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Turning the World Upside Down
39 Plays2 days ago
In this sermon, pastor Ridley Barron preached about the pervasive deception and doubt instilled by Satan throughout history, as illustrated in Revelation 12 and the Genesis account. Ballard underscores the clash between two kingdoms, focusing on how Satan manipulates words to make God's commands seem restrictive, leading to doubt and disobedience. He draws parallels between ancient temptations and modern issues, such as societal changes and personal struggles, highlighting how sin distorts God’s original order and brings chaos into human relationships. Emphasizing the importance of self-reflection, repentance, and personal responsibility, Ballard calls listeners to reject complacency and blame-shifting, and instead, embrace the gospel's message of grace, justification, and the ongoing restoration plan God provides.
Timestamps:
00:00 Show love; step into others’ stories.
04:00 Creation longs for restoration through God's rescue plan.
06:43 Rebellion pattern like Adam and Eve's analyzed.
12:32 Sex aligns with God's plan for relationships.
15:58 Desire and appetite drive our actions.
16:57 Seeking connection and validation through familiar relationships.
22:25 Speaker critiques gender roles and societal changes.
25:27 Life is difficult because Satan rules Earth.
28:08 Personal accountability needed for genuine repentance.
30:24 From denial to repentance, embrace God's forgiveness.
35:44 Adam's sin brings death; Christ offers life.
37:22 God offers redemption; choose repentance or sin.
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Transcript
The Foster Care Challenge
00:00:00
Speaker
um Last year, end of last year, 400,000 children in the United States in the foster system. One out of every four of them, 100,000 of them, no home. At the end of last year, just in the Southern Baptist Convention, 13 million people who profess to be Christians. See a problem with the discrepancy there?
00:00:26
Speaker
We can't call ourselves a pro-life church until we start to care about every life from conception to reception.
00:00:36
Speaker
Conceived in the womb, received back home by Jesus Christ. Everything in between, it's our job. Not your job, not your job. It's our job to look for the least of those who need Him.
Love and Compassion Beyond Agendas
00:00:49
Speaker
so If you're not called to foster, you are called to love, and there's lots of ways you can show that love and care. um And I would say, Kelly, cry as much as you need to, darling. I think God probably would wish that we would cry more tears for the lost and those who are hurting, instead of getting caught up in our agendas. You know, the phrase that stuck out to me in there is where the little girl says, God, would you send someone to step into my story?
00:01:19
Speaker
And that's all it really takes is just intersecting with somebody else's life. Last week, as we began this series going through the book, the Bible, um we started Genesis 1, and I would try to make it real clear to you, those of you who weren't here last week, the the Bible is the meta-narrative of God, okay? And so what that means is that it's the larger story that
The Bible's Meta-Narrative
00:01:40
Speaker
centers on him. He's the hero of the book. It's his name that's on every page. He is the one that's honored by what happens in there.
00:01:46
Speaker
But it is compiled from lots of little stories. My story, your story, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joshua and all these people we're going to read about through this year. And all of those lives intersecting are what make up the greater story of God. And that's what brings Him glory.
00:02:05
Speaker
The problem is, as we saw last week, Genesis 1 and 2 start out great, right? God creates Adam and Eve. He gives us an incredible place called the Garden of Eden where our minds can't even conceive what it was like. Man, woman, the pinnacle of that creation, given a special assignment by God to do lots of things, be fruitful, multiply. soday I'm just getting started, don't get upset. sub Subdue the earth.
00:02:30
Speaker
where we're you know that All of those things that we were given the assignment to do. And then we turn the page to chapter three, and if this were a movie, this is where the ominous music would begin to play in the background. And the the scene would probably darken just a little bit, because here is where Adam and Eve make the incredibly life-changing, life-altering decision for all of humankind.
The Fall and Its Consequences
00:02:58
Speaker
We call it the fall.
00:03:00
Speaker
And that's where we're gonna look today because it is the fall of mankind that put us where we are, put us in the situation that we are currently in. It derailed God's good plan for his creation and it shattered our ability to do what we were created to do, which was to reflect the image of God.
