“What Did God Really Say?”
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
By: Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor of Grace United Methodist Church, Soddy Daisy, TN www.graceumcsd.org
The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the world.
This is a huge responsibility.
Precious lives are at stake.
Precious souls are at stake.
And we are the Church.
These are our marching orders!
…to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world!!!
These are the marching orders which God gives to you.
These are the marching order which God gives to me!
This is to be the reason for our existence.
And when we are intentional in making this the central reason for our existence…we are happy, joy-filled Christians…and nothing is able to stop us from…at the end of the day…being able to say: “Mission Accomplished!”
Sadly, enough we are so often not able to…at the end of the day say “Mission Accomplished.”
And the reason for this?
We are often our own worst enemies…
…which means we are often our neighbor’s worst enemies…
…our brothers and sisters in Christ’s worst enemies…
…and God’s worst enemies!!!
The biggest buzz kill for making disciples of Jesus Christ is…us!!!
We get in the way.
Every one of us!
And when we get in the way of the making of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, Satan rejoices, laughs and says, “Well done my good and faithful slave! Well done! Keep up the good work! Well done!”
I don’t know about you, but to be a slave of Satan and to do Satan’s handiwork is the last thing on earth I want to do…
…although I’m sure I am often guilty of doing just that!
How about you?
As we look at our Old Testament Lesson for this morning we see that the creation has already been called forth from chaos and been given form.
The garden of Eden is up and running.
The human beings God has created have been given a God-given purpose, to “till and keep” the garden.
And along with the task the humans are given is a certain freedom within the garden; everything they could ever need is at their disposal.
God encourages, “freely eat,” having personally planted an easily accessible “tree of life” at the garden’s center.
The only prohibition, the “but,” comes in verse 17; the humans are forbidden to eat from the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil.”
To eat from this tree is to die!
And here it is that we see that we the people living in 21st Century America are no different than the very first human beings who were ever created!
Adam and Eve disobeyed!
Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s authority!
Adam and Eve forsook God’s good and perfect will for their lives…
…conveniently listened to Satan instead…
…and ate that doggone fruit.
And at the end of the day, instead of being able to say: “Mission Accomplished,” they found themselves hiding from the very God Who created them out of love and for love…
…they were hiding from love…
…naked as jay-birds!!!
How often do you and I find ourselves hiding from love—naked as jaybirds?
And who’s fault is this?
It is our fault alone!!!
No one else is to blame!
Adam and Eve were unable to believe that God’s intentions for them were nothing but good and right!
They became suspicious of the Authority of the God who created them out of the dust of the earth and provided them with everything they could ever want—including life eternal!!!
Therefore, when Satan came and tempted them to disobey God’s authority…
…When Satan came and basically said, “You will not die if you eat of this fruit! God is lying to you. God does not have your best interests in mind! God is playing a trick on you!
God is being mean and bad and is trying to undermine you by giving you this instruction!
Rebel against this God who tells you not to eat of this fruit…
Rebel against this God who does not have your best interests in mind…
…after-all you know better than this God anyway…
…rebel, and you will become like this God and maybe…just maybe you can overthrow Him…
…maybe you can knock Him down like I tried to do…
…maybe you can throw this Authority figure to the ground!”
When Satan came and said these things to the humans they were more than ready and willing to believe him and REBEL!!!
They didn’t believe that God’s intentions for them were for their own good—and after-all who likes to be told what he or she can and can’t do anyway?
How dare God tell them they can’t do something!!!
And so they ate from the only tree in the entire creation which God (who wants only what is best for them) asked them not to eat of.
And we are no different are we not?
We don’t like authority.
We don’t like being told what to do—even if it is in our best interest.
From day one we rebel against our parents who love us.
We rebel against our teachers in school who want us to learn and be the best we can be.
We rebel against the people who hire us to do a job…
…the very people who give us opportunity to put food on our table, have some self-dignity…
…a home for our families, a car to drive, vacation time.
