Bob Beasley, a pastor in Ontario, Canada, talks about the time when Rena, a three-year-old, sat with her parents during a baptismal service. It was a new experience for her, so she exclaimed, “Why he pushed that guy in the water? Why, Dad, why?" Her mom tried to explain briefly and quietly, but Rena just wouldn't be satisfied. Later that night, her parents tried to provide an answer that a child's mind could comprehend. They talked about sin and told Rena that when people decide to live for Jesus and “do good” they want everyone to know. They then explained that water symbolizes Jesus' washing people from sin; when they come out “clean,” they are going to try to be “good.” A moment later, they realized they’d have to work on their explanation a bit. Rena had immediately responded, “Why didn't Pastor Bob just spank him?” (Bob Beasley, pastor of Gregory Drive Alliance Church, West Chatham, Ontario, Canada, www.PreachingToday.com).
If only getting clean from sin was so easy, but when sin has ruined you, no amount of water or spanking can clean up the mess. Baptism is a beautiful symbol of new life in Christ, but that new life requires real transformation before baptism has any real meaning.
The question is: How does that transformation happen? How do you get clean after sin has ruined you? How do you recover from a fall? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 3, Genesis 3, where we see how God invites the first human beings to recover from their fall. Their original sin brought ruin to themselves and to the entire human family, but God offers hope for recovery, not only for them, but for all their descendants, even for you and me!
Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden (ESV).
They had sinned against God and now they are scared.
Genesis 3:9-11 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (ESV)
Tell me: Do you think God asks these questions because He doesn’t know the answer? No, of course not! God knows exactly where Adam is. God knows exactly what Adam did. Why then does He ask? It’s because God wants Adam to openly confess his sin. Does Adam do it?
Genesis 3:12-13 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (ESV).
Do they openly confess their sin? No. They both play the blame game. In fact, Adam has the audacity to blame God Himself. In verse 12 he says, “The woman whom YOU gave to be with me” – she did it to me. Then Eve blames the serpent.
Now, that is NOT the way to handle it when you mess up! Yet that is what a lot of people do. They blame others for their failures, or they make excuses. Don’t do that when you fail. Instead just...
CONFESS YOUR OWN SIN.
Admit what you did wrong, and take responsibility for your own actions.
This goes beyond just an apology, which is an expression of regret: “I am sorry.” A confession is an admission of fault: “I am sorry because I did wrong. I sinned.” Susan Wise Bauer says, “Apology addresses an audience. Confession implies an inner change... that will be manifested in outward action” (Susan Wise Bauer, The Art of the Public Grovel; www.PreachingToday.com).
In his book Less is More, pastor Kai Nilsen tells the story of the day he and two friends were on their way to a youth Bible Study. They stopped at a local drug store to pick up a few items to use as a prank in the Bible Study. They gathered some cap guns, tiny fake-metal bearings to toss like grenades across the table at unsuspecting classmates (probably girls), and other (what he calls) “small weaponry of chaos.” The problem was they had no money to pay. No problem, they thought. A drug store with all this merchandise won’t miss a few insignificant knick-knacks. The store manager, who met them at the door, had other ideas, including calling the local police who chauffeured them to the police station, filed their report, and called their parents.
Kai Nilsen says, “I’m not sure what was worse, facing the police or facing my mom.” (“Actually,” he says, “I know what was worse!”) To each he pleaded his case: “I was just the look-out guy. Yes, I was part of it, but I didn’t take anything!” The argument convinced no one, and the tiny bag of fake metal bearings buried in his pocket screamed a different story. “Liar! Thief!” They knew. He knew.
When Nilsen returned home, he snuck off to their garage, tucked many yards behind the house, extracted that tiny bag from his pocket and flung it into the darkest corner hoping, praying that he would never have to confront it again. However, every time he walked past that part of the garage the tiny voice persisted, “Liar! Thief!” (Kai Nilsen, “Less Is More: A Lenten Guide for Personal Renewal,” Renovare, 2013, pp. 22-23; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s the way it is with hidden, unconfessed sin. Even though nobody else knows, you do! And the thought of it will haunt and enslave you until you come clean.
Why not come clean with God right now? Confess your sin and replace that haunting voice in your head with God’s voice: “I forgive you; I love you; welcome home.”
Proverbs 28:13 says, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”
So stop making excuses and playing the blame game. Just confess your sin. Then…
ACCEPT ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Endure the results of your actions with a willingness to take what comes from the hand of God. Accept them as Adam and Eve had to. Skip down to vs.16, where God judges the woman.
Genesis 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you” (ESV).
There are two things God tells the woman. 1st, there will be pain when she gives birth to a child. 2nd, there will be a power struggle between her and her husband.
First, God says there will be pain in childbearing. Ladies, I don’t need to tell you about the pain that’s involved in having a baby. Suffice it to say, that after three kids of my own, I thank the Lord every day that He did not make me a woman. It’s like the little boy told the little girl, “Let’s play pregnant, I’ll shave, and you throw up.” There is pain in the whole process of bearing and raising children.