00:03:19
Speaker
So Genesis chapter three today, if you're with me, this is where the narrative shifts from creation to the curse. And to be clear, this curse didn't just affect humans, it affected all of creation, everything. It's the reason why we have natural disasters. It's the reason why we have diseases and viruses and things of that nature. It's the reason we have the chaos that we have.
00:03:43
Speaker
in this world. Everything was broken. Our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, and our relationship with the creation that God gave us charge over. All of it destroyed.
God's Rescue Plan
00:03:56
Speaker
Romans 8, Paul actually addresses that a little bit. You can flip over there later and read it. But Paul says in there using this language, the creation longs for the restoration and the reconciliation because it knows that it has been separated from the creator who made it.
00:04:13
Speaker
And because God is good, because God is kind, because God is compassionate, he didn't abandon his plan. He's always stuck with this plan that he wanted relationship with us, and so he, he decided to make all things new. Because he alone has the power to do that.
00:04:29
Speaker
And today we're gonna read about the first promise of a rescue plan in the Bible. And it is that rescue plan that ignites this messianic hope, this thread that runs from Genesis all the way through Revelation. And anytime you see light or hope or joy in the scriptures, it's because mankind is holding out that this hope will arrive and put everything back where it belongs.
The Battle of Good and Evil
00:04:55
Speaker
Genesis chapter 3, we're going to start with verse 1. We'll be bouncing around a good bit today. Most of it will be on the screen for you, but if you want to follow along, I'll try to keep you connected. Genesis 3, beginning verse 1, it says, Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
00:05:16
Speaker
The woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, you must not eat it or touch it or you will die. No, you will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman. In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
00:05:38
Speaker
The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were open and they knew they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
00:05:58
Speaker
And skip down to verse 15, here is the promise of God's restoration plan. I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. What happened that day was the launch of an eternal battle that is going on between two kingdoms. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of good, the kingdom of light, and the kingdom of Satan or darkness or evil.
00:06:28
Speaker
And at their core, this is a kingdom of, I mean a conflict of words. We're gonna look at that in just a little bit, but it culminates in the arrival of the one, the only one who had the ability to crush the head of the serpent we know as Satan.
Satan's Strategy of Doubt
00:06:43
Speaker
So I wanna talk a little bit about the pattern of rebellion that we see in the life of Adam and Eve, because it's a pattern that you and I see played out in our lives on a regular basis. And one of the reasons this is important, you go ask any great military strategist You go ask any great football coach or basketball coach. You ask them, hey, what does your opponent do? How do they look? How do they act? How do they respond? And they will tell you because they know that the first thing to do to beat your opponent is to know their their mode of operation.
00:07:14
Speaker
to know what it is they do. So as you and I to today are unpacking the scripture and and we're looking at the the techniques of the enemy, what we are doing is exposing what Satan is up to and what that means is that Satan is very irritated this morning that we're discussing this. I want you to know this because right now some of you are already zoning out on me. It's scary to watch your eyes.
00:07:37
Speaker
It really is. Some of you have already slipped into phase three of the sleep mode and you are just about out of here. Don't do it, okay? Don't give in to the peer pressure that the guy next to you is asleep and you want to join him. Because this is important strategy talk we're having here today. This is going to help you and I better understand what the enemy is trying to do in our lives, okay?
Consequences of Disobedience
00:08:01
Speaker
First thing he does, first thing he did with Adam and Eve is he creates doubt.
00:08:06
Speaker
He creates doubt. He is the most cunning of all creation. And it says here in the story, he comes to the woman, he whispers in her ear, he says, did God really say that?
00:08:18
Speaker
And by doing so, he planted just enough a seed of doubt that she began to question whether or not she had really heard God correctly. Now, to be clear, she actually didn't hear God. we We look at the story carefully. We see that God gave that command to Adam. It was Adam's responsibility to convey it to Eve, and it was also his job to support and encourage and protect his wife from what the enemy was doing. He failed.
00:08:43
Speaker
But Eve listened to this deception and she listened to what Satan was trying to do as he tried to plant a seed of doubt in her mind. Now a little bit of trivia for you, we don't actually know that this serpent is Satan till the very last book of the Bible. It's not until Revelation chapter 12 that it says, so the great dragon was thrown out, the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the one who does what?