We rebel.
We talk badly behind their backs.
We stir up trouble at the office or factory.
We begrudge them telling us what to do.
We come to hate them in our hearts—these the very folks who gave us a chance in the first place, and pay our wages…
…we don’t trust their judgment…
…we think they are out to get us…
…so we REBEL!
So, we who rebel…
…we who do not believe and trust…
…we who would take over and run things on our own leaving the boss in the dust or the ditch or the grave given the opportunity remain employed by she or he none-the-less!!!
And we who don’t trust God…
…we who find ourselves naked and hiding from Love…
…are loved by God none-the-less!
We are so loved by God that God stooped down and took on our form, and took all the sins of our own rebelliousness, our pride, our vanity, our murderous hate, and nailed it to the Cross and bled Himself dry in order to forgive us!!!
Love continues to Love us.
That is God!
That is Grace, which is love in action!!!
And so we, who have been forgiven, have been given one great task.
And that great task is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves by making disciples for the transformation of the world!
But there still must be an order in it.
There are some rules.
And rebellious as we are, we, who have been set free from the consequences of our very own sins…
…once again REBEL!!!
We REBEL, and thus we get in the way of God’s most important task which he has given to us to fulfill!
Recently, I was told of a man in another church…a man who has been a member of that church for years.
What happened was that another layperson had taken the responsibility of training the communion stewards.
This is a big church, and in order to be able to have everyone take communion, they have communion stewards who are stationed at various different parts of the sanctuary.
Anyhow, this man.
This retired man who drives a nice fancy sports car and lives in a big fancy house, and who has obviously been successful in the worldly sense of the word is one of the communion stewards who is being instructed.
And this fine layperson says to those present, “Now, I want all of you to where name tags when you serve communion in order that the folks will know who it is that is serving them.”
The man spoke up right away, “Why should I have to wear a name-tag? Everyone knows who I am. I’ve been a member here for 30 some-odd years!?”
The layperson calmly explained that this is a big church and it is difficult to know everyone’s name.
She continued, “also in the effort to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, we want our guests to come to know those in leadership positions.”
At this the man became furious: “Well, I am not going to wear a name tag!
And if this is what I am going to have to do in order to serve communion—then I am not going to do it!”
With that the fellow stormed out of the sanctuary, jumped in his $80,000 sports car and sped home…mumbling under his breath curses upon that poor woman who was only trying to do what was best for the church and the church’s mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World!!!
We are the ones who get in the way of God’s mission for us!
And it is the most important mission in the entire world!
Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!!!
We rebel!
We don’t like to be told what to do!
If we are told to make a change, which has the intention of enabling us to be more effective at our assigned tasks—making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world-- we stomp off in anger… “I am not going to be told to wear a name-tag! I’m taking my toys and going home!”
Oh, how childish we are.
Oh, how we get in the way of God’s purpose!
If our church is not growing as fast as we like, we have no one to blame but ourselves!
We have gotten in the way!
Perhaps we have spent so much time rebelling against the positive changes we need to make in order to better fulfill our tasks—that we forget about our tasks all together!!!
It’s hard to be a complainer and a disciple maker at the same time!
It’s impossible to be a gossip and a busy body and a disciple maker at the same time!
John Wesley said, “One might as well cut another’s throat than to cut down another when that person is absent!”
It is nearly impossible to complain that “I’m not getting my way,” and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world at the same time!
We cannot rebel and make disciples of Christ!
We cannot be at one another’s throats and make disciples at the same time!
We cannot be naked and hiding from love and make disciples of Jesus Christ at the same time!
The biggest factor in Pastor Burn-Out is the Church!
The Church of complainers.
The Church of folks who don’t trust that the pastor who has been appointed to lead them and love them and (faults and all) does have their best interests at heart!
Will that pastor make mistakes?
You better believe it!
Will that pastor make those mistakes on purpose…not likely.
