Have you ever experienced buyer’s remorse? Just before we buy something major like a car or a house we feel the surge of excitement that comes with getting something new. It’s the same feeling a child has when he or she gets a new toy for their birthday or for Christmas. After we buy the item, sometimes we are hit by a wave of remorse. We ask ourselves if we really needed the item or if we should have spent the money.
Buyer’s remorse is nothing new. In fact, the first instance of buyer’s remorse is in the reading we heard from Genesis earlier in today’s service. It began with the crafty serpent and his sales pitch. He was also the first example of a salesman who sold “snake oil.”
Sin is a mystery. It arises from within God’s “good” creation. The serpent is one of God’s creatures. Human suspicion about God’s motivations was embedded within human hearts from the beginning of time. It merely needed the serpent’s encouragement to bring it out and convert it into action.
Obedience is at the core of all that God wants for and from his children. In Eden, God didn’t ask Adam and Eve for love or faithfulness, only for obedience to one fundamental command: “If you want to walk with Me, do what I say.” God has set boundaries for us. They are like painted markings on a highway. Without those markings to give directions, there would be confusion and accidents. We are surrounded by a world where people live by their own moral codes and defy God’s boundaries. These people don’t have any peace or sense of security that moral guidelines provide.
The serpent tried to make God’s command not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil sound more restrictive than it really was. The serpent tried to get Eve to question God’s character and motives for herself. In her reply, Eve twisted God’s prohibition. She left out the words “surely” and “every”- “surely,” because God said so, and “every,” because of God’s generosity. She also added to God’s prohibition, “Neither shall you touch it.” Where did that come from? Was it an exaggeration, or was it something she and/or Adam added to build an extra wall of protection between themselves and the tree? There is a danger in adding to or taking away anything from God’s Word. Any alteration changes the meaning. All we have to do is look at the Pharisees and their 613 rules to see what happens when God’s Word is changed by man.
Doubt led to disobedience, and the world has suffered the consequences ever since that fateful day. When we turn our back on God’s Word, we turn our backs on God’s world. Evil appealed to false pride, and this false pride replaced God with the self. The inflated sense of importance overshadowed God and others. It made man the centre of creation. Pride is at the root of many temptations. All of us suffer from temptation. We become victim to it, and therefore all of us sin.
There are two ways for us to gain experience. If we gain experience by obeying God, we will gain wisdom. If we gain experience by disobeying God, we will become slaves to sin. Adam and Eve gained experience by listening to the serpent instead of listening to God. Consequently, they became slaves to sin, and through them all of mankind became slaves to sin. The danger is that once we have sinned we are not equipped to deal with the consequences of our sin. We are not always equipped to deal with our new knowledge let alone being able to control the circumstances of our lives.
As a result of disobeying God, Adam and Eve found out about good and evil. Their sense of guilt made them afraid to meet God. They would go on to know and experience every kind of sin, suffering, pain and physical and spiritual death. When we make choices that are contrary to God’s Word, we experience the same things and the same fears. As we try to run away and hide from God, he kindly and graciously calls to us and seeks us out. God wants us to look for Him. He wants us to come to Him with a repentant heart and honest words.
As soon as Adam and Eve sinned against God by eating of the tree, the process of death began. They became susceptible to the physical degeneration of disease and old age, and they faced a more serious form of death: spiritual death and eternal separation from God. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. They became homeless nomads. We are also homeless nomads spiritually when we try to find our way back to God.
When we stand before God like Adam and Eve did, we will be asked to account for our actions on the basis of our human responsibility. It doesn’t matter what the reason for our disobedience will be. We won’t be able to blame someone else or something else like Adam and Eve did. There is no place for excuses in the Christian life.
By manifesting himself in another form as a means to deceive someone into doubting and disobeying God, Satan established himself as a force to be reckoned with. In John 8:44, Jesus referred to Satan as a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He was referring to the events in this passage from Genesis. Satan’s lies promised great benefits, but Adam and Eve experienced the painful truth. They did know good and evil, but because they were corrupted by Satan they did not know as God knows in his personal holiness. We hurt ourselves when we believe that we will find greater blessing and happiness in doing our own thing instead of obeying God.
Listening to God is not a one-time event. We must always listen to His Word or we’ll begin to listen to the wrong voices. By listening to God, we will be prepared for the assaults that will come our way. We were created to serve God.
There are many voices in our world that give us conflicting messages. We have the responsibility to know what God is telling us, to listen to Him and to act on those commands. We have to make God’s Word our guide and not deviate from it regardless of how appealing the world’s messages might sound.
Eve did what so many people do even now: she revised and then rejected what God said. This sin always produces the same result-separation from God and, ultimately, death-unless sin is atoned for. Every false religion has an element of truth, and so do false teachers. This makes their teachings believable to those who don’t know and believe what God says in the Bible. Satan’s words contained a partial truth- “your eyes will be opened”-a common tactic of his when tempting humans. He appealed to Eve’s desires, just as he did with Christ in the wilderness, and as he does with all Christians. When Adam ate of the fruit, sin and death became earth’s realities.
Before Adam and Eve sinned, they enjoyed three very special privileges:
1. They were in communion with God; they walked and talked with Him.
2. They knew God as He is. Their minds were not clouded by falsehoods or half-truths.
3. They had spiritual life. They were alive not just physically, but in every sense of the word their souls were alive.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and rebelled against Him, they lost all three of their God-given privileges:
1. Their intimate communion was broken. They hid from God.
2. When they believed Satan’s lie, their knowledge was corrupted and their understanding of God damaged. What God had said became twisted in their minds.
3. Perhaps most important, instead of knowing life as they had once known it with God, they began to know death.
The present condition of the world reflects what Adam and Eve knew after the Fall:
1. People are alienated from God.
2. People are ignorant of the truth of God.
3. People are condemned to physical and spiritual death.
Everything Adam lost in the fall is exactly what people lack today without Jesus Christ. Thankfully, God provided a way for us to regain what Adam lost. God provided a way for us to be restored to Him. He became flesh, human and vulnerable. In Jesus we are reliving the broken relationship between us and God. Jesus is God’s way of returning us to the Garden of Eden and a right relationship with God. The way back is the way of confession and repentance.
We can’t hide from God like Adam and Eve tried to hide. God knows exactly where we are. Instead of hiding in fear, we can say the same thing the tax collector said in Luke 18:13- “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
We are in the season of Lent. It is a season where we are invited to answer God’s call to come into the open, face the hard truths of how we have broken trust with God and with each other, remember how God has joined us in Christ and listen for the invitation to take and eat the bread of life, which we will do in a few minutes.
