{NOTE: This series is best used with the clips provided by HomeWord with Jim Burns and Max Lucado. You can find many free resources at this link: http://www.homeword.com/PolarExpress/ You may also be able to secure the clips by contacting them.}
THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON: BELIEVE
GET ON BOARD: WHY WE NEED CHRISTMAS
GENESIS 3:1-15
INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES:
Hero-boy awakens to the sound of a huge train where there should be no train. He finds, as we shall see, not only a train but a conductor who invites him aboard. But the young man has doubts. You can tell from his expressions that he is wondering: “Is this for real?” “Is this a hoax?” “Is this something I need to do?” The conductor certainly thinks so... Encounter with the conductor CLIP 1:41.
“If I was you, I would think of climbing on board.” As the conductor highly recommends that hero-boy climb aboard the Polar Express, I highly recommend this movie. The story has a great deal to say to us about child-like faith. Although not a blatantly Christian movie it is a feel good story with an important message that says, “Often the most important things in the world are the things you cannot see.” Well, for the next two weeks I want to use some of this award winning story to help us focus on Christmas. Jesus often took modern day issues of his time and used it to make a God honoring point. And today so many people are caught up in the “holiday spirit” without realizing the real meaning of the season. So, like hero-boy, this Christmas season, I want us to climb aboard too. Oh, not on some imagined train but on the real ride.. One that leads not to the North Pole but to heaven. You see, Christmas is all about the way to heaven. For if Jesus Christ hadn’t come, there would be no hope for you or I. So, let’s climb aboard and this Christmas season... believe, in the real reason for the season. (Pray)
INTRODUCTION TO THE SERMON:
I want to begin by talking about our need for Christmas. To do that I want to focus on an O.T. scripture, one that you might not think of when you think of right away for this time of year, but one that from the beginning tells us about our need for Christmas. Gen. 2 & 3 reveals our longing for perfection with God, how we created alienation from God & then our need for reconciliation back to God. All which speaks of our great need for Christmas.
I. PERFECTION WITH GOD:
Genesis 2 describes man’s perfect existence in the garden of Eden. It shows that God created an ideal environment for man to live. 2:8-ff. “Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had created.”(NLT)
Now, I want you to notice at least 5 things that describe the Garden of Eden as the perfect place to dwell. (1) It was a beautiful place, it was gorgeous. I picture it like the Black Canyon, a beach on Maui, & some botanical garden, all wrapped into one- a beautiful place. (2) It was a productive place. The trees were good for food. Adam and Eve didn’t have to worry about chemicals or about insects or worms in their apples, they just picked that luscious fruit every day and it supplied their need. (3) It was an eternal place- In the middle of the garden was the tree of life, and as long as they had access to that tree they did not age, nor did they die. Apparently, in this food were the ingredients that enabled man to live forever; not a fountain of youth but a tree of everlasting life. (4) Eden was also the place of a perfect marriage. God brought man and woman together here and they lived in a flawless, loving, harmonious, relationship: an ideal, perfect marriage. I have a good marriage and a wonderful wife but our marriage isn’t perfect. I’m not always as patient or as encouraging as I should be. Deb isn’t as organized or timely as she’d like to be sometimes. And there are some other problems, some that I will not talk about publicly.. Those of you that have heard me preach know that I’m transparent but I’m not a total idiot. But it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Pastor doesn’t have a perfect marriage because neither do any of you. But Adam & Eve did! There was no past to forgive, no accusations, no baggage, no childhood fears, no lies, no physical flaws, no inhibitions.. it was paradise. 2:25 says, "Now although the man and his wife were both naked, neither of them was embarrassed or ashamed."(LB)
(5) Eden was also a spiritual place. Gen. 3:8 implies that frequently God came and walked with Adam & Eve in the cool of the garden. God & man had a daily, intimate relationship. God is Holy & perfect, man was Holy & perfect. So there was no guilt, no doubt, no fear..
