Why the World is Broken

[0:00] We'll continue to worship God by the reading of his word. So please turn in a copy of your scriptures to Genesis chapter 3.! Genesis chapter 3.

[0:12] And once you have found that, place a marker or place your finger also in Revelation chapter 12, the book of Revelation. So the first book, Genesis, and the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter 12.

[0:27] We'll read these passages one after the other. Well, let us hear the word of God. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

[0:45] 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.

[1:12] 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.

[1:29] 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, she took of its fruit and ate.

[1:42] And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

[1:56] And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Turn now to Revelation chapter 12. We'll read verses 7 through 11.

[2:09] Revelation chapter 12, verses 7 through 11. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.

[2:20] And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.

[2:38] He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come.

[2:54] For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

[3:08] For they love not their lives, even unto death. For you'll notice that the title of this morning's sermon is in the form of a statement and not a question.

[3:26] That statement is, Why is the world broken? There's no question mark behind it, but it's stated in that way because I believe that the brokenness of our world cannot be denied.

[3:42] The evidence that our world is broken abounds all around us. We see it in the form of wars. We see it in the form of natural disasters and disease and death.

[3:57] We see it in the form of relational breakdown, depression and hunger and greed and exploitation and corruption and the list goes on.

[4:10] I think all of us, in different ways and to different degrees, have experienced brokenness. All of us have experienced brokenness as we live in a broken world.

[4:26] And there is no denying of that. There is no denying that we are broken. There is no denying that we are broken. There is no denying that we are broken. And perhaps some of us, even right now, are aware of how broken we are.

[4:38] Maybe there is a particular circumstance that defines brokenness for us, even in this moment. But while there is no disagreement about the fact that our world is broken, where there is disagreement, it's how our world got broken and the solution to the brokenness.

[5:03] And this morning, I want us to consider from the passages that were just read, how our world got broken and what is the solution to the brokenness.

[5:15] And before I do that, I want us to pray. So would you bow with me? Father, we bow in this moment, knowing our need for you and just expressing it in prayer.

[5:28] Lord, how we need you to show us Christ, how we need you to speak to our hearts in ways that only you can. Lord, we ask that you would grant us illumination in your word.

[5:43] Lord, help us to understand how our world came to be broken as it is. Indeed, Lord, help us to understand our own brokenness.

[5:58] And then, Lord, I pray that you would help us to see the only one who can mend broken hearts and broken lives and indeed who has provided the only way for that to be done.

[6:12] And that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, Lord, once again, we pray that you would show us Christ. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

[6:25] So why is our world broken? Our world is broken because we have forsaken God's way and we have chosen Satan's way.

[6:37] Or to put it more graphically, our world is broken because we have rebelled against God. We have chosen rebellion against God over submission to God.

[6:50] We have chosen disobedience against God over obedience to God. And as a result, our world is broken. We have the fruit of our actions.

[7:04] And I think if we think about it properly, our world is broken because we are broken. And we are broken because we are fallen. And that's what Genesis 3 that we have come to this morning shows us.

[7:21] Genesis 3 gives us an account of what theologians call the fall. How mankind and the human race in this world in which we live in, how it became a fallen world.

[7:37] Next Sunday, the Lord willing, we will look at the consequences of the fall. But this morning, we just want to look at the fall itself, the rebellion of Adam and Eve.

[7:49] And we see that in these seven verses, it takes place in two particular steps. But as we consider this this morning, I don't want us to think that we're just looking at what happened to Adam and Eve because really, what happened to Adam and Eve is not some unrelated, distant story.

[8:13] Brothers and sisters, it is a story that is too familiar to us, and it is a story that we face every single day of our lives. What they face in the garden on that day, we face every single day.

[8:29] And so in our remaining time, I want us to consider these two steps that we see in Genesis chapter 3 that leads to this rebellion.