00:09:12
Speaker
deceives the whole world. Satan is constantly trying to get you to ask the question, did God really mean that? Is that really what he intended to say? Is that really what God's plan is for me? As I said earlier, from the very beginning of time, this has been a clash between two kingdoms and the core of the battle is about words. If you remember last week, John chapter one, in the beginning was the and the was God and word was with a very good you've you've learned when I stopped the word is the phrase to put in there that's good so the word was there from the very beginning you flip over to Colossians chapter 1 and it says that all things were created by that word and so Satan's number one strategy get you to question that word get you to question that word
00:10:05
Speaker
So Satan causes them to doubt those words, he twists and perverts the actual command. If you look at Genesis 2.16, it says, and the Lord, gotta
Denial and Blame in Sin
00:10:18
Speaker
be on the right page, the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Did you catch it? He said, you must not eat. He didn't say, don't touch.
00:10:34
Speaker
But when Satan asked Eve, she added that little bit of phrasing there. Why? Because Satan had successfully gotten Eve to begin to question the mo question the motives behind what God was doing. Is God just trying to ruin my fun? Is God just some big killjoy up in the sky that's trying to take away my joy? I mean, after all, he created me this way. He created me to be this kind of person.
00:11:02
Speaker
So God's command to them appears more restrictive than it was intended to be. ah Hear it again. Go out and eat anything you want. Go enjoy it from one side of the garden all the way to the other. Have a blast. Just stay away from one tree. And instantly Adam and Eve's focus becomes the one tree.
00:11:25
Speaker
You got a thousand trees in the garden to choose from. All kinds of things to eat. Why do you focus on this one tree? Because Satan has gotten them to question, why is God so mean to us? Why does God do this to us? There are some of you here today who've fallen into this trap because you're questioning your faith. Does it really matter? You're questioning whether or not your prayers work because he isn't answering instantly like you want him to.
00:11:55
Speaker
Your question whether or not his plan is good and his desires for you are good? And if Satan can get any one of those questions rolling around in your head, he's opened up the door for deeper thought. And what happens is is that Satan begins to tempt Eve. He tempts Eve in two places. He tempts her to devout the wisdom of God, to doubt the wisdom of God. You see, Eve is more focused on what God commanded than the why behind what God commanded.
00:12:24
Speaker
Let me give you a modern illustration of how this works. The sexuality movement here in the United States of America is out of control. Sex is a part of everything. And if you go and talk to somebody about how God's plan for sexuality was supposed to work, their first thought is, oh, God's just trying to take away the fun. Why would he care? I love this person. I want to be with this person. Why can't I have physical interactions with this person?
00:12:51
Speaker
And on the surface that sounds good because we stop thinking about the why and just worry about the what. But if you ask yourself the question, well why would God say that sex should only be between a man and a woman who are married in a committed relationship? Because who created you? Who knows the owner's manual backwards and forwards?
00:13:11
Speaker
Who knows that women being compassionate, tender, sentimental women cannot go from one relationship relationship to another relationship to another relationship without their hearts being ripped apart and having scars so deep that then they can't really feel love ever again? The story of this little girl up here is the beginning of one of those horror stories where her heart's been ripped apart by people she placed her trust in and they wouldn't keep that trust and suddenly she looks around and she's got nobody
Pursuit of Approval Outside God's Plan
00:13:36
Speaker
to trust anymore. It happens with adult women just like it does with children.
00:13:41
Speaker
Guys don't think that you're above it. It happens to you too because you put your trust in this girl and you think, this is the girl in my dreams and I'm gonna compromise and I'm gonna do it this way. And God says, no, that's not the way I created you. I created you to be one man, one woman for life inside a commitment. And for you to settle for anything less, messes it up. It's like putting jello in your gas tank.
00:14:11
Speaker
Not that I've ever tried that, but it's not gonna work. You can try any other liquid, milk, tea, moonshine, put whatever you want to in your gas tank, it's not gonna run because one thing was created to be the right thing.
00:14:31
Speaker
So he got her to question the wisdom of God. He also he also got her to question the ways of God. He got her to question the ways of God by creating suspicion about God's design for her life. Satan says, you're not gonna die. God's not gonna keep that promise. That's just an empty threat. So he insists by those suggestions, he insists that God is holding her back from her full expression of herself. That somehow he's limiting her from being all that she can be. This is the first time that people doubt God in the Bible and it won't be the last.
