These truths should cause our hearts to love him and to think much of him. It should lead us to worship him. We see there in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning " Who was there? God. God is eternal. He existed before the beginning of time, space, and matter. He is there, and he is laying the foundations of the world. "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." Think about that for a moment. The world is empty. The world is disordered and dark. Maybe that's where you find yourself tonight. Maybe your world is disordered. Maybe you're groping around in the darkness. Maybe you're feeling empty inside. I want you to look here. Where is God? He's there, and he's hovering. He's here, and he's hovering. What I want to encourage you to do tonight is to take a moment to lift your eyes from your circumstance and behold God. He is here, and he is disclosing himself to you. "And God said, 'Let there be light '" Can you imagine this? "Let there be light." First of all, I want to point out the fact that God said, "Let there be light," and what happens? There was light. That should give us great confidence that whatever God says, he does. That should give us security in what he said historically, that should give us security in what he says about now, and it should give us security in what he says about the future. He says, "Let there be light." This is a world that has never known light, and he speaks light into existence. I'm tempted often to have us be in the sanctuary the second week and just turn out the lights completely, and then have this really godly voice say, "Let there be light," and all of a sudden the stage lights come on. It was complete darkness, and all of a sudden it's light. That would be a pretty powerful thing. It doesn't compare to what it must have been for the earth to never have known light and all of a sudden bam! There was light. "And God saw that the light was good." Whatever God does is good. There is no evil in God. God is a good God. We define good by what he says is good, not by what we say is good. Part of our anxiety in our lives starts with pride and me saying, "I know what's best for me." Something starts to interfere with what I think I ought to have, and I become afraid. Right? Something threatens that. Instead of being openhanded and trusting God knows what's best for us, even if it's difficult in the

4 midst of our lives. It doesn't mean even the thing that's happening is a good thing; it just means God has this supernatural, sovereign ability to bring good out of it. "God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." He has authority. He has the ability to name. Why? Because he created. It's his. "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." What we're going to see is there's this rhythm. God is taking what's disordered even in time. He's setting a rhythm in time. If you think about how music works You play the note, and then there's rest. You play the note, and then there's rest. There's evening, and then there's morning. There's rest, and then there's work. He didn't create us to work 24 hours a day. He didn't create us to work 7 days a week, we'll see. Remember on the seventh day he rests? He's setting a pattern, what is going to be music to God. "And God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.'" We see two activities of God as he speaks: separating and gathering, as we prayed. God is sovereign in our gathering together. God begins to assign order to things, value to things, and purpose to things. Then we see in the Genesis 1 story that God creates man on the sixth day. Right? He creates man in his image, man and woman, equal in the eyes of God, to reflect him, to represent him on earth. God blessed them, and he said to them Look at the rest of creation. He just says and it happens. What's different here in the sixth day when God creates man is that he says to man. That suggests God is a relational God, that he's speaking to man, that man needs God's direction to know what to do. We don't need God because we're fallen; we need God because we're human. He created us to live in a loving, dependent relationship with him. When we disconnect with him and try to live independent lives, when we start living out of rhythm with his created design, then all kinds of chaos comes. Now in this speaking to man, there is needed a response. Man, created in the image of God, has been given the ability to choose, to choose life or death, to choose obedience or disobedience. He must choose to obey. That is a God- given trait that reflects God and his ability to choose. God chooses. We'll come back to that later. Maybe when you read this account of the creation This is kind of an account from about ten thousand feet, looking down. Maybe it doesn't stir in you a lot of awe and wonder. After all, it's just