[8:43] And the first is doubting God's word. Now once again, as we work through this book of Genesis, we need to remember what Moses is doing, what Moses has in mind as he is writing the book of Genesis and the other four books that he wrote, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

[9:11] Moses is presenting the nation of Israel, presenting God's people with an understanding of God, who is creator, and the world that he created, and also of themselves, and understanding how the world came into being and how the world came to be as it is.

[9:31] He is giving a God-centered worldview of the world. And again, all nations at the time had their views of the world. Even today, people who don't subscribe to this view of the world, they have some view of how the world came into being.

[9:46] And that's what Moses is doing. And Moses is at a pivotal point in his argument to God's people. We have seen so far in chapters 1 and 2 that he gave us an account of God's perfect creation.

[10:02] How when God was finished his creation, he said, it is very good. That was his commentary on it.

[10:14] Everything that God created was very good. And then the next thing we come to is chapter 3, and the first thing we come to in chapter 3 is a talking serpent.

[10:27] And not only is this serpent talking, this serpent is talking to Adam's wife about something that God commanded Adam on the day that he created him and on the day that he placed him in the Garden of Eden, even before he created Eve.

[10:47] This talking serpent is having this conversation with Adam's wife about something that God said to Adam, that God commanded Adam in the Garden.

[11:00] He's questioning what God actually commanded concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[11:11] Now the moment when we come to this, you know this is an unusual occurrence. It's an unusual occurrence because snakes don't talk. Animals don't talk.

[11:22] God did not create them to talk. God created human beings to talk, and we talk to one another, but we don't see us having conversations with animals. Now it's not possible to know what Moses thought about this, or what the children of Israel thought about this.

[11:39] We don't have an account about how they processed being told that there was a serpent who spoke to Eve. We don't know.

[11:50] And the reason we don't know is we don't need to know. It's not essential for us to know. But we have a bit more information than they did.

[12:03] And so the last book of the Bible, so you see this in the first book of the Bible, this talking serpent, and the last book of the Bible, this talking serpent is actually identified.

[12:13] And that's in the second passage that we read from Revelation chapter 12. But this is also in Revelation chapter 20. It's repeated again, where we see that Satan, the devil, is identified as the ancient serpent, an ancient serpent pointing way back to Genesis.

[12:34] Genesis. And in the last book of the Bible, it helps us to understand that Satan was actually in rebellion against God.

[12:48] We don't know the point at which this all took place. But what we see is that Satan and a third of the angels rebelled and they were cast to the earth.

[13:00] They were kicked out of heaven. And again, we don't have all the details about that, but when we think about what is being presented to us in Genesis chapters, well, chapter 3 in particular, it becomes pretty evident that Satan had already fallen.

[13:20] As a matter of fact, we can see that from chapter 2 because God puts this tree in the middle of the garden. Along with the tree of life, he puts the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[13:33] So evil was a concept. Evil was a reality when God placed these two trees in the middle of the garden, the tree of life. The whole idea is that there's this possibility of death as well.

[13:47] And so there's life and death and there is this tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the punishment for eating off of it is death.

[13:59] And so although we know that God has created the world as perfect and we know that at this point sin has not come into the world, there is this logical conclusion when we consider what is written in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 and we consider what we read in Genesis 12 and also in Revelation 12, sorry, in Revelation 20, we see that something had gone on with Satan and he is identified as this ancient serpent.

[14:38] And so what we have here is Satan himself who is talking with Eve. I think it's important to try to follow this because again, if evil did not exist at this time when God created this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it would just make absolutely no sense.

[15:04] But it obviously did and then there was also this reality or possibility of death at the time. so I think we can conclude that Satan had already rebelled against God but based on scripture, again, that sin came into the world through one man, we can also conclude that at this particular point sin had not yet come into the world.

[15:31] Adam had not yet disobeyed so sin was not yet into the world. But what we see is that Satan is not passive.

[15:47] Satan is not passive at all. He's in active rebellion against God and there's a whole lot that is going on in these seven verses that we have just read.