On top of that, there is a power struggle between the woman and her man. They have disagreements over how to raise the children. They have disagreements over how to spend the money. They have disagreements over what temperature to set the thermostat.
In verse 16 God tells the woman, “Your desire shall be for your husband.” Now, if you skip over to Genesis 4:7, you get a feel for what that word, “desire,” means. There, God tells Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door; It’s desire is for you (same word), but you must rule over it.” In other words, sin desires to control Cain, but Cain must learn to control his sinful desires. So the woman desires to control the man, but in Genesis 3:16 God says the man will rule over her.
Instead of harmony in the home, the husband and wife will struggle for control of the home. Their sin brought the desire for each to dominate the other.
A farmer’s boy decided to get married. His father said to him, “John, when you get married, your liberty is gone.”
The boy couldn’t believe it, not with HIS sweetheart. So the father said, “I’ll prove it to you. Catch a dozen chickens, tie their legs together and put them in the wagon. Hitch up the two horses to the wagon and drive into town. Stop at every house you come to, and whenever you find the man is boss, give him a horse. Wherever you find the woman is boss, give her a chicken. You’ll give away all your chickens and come back with two horses.”
The boy accepted the challenge and drove into town. He had stopped at every house and had given away ten chickens when he came to a nice little house and saw an old man and his wife standing out on the front lawn.
He called to them and asked, “Who is boss here?”
The man said, “I am.”
Turning to the woman, the boy said, “Is he boss?”
The woman replied, “Yes, he’s boss.”
The boy asked them to come down to the street. He then explained his reason for asking and told the man to pick out one of the horses. He said he would bring the horse back to him that afternoon. The old man and the old lady looked over the horses carefully, and the husband said, “I think the black horse is the better of the two.”
The wife then said, “I think the bay horse is in every way the better horse. I would choose him.”
The old man took a careful look at the bay horse and said, “I guess I’ll take the bay horse.”
The boy smiled and said, “No you won’t; you’ll take a chicken” (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.336).
Even when it seems there is harmony on the outside, each one desires to control the other on the inside.
Pain in childbearing and a power struggle in the home: That’s the consequence of sin for the woman.
Then there are the consequences of sin for the man. For God not only judges the woman, God judges the man.
Genesis 3:17-19 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (ESV).
Just as the woman will experience pain in childbirth, so the man will experience pain in his work. The word for “pain” in verse 17, is the same Hebrew word translated “pain” in verse 16. Both the husband and wife experience “pain” as a result of their sin. They just experience it in different realms. For the man, the ground that once produced an abundant crop, giving him everything he needed to provide for his family, now becomes stingy with its fruits, offering thorns and thistles instead. Work now becomes painful, toilsome and exhausting, cumbersome and a chore. Man experiences pain in his work.
Then he passes away. Then he is gone! God told Adam, vs.19, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
In his book The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson describes the largest organ of the human body, the skin. He writes:
The skin consists of an inner layer called the dermis and an outer epidermis. The outermost surface of the epidermis is made up entirely of dead cells. It is an arresting thought that all that makes you lovely is deceased. Where body meets air, we are all cadavers.
He then concludes:
These outer skin cells are replaced every month. We shed skin copiously, almost carelessly: some twenty-five thousand flakes a minute, over a million pieces every hour. Run a finger along a dusty shelf, and you are in large part clearing a path through fragments of your former self. Silently and remorselessly, we turn to dust (Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Doubleday, 2019), p. 12; www.PreachingToday.com).
We live a life of pain, then we turn to dust. It doesn’t sound very hopeful, does it? But there IS hope! For God not only judges the woman and the man. God judges the serpent too, and here we find our hope. Here we find grace and mercy in the midst of pain.
Genesis 3:14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life (ESV).
The devil is disgraced more than any other creature. The one who wanted the highest place in all the universe now takes the lowest. God humiliates the serpent, and He declares that humanity will hate the serpent.
Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (ESV).
Satan thought he could win the loyalties of the woman and her descendants, but now he finds that they will hate him. More than that, he finds that one of them will kill him some day. Satan will be mortally wounded – his head crushed – while the one who wounds him will get away with only a strike on his heal.
In the midst of discipline, there is the promise of a Deliverer. In the midst of sorrow, there is the promise of a Savior – One who will rescue us from the enemy of our own souls.
Who is that One? Who is that Deliverer? Who is that Savior? Is it Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain? No. He ends up murdering his brother. Is it Abraham, the great Father of the Jews? No. He turns out to be a liar, afraid of Pharaoh. Is it the great King David? No. He ends up getting a woman, who’s not his wife, pregnant, and he kills her husband to hide his own sin. None of these can deal the fatal blow to Satan. They are all the seed of men, descendants of men, and therefore sinful like Adam himself.