5 black and white. Right? You're just reading it. It occupies one page in my Bible. Maybe you don't have that kind of brain that automatically starts to dream and be creative with that. What I want to encourage you to do is not to stop there because it seems so simple (and it is for God), but to take a step out and look at what this has done. When you look at the expanse of the heavens, when you look at the stars in the sky, when you look at the birds in the air, when you get down on your hands and knees and look at the life within the grass, this is what God did. He took what was disordered and dark and empty, and he filled it. He brought life to what was dead. Guess what? God is the same today as he was then. He's still up to the same activities of bringing life from death, of bringing order out of disorder. He and he alone has the ability to create out of nothing. Now I want to move to Genesis, chapter 2, and we're going to look at this account of the creation. I don't really like to call it the story of creation. It makes it sound like it could be make- believe. I like the idea of account. This is the account of the creation. In Genesis, chapter 2, starting in verse 4, we see what I would like to call the creation on the ground. What does it look like not from way up there but from down here? We see the abundance God provides. I might even call this the garden sanctuary, where man dwells with God. You see here the abundance and wealth that is there under God's authority. Let's talk a minute about the authority of God. This is, in essence, a covering. We should find security under the authority of God. We see here in this account, Adam and Eve have protection under God's authority, they have provision, they have direction, and they live in God's presence. Now it is part of our culture to live entitled lives, and that means I want protection and I want provision, but I don't want anybody telling me what to do. Right? Do you have kids? You have college- aged kids, maybe. Isn't that often how we live with God? We're presumptuous with God. We don't want him telling us what to do, but we sure want the benefits of living under his authority. It's a package deal. If you reject one, you reject them all. You don't get to stand outside of God's kingdom and demand that he meet your needs. So we see under God's covering this abundance and all that he has for those who live under his sovereign rule. Now we should point out there is a vast distinction between the Creator and the creation. Blurring the lines between the Creator and the creation leads to all kinds of problems. An example of that

6 might be in marriage. If we think our marriage is going to be what satisfies us, or our spouse is going to be what satisfies us When we blur that distinction between the Creator, the One who is to fill us, and we start to look to our spouse or to our marriage to satisfy us, we set expectations on our spouse, on our marriage, on some of the other things we'll mention here in a moment, that they cannot bear, that they weren't created to bear, and it leads to a whole lot of disappointment. It's helpful for me that as I get disoriented, by God's grace he helps me to reorient to him when I start getting disappointed and dissatisfied because I'm seeking satisfaction somewhere other than him. We tend to build empty wells that will never satisfy us. I think Matt talked about these different buckets. As he was talking, I was thinking about shifting gears. We go from one gear to the next, and none of them are working. We can take the gifts of God that were given to us to bring glory to the Giver As God gives us good gifts, it should not terminate on those gifts but should roll up to him. Instead, we end up worshiping those gifts and seeking after the gifts rather than the Giver. We begin to look to work. Right? This is something that God in his created design created us for, but we start to look to work for satisfaction. We start to make an idol. You've heard of workaholism. We can do the same thing with relationships. Relationships are a good gift from God, but he didn't intend us to idolize them. He didn't intend us to treat other people as our gods. Marriage, sex, food, and even rest. We can idolize rest. Then we also see here in this account there is one rule. We might say the law. The one law God has rules that he says, "Okay, do this" and other things he says, "Don't do this." This is one of the only "Don't do this." He says, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden " In other words, "Under God's authority within the boundaries he has set, you have complete freedom. Just don't do this one thing." Now is this one thing there meant to preserve their lives or to rob them of life? To preserve their lives. Right? To keep them from dying. This isn't like God is a cosmic killjoy trying to rob you of life. But isn't that what the Enemy does? He says, "Oh, what's really good is outside of the boundaries God has created for you. That's where it's at." So we have complete freedom within the boundaries, and our authority sets the boundaries. Authority sets boundaries there not to rob us of life but to preserve our lives. There is an interesting element here: the presence of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This section of Scripture might be looked at as kind of a close- up of Day 6 of creation.