[16:06] One of the first things we see is that Satan attacks the very image of God. God created Adam and Eve in his image and they were the ones who were over all of his creation and we see Satan not going after the other animals, not going after the physical world that God created but he came after the bearer of God's image image.

[16:36] And he heard the command. Satan knew the command that God had given to Adam. Actually he knew it even before Eve was given it because when you read the account if you accept the account and I think we need to accept the account God gave the command to Adam.

[16:57] He didn't give the command to Eve. Now obviously at some point Adam told Eve but the command was directly given to Adam but Satan heard this command.

[17:11] And what he does is he takes the command and he seeks to distort it. And notice what he does he doesn't go to Adam but he goes to Eve.

[17:22] He doesn't go to the one who God placed in charge of the garden and to whom he gave a wife for whom he was responsible. He doesn't go to Adam but he goes to Adam's wife.

[17:36] He goes to Eve and he begins to have this conversation with her. One of the insightful points about this passage that I saw as I studied and I have Kent Hughes to thank for this is he points out that this dialogue between Satan and Eve is a very interesting dialogue.

[18:02] It's interesting because you may remember three weeks ago, two weeks ago when we came to Genesis chapter 2 and verse 4 that I shared with you how for the first time we're seeing God being referred to as Yahweh Elohim, the Lord God.

[18:22] Before that he was just referred to as God but now he is being referred to as Yahweh Elohim. He's being referred to as the God not only who is creator Elohim but he's being referred to as the God who is the covenant redeemer.

[18:37] The God who makes a covenant with his people and the God who keeps that covenant and even will go to the extent of redeeming his people when they break that covenant.

[18:48] It's an expression of his mercy and of his grace. In this conversation between Eve and Satan God is not referred to as the covenant redeemer.

[19:02] He's simply referred to as God and it is so distinctive because as soon as this dialogue is finished it goes back to referring to God as the Lord God. I think it's a very insightful thing to notice that as Satan and Eve are having this conversation about God misrepresenting God in so many ways they can't call him by his covenant name.

[19:25] They can't call him by his name Yahweh Elohim. The God who not only creates graciously creates but the God who also shows himself to be one who makes covenant covenant even to the point of redeeming his people when they fail.

[19:52] And so Satan comes to Eve and he plants doubt in her mind and he asks her and says to her did God say?

[20:07] Look at how he asks that in verse 1. Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

[20:20] And notice how even here it's a very subtle but important change. God did not say anything. God commanded. And there's a distinct difference.

[20:33] If you notice in chapter 2 in verse 16 it says the Lord God commanded the man. He didn't just say to the man. He commanded the man. He says here's what you can do and what you cannot do.

[20:46] What Satan does is he takes the edge off of that. He says did God actually say this? Did God actually say that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

[20:59] another insight that I got from Kent Hughes in this is that as Satan is speaking to Eve he's speaking to her in the plural.

[21:13] Not speaking to her singular. He's not saying you singular. He is saying you plural. And I'll come back to that as to why he's doing that.

[21:28] He's speaking to Eve in the plural and he's saying did God actually say you all shall not eat of any of the tree in the garden?

[21:39] So he distorts God's word. He misrepresents it as a command as something God just said rather than something he commanded.

[21:53] And Eve responds by saying to him we may not eat in verse three she responds and she says we may not eat 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.

[22:16] Now according to Genesis 2 and 9 there were two trees in the midst of the garden. there's a tree of life and there's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[22:31] And so Eve introduces something that God never commanded. God never commanded that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not to be touched.

[22:43] We don't know where that came from. We don't know if that was her own addition to what God said. We don't know of Adam you know sometimes we want to warn someone maybe Adam said to Eve he said listen God commanded us not to eat off that tree as a matter of fact he said don't even touch it you don't know but somehow that got introduced but the point is though it's logical that you shouldn't touch the tree if God says do not eat off of this tree commands us don't eat off of the tree if he commands us don't do this we should be nowhere near that because if you can't eat of it why do you think you should be able to touch it and feel it because the next thing you know it's going to be in your mouth so even though we don't have any record of him saying don't touch it it!