00:15:09
Speaker
For centuries, this has been the tactic of the enemy. If I can just get a foothold inside her thinking, if I can just get him to doubt that I am good, if you can just get them to doubt that their worth is found in Jesus Christ, you you can name any number of tactics, but they all come down to this one, creating And the real glaring problem here from the very beginning is that Eve is talking to Satan about her problems with God instead of talking to God about her problems with Satan.
00:15:45
Speaker
Second thing, once doubt has entered into the mind, deception becomes an option. Satan uses our appetites against us. Our appetites are very, very strong forces inside of us, right? If I start to talk about juicy steaks,
00:16:03
Speaker
or mouth-watering sausage biscuits, or your favorite vegetables. Maybe a great hot steaming cinnamon roll with the frosting just falling off the edge. Suddenly you start to think, man, how soon is he gonna be done so I can get out of here and get to a restaurant?
00:16:24
Speaker
Why? Because your appetite has been peaked and your appetite begins to drive you. And when it's a strong enough desire, that appetite, then you won't think about anything else but that. And desire drives us. And so Satan plays off of this because he knows there's two very strong things, two appetites that work in just about anybody, but especially here with Eve. Number one, he gets her desire for significance through finding approval.
00:16:53
Speaker
Everybody likes to know they are affirmed and loved, right? Everybody looks, we're all looking for our circle of friends, the people who know us, understand us. Popular phrase this day and age is, I see you. Everybody wants to know that they've been seen, that they've been understood, that people relate to them. So he uses the beauty of the fruit to attract her desire for approval.
00:17:19
Speaker
by making her feel valued in that she is available to eat that. Satan deceives her into seeking significance by a forbidden source. And the same thing is played out over and over again in our minds every single day. Where do I go to find my worth?
00:17:40
Speaker
Where do I go find my value? Where do I go to find that place where people see me? Where everybody knows your name? You remember the Cheers theme song? You wanna know why that show was so successful? Why Friends was so successful? Because all of those those shows talk about finding that special group of people who see us and understand us and know us. And Satan convinces us that there's ways to do that without incorporating Jesus Christ.
Chaos from Rejecting God's Design
00:18:09
Speaker
The second appetite is a desire for success. A desire for success. You saw the fruit was desirable for obtaining wisdom. That's the way it says it. It was desirable for attaining wisdom. Wanting wisdom is a good thing, right? Thank you, Butch. um Yeah, wisdom wanting wisdom is a good thing. Desiring it is not the problem. The scriptures themselves say, seek wisdom with all of your heart. Give everything you've got to go after it. Where is wisdom found? Butch, where are you?
00:18:40
Speaker
Okay, yeah, it's found in, pra it's found in the whole book. It's the whole book is full of wisdom. Proverbs is a great place to start, but wisdom is found in this book. So wanting wisdom, desiring wisdom is not a problem. The problem is pursuing that wisdom outside of God. So Satan convinced Eve, here's a way that you can have wisdom and you don't even have to include God in it. He doesn't have to be part of this process.
00:19:08
Speaker
Satan tempts us to seek wisdom through forbidden means. And believe me, it is a strategy he uses to this day. Paul even acknowledged it in 2 Corinthians 11. He said, but I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. You see, Satan's constantly trying to trick us into believing truth is not truth and not truth is truth. He's constantly twisting them. In fact,
00:19:38
Speaker
If you go back to it, we just read it a minute ago where he's talking about the command and and he says to Eve, did God really say that? And she says, well, no, this is actually what he said. And he says, oh, that's not gonna happen. You're not gonna die. Instead, you will get knowledge of good and evil. Now did you catch that? That's the truth. Satan actually told the truth.
