OCTOBER 18, 2020 SUNDAY MESSAGE
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As we move forward in our service, we are continuing our series called the Gospel Story which we hope emerges as good news in the midst of bad news, fake news, and competing news from polarized outlets and we have been tracking through it in 6 chapters: OX>†>O.
We wanted you to understand, without a shadow of a doubt, that God started His story GOOD and that He arranged (or ORDERED) it in such a way that it would bring about the FULLNESS of life, love, shalom, and human thriving on this earth… that was the first chapter
O - Earth
While everything up to THIS point has been GOOD NEWS, we have not ventured into the chapter where we learn the BAD NEWS!! One of our elders Dwayne Williams preached last week that a REBELLION occurred and we represent that with another symbol:
X - Rebellion
The effects of this rebellion are devastating but we can’t hide from it!
So we are going to take a closer look at Genesis 3 today as we explore the consequences of that REBELLION because we have to be honest with ourselves and confront the reality and the DEPTH of the BAD to know the GOOD that God produces from it. Let me give you a sneak peak of what I’m talking about from Genesis 3:15:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Proto: First Evangelium: Good news
Even in the midst of profound devastation, the Lord of all creation begins to sow hope and glimpses of redemption right after Adam and Eve Rebel!
The GOOD NEWS IS THIS: though God was the one who was violated, He will make a way for Victory to become possible... Stand with me & sing praises to the King who proclaims good news!!
As our kids have grown up, we have different kinds of building toys and blocks!
• one of our favorite games was to build these foam blocks up as tall as we could. Now the height of their enjoyment wasn’t the building but running into the foam tower as fast they possibly could destroying the structure and scatting the blocks all over the room.
• We have graduated to legos now and destruction isn’t the goal: design, intention, creativity,
structure is the goal. They don’t want it to be destroyed, they want to build!
• We put together some competitions and everyone once in a while, they drop it and it shatters!!
• There are usually sections still in tact for them to piece it together giving you a glimpse of what it was supposed to look like...
• You can even see it in a puzzle. Our youngest who loves Thomas the Train, we have a “large piece” Thomas puzzle.
• So we will sit down on the floor and put it together
• but, if we leave it, eventually it will get stepped on, moved, or his brothers will come in and
break it apart & SCRAMBLE it!
• If you look closely, EVEN IF THE BIG PICTURE IS SHATTERED separated from all the other
pieces, you can see a portion of the picture as it was meant to be!
• There is a remnant of the way it was supposed to be imprinted on each of the individual pieces
of the puzzle!
To bring this into ADULT WORLD, what if you came home and found everything in your house dismantled, mixed up and scrambled?
Your furniture, your utensils, your appliances scattered about? Once again, there is enough of a remnant to see how it was supposed to be before this happened (this WAS furniture) but it would be all but impossible to put it all back together all incredibly mixed up and now it’s
hard to know where the different pieces were supposed to go.
This is what we see happen to God’s creation in Genesis 3!! Everything was as it was supposed to be...but something devastating happens!!
Let’s take a look at Gen. 3
Let’s read it in GENESIS 3:1-
3 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’?”
At first, the serpent’s initial question may have seemed innocent, although it deliberately misquotes God saying the couple must not eat of ANY tree in the garden.
The serpent’s question simultaneously:
• OMITS the positive statement made by God in Gen 2:16 AND
• DISTORTS the earlier statement by presenting God as saying Adam and Eve could not eat from ANY tree at all.
Eve responds with this:
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We MAY eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’”
This is ALSO not what God said. She adds: “and you must not touch it.” Some speculate that
God did say it but it’s not recorded
• She is confused by serpents twisting of truth,
• She is adding rules (first legalism),
• we don’t know details but things are definitely unhinging here and this subtle distinction has massive ramifications.
Next, the enemy goes for the jugular with a full blown lie...
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
LIE: God is not JEALOUS! He is PROTECTING
Genesis continues...
6 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.
Progress: Taste > Aesthetic > intellect
Now, their choice to disregard God’s instructions was an act of willful rebellion not just a “FALL” which is more accidental than what we just read! They made a decision NOT to trust God and His words.
A couple of relational “changes” take place as a result. Let’s see if you catch them as we read in V7...
7 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. Perfect unity between the humans has changed
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of 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. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Perfect unity between God/humans has also changed and here is the result...
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (God doesn’t lack information but attempts to elicit a confession.) 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me
some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
This is where things go completely off the rails!! Everyone is looking for someone else to blame and all if it has gone haywire!! These relational changes have created separation and separation IS death.
• trust is put to death
• intimacy is put to death
• presence is put to death
• Perfect Harmony is put to death
So, when we say "death entered the world” it is more than physical mortality being applied to the human body! There is a termination of shalom in everything God created because it was not longer being held together by God’s sovereign reign and rule!
What do I mean by that?
• Remember, we talked about how God ordered creation very specifically?
• BUT humanity believed they KNEW BETTER than God and they USURPED the structure of God’s perfectly good creation.
• SO EVERYTHING GOD ORDERED UNDERWENT A DEVASTATING DECONSTRUCTION. It was beyond scrambled like the puzzle we talked about at the beginning of the service....it was
shattered like this!