But there was one restriction. 2:16-17 - “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may eat the fruit from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit from the tree which gives the knowledge of good and evil. If you ever eat fruit from that tree, you will die!’”(NCV) God had created man as a unique being. He made man a free moral agent with free will, he could choose to obey or disobey God. That free choice allowed man to have an intimate relationship with God, but it also allowed man to be a deep disappointment to God. You see, the only thing that makes free will genuine, is free choice, so there had to be at least one opportunity for mankind to disobey. So God put this tree in the Garden & said, "You can do anything you want, you can eat of any tree.. except that one." And God told them that the consequences of disobeying that command would be death, not that God was anxious to punish, but because He wanted a perfect relationship by choice. Slowly, over time, this first couple must of wondered about that forbidden fruit until one day the perfect Garden was shattered by sin and the result was that man created alienation from God.
II. WE CREATED ALIENATION FROM GOD:
Beginning with our printed text, Adam & Eve have an encounter with Satan and this chapter describes his scheme, man’s fall and the subsequent consequences of sin. First, it talks about the “serpent.” The Bible doesn’t give us a great amount of detail about the origin of Satan. I’ve listed some scriptures on your outline that you can look up. They imply that Satan was once an angel of God, who pridefully rebelled and 1/3 of the angels in heaven took his side and so Satan and his followers were cast out of heaven to be banished from God forever. Satan knows that he can’t defeat God, who is all-powerful, omnipotent. But he knows he can hurt God deeply, if he can hurt & destroy God’s children. If you want to get to a parent, attack the child. And satan attacked God’s children to create disobedience, disharmony, alienation.
3:1a-"The serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals.. And he said to the woman.." Now, there are a lot of things in the Bible that God simply expects us to accept by faith. One of the first things we are asked to accept is this story of a talking snake. Can we really believe all this stuff in Genesis? In a talking snake, a perfect place, an invisible God who loves us? Isn’t this just a fairy tale? Made up by some genius to make us feel guilty? It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t compute, and a great many people want to believe but aren’t sure whether they can accept that which they can’t prove or see. Encounter with the King CLIP - 0:38
Is he right? Is seeing believing? Or are there things that are very real that we cannot see? Our garage doors open by unseen forces at the touch of a button. We put our food in little boxes, not seeing a heating element yet believing the microwaves will make it hot. Our computers have sound boards where the computer talks to you without ever seeing a person. Why is it that when it comes to the Bible we are afraid we’ve been bamboozled, duped, railroaded? I think it’s because we know if we accept it we’ll be held accountable. It’s one thing to accept unseen waves that heat your food, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to accept my own sinfulness. But it is clear here in Genesis and throughout the Bible that there is an adversary and that he is powerful and deceitful. He could easily take on the form of a snake or maybe snakes were very different in the beginning. After all part of the curse after sin was that snakes would crawl on their bellies. Makes you wonder how they got around before that. Whatever the situation, somehow Satan used the serpent to tempt Eve.
And notice how Satan enticed Eve to sin. He went through a 3-fold progression of thought that he still uses with us today. Vs: 1b-"Did God really say, `you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’" Satan’s first move is to question God’s word. Did you notice how he tries to make God more restrictive than He really is? "Did God say you couldn’t eat from any tree?" And there is a condescending arrogance surrounding the question.. "Did God really say that? I mean is He that narrow & restrictive?" Notice, Eve corrects him by telling him that God allows them to eat of all the trees except one but if they eat of that one they will die.
So, Satan counters with his next move and denies God’s Word. vs:4- "You will not surely die.." “That’s not true, that’s a myth.” Then immediately he makes his decisive move and reverses God’s word. “Not only is He lying, the reason God is lying to you is because He doesn’t want you to be as smart as He is.” V:5- "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.. "One author calls this the big lie, humanism. It says, "You’ll be your own God! You make your own rules. Nobody has the right to tell you what to do. You decide what is right & what’s wrong." Sound familiar? It’s still working.
Notice Eve & Adam’s reaction to temptation. In vss:2-3 Eve says: “..We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.” Becky Pippert says that as soon as Satan heard her say, "Don’t touch it," he knew he had her, because God had never said that. Eve was the first legalist. She made rules where God had not made any rules. Vs:6- “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” The Bible tells us to be alert and even flee from temptation but Eve mulled this over in her mind and the more she looked at it, the more appeal it had, until she gave in and ate.