[23:34] !!! Satan now moves from distorting God's word to an outright contradiction of God's word he knew what God said but he didn't correct Eve when Eve added the part about not touching the tree Eve talked about the knowledge of good and evil and she talked about death so he simply goes on to the point about death he just skips over the addition and he picks up the point about death he says death you're not going to die look what he says in verse 4 he says you will not surely die you will surely die so he outrightly contradicts

[24:38] God's word God told Adam in verse 17 for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die and so now Satan has moved from a distortion of God's word to a contradiction of God's word and he flatly says to Eve you will not surely die now there are different views about what that promise of death meant whether it was dying you shall!

[25:15] on that day died spiritually or however they died or they were going to eventually die means all kinds of things but here's where we can conclude from it whatever it means Satan was contradicting what God said that's the most important point to see about this particular point in the passage that Satan was directly contradicting!

[25:37] the word of God to Eve moving from distortion and saying what God says will surely happen will not surely happen and brothers and sisters this is the height of rebellion this is the height of rebellion against the God of the universe who has created all things and who has revealed himself in his world and laid down the rules and that someone would come and say what God said he didn't say as I was thinking about this I realized that this is really one of the occupational hazards for everyone like me who handles God's word there is a hazard in saying that God did not say what he said that

[26:44] God's word does not say what it says and what a danger that is what rank rebellion that is to take God's word and say it doesn't mean what it says he doesn't mean what he said but that is what we see Satan doing but notice it didn't start a contradiction he started with the distortion distorting God's word and then outrightly contradicting God's word and this is an increasing hazard today because there are people with itching airs abounding growing in leaps and bounds and they want to hear particular things and when you give them what they want to hear they will give you what strokes your sinful ego!

[27:38] his word to do is to simply echo what he has said to be an echo of what he has said and I think if there is a prayer that preachers like me need again and again and it is the prayer that we will be faithful to say what God said no matter what no matter who no matter what the circumstance or who we're addressing that we would be bold to say this is what God says as opposed to compromising and giving in to itching airs and then we see in verse five that Satan even goes further Satan goes beyond distorting God's word beyond contradicting God's word and he now attacks God himself look what he does in verse five he says for God knows so you're not going to die you're not going to surely die for

[28:41] God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good from evil and so what Satan is saying to Eve is God is holding back from you God don't want you to be like!

[29:01] it's almost like two persons on a job and one is jealous of the other don't want the other to know what they know or to be able to do what they do and they are holding back and not having an open hand with them and that's what Satan tells Eve that God is not really that good that God wants to keep her and Adam in the!

[29:29] He wants their eyes to stay closed says your eyes need to be opened God wants your eyes closed and the reason he doesn't want you to eat up that tree is not that you're going to die but God knows if you eat up that tree you'll be just like him he's withholding that from you and so interesting when we consider the realities at this particular point in the account is that God warned that the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would result in death Satan instead promises that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would lead to larger life a better life a life like God open eyes and being able to know good and evil and that's the point that Satan leaves

[30:30] Eve at we have no more record of talking to Eve but he leaves her with this misrepresentation of God that God is holding out something from her and Adam and if she eats off of this tree that God tells her not to eat off of that she would enter into larger life and she would have her eyes opened and she would be just like God and so Eve is left with these two options God's command and certain warning is warning about death or Satan's lie and his false promise about not dying and she has to choose she has to choose whose word she was going to believe whether she will believe God's word or she will believe Satan's word and brothers and sisters it's the same for us every single day no we don't have a talking snake coming to us we don't have a talking anything coming to us that's out of the ordinary but we have the thoughts that are coming to us and they are contradicting they are distorting they are misrepresenting and we have to decide who we are going to listen to we are going to decide who we are going to obey but notice that in many ways although we see this account in chapter 3 of