00:20:04
Speaker
He didn't lie to her, but he got her to question the what instead of the why. And so what happened is she fell prey to this trap and she's going, oh, wait a minute, if I can have knowledge of good and evil, that would be awesome. It's right there in the name of the tree, the tree of knowledge and good and evil. I will go pursue that, I'll eat that fruit. But here's the problem, because she didn't ask the question why, what she didn't understand is what God knew about her. If you eat that fruit, it will open you up to a world of guilt and shame and ridicule
00:20:39
Speaker
ah Feeling lesser than all of those things are gonna be opened up and oh by the way, you're gonna bring death to the world You're gonna bring death to the world So the next phase is outright disobedience we doubt and He begins to deceive us and then disobedience enters the picture. You see as soon as Eve took that bite, as soon as she ate from that fruit, sin began to break down the world around her. There is a complete reversal of Genesis 1 and 2 and what God has done in creation. God's good design for humans is completely uprooted and now it doesn't even resemble what it used to be.
00:21:18
Speaker
You see, God's design was for humans to submit to him, for wives to submit to their husbands, and for beasts to submit to the human beings who were in the garden. But in a flash, because of Satan's deceptive technique techniques, things have turned upside down. The woman now submits to the beast, the man submits to the woman, and nobody is submitting to God. You hear that?
00:21:44
Speaker
the The woman submits to the beast, the man submits to the woman, and no one is submitting to God. God's good and perfect order has been flipped upside down.
Modern Movements vs. God's Intentions
00:21:54
Speaker
And it's still happening to this day. This is why movements like the feminist movement, anti-God, has no resemblance to anything that God desires. Looks good on the surface.
00:22:08
Speaker
Looks like it might be a good thing because everybody wants women to be honored, right? Well, guys, the whole plan for God, when it was God, Adam, the woman underneath him, under his authority, was not to keep the woman down, it was to elevate her. Let me let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. This lady on the front row, I've been married to for 17 years. She's godly, she's beautiful, she's wonderful. Why in the world would she want to be demoted to being like me?
00:22:37
Speaker
That's a serious question. I was created to scratch, sniff, grunt, groan, do all the things that guys do really, really well, right? To be a lunk head whenever I talk, that's my job. Why would she want to be that?
00:22:53
Speaker
But see, when God created man, he created him to have certain aspects of his abilities, his character, his personality, to be a certain way, to do certain things. We don't have that in our world anymore because they've emasculated men. They told him to stop acting like men. Instead, they dressed him up like women and said, find 127 other genders and get comfortable with that. And the problem is, fostering's going through the roof, adoption's going through it. Why? Because the homes are falling apart. We're not following God's order.
00:23:24
Speaker
The best place for this woman, the safest place for this woman, is under my protective love and care as her prophet, priest, and king. And oh, by the way, I can't be nearly the man of God I need to be without her.
00:23:39
Speaker
She's the Holy Spirit inside of me. She's the nudge up against me. She is the encouragement I need to go take on the world. She was created to be my partner, but just like every other organization you are associated with, somebody's gotta be in charge. What would happen at your job tomorrow if you went to work and nobody was in charge? Nobody. Instead, everybody declared their rights. Well, I'm not gonna listen to him. He's only been here for four years and I've been five.
00:24:09
Speaker
I'm not gonna listen to her, her shirt is wrinkled. I'm not gonna listen to him, he drives an ugly car. I mean, we come up with all kinds of dumb reasons to turn God's order upside down, but the one consistent, always true result, chaos. And no one is listening to God.
Personal Responsibility in Sin
00:24:31
Speaker
We gotta get back to listening to God, guys. We are, we are as a culture living in disobedience.
00:24:39
Speaker
We're living in a place where God never intended us to be. And this couple that was once united now becomes divided by the sin that they've allowed in. And sinning together is the fastest way to tear two people apart.
00:24:56
Speaker
See, the consequences of their sin, as I said a minute ago, is that death has entered the world. Look at Romans chapter five, it says, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way, death spread to all people because all sinned. As his creation, we were given one assignment, be the pure reflection of God.
00:25:18
Speaker
but we now reject God outright and fail in our only purpose. So Satan has been in dimin given dominion over the earth. Did you know that? Did you know that the reason you have such a hard time living on this earth is because Satan is in charge of this earth right now?
00:25:36
Speaker
Ephesians chapter two, verses one and two. Paul does writing, he says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sin, in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. That's Satan. He's been given charge of this earth. And that's why you and I are fighting an uphill battle every day to live like Jesus in a world that doesn't love Jesus.
00:26:06
Speaker
This is why life is so hard for us in this place. We are literally living in occupied territory.
