¡§Anchor Points¡¨
¡§She Ate, He Ate¡¨
Genesis 3
February 20, 2000
Anchor Point #4:
¡§The Entrance of sin has ruined man¡¨
By Way of Review:
„h Anchor Point #1: ¡§God is here, and He has spoken.¡¨
„h Anchor Point #2: ¡§God has created all that is.¡¨
„h Anchor Point #3: ¡§God created man in His own image.¡¨
¡§My Four Questions for the Shrink¡¨
1. Would you agree with me that the very beginning point for solving the problems that a person faces is for that person to come into a personal relationship with God?
2. Would you understand that the means by which one comes into a right relationship with God is by God¡¦s grace through man¡¦s faith alone in Jesus Christ alone?
3. Would you as such agree with me that, at the core, all of man¡¦s problems which do not have a physiological basis have a spiritual basis, and the cure to such is to be found in correcting some flaws in that person¡¦s relationship with God?
4. Would you agree with me that the primary manual for helping a person to overcome problems is the Bible, the Word of God?
Sin is a touchy topic! People get naturally antsy when we talk about sin too much. In fact, we will be called all sorts of names when we talk about sin. People might accuse us of ¡§hate¡¨ if we are faithful to point out that there is such a thing as sin and that people ought to amend their ways to come in line with what God says about sin and righteousness. Man has long wanted to run away from what the Bible says about sin.
I. A History of Minimizing Sin ¡V Since the Enlightenment, there has been a sustained history of minimizing or dismissing sin:
„h In 1679, John Locke argued that, before civilization, humans lived in a perfect State of Nature, free and completely without guilt, because rules and restrictions imposed by civilized societies did not exist.
„h In the mid-18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau said that society¡¦s rules of personal and sexual conduct generate the immorality and violence that they are ostensibly designed to hold at bay.
„h The 19th century saw the rise of socialist philosophy which emphasized the utopian image of the New Socialist Man, who would escape from the immoral morass in his own power.
„h Also, Sigmund Freud¡¦s theories played well to those with itching ears, as he proclaimed that many of humanity¡¦s torments arose from the frustrations which attended society¡¦s moral inhibitions.
„h In the early 20th century, Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she portrayed Samoan society as being more advanced in some respects than our own because of the lack of possessiveness, monogamy, and sexual inhibitions that she found in Samoa.
„h Today, those who have a vested interest in casting off restraint lift other cultures up (Mayas, for example) as being praiseworthy (ignoring some tremendous¡Xand embarrassing¡Xshortcomings inherent in those cultures).
„h There are those today who are denying that our own society has fallen as far as it has into wickedness and wretched excess. PPG article
„h Even the evangelical church has gotten into the act!
„h Sidling up to Robert Schuller.
„h Overexaggerated focus on Jesus as the ¡§Fixer of our Temporal Problems¡¨.
The Cold Splash of Reality
„h Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud are largely discredited.
„h Mead herself has significantly discredited her own supposedly scholarly work, even in some ways, for the contrary evidence that it missed.
„h The scale of cruelty in the 20th century is unmatched in history (ironically, at the same time we are denying/diminishing the doctrines of sin/hell/God¡¦s wrath).
II. What are the Stakes?
When we misunderstand the human condition,
„h We will minimize sin. We¡¦ll explain it away, water down its consequences, seek scapegoats.
„h We will excoriate the sins of others while tolerating our own. I might be tempted to focus on what others do wrong and pretend that I myself could never be wrong!
„h We will misunderstand salvation, if we even see the need for it at all! If I am not a sinner, totally depraved, alienated from God, and hopelessly lost, then what need have I of salvation?
„h We will not be able to correctly prescribe the correctives for man¡¦s problems. This is the problem with the shrink I referred to earlier. If she starts from the wrong assumptions, she will reach the wrong conclusions. Her prescriptions will amount to the equivalent of putting Band-Aids on cancer!