When I step on your toes, and I’m sure I will…please come talk to me…don’t cut my throat and thwart the mission of the church…I don’t bite.
If another leader in the church makes you angry.
Come to me.
If you hear one of your brothers or sisters cutting the throat of another…
…don’t stir the pot…
…don’t join the wolf-pack…
…instead, suggest that person go speak to the pastor in confidence about the problem.
I am bound by my ordination as an Elder in the United Methodist Church never to talk to anyone about what has been told to me in confidence.
If you are embarrassed as were Adam and Eve…
…don’t be.
I’ve heard it all, and probably have participated in much of the same kind of lunacy myself!
Adam and Eve hide from God because they didn’t think God was big enough to handle what they had done.
Adam and Eve did not admit to God that what they did was their fault.
In verses 12 and 13 of Chapter 3 Adam tells God: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
In other words, “It’s not my fault. Don’t blame me. Don’t punish me. Punish her. It’s her fault!!!”
“Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’
The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Baloney!
It was there own fault!
They Rebelled!
They had free-will!
Just imagine if they would have, instead, admitted this to God and asked for forgiveness.
I am convinced God would have been BIG ENOUGH to handle it!
After-all God only wants what’s best for us.
But having rebelled and having lost their innocence…
…and no longer being trustworthy with the gifts and the tasks they were given to perform…
…God had no other choice to banish them from those tasks from which they were entrusted and no longer give them the right to eat from the tree of life and live forever!!!
It was for their own good.
It would have been nothing but chaos if they had been able to stay!!!
They would have ended up killing one another if God had allowed them to continue living in the garden.
So God had to come in and fix it through His life, death on the Cross and Resurrection from the dead.
The people couldn’t be trusted.
But God loved them none-the-less!
Can we be trusted with the great task God has given us?
Can we be trusted not to rebel against God and one another and thus make it impossible to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of this lost and dying world?
The biggest obstacle to making disciples is me and you…the very group of people who are given this-- the most important task in the entire universe!
We aren’t any different from Adam and Eve.
To eat from the tree is to die!
Let’s every one of us repent of our rebellion against God and against one another!
Let’s everyone of us live like mature persons, mature Christians who do not fight over the color of the carpet or the way the bulletin is printed, or whether or not we like the pastor, or whether or not we like the hymns…
…let’s grow up and not go stomping off because we’ve been asked to wear a name tag for the sake of the Kingdom of God!
A colleague of mine was greeting people before the worship service a few weeks ago.
He was shaking hands, and asking folks how they were doing.
When he got to the back part of the sanctuary he came upon two men who were busy studying that morning’s bulletin.
They were huddled over the bulletin and absorbed in conversation.
My colleague, their pastor who loves them and wants only what is best for them, held out his hand and said, “Good morning.”
Neither of them looked up so he tried again.
This time both of them looked up with scowls on their faces and said, “We don’t like having the words to the hymns printed in the bulletin!
We want to sing out of the hymnal like we’ve always done!”
My colleague, in a congenial way, said to them…well, first of all, “I greeted you and you didn’t greet me back.”
“Second of all, is this the way to prepare to worship God…by complaining about the words to the hymns being printed in the bulletin?
We’ll be more than happy to put the page numbers to these hymns in the bulletin so you can sing from the hymnal from now on.
But what a way to prepare to worship God!
You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
We are so privileged, you and I!
God has entrusted us with the Greatest News in the entire world!!!
And God has entrusted us with spreading that news!!!
Our job is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
May we all think before we act or open our mouths…
… “is what I am about to do going to help or hinder the one great task with which I have been entrusted?”
With that mission in mind…
…with that mission driving everything we do…
…no one can stop us…
…not even the cunning serpent!!!
For achieving the mission of the church is the will of God!
May it be so at Grace United Methodist Church!
Amen.
Let us all now turn in our hymnals to page 12 and pray together the confession and pardon.
