Truth and Consequences
Genesis 3:8-19
Intro: There is a fairly new word in our English language. The word is “affluenza”. It is so new that my spell check says that it doesn’t exist. I had never heard of the word until a couple of months ago. You may have heard of this story.
. There is a teenager named Ethan Couch. He is sixteen years old. Ethan grew up in a life of luxury. Pampered and catered to his entire life. He and seven of his friends decided to get drunk one night. They were out in the family pickup truck. Ethan was driving and drove into a crowd of people at 70 MPH. Four people were killed and eleven more were injured. Ethan’s blood alcohol was three times the limit and they found valium in his system also. Ethan was arrested and finally went to trial last December. Just last month. During the trial, a psychologist testified that Ethan, being wealthy and pampered and sheltered his whole life should not really be held responsible for his actions. He said that Ethan suffered from affluenza, a social disease that only affects the wealthy and affluent. People with this social disorder don’t understand that they can’t do things like this. They need help, they should not be held responsible for their actions. The judge agreed and Ethan was given 10 years probation and rehab.
. While this story may make your blood boil with what’s going on in our society, it is not really unique. We are a society that does not want to hold people accountable for their actions. From our government on down.
. Not only are people not held accountable, no one wants to take responsibility for their actions.
. As many of you know, at one time I owned a service business. I had an employee. His name was John Smith. I know, that should have given me a hint. Actually John was a pretty good employee other that this issue I am sharing with you. Any time anything went wrong, John would call me and the first words out of his mouth were, “ Anthony, this was not my fault”. John was never responsible for anything that went wrong. It was always somebody else’s fault.
. While we may think that this is a new phenomenon in our society, it is not.
. We see the first account of this in our scripture this morning.
. We are back in the third chapter of Genesis this morning.
. Last time we looked at the conversation that the woman and the serpent or the devil had.
. This morning we are going to look at the conversation that God has with Adam, Eve and the serpent.
. In this scene, we will see that God gives them opportunity to Fess up and the consequences of their disobedience and sin.
. Lets read our scripture. Genesis 3: 8-19
. 8When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees.
9Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”
11“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
12The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
13Then the LORD God asked the woman, “What have you done?”
“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”
14Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live.
15And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
16Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
17And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
19By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
. Adam and Eve have done what is forbidden to them and they are ashamed. What they should have done, is in their shame, confess what they had done. They chose to conceal. To hide from God.
. Let’s look at Adams conversation with God.
. Look at verses 8-12 again.
. . 8When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees.
9Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”
11“Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
12The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
. The first thing we see here is that Adam blamed God.
. The woman that YOU gave me God. I didn’t pick her, you picked her for me. You created her. You should have done a better Job.
. His first response was to blame God.
. Many of us do the same thing when things don’t go the way we want them to.
. Have you ever heard or possibly even said “God, how could you do this to me.”
. We blame God for many things but if we look closely at our lives, we will see that most of the things that we cry out to God about are many times of our own making.
. Philip Yancey, in his book "Reaching for the Invisible God" describes the way God get’s blamed for things in this way.
"When Princess Diana died in an automobile accident, a minister was interviewed and was asked the question “How can God allow such a terrible tragedy?” And I loved his response. He said, “Could it have had something to do with a drunk driver going ninety miles an hour in a narrow tunnel? Just How, exactly, was God involved.”
Years ago, boxer, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, killed a Korean opponent with a hard right hand to the head. At the press conference after the Korean’s death, Mancini said, “sometimes I wonder why God does the things he does.”
In a letter to Dr. Dobson, a young woman asked this anguished question, “Four years ago, I was dating a man and became pregnant. I was devastated. I asked God, “Why have you allowed this to happen to me?”
Susan Smith, the south Carolina mother a couple years ago who pushed her two sons into a lake to drown and then blamed a fictional car-jacker for the deed, wrote in her confession: “I dropped to the lowest point when I allowed my children to go down that ramp into the water without me. I took off running and screaming, ‘Oh God! Oh God, no! What have I done? Why did you let this happen?”