„h We will plant the seeds of the destruction of the church. We had better be clear on this point: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners! That overriding priority transcends all other considerations of His work to the glory of God! When mainline Protestant churches have gotten away from the truth of the Bible, they have come up with false/humanistic notions of the nature of man, and have failed to preach against sin in a personal way. No sin, no need of a Savior, no theology, no need of church! This is why so many of our mainline denominations are dying today: people have teased out the implications of liberal theology and have concluded that attending church is ultimately a waste of time! Phyllis McGinley says of her creation, the Rev. Dr. Harcourt,
¡§And in the pulpit eloquently speaks,
On divers matters with both wit and clarity:
Art, Education, God, the early Greeks,
Psychiatry, Saint Paul, true Christian charity,
Vestry repairs that must shortly begin¡X
All things but Sin. He seldom mentions Sin.¡¨
There is no gospel without an understanding of sin!
III. Some False Understandings of Man¡¦s Nature
„h Man is a ¡§blank slate¡¨. Man starts life with a clean slate, and man will turn into a good person if we write the right things on his slate.
„h Man is basically good. This humanistic idea is just intellectually unsustainable, at least without watering down the meaning of ¡§good¡¨.
„h Man is bound to act according to antecedent causes (determinism, behaviorism). This is the ¡§I can¡¦t help it¡¨ approach; there is no such thing as sin if I am not morally culpable for my behavior.
IV. What does the Bible say?
A. On the Nature of Sin
1. Sin always involves a disregard for God and His Word.
In verse 1, we see a personal being (serpent) being used as the mouthpiece of a personal Satan, raising a subtle question about the veracity of God¡¦s Word: ¡§Has God said¡K¡¨, i.e., do you think that God really meant that? Eve is called to render her own judgment on the Word of God! Then in verse 2, she adds to the Word when she says ¡§You shall not¡Ktouch it¡¨, portraying God as overly-strict, again a distortion of the Word. Then, in vv. 4-5, a direct denial of God¡¦s Word regarding judgment is given.
2. Sin questions God¡¦s intent for our good, and asserts our own ability to judge what is best for us apart from God. :4-5
The serpent implies that, instead of keeping that knowledge for man, God is keeping this knowledge from man to man¡¦s detriment. God has promised good for man as man trusts and obeys him, but sin doubts that God really has our best interests at heart.
3. Sin seeks our good from another source other than God. :6
She was probably sunk from the moment she looked at the tree with an ¡§open mind!¡¨ She thought about it; weighed it as to its desirability. ¡§Looks good¡¨; ¡§bet it tastes good!¡¨; ¡§this serpent, he really sounds like he knows what he is talking about!¡¨ This rebellion against God was not direct; rather, it was a God-less pursuit of good. It came from a desire to want more than God offered (of course, what was gotten was a lot LESS than God offered!). Eve
„h Listened to a creature rather than her Creator;
„h Followed her impressions rather than her instructions; and
„h Made self-fulfillment her goal¡Xmaterial, aesthetic, and mental enrichment lured her.
Her sin probably came before she actually bit; it came when she believed the lie of Satan over the truth of God. The internal led to the external, which led in turn to her sharing of her sin with Adam, who is not recorded as having any thoughts at all¡Xjust ¡§ate¡¨. Insert your own joke here, ladies! This may be making too much of this point, but it may not be to say that the interjection of the sexual dynamic has caused many a person to take leave of his/her intellectual faculties! First animal I ever remember killing with my car was a male cardinal, who was in hot pursuit of a female cardinal and met instead with the grill of my car!
Other Scriptural truths about sin:
Bible tells the tragic stories of the propensity of all men to sin; children of Israel, despite seeing the hand of God in amazing ways, continued over and over to sin. Even David, a man after God¡¦s own heart, was capable of brutal sins.
Romans 5:12 explains why this is so: ¡§Wherefore as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.¡¨ In Adam, we are all sinners; he initiated a contagion that has infected all of us; indeed, we sin because we are born sinners. Theologians speak of ¡§total depravity¡¨, which doesn¡¦t mean that I am as bad as I could be, but that every part of me is infected by this contagion of sin.
Jesus agrees with this assessment: in the Sermon on the Mount, he illustrates teaching on prayer with this phrase, ¡§If you then, being evil¡K¡¨
And Paul is clear in Romans 1-3 that our endemic sin attracts the wrath of a holy God.