[32:15] Satan himself being interjected into the narrative even before that there was still just two ways to live obedience to God eating off all the trees that he says you could eat off of and not eating off of this one the path of obedience and the path of disobedience it's still the same but now it's been packaged in a different way Satan has put a different package on the way of disobedience and he is saying that disobedience really is not that bad doing what God said not to do is really not that bad and we're faced with this every single day brothers and sisters why is it that we yield to temptation why is it that we go the way of disobedience it is because in our eyes it really was attractive it seemed like a better proposition we're rational people and even when thinking is fallen and broken and distorted we're still going in a way that we think is in our best interests and when we go against

[33:28] God's word and go against God's way we're doing it because we are just like Eve thinking that there's a better way and what God says really doesn't apply somehow to us or in this particular situation and we reason ourselves around it but you know what we're in a better position than Eve was one we have Eve's example and two we have our whole Bible and here's the reality if Satan is able to speak through a snake he can certainly speak through someone standing in a pulpit opening a Bible certainly speak through a human being who looks just like us and who doesn't raise any unusual questions in our minds and so we have to be ever so vigilant and so careful to remember that yes the distortions will come the contradictions will come the misrepresentations of God will come but we must remember that let God be true and every man and everyone else a liar so Eve was left with these two choices that's the first step in rebellion against God doubting his word the second step naturally follows which is disobeying his word and that is what we see Eve doing in verse six which is my second and final point in this passage look at verse six again 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 she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate

[35:44] Moses tells us that Eve observed three things about this tree two are true and one is false she observed that it was good for food that's true she observed that it was a delight to the eyes that's true God told us that when he planted the garden over in chapter two you'll see in verse nine it says out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up from every tree that is pleasant to the eye and good for food that was the characteristic of all the trees that God created pleasant to the eyes and good for food so that included the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil it was pleasant to the eye and it was good for food but the difference with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is God says don't eat off of it

[36:46] God forbade them to eat from that particular tree and so when you consider what was in front of Eve what was in front of Eve was not that the tree was good for food or that it was pleasant to the eye all the trees were like that the one thing in her mind that this tree offered that the other trees didn't offer was that it could make one wise if you eat off of it and notice what Eve has done Eve has now taken the understanding of the knowledge of good and evil and encapsulated it into this meaning it'll make you wise so this was an issue of wisdom this was an issue of having a kind of wisdom and Eve under Satan's deception viewed the tree of knowledge of good and evil as something to be desired to make one wise it was a tree of death and she thought it was a tree of wisdom brothers and sisters this is the fundamental issue the fundamental issue and why our world is broken is that we are wise in our own eyes that we want to be wise away from

[38:24] God I think we all know that wisdom is needed to live life and there's a wisdom that God was offering to Adam and Eve but it was a wisdom that he wanted to be determined by him and subject to him Adam and Eve chose a wisdom that was separate and apart from God a forbidden wisdom and it's a kind of wisdom that calls what is good bad and what is bad good it is a distorted kind of wisdom she believed Satan's lie and his false promise about wisdom and so she was emboldened to disobey God and so we're told that she took of the fruit now how many of you have visualized and maybe it's because the way we were raised and we were taught that there's this single fruit whatever it is an apple or whatever that Eve picks and she eats the idea seems to be that this was a tree this was kind of like a tree where you would go you know kind of like you imagine going to a ganep tree most of us would not go to a ganep tree and take a ganep and walk away with that ganep we can take a handful of ganeps we can take as much as our hand could get and that seems to be the idea here the idea here seems to be you know even sometimes how you can go to the tree and you just eat right while you right there drop on the ground whatever you want to drop but you're just eating off the tree when you look at it that's the idea that it that it seems to convey it says that she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband

[40:19] I mean generally you know it's a fruit and you're eating a piece of it and you don't say kind of like give some you give a piece you give a bite you give something but the idea seems to be that she just went she just went like they say for the whole hog she just she just went and she was eating maybe the idea was the more I eat the wise I'm going to be and notice that she didn't call for Adam she didn't run say Adam hey look what I did look what I ate the Bible says that she ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and it seems like this is why when Satan was addressing Eve he addressed her in the plural he didn't address her as talking to her but he addressed in the plural because