Now the question remains, exactly what role did God play in a boxer beating his opponent to death, a teenage couple giving into temptation in the back seat of a car, or a mother drowning her children?
Is God responsible for these acts? To the contrary, they are examples of incredible human free will being exercised on a fallen planet. And yet it’s in our nature as mortal, frail, fallen people to lash out at one who is not, that being God."
. Not only did Adam blame God, He blamed the woman.
. He blamed Eve.
. Guys, I don’t know about you but it sure is easy to blame the wife isn’t it. Especially when she is not around.
. Pam and I do have a deal though, if I am not with her and she needs an excuse, she can blame it on me and I can do the same with her.
.As we will see though, guys we can’t lay our responsibilities off on our wives.
. Try as we might, we must take responsibility for our own actions and inactions.
. Adam told God that it was the woman’s fault so god turned to her.
Look with me at verse 13 again.
. 13Then the LORD God asked the woman, “What have you done?”“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”
. The Devil made me do it.
. Sounds familiar , doesn’t it.
. From 1970 to 1974 there was a show on Tv called the Flip Wilson show. Flip was the first black comedian to be successful with a majority white audience. He was groundbreaking in his comedy. He would dress up like a woman and called her Geraldine. Geraldine was always getting into some kind of trouble and her favorite expression was “the devil made me do it”. She would never take responsibility for anything and always blamed her problems and issues on the devil. While this comedy routine was groundbreaking, the blame on the devil is as old as creation itself.
. Eve started this blame game and people of all races and nationalities have been using this excuse.
. I cringe many times when people look at me and say you know pastor, the devil will trip us up every time.
. While Satan is active and present in the world, the majority of the time, it’s our own selfishness and conceit and covetousness that get us into the trouble we are in.
. While Satan rejoices in the situations and problems that we create, it’s just that. We are responsible.
. The devil is not omniscient as God is, he is not omni-present, meaning at all places at once. He is fallible and we give him way too much credit for our sinfulness.
. God created man with the ability to choose. The choices we make in life have consequences, either good or bad.
. But no matter what people may tell you different, we all make choices and we all must live with the consequences of our choices.
. Our narrative now tells us of those consequences.
. Look at 14-19 again.
. 14Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live.
15And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
16Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
17And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
18It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.
19By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
. There were consequences for the devil. I don’t know how snakes moved before this, it seems they moved some way other than slithering along the ground.
. The serpents deception caused everlasting consequences for all serpents and a hostility between them and man.
. The consequences for the woman were sharpened pains in childbirth.
. Man was taken out of a lush environment where all he had to do was look after the garden and made to scratch out a living.
. Man has been scratching out a living ever since.
. And finally, death was introduced into the world. Since man had disobeyed, there would be a limit to his life.
. We can learn many things from this scripture.
. The first thing is: You can’t hide from God.
. We might be able to fool our friends.
. We might be able to fool our fellow Christians.
. We can’t hide from God.
. God knows. I believe that God was giving Adam and Eve the chance to confess their sin to him.
. Notice that they didn’t, and they fell out of fellowship with him.
. That’s what happens when we have unconfessed sin.
. Don’t try to hide from God, it never works.
. Next we need to learn that: There Are Consequences For The Decisions That We Make In Life
. While God is faithful to forgive our sins, that’s what we talked about last week, there are always consequences for our decisions.
. Our society will try to tell you that you are not responsible for your actions, God’s word shows us that we are responsible for our own actions.
. We can help ourselves in decision making if we will search God’s word and understand the life that he wants us to live.
. The worst decision that we can make in life is to reject the free gift of salvation that comes through Jesus Christ.
. The consequences of that decision are eternal. An eternal separation from God throughout eternity.
. Have you accepted this gift of salvation yet, today can be the day.
Invitation
*** To my Christian brothers and sisters, thank you for taking the time to read this sermon. I ask that you take another second and score this for me. I am always open to feedback so that I can continue to grow in the proclamation of God’s word.
May God bless you as you continue to strive to walk worthy of His calling.
Sources: The Holy Bible, NLT
Illustration from sermon central