7 The culmination of the creation says it's very good, but then it says there's this tree. How might we explain the presence of this tree in the garden that has been described as very good? It's kind of a dilemma, right? The question is Is the ability to choose evil a bad thing? Or asked another way: Is it to God's glory that we would choose him and his ways over that which the Enemy offers? Yeah. When we have a choice and we choose him over slavery, over sin, over the enticement, that brings glory to God. That obedience brings glory to him. The concluding sentence here in Genesis 2 is, "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." The concluding statement of the garden experience is a world without shame. Can you imagine a world where you could be completely you without fear, without fear of criticism, without fear of condemnation, either because of your own contamination and sinfulness or someone else's ridicule of you? That's freedom, right? That's what we have at the conclusion of Genesis 2. So we have this beautiful picture, this living in perfect harmony, if you will, in the first two chapters, and then we move to chapter 3. This is a different scene. The close of the creation, the curtains draw to a close, and then we open at Genesis, chapter 3, and we see there's another character in this scene. It says, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made." Who is this Serpent? Well, we can learn a few things just from the text. He's created. Remember the distinction between the creation and the Creator? He's a created being, so he's not God. It's not this cosmic battle and we don't know who's going to win. This is an adversary of God whom we learn later is a fallen angel, is Satan. I don't know exactly how he's appearing, whether he's manifesting himself as a serpent, whether he is possessing a serpent, or what's going on, but I think it's suspicious and so should you; although, in our culture it's not that suspicious. I was watching this show the other day, and there were these rabbits and everything else, and they were all talking. If I'm seeing an animal and they're talking to me in English, there's something up. Right? But we've normalized that in our culture. Anyway, there's something suspicious about this talking serpent. We also find this serpent is craftier than any other beast of the field the Lord God had made. He's crafty and seductive and slippery. He's going to begin to speak this subtle, seductive, smooth speech

8 that is going to entice mankind into sin. Isn't that the way temptation works? A real personal evil, Satan and his demons enticing men and women through the world, enticing their flesh. So real personal evil enticing the flesh through the world. That's what we're seeing here. That is the essence of temptation. Look at what he does. "He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say '" How many times have you heard that? Do you not recognize that voice? "Did God really say? It's not that big a deal. Everybody is doing it." He immediately begins to attack God's Word. Then we're going to see later he's going to begin to attack God's character. "'Did God actually say, "You shall not eat of any tree in the garden"?' And the woman [attempting to clarify] 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."'" There seems to be some uncertainty there. "Surely you will die." "Lest you may." The Serpent sees his opportunity, that she's not quite so confident in what God has said. He's going to take that, and he's going to begin to twist it. That's what the Serpent does. He takes God's truth and begins to twist it to lead you away from life. There's oftentimes so much truth out there, but it's not leading you to the ultimate truth. Satan begins to twist the truth and lead people astray. That's why we need to be certain of what God has said and what he hasn't said. "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die.'" An outright lie, outright contradiction to what God said. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Here's the seductive song of the Serpent. "You can't trust God. He doesn't have your best interests at heart. You can be your own god, and it's no big deal." "So when the woman 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 " Those are three seemingly good things. How is she evaluating the situation? With her senses, what she perceives. They're three seemingly good things, but what has she forgotten? What has God said? So should you make judgments, decisions, based on your perceptions, or on what God has said? This is critical in just the way we have a tendency to trust in ourselves rather than God.

9 At this point it says, " she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." They did what God told them not to do. At this point, we see the unraveling of creation. We see mankind becoming disoriented. He becomes egocentric. He becomes self- focused rather than being oriented around the Lord. From this proceeds every mental disorder, every disease of the body, every family dysfunction, every distorted thought, every deceitful heart, every societal division, every physical decay, and death. That's what comes from this. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." It sounds kind of silly, doesn't it? The whole unraveling of creation has just occurred, and we're going to sew fig leaves together and make loincloths for ourselves. I mean, what I'm picturing is the little boy at the base of the dam. A hole has been poked in the dam and he has his thumb. This whole thing is about to break loose, and he thinks by putting his finger on that dam he's going to keep this whole thing from unraveling. It's ridiculous. But don't we do that? What are the multitudes of ways we try to cover our shame? Maybe it's through performance, doing good works, being really religious. Maybe it's through a physique. Maybe it's through our personality. That's how we're kind of getting by and how we find a covering. Maybe it's through prosperity. Maybe it's position. Maybe it's possessions. Maybe it's posterity. Maybe it's child rearing. Maybe that's where we're going to find our worth, our identity: in these things that really are not going to cover. There's still going to be that undercurrent of shame, and it's not going to fix the problem. The Scriptures testify to that. "And 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 " So did it work? No. They're running from God. They're hiding from God. Why? Well, we're going to see. "But the LORD God called to the man " We see God's pursuit. In their nakedness, in their hiding, he sees them. You can't hide from God; he sees. He's going to begin to ask questions. He's going to try to draw them out. The man said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked " Did his attempts to cover himself work? No. He still says, "I'm naked." His attempts to cover himself are vain attempts to cover himself. "' and I hid myself.' He said, 'Who told you that you were naked?'" All of the symptoms are there. You're hiding from God. I mean, you might have kids. They're hiding from you All of the symptoms are there that they've sinned.