[41:20] Adam had to have at least been an air shot Adam had to at least been able to hear this conversation and we have no idea what was going on in Adam's mind we had no idea why Adam didn't intervene Adam knew and Adam's disobedience is greater than Eve's disobedience as a matter of fact what the Bible actually teaches us is that it was Adam's obedience that ushered sin into the world not Eve's now I think it's enough for us to accept that I don't think we need to necessarily understand that why Eve's disobedience did not bring sin into the world the Bible says it didn't it says that the disobedience of Adam brought sin into the world now obviously one logical thing we could think about is that he was the one God gave the command to and just the way that

[42:23] God had ordered things we see Adam naming the animals and we see him being in charge and exerting some level of leadership and it could be that God left it to him to instruct his wife concerning the rules that he had laid down in the garden eat off all the trees except this one and so ultimately he was the one who was responsible because he knew better what God had actually said but again the idea is that Adam is at least an air shot and yet he did nothing now it's interesting that in the account we don't read and they both drop down dead we don't read that God said to them in the day that you eat you will surely die but the next thing we read in verse 7 is not that they died but their eyes were both opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths and so

[43:49] Adam and Eve fell from this state of innocence this state of where they thought nothing of their nakedness that it was it was natural it was beautiful it was not something to be ashamed about and when they pursue their own wisdom away from God all of a sudden they have a different view of the world a different view of themselves a tree that they only thought was good for food now they could see that hey those leaves are big enough they could cover us and we can see the death setting in we can see the death of their innocence a little later we're going to see the death of their honesty they they try to hide from God they're being crafty like Satan himself in their response to what has happened but they died and their death is the death of many people today see there there are a lot of people who are walking around today who the Bible describes as dead the Bible describes them in Ephesians chapter 2 as dead in trespasses!

[45:09] in sins and they are under the prince of the power of the earth so they're the walking dead they're physically alive but they are spiritually dead and the death that really came to Adam and Eve on that day is that same death and that is the death that Adam passes on to all who are his offspring that though they have biological life they don't have spiritual life and no doubt Adam and Eve were welcoming of God and his presence in the garden and when sin enters in and their eyes are opened they now are hiding from God and running from God and God is not someone they want to relate to and we'll look at it next week how it unfolds but I'll make this point now and say this that Adam and Eve did not go looking for God and if God did not come looking for Adam and Eve they would never have gone looking for God and so they did they did die they died in that their fellowship with God was severed it was broken and in came spiritual death and that's the death they passed on to all of their children and see we could make the same conclusion when we look at Adam and Eve

[46:43] God says the day you eat you're going to surely die but they didn't die right away as a matter of fact they had enough strength to run and sow some big leaves and put on them but God says the day you eat you will die and so they died and their death was a spiritual death and we can do the same for people today some of our loved ones people we work with neighbors they walk around but they're dead they're dead because they do not have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and so this is the bottom line about our world why it is broken our world is broken because we rebelled against God we rebelled against his way and we have chosen Satan's way we rebelled against God's wisdom and we have chosen

[47:43] Satan's wisdom 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30 says that Christ says that he is the source of your life in Christ Jesus God is the source of our life in Christ Jesus whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and our sanctification Jesus is our wisdom and we are unwise away from Jesus we are wise the way of the world as Eve viewed things as she and Adam viewed things and they have that wisdom that leads to death but the wisdom that God offers through the Lord Jesus Christ is the wisdom of life and one of the things that we need to do as we as we work our way through this we need to remember that God is unfolding his eternal plan

[48:49] God is doing in time and in space what he determined to do in eternity past and so as you see these two trees in the middle of the garden they're signs they're symbolic they point to something beyond themselves and even then God was in the book of Genesis this unfolding revelation that we have in scripture he was laying out these two paths laying out the path of life and laying out the path of death and that tree ultimately points to Jesus Christ ultimately points to him who's the source of all wisdom the tree of life pointed to him and for some reason Adam and Eve were more attracted because of