00:26:18
Speaker
And this is the terrible reality behind our sin and our suffering. The fourth thing that happens in this cycle of rebellion is denial. Denial, I'm not talking about the river in Egypt either.
00:26:35
Speaker
I had to throw in a dad joke day, where's Rick Williamson? He was making fun of my jokes last week anyway, so. Denial, Genesis 3.7 it says, then the eyes of both of them were open and they knew they were naked so they sewed fig like fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. So Satan shifts from deception now to let's blame one another.
00:26:58
Speaker
How do they respond to their shame in this moment now that they have become aware of their nakedness and they're suddenly ashamed? Well, they respond the same way that anyone of us can respond. There's two options you have when you when you notice your sin. Number one, denial. Number two, disgust.
The Cycle of Sin and Rebellion
00:27:14
Speaker
Denial or disgust? Denial says, and if you're a parent of a kid, you've heard this before, who me? I didn't have anything to do with it. Their fault. Not not my problem, they did it.
00:27:29
Speaker
I'm good, I'm good, I had nothing to do with this. ah it It has to be somebody else's fault. We live in a culture where no, when's the last time you heard anybody ever take responsibility for their bad choice? Not gonna happen in California. Everybody's passing the blame around out there, aren't they? Go to Washington, D.C., they don't even know what the word responsibility means.
00:27:50
Speaker
Go right down the street to your neighbor's house and the same thing is being played out as a microcosm of what's going on in our country. Nobody wants to take responsibility for who they are. Guess what? Satan's got you right in his hands. Because it's your sin that's the problem. It's your sin that creates your chaos. It's your outright rebellion against God that puts you in a place where you live with guilt and shame. And until you go, this is my sin that needs to be dealt with, you're never gonna know remorse over what's going on in your life.
00:28:20
Speaker
You're never gonna feel sorry enough to confess it and you're never gonna repent of it because you think it's somebody else's problem. Well, like my parents didn't do so and so. Well, I have church hurt.
00:28:37
Speaker
Well, if it wasn't for fill in the blank. If it wasn't for this, if it wasn't for that, I just, I know it's not, it's gotta be somebody else's fault.
00:28:48
Speaker
God shows up and Adam has not only the audacity to say, Ida is not my problem. He then, it's a subtle shift, but it's a major one. He goes from, it's not my problem to, God, it's your fault. You gave me that woman. This is your cotton picking idea. It's gotta be your fault. And none of us would ever have the nerve to look at God and say something like that, but here's Adam saying it.
00:29:17
Speaker
And oh, by the way, you and I do every time the spirit touches our heart and says, hey, I need to deal with you about this particular sin in your life. And you go, oh, not my fault, it's somebody else's. Maybe even yours, God. Maybe if you had healed my grandmother at age eight like I asked you to. Maybe if you had gotten my dad that job at age 13 so we didn't have to move when I prayed for it. Maybe if you had saved my marriage like I asked you to.
Necessity of God's Redemption
00:29:45
Speaker
you and I'd have a better relationship. You better be real careful about what you're laying at the feet of God. You better be very, very careful what you're blaming and where you're pointing your finger. My football coach, I did this once for all my children, they didn't understand it, so I'll try to explain it to you. My football coach used to always say, be very careful where you point the finger, because there's always three coming back at you.
00:30:10
Speaker
The first time he said that, I went, you're a punk, why did you say something like that? The second time he said it, my teenage brain connected. You know, for every bad decision that's made, I gotta to check myself. I gotta check myself, what role did I play in this? Maybe I was too proud, maybe I was too arrogant, maybe I was too willing to look the other way when God was saying, you need to take a closer look at yourself. Here's the thing.
00:30:38
Speaker
God wants to take us from denial of our sin to disgust about our sins. He wants us to be so disgusted in our sinful rebellion against him that we turn our way back towards him and ask for the forgiveness that he so willingly wants to get. This is the beauty of the gospel. You see, we are either right now in this moment, right here as you sit, you are either hiding from God with Adam because of your shame and your guilt,
00:31:09
Speaker
or you're hiding in Christ who has covered your shame with his righteousness. That's the only two statuses there are in this war that's going on. In Colossians 3, Paul wrote it this way, he said, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. If you're that person today, if this describes you, praise God for where you are. Praise God for the gift of his grace and his mercy.