And then, to make matters worse, what did she do? She gives some to her poor, unsuspecting, defenseless, "I’m just trying to be the best I can be" husband.. not true. You see the last of vs:6? "She gave some to her husband.. Who was with her, and he ate." Sometimes we picture Adam off in another part of the garden talking to the animals and Eve comes up and says, "I’ve got a surprise for you. I ate of the fruit God told us not to and I didn’t die, in fact it’s the best I’ve ever tasted, try some." No, that would make the man really stupid. At least Eve got duped by a supernatural being, Adam would of been taken in by a woman. I think that phrase, "who was with her," lends itself more to the probability that Adam listened and then watched as Eve ate. When she didn’t die, he ate too. But no matter what the details, they both disobeyed.
Now, notice the consequences of their behavior. God had said, "If you eat of the fruit, you will die." Death in any language, primarily means separation. And there is a 5-fold separation that takes place here as a result of sin coming into the world. (1) First, there was a psychological separation. They no longer have a clear conscience. Vs:7a- “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked..” Before sin, the Bible said, "they were naked and not ashamed." But now, that they’ve sinned there’s shame, guilt, insecurity. (2) Sin also brought spiritual separation. Not only are they not like God, as Satan had promised, but they’ve lost the beautiful, intimate, fulfilling relationship they had once had. Vs:8- “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden." Gone were the perfect walks, gone was the intimate fellowship. (3) There is also social separation. For the first time in their existence they don’t feel good about each other. They place blame. Vss:9-12- “But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’ The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’” Adam immediately blames Eve.. “The woman you put here with me, she gave me some... And come to think of it God, this is really Your fault, if you hadn’t put her here we wouldn’t have this problem, why did You do that?" One man said, "God, why did you make women so soft and beautiful?" God said, "So you’d love them." Then the man asked, "Then, God, why did you make women so illogical and emotional?" God said, "So they’d love you!" But here’s the beginning of domestic discord. And everything we have today, divorce, irreconcilable differences, spouse & child abuse, the whole gamut, started right here. (4) Came environmental separation. V:17-18a - “And to Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. The earth becomes contaminated because of sin. Thorns, thistles, air & water pollution.. it all had it’s start right here. (5) Finally there was physical separation, man is alienated from his own body. In v:19 God tells Adam "..you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from dust, and to the dust you will return." Now, Adam and Eve didn’t die physically right away. But the aging process began to set in. And every time you pass a cemetery, or a hospital; every time you have a new wrinkle or arthritis in your joints you should be reminded of Rom. 6:23- "the wages of sin are death." When I turned 50 somebody said, "You’re not getting older, you’re getting better." That’s nice but it’s not true. With age we don’t get better.. our bodies wear out.
Sin had devastating effects on God’s creation. Satan had a temporary victory, he had succeeded in killing God’s perfect creation. Most of you probably already have your Christmas tree. If you don’t have a "fake" tree than you probably went to a lot, or got a permit to cut one down. You looked at various trees, you selected one, put it in a tree stand, watered it & decorated it. It will be the center of attention in your home for days. But all Christmas trees have one thing in common: They are all dead! They have all been cut off from their source of life. Oh, you delay it some by watering and you make them more attractive by decorating, but they’re dead, and it won’t be too long until you say, "Time to take the tree down." So you take off the decorations and you throw that tree out or put it in the trash. See the parallel? We’re like that. We come in various sizes & abilities and we try to delay the inevitable. We adorn ourselves trying to make ourselves more attractive and influential but we all have one thing in common physically.. we are all dead. We started decaying the day we are born, & the aging process doesn’t stop no matter how good you look or how influential you are right now. It’s only a matter of years or maybe days until we strip ourselves of our adornments & accomplishments, and we will be discarded in a cemetery. You may say, "Boy, Tim, that’s pretty morbid." Yes, but that is what sin has done to God’s creation. Not just Adam & Eve’s sin, but Tim’s sin, your sin. But there’s good news.. In fact, it’s what Christmas is all about, & why we desperately need it.