10 It's not that God doesn't know. What God is looking for is for you to be honest with him about where you're at. Not where you're at circumstantially, but where you are in your heart before him. You see, for some of you, part of your being here is just that. God is pursuing you, and he's asking you to be honest with him. He sees you in your sin, and he's saying, "Where are you?" What he's looking for is an honest confession. "'Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?' The man said, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me '" I know there's usually a lot of funniness around that, but I want to get past that to the main idea here in my mind. "She gave me the fruit of the tree." First of all, the woman is not named, so that's not like a diss. "The woman you gave to me." She's not named. She has been named woman by man. That's her name at this point. " whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree " Is that true? We might look at that as blame, or we might look at that as a full confession. " she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." So regardless of where he was going initially, he lands on, "And I ate." Obviously, God accepts that and moves on. He moves on. "Then the LORD God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me '" Is that true? That's true. Yes. " and I ate." She takes responsibility. Both are true. God moves from that. "The LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock '" Does he give the Serpent an opportunity to repent? No. He goes on to say in Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring " First of all, there are two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of God under the lordship of our King and Savior Jesus Christ, and then there's the other kingdom. He says, "You are with me or you're against me." It doesn't matter what heading it's on. You're either for him or you're not. You are under one kingdom or the other kingdom, and that other kingdom is set up to come against the kingdom of God, because it lives for itself. What's true is there will be no kingdom that will stand. Only the kingdom of God will stand and reign and rule forever. It says, " and between your offspring and her offspring " First of all, can you imagine overhearing this? Can you imagine Adam and Eve going, "Offspring? I thought we were going to die"? We see God's mercy begin to We see hope. I mean, how long does it take for God to begin to

11 unfold his plan of redemption after the fall? It's just a few verses. He's going to begin to unveil that there is hope in the midst of this tragedy. " he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." There will be a man born of a woman who will come and crush the Serpent's head, but in doing so he'll be bruised, and by his wounds we will be healed. "To the woman he said " So God's just judgment upon the rebellion of mankind. "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing " Is that true, ladies? Yeah? Okay. " in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." We have suffering enter, bodily suffering. We have relational suffering and conflict. We see the conflict. We see dissonance between God and man, dissonance between man and woman, and we're also going to see dissonance between man and that which he was brought forth from, the ground. Noise. "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." There's this kind of idea here that you'll consume him. You'll try to usurp his authority in the family, and the husband, rather than being the loving servant leader of the home, will be the harsh authoritarian or, like Adam was, completely passive. "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 of it," 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, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.'" God said, "The day you eat of it, you will die. It will cost you your life, but I have the ability to preserve your life eternally." That is the reality we all face. We all face a world that is broken, suffering, disordered, disoriented, all of those things we've already described. Then it says, "The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." Eve sounds like the Hebrew word life- giver. How I read that is that Adam ("the man" at this point) believed God. He believed in the grace of God. He believed by faith that God would provide a man born of a woman who would come and crush the Serpent's head, and that they would have offspring, that there was hope of redemption in the midst of this brokenness. I don't know, you men in this, if you had just followed your wife into this cosmic