[49:50] Satan's distortion and misrepresentation they're more attracted to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Revelation 12 and verse 11 the last verse of the passage that was read we're told that they God's people conquered him Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony for they loved not their lives even unto death how do we overcome the devil how do we overcome when we are tempted day by day the way that Eve was we need to believe God's word and we can only do so because of the blood of the Lamb of Christ that was shed for sinners like us that's the only that's the only way that we can do it it's easy to think that we would have feared better than Eve did and we would have made better choices than she did but here's what we need to know right now that the only way that we can choose the way of true wisdom and choose the way of true life is through the blood of the Lamb but John also tells us another reason they overcame the devil is because they did not love their lives so much that they were unwilling to die they did not love their lives so much that they were unwilling to die before they disobeyed

[51:43] God brothers and sisters this must be the posture of our own hearts by the grace of God that we would not love our lives so much that we would be unwilling if it came to the point of even death to die before we disobeyed the Lord worldly wisdom all the offerings of the world it's all attractive it's all packaged in glitz and glamour but in the end it leads to death and isn't that interesting that in a moment you could love your life want to preserve your life so much that you don't want to die to God's way but in the end choosing a way that you think leads to life it ends up leading to death and that's what the Bible says there's a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death and so brothers and sisters the foundational reason that our world is broken is because of this disobedience on behalf of mankind

[52:55] Adam's disobedience but we add to it our own disobedience if you turn quickly over to Romans chapter 5 and I'll close with this this is what the apostle Paul writes verse 12 therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin so the death spread to all men because all sinned all of us all of us it's a cop out to point to

[53:56] Adam's sin because we've all sinned all of us without exception we have added our own sins to Adam's sins and we do that when we choose what is right in front of our eyes believing that we are wiser than God who has given us his word and we go another way and it leads to death our world is broken because of what Adam did but our world continues to be broken because of what we do and the choices that we make and the choices that other sinners like us make and we add to the brokenness Adam didn't break our world once and for all as we follow the revelation of God's word we see others coming and adding their own sin to Adam's sin and that's what we do and may

[55:01] God help us day by day that as we face these moment by moment decisions we are laid before us as obeying God and choosing life and obeying Satan and choosing death that appears like life choosing folly that appears like wisdom we need to choose life and we need to choose folly what appears like folly so that we may have wisdom the way God has laid it out to us but we have this promise in God's word that one day Christ is going to return he's going to make all things new one of the most encouraging and comforting passages of scripture to read is in revelation 22 to the very end where we are told that God is going to usher in a new heaven and a new earth and he even tells us that there's going to be the tree of life in that new heaven that God is going to bring to us and he prepares that for all those who love him and all those who are looking for his coming the thought

[56:18] I want us to conclude on this morning though is that in this account of Adam and Eve we see the mercy and grace of God displayed in an unimaginable way the God of the universe was defied the good gracious God who created this abundant world and this abundant garden and placed his image bearers in it and told them you could have it all but honor me by not eating off of this one tree and they flatly disobeyed that and they didn't get snuffed out in a moment you see God snuffing others out but he didn't snuff them out and the first way that we see God dealing with sin is in an amazingly patient and gracious manner

[57:20] Adam and Eve who deserve to die both spiritually and physically in that moment God spared and we look at next week how he graciously dealt with them let's pray let's pray Father we thank you for the mercy and grace that you show to Adam and Eve but also that you show to us thank you Lord that when we have chosen the path of death and rebellion in your mercy and you sent your son to redeem us and to save us God would you help us to choose the way that leads to life help us to choose your wisdom that looks like folly to the world but it is true wisdom and help us to reject the wisdom of the world that is folly that parades as wisdom

[58:29] God work in our hearts and I pray even in this moment where there are those of us who are faced with decisions and choices God give us the grace and the strength through the Lord Jesus Christ to choose the way of life and not the way of death and brokenness we pray in Jesus name Amen this time for our closing song