III. RECONCILIATION TO GOD :
The fact that reconciliation back to God is possible. From the time the first couple sinned, God made preparations to reconcile man to Himself again. The problem was enormous. God’s perfect justice required punishment. Remember,“The wages of sin are death.”(Rom. 6:23) Yet, God’s perfect love desired reconciliation. How could perfect love and justice meet? They meet in The Plan. God would pay the penalty of sin. He would come to earth, be born of a virgin, live among men without sin, and He would become the substitute for man’s punishment, suffering death on a cross to pay the penalty and reconcile us back to Him. 2 Cor.5:19- "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself."
And what is amazing is that from the very beginning we learn that God already had this plan in mind. In Gen.3 we have the announcement of the plan. Gen. 3:15 is the first prophecy of Christ. God says to the serpent- Vs:15: “I will make you and the woman enemies to each other. Your descendants and her descendants will be enemies. (Most women think of snakes as enemies) One of her descendants will crush your head, and you will bite his heel.”(NCV) In other words, one day their would be an offspring of a woman that would destroy Satan, crush his head. That offspring of course was Jesus. Ever wonder why Jesus was born of a woman? Why not just show up as an adult in the temple? Well, here’s one of the reasons.. God had said from the beginning that from the woman would come One who would defeat satan. The first time I realized what this prophecy was saying I was thunderstruck by the fact that on the very day man sinned, breaking his relationship with God, on that same day, God in His great love announced His plan to reconcile man to Himself.
Then we see the design of God’s plan. 3:21- “The Lord God made clothes from animal skins for the man and his wife and dressed them.”(GW) Now, they had clothed themselves with fig leaves, why wasn’t that sufficient? Was it indecent? No, God was going to demonstrate to them that they couldn’t cover themselves. They weren’t able to cover their own sin, and God was for the first time expressing His criteria, that sin would be cleansed by the shedding of blood. So, the first animal was killed and God took that skin from the first sacrifice and clothed Adam & Eve as a fore shadowing, that one day Jesus, the lamb of God, would come and die, shed His blood, to cover man’s sin. You see, the plan took flesh. 1 Ptr. 1:18-19- "You know that in the past you were living in a worthless way.. But you were saved from that useless life. You were bought, not with something that ruins like gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like a pure and perfect lamb. Christ was chosen before the world was made.."(NCV) God’s plan for reconciliation was announced on the very day man sinned but Jesus had volunteered to come even before man was created. You see, I need Christmas because I needed Jesus Christ to come. I don’t fully understand it but when that babe of Bethlehem became the Christ of Calvary, all of my sin, from my first sin till the time I die was laid upon Jesus. You see, the greatest separation that occurred because of sin wasn’t man from himself, nor man from his fellow man, nor man from his environment, not even man from his God.. the greatest separation that occurred because of sin was the separation of God the Father from God the Son. There was a perfect union but when Jesus went to the cross and my sin was laid upon Him.. the earth became dark and Jesus cried out, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" And for the first & only time there was separation between God the Father and Jesus the Son. You see Christmas serves as a reminder of the greatest gift we could ever receive: That Jesus came to earth and died on a cross, so sin could be punished, love could be expressed and all could be reconciled to God.
In the Polar Express, lonely boy sits by himself. His past experiences have blinded him from what Christmas really means. Lonely Boy’s Arrival - Clip. 0:48.
And I don’t know if Christmas works out for you or not.. The commercialism, the hectic schedule, maybe this time of year brings back sad memories. But I do know that the girl is right: Christmas is a wonderful, beautiful time, when you understand our need for it. That it is all about giving. And the greatest gift is that God became man to buy us back from sin, to offer forever reconciliation. It’s why the angel told Joseph, “..You are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins.” (Mt. 1:21 NLT) Millions have come to realize that most beautiful gift, so why not climb aboard: “come with us, we’ll go together.”
{Scripture taken from the New International Version unless otherwise noted}