12 sin, if that would be what you would name her in that moment of frustration: Eve. That's probably not what you would have called her. But to have received grace in order to pass that grace along "And the LORD God " In the response of Adam. " made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." Man's vain attempts to cover himself were to no avail, but God provided a covering, a covering of animal skins. An animal skin requires shed blood. God is beginning to teach his people what it would cost for their redemption, pointing to the Old Testament sacrificial system, and then further, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God for our sins in Christ. "Then the LORD God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever ' therefore the LORD God sent him out from 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 the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life." So there's not going to be a way back into the sanctuary of God, living in the presence of God, that you're going to find on your own. But Jesus shows up, and he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He is the way, though there will be many who will try to come a different way. That is the story of Cain and Abel. "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, 'I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.' And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions." Be mindful. God is trying to unveil his plan of redemption. He's trying to say, "Okay, this is what is going to be acceptable, and this is what is not going to be acceptable." It says, "And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering " We learn later in Hebrews that Abel offered the sacrifice by faith. It's not only, though, that what was acceptable in Abel was he had faith. It was also his offering. It's not just enough to have faith in anything; it's to have faith in the right sacrifice, the one sacrifice of Christ. " but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell." Can you imagine this? That day when men and women come before God with the works of their

13 own hands and say, "Look at all I've done and sacrificed" and God says, "No, there's one way: through the sacrifice and work of the Lord Jesus Christ through that sacrifice." It's faith in that sacrifice, not faith in the works of our own hands. Even in that, we see the Lord's pursuit. He says, "Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?" You can hear that with one of two lenses. You can hear that with a religious lens. It continues to go on down here. It says, " sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it." The problem is identified: sin. You must overcome it. You can hear that with a religious lens. That is, "Now what am I going to do to overcome sin?" Or you can hear that through a gospel lens, and you can repent of your dead works in trying to overcome sin on your own and trust in the redemptive work of Christ. It's that simple, and he will accept you on that basis. So we've defined the problem as sin, and the ways we can cover our sin on a basis of self that will be to no avail would be to put our trust in our physique, our power, our possessions, our performance, our position, our partner, personality, prosperity, posterity. We talked a little bit about that. Instead, we can lay a foundation of acceptance based on Christ, and from that we can build. On that foundation of Christ we find the immeasurable riches of his grace. First Corinthians 3:11 says, "No man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." The essence of sin is our rebellion against God, our forsaking God. Jeremiah 2:13 says, "For my people have committed two evils: They've forsaken me, they've rebelled against me, the fountain of the living waters, and hewed out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water." Pride and idolatry. In Romans 1:21-25 it basically says the same thing. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. [ ] They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served [the creature or the creation] rather than the Creator " The lines got blurred. The affect is the marring of shalom, that perfect peace and presence of God in the garden. It is disease. Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned " It's not just because Adam sinned and has infected us; it's because we personally and consciously rebel

14 against the Creator. For that we are responsible. It spreads generationally and is progressive. We saw it moved from eating a fruit to murder in Genesis 4. " for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God " Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together " The whole creation has been infected. We know that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I pray that the Lord opens our eyes to the reality of where we stand before God apart from Christ. There's a kind of brokenness that is circumstantial, but there is a kind of brokenness that occurs when you understand where you are before a holy God. My daughter was asking me this past week (she's 5), "Daddy, did you used to be a criminal?" I had no idea where she had heard this, but the truth is, "Yes, your daddy was a criminal." She said, "Why were you a criminal?" and I said, "Well, because I broke the law, and I did things I wasn't supposed to do." I said, "And guess what? You're a criminal too." She was like, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, you've broken the law of God." We had just had a conversation not probably 30 minutes before where she had lied to me. It's one of the first times she has lied to me that I know of. I took her back to her room. I didn't spank her. I said, "Listen, I just want you to know how serious deceiving Daddy is. You cannot deceive Daddy. You can confess a lot of things even if they come with consequences, but do not cover. Do not lie." I showed her grace, and I said, "You know what? You can come out of your room now." I said, "Do you remember when you lied to me earlier?" And she got it. I have never seen terror on my daughter's face like I saw terror on her face when she realized she had forsaken God. I think we're so numb to it. When she realized that before a holy God she had transgressed, it broke her. I don't know what God is doing in all that, but I had the great pleasure to remind her of the gospel in that moment. I'm not sure it really took hold. She tended to move on. But what has just haunted me this week is just seeing her face. She almost was hyperventilating as she realized what her offense against God looked like. I want to lay out for you quickly a biblical anthropology: heart, body, family, society. Heart is our inner man that lives within a body, and we all live within a family within a society. Sociologists have a tendency to intervene at the level of society with social justice, political movements, and better education, but we need to understand the limitations of that.