So we search all of history in vain for our Deliverer, until we come to the little town of Bethlehem at around 4 B.C. There, in a stable, a little boy was born of a virgin. He is NOT the seed of a man. He is the seed of a woman, the Son of God. He alone is our Deliverer. He alone is our Savior, and He dealt that fatal blow to Satan on the cross.
Sure, Satan struck Him on the heel there. They put nails in his hands and feet, but that wound was not fatal. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, victorious over the grave, victorious over sin, and victorious over Satan himself. The Bible says, “Through death [Jesus]… destroy[ed] – literally, He rendered powerless – the one who has the power of death – that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Jesus dealt Satan that fatal blow 2,000 years ago on the cross. The Seed of the Woman crushed his head, and now he is in his death throws, and soon, very soon, he will be gone. Halleluiah!
Three years ago (2018), Jeremy Sutcliffe grabbed a shovel to decapitate a 4-foot-long Western diamondback rattlesnake after it spooked Jennifer, his wife. Then when he went to pick up the severed head, it sank its fangs into his flesh and released a near deadly dose of venom.
Jennifer, who happens to be a nurse, got him into a car and began to drive him to the hospital. About two miles into the drive, her husband began having seizures, lost his vision and, unknown to them, began bleeding internally. So she met up with an ambulance and then a helicopter, which flew the 40-year-old to the hospital as his organs were already shutting down. It was touch-and-go for the first 24 hours, but eventually Jeremy’s condition stabilized, and he lived to tell the story.
Harry Greene, a biology professor at Cornell university told NPR, “A severed viper head certainly can deliver a dangerous bite, as can the unsecured head of a recently 'killed' snake.” In fact, Greene says, “The typical rattlesnake can keep moving for a few hours at most after it is split in two” (Vanessa Romo, “Man Kills Snake; Snake Tries To Kill Him Back,” NPR, 6-7-18; www. PreachingToday.com).
On the cross, Jesus severed that old serpent’s head, but he’s still moving, and he can still deliver a dangerous bite. So watch out for him and look to Jesus to save you when he bites. For Jesus has already won the victory over Satan on the Cross.
Jesus is your Savior from sin. Jesus is your Deliverer from the devil. Jesus is your Rescuer from ruin. He is the only way to experience full recovery. So after you have confessed your sins and accepted its consequences...
PUT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN GOD.
Trust the Lord to save you from your sin. Depend on Him to give you life itself as he puts you on the road to recovery. That’s what Adam did.
Genesis 3:20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living (ESV).
Literally, Adam named his wife, “Life.” Now, how could he do that when all he is DEATH? I’ll tell you how: He believed God’s promise of a Deliverer through the seed of the woman.
Adam believed God. He trusted the Lord, and God responded by covering up his sins. God covered up he and Eve’s guilt and shame.
Genesis 3:21 And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them (ESV).
God shed the blood of some animals, and through that shed blood, He provided a covering for their sin.
Now, that’s exactly what God wants to do for you. If you put your trust in Him, if you rely on Him like Adam and Eve, God will cover your sins, and He will take away all your guilt and shame. For God own Son has already shed His blood. Now, God stands ready to cover any who trust Him with His Son’s righteousness. Just confess your sin to the Lord, accept its consequences, and put your confidence in Him.
In the film The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe portrays an Australian farmer, Joshua Connor, who allows his three sons to enlist with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) in World War I. All three of them are together at the Battle of Gallipoli. All three of them go missing in action and are presumed to be dead. The movie begins four years after their disappearance. Connor's wife couldn't handle their loss: she drowns herself early in the movie. Connor buries her, promising at her graveside to bring her boys home and bury them next to her.
Then he goes looking for his sons. After a three-month journey, Connor arrives in Istanbul, and from there he bribes a fishing boat captain to transport him to Gallipoli, against the wishes of the British Army, who were there trying to find and properly bury their war dead. Possessing nothing but his eldest son's diary and the knowledge of what day his sons disappeared, Connor is convinced that he can find them. A Turkish officer who was present at the battle, Major Ihsan, is the only one who takes Connor seriously. The British officer in charge has already planned for a supply ship to take Connor back to Istanbul and is content to see him rot on the beach in the meantime. Take a look (show The Water Diviner clip: The Only Father Who Came Looking).
Major Ihsan asks the British officer why they won't help Connor to search for his sons. The officer quips that he can't go about helping every father who won't stay put and let the authorities handle the matter. Major Ihsan replies, “Yes, but he is the only father who came looking” (Jeff Hual, “The Irresistible Father,” Mockingbird blog, 6-22-16; www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnIQ-eI1UM; www.PreachingToday.com).
When you were dead in your trespasses and sins, God came looking for you not to bury you, but to give you a brand-new life. Please, accept His love for you. Surrender to Him; and in that surrender, find a whole new life in Christ.
