The Poison Of The Apple Series

OPEN: A mother was telling about her 7-year-old daughter, named Jessica. She said they were re-reading the story of Adam and Eve and how sin came into the world and that led them to discuss why bad things happen sometimes, Later in the week, Jessica became ill and had to stay home from school. She was feeling miserable and she said to her mother "If only Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the fruit, I wouldn’t be sick."

Before her mother could answer her, Jessica quickly added, "But, of course, if they didn’t eat it, we’d be sitting here naked!"

INTRODUCTION: When I was back in Bible College, they taught me a principle of sermon preparation that I’ve never used. They said you should:

1. Tell people what you plan to tell them.

2. Tell them what you’re gonna tell them.

3. THEN Retell them what you’ve already told them.

Like I said, I’ve never used that technique.

It doesn’t appeal to me.

But the more I worked with this text and what I was learning from it, I realized that’s precisely what I needed to do with this sermon.

So, let me tell you what I’m going to tell you:

The theme of this series of sermons has been the stewardship of things God has entrusted to us, and the focus of this sermon had to do with stewardship God has given us of the relationships we have with one another.

One of the most significant messages out of the story of Adam and Eve is that there were consequences for sinful decisions. And one of the consequences of their eating of the forbidden fruit has been the poison that meal had on our relationships with one another. Their eating of that fruit poisoned their sin relationship with each other. But the thing that led to that damaging of their relationships with each other was the damage their sin had on their relationship with God.

My point is this: our relationships with others in this world have been broken because of what Adam and Eve did. But that damage will never be fixed until we repair our relationship with God.

ILLUS: Now, I recently read a few things recently that have helped me understand that principle. I was reading about a man who had died a couple months ago named Steve Jobs.

Does anybody know what Steve Jobs was?

That’s right, he was the founder of Apple Computer and the creator of iPads/iPods/etc.. He was a gifted creator, and much of what we’re able to do with computers and phones these days can be directly tied back to his genius.

Walter Isaacson recently wrote an authorized biography about the life of Steve Jobs where he described much of the background of the life of this computer giant. But one of the things Issacson talked about caught my attention.

According to Isaacson: Jobs gave up on Christianity at the age of 13.

Why? Because he’d seen a picture of starving children on the cover of Life magazine. Disturbed by what he’d seen, he asked his Sunday School teacher, “does God know about this?”

And the teacher responded said, “Steve I know you don’t understand, but God knows everything.”

And that’s all that teacher apparently told him.

Steve said, “Well I don’t want to have anything to do with that God.”

And he left... and never went back to church.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/under-god/post/steve-jobss-journey-for-enlightenment/2011/11/16/gIQAkx2BSN_blog.html

Now, why did Jobs walk away from God?

He walked away because – He blamed God

He looked at all those starving children and he asked “does God know about this?

He thought to himself: If God knew about this it shouldn’t have happned.

I God were good, this wouldn’t have happened.

He was rightly disturbed by the injustices of life.

He was rightly angry about the pain and suffering in the world.

In his young mind it was obvious: If there’s a god… why is there evil?

And so He blamed God and left the church, all because there were hungry children.

Now, fast forward 20 or 30 years. Steve Jobs became the founder and head of Apple Computer. Over the years he showed himself to be highly gifted and creative pioneer of the computer age. Last year Apple Inc. Made a net profit of $14 billion.

So, here was Steve Jobs – a wealthy and powerful industrial giant. He has power and money at his disposal to take care of any of the world’s ills he chooses to. So, now is his chance to deal with the injustices and unfairnesses of life!

And what did he do about that?

Nothing!

As far as we can tell, once he left the church he didn’t do anything to feed the poor or help the helpless!

According to a New York Times (published August 2011)