15 Family therapists tend to intervene at the level of the family with family dynamics and those sorts of things. "If we could just change the family, then everything would be okay." Psychiatrists tend to intervene at the level of the body. They prescribe medical because they see problems as primarily biochemical. Not Christian doctors or psychiatrists. They understand the limitations of what they're offering. Mark 7:21-22 says, "For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder " Out of the heart come these things, and it infects all of those things. All are affected, but the cause of all this dysfunction begins in the heart. Unless that is cured, all of these other things are just treating symptoms. This is where Jesus and Jesus alone intervenes. He offers us a new heart as we trust him. It's not that we shouldn't intervene in these other areas. I just got back from a mission trip. We went on a medical mission trip. But we understood the limitations in terms of preserving life with what we were bringing, and what we were bringing in terms of medication was just an opportunity to share something that is far more glorious, something that was far more hopeful, and something that could preserve their lives much further than medication could, and that was Jesus. So we're not to withhold good things in those areas. In fact, that's called good works. That's part of what we're called to do as Christians, to be involved in those other sectors, but under the name of Christ. Another way to look at this might be (this is from John Henderson's Equipped to Counsel) that we have a heart that's physically embodied and socially embedded. I think the socially would be the family and the society put together, but to understand we're also spiritually embattled. But in the midst of that, all of this is taking place before a God who's sovereignly enthroned. Nothing escapes him. In the unraveling of creation he doesn't allow anything that can become undone to the point where he can't redo it, or to the point that he will redo it and make it even better than it was before. When he says, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth," he's accomplishing that, despite man's rebellion. Part of our curriculum is engaging the world of secular recovery. Traditional Step 1 says, "We admitted we are powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors and that our lives had become unmanageable." It's not that that's not true. It just doesn't seem to capture the weight of what has just happened. If we don't have a correct diagnosis of the problem, we may be tempted to intervene with a prescription or an intervention that has limitations. We need to understand the

16 problem is sin, and that really narrows what we might offer in terms of help help that really can overcome the sin and suffering of the world. The redeemed truth from Step 1 is: "Man in relationship to his Creator has fallen from a place of dignity, humility, and dependence to a state of depravity, pride, and rebellion. This has led to unfathomable suffering. Any attempts on our own to redeem ourselves are futile, only increasing the problem of independence and self- sufficiency. Any perceived success leads only to empty vanity. Apart from Christ, we are powerless to overcome sin, and our attempts to control it only increase our chaos." Ephesians 2:1-3 kind of summarizes this. "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world " If you're dead, you can't bring life to yourself. When we were on our trip to Israel, there were olive trees, and our guide, who was a Jewish guy, said it's the only tree that can resurrect itself. I would say, more than that, redemption. God can cause life to come out of dead roots and bear good fruit. " among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." The wisdom of man would say, "Oh, you just need a better self- esteem." Does that seem to fix the problem? No. "You just need to try harder." Does that seem to fix the problem? No. Or just the classic, "Just don't do that anymore." Are you kidding? Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for this time. I thank you for your truth. I thank you that we can stand confidently in what you have said, that we can have security in what you've said, that we can trust in what you say. What you've been saying from the beginning is no different than you say today, that we can have life, we can know you, we can prosper under your authority, as we lay down our lives and forsake our other pursuits to follow you. You came into the brokenness of this world and called people to yourself and said, "Follow me." You still are speaking that today. You've given us a choice. So Lord, I pray your blessing over this group. As they get into your Word and as they begin to look at the remedy for our insanity, the gospel of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer Jesus, our hope of the world, I pray you'd bless them. In Jesus' name I pray, amen The Village Church