WHAT WERE CONSEQUENCES OF ADAM AND EVE TURNING AGAINST GOD?
So far, from the text:
• The Relationship between one another has been ruptured.
• They feel SHAME which did NOT exist before this moment.
• Adam and Eve are, in a sense, hiding from each other now.
• The Relationship between God and humans has been ruptured.
• Adam and Eve are now trying to HIDE from God.
Sandra Richter says, “With the Fall, humanity loses
• their identity as God’s people,
• their place in his paradise and
• their access to his presence.” 3
As catastrophic as this is, it doesn’t stop there!! More Specific consequences were proclaimed over Adam, Eve, and the Serpent as well as some macro-level applications of a fractured creation!
Let’s read about that in verse 14...
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and
hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
So this is what we have:
• The serpent is cursed and given a low position amongst all life and must crawl upon the ground.
• There is enmity, strife, and violence ushered in where life giving rhythms once abounded.
• ...but we do get the first good
News very soon after - Proto-evangelium.
Proto: First / Evangelium: Good news
16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in child-bearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I
commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles
for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
We can see the connection to the original mandates:
• “be fruitful and multiply...The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
• The original tasks given to both Adam and Eve, which once worked perfectly and teemed with
life, now involves great difficulty.
• Once again, there is a remnant of the things as they were meant to be but there is an added layer of difficulty and pain involved:
• Woman STILL has the miraculous ability to bring life into this world but there pain, possible loss, infertility
• Man can still work and find fulfillment in it but the production is difficult and often results in addictive workaholism or passive lack of production
• I taught on this before but it’s worth highlighting again, this mention - of hierarchical tension-
filled relationships between men and women - comes AFTER the
REBELLION as a consequence of it:
• “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
• Before this, they are: "side by side, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.”
• So, beware those who weaponize Genesis 3 as if it is the goal when Genesis 2 stands in testimony against it.
• Genesis 3 isn’t the goal EDEN IS THE GOAL!
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
Notice that, in God’s kindness, he covers their shame and clothes them but the garments given are made out of skin - the dead flesh of creation. They are clothed in Garments of death which makes the redeeming words of Isaiah so much richer:
Isaiah 61:10
“I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness”
And Paul, who states:
“for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
Garments of death will be turned into garments of joy, righteousness, as we are clothed in Christ.
22 And the Lord God said, “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.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Shattered and shut out, humanity and all of creation, since this moment, has been longing and GROANING...to return back to paradise lost.
I mentioned two earlier but, in fact, THREE RELATIONSHIPS WERE BROKEN THIS DAY:
• Human to Human
• Humanity and GOD
• Humanity and creation
Which one do you feel a need to participate in reconciliation on earth today?
One of life’s biggest questions that gets answered by this story is “why does God let bad things
happen?”
• The answer is: God didn’t make it that way!! As we covered, He made it perfect, harmonious, and GOOD!
• Humanity, through Adam and Eve, brought sin, death and calamity upon us.
• As a result of their rebellion, all of creation is in a fallen, broken state
• Mike Breen, in his book covenant and Kingdom writes, “All the maladies and miseries of the world originated here—all the sickness and suffering began here, with a wrongful ruler given power by our wrongdoing.”
• Rogue and destructive body cells like Rogue and destructive weeds spread and multiply
• Earthquakes, tornadoes, and virus’ wreak havoc upon the earth and the remnant of God’s
image bearers.
The next question that pops up when you discuss this is:
Why does the REBELLION of Adam and Eve affect me today?
• One of the things we should understand about this is that this is a very uniquely WESTERN
question. We are superimposing our worldview on God as if there are no communal ramifications of our choices.
• So, when they rebelled, all of creation was affected...even you...
even today!
• So if you catch yourself thinking: “HOW COULD you do this?” AND before we get too critical, we have to come to terms with the fact that all of us, if given the opportunity in the garden, would have fallen into temptation and rebelled against our creator.
Sandra Richter puts summarized this beautifully:
“In addition the bodies of these made in the image of God are cursed with death. Not immediate
death, but their bodies become mortal and are thereby invaded with the sickness and deformity that lead to death. Although I am still alive (at this printing at least!), I am very sad to say that gray hairs and wrinkles have made their appearance. I have a knee that worked a lot better four
surgeries ago. I am no longer able to dive for a volleyball without ibuprofen-inspiring results. In other words, my body is already rotting around me. And so is yours. We inherited this state of affairs from our ancestors, and unless the process is interrupted by the return of Christ, then as with all who have gone before us, the death already resident in our bodies will have its way. Adam and Eve were the biological and legal representatives of our race, and they have passed on the legal and biological consequences of the curse to their children’s children’s
children.” 6
As we close, I want to point you to the hope laced throughout this chapter and to remember that we can’t get to redemption without acknowledging our participation in sin. The quickest way to healing is to NEVER to ignore the infection and the promise of renewal that goes far greater than repair but resurrection POWER.
ROMANS 5, referring to this moment, says: “12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned...15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! 18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
Coty Miller’s own “Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.