B. On Man¡¦s Response to Sin
1. Man covers up. :7
There is an immediate understanding of their nakedness. Now, we have a hard time understanding how this elemental fact has escaped them up to this point¡Xbut we look thru eyes that are jaded by sin! There response to this dilemma is for Eve to hop on her Singer sewing machine and piece together some fig-leaf boxers for them to wear. Yes, I know it says ¡§they¡¨, but really, ladies, do you think Adam was much help in the sewing department¡X¡§just pick the leaves, Adam, and let me do the sewing!¡¨ Their first response was to cover up¡Xwhich we still do a pretty good job of today, don¡¦t we? We don¡¦t want our sin to be exposed, so we cover up!
2. Man shifts blame. :12
God comes into the garden, and a conversation ensues between Adam and God. Adam indicates that he is fearful because he is naked, and God responds by asking him how he had figured this out, knowing all the time that the pair were guilty. And what does Adam do when he is caught with his hand in the¡Kfruit tree? ¡§She did it first!¡¨ Then, the woman says, ¡§The devil made me do it!¡¨ Ironically, one of the things that some of our contemporary psychologies attempt to do is to shift the blame away from man onto all kinds of other patsies!
3. Man minimizes sin.
Inherent in the words of the man and woman is the idea that ¡§what we did isn¡¦t really all that bad¡¨; we are not really responsible for doing anything so wrong.
4. Man¡¦s thinking becomes skewed.
We even sense that Adam is trying to shift some of the blame to God: ¡§That woman that You gave me, God; I didn¡¦t ask for her, but You insisted that I have her. What were You thinking, Lord?¡¨ Adam¡¦s thinking was so skewed that he looked at God¡¦s gracious and wonderful gift to him, Woman, and saw her as the source of his trouble!
C. On the Consequences of Sin
1. Shame and guilt. :7
We won¡¦t belabor this, because we saw it in the point made earlier. Their shame and guilt at being naked caused them to sew the fig leaves together for a garment.
2. Sense of loss/vulnerability. :10
Naked and hiding. Man is in flight from God.
3. Separation
a. Man from God.
Man was created by God for the purpose of communion; this purpose is smashed by the entrance of sin.
b. Man from himself.
Man does not have the ability to know himself as he truly is. We all have inaccurate perceptions of ourselves¡Xblind spots!
c. Man from man.
Adam from Eve; Cain from Abel; later, the godly line from the ungodly line.
d. Man from nature.
4. Physical/emotional/relational losses. :16-19
These are seen clearly. Physical pain; emotional distance; marriage and children, designed for the pure enjoyment and fulfillment of man, become sources of frustration in many instances. Banishment from the Garden of Eden. Ultimately, death!
D. On God¡¦s Grace Despite Man¡¦s Sin
1. His presence in the Garden. :8-13
Even as God comes in the Garden, we see grace in His coming. He draws Adam out rather than driving Adam out from hiding. He respects Adam as an intelligent creature made in His own Image, reasoning with him about the gravity of Adam¡¦s error.
2. His provision for covering. :21
God crafts the guiltwear for Adam and Eve, garments made from the skins of animals; this is a hint at the principle later given that without the death of one, there can be no covering of sin!
3. His plan for redemption. :15
¡§Proto-evangelium¡¨ ¡V The first appearance of the evangel, a messianic prophecy in the Scripture!
„h Indication of two competing kingdoms vying for allegiance of men.
„h Hatred is a proper description of the relationship between the two ¡V ¡§enmity¡¨.
„h Notice that God is in control of the entire enterprise!
„h To the serpent, a literal curse ¡V ¡§eat dust¡¨; serpent representative of the one motivating him¡XSatan¡Xand Satan and his legions will be crushed in the final outcome by the ¡§seed of the woman¡¨¡XHOLD IT!!! WOMEN DON¡¦T HAVE SEEDS! To whom is this ultimately referring? The one born without the seed of a man¡Xthe virgin-born Christ! He is ¡§wounded¡¨ in the conflict¡Xand ¡§by His stripes, we are healed!¡¨
SIN is rebellion against a holy God, and we are all born guilty of it; we act it out regularly in a myriad of ways. And God is justly a Hater of sin; how could a holy God be anything less? How could a loving God be anything LESS than angry at something which so devastates man, the pinnacle of His creation?
But the good news is that He does not stop there, but has provided for us an escape from the hellish consequences of our rebellion thru Jesus Christ!
Have you come to terms with the reality of your sin¡Kand your absolute need of a Savior?