00:31:39
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but don't believe that statean Satan doesn't still want to touch you and affect you. He will still come after you. Don't get proud and go, oh, I took care of that, I have a relationship with Jesus, I am untouchable. Have a conversation with Paul about that. As he writes very clearly in his letter, the things I wanna do, I don't do, and the things I don't do, that's the things I do.
00:32:05
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Shame, shame focuses on our sin, Freedom focuses on our salvation. Lastly, destruction. You'd love to believe that there's some other ending to all this, but here's the reality. Sin does not just impact one area of your life, it touches all of your life and it touches lives around you.
00:32:28
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There's never been a sin that was committed that didn't have an
Impact of Sin vs. Hope in Christ
00:32:31
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impact on someone else around you. If nothing else, it always impacts your relationship with God, but most often it causes you to break relationship with others, to stifle relationship with others, and it continues to be piled on to the problems with our creation. When men hate men, creation is impacted. When men cheat other men, creation is impacted.
00:32:55
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When we steal from one another, creation is impacted because the pile of sins continues to get deeper, the chaos goes wider, and the darkness is beyond your understanding.
00:33:07
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Genesis 3 reveals a tragic tragic shift from ruling with God to running away from God, from fearing God and respecting God to being afraid of God.
00:33:21
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What is lost between God and man in this moment is revealed in how Adam and Eve react. Adam is still king over the earth. He still has responsibility to God. He's still been given charge of all things. Yet, I want you to notice how he responds to God's questions in Genesis 3.11. Then he asked, this is God speaking, who told you you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? By the way, when God asks questions in scripture, he's not asking for himself.
00:33:52
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He already knows the answers. Keep that in mind as you read the next 65 books of this Bible. I'd never ask a question to find out an answer. He always asked the question to remind you of the answer. Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you? The man replied, the woman you gave to be with me. Notice he doesn't even call her Eve anymore. The woman.
00:34:17
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That woman, the one way over there who I have distanced myself from because I don't want anything to, do good gracious what she did to me, Lord.
00:34:28
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And the Lord looks at her and says, well, what what is this you have done? And the woman says, the serpent deceived me and I ate. In other words, God, your creation did this to me. And not once do they take responsibility for their sin.
00:34:45
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If the first sin was eating forbidden fruit, then surely the second sin was turning and blaming one another. Because destruction drives us right back to doubt. What we've been talking about this morning is not linear, it's cyclical. Destruction takes you back to doubt. When you wake up and you find you're in the middle of the chaos, guess what you first do? Instead of turning to God and asking for deliverance, you turn to God and blame him for not delivering you.
00:35:16
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Subtle difference, right?
Choice: Denial or Redemption
00:35:18
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But it makes a big, big difference because it puts you back on the cycle that takes you further down every time you go. And the only thing, the only thing that will save you from this cycle is the intervention of the one true God, who will not force himself into your life, but will only come if invited.
00:35:44
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Romans 5, 17, and 18, it says, if by the one man's trespass, death reign through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ? So then, as through one trespass, there's condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act, there's justification leading to life for everyone.
00:36:10
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Adam's choice, cause the fall of mankind. Christ's choice to leave heaven, to come down to this earth, to wrap our flesh around himself, his choice opened the door for all of us to experience freedom from our guilt and shame. That's the good news of the gospel. And today you've been given the privilege of receiving it and be given the option of what to do with it. Will you live with denial of your sin?
00:36:42
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or will you allow disgust of your sin to drive you to the feet of Jesus? Will you pray with me this morning?
00:36:54
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Father, what we need is a fresh pouring of your spirit into our lives every single day because it is so easy to become comfortable with our compromise, to become at peace with the poor choices we make.
00:37:11
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to find a way to blame others for our shortcomings.
00:37:17
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Your word is clear, first of all, that every one of us have failed you. We've been outright disobedient to your commands for our life. But it goes further to say that you, you being a kind and compassionate God, didn't give up on this plan for humans.
00:37:41
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And so you decided to send yourself in the form of your son to take care of this plan, to give us the option. And it truly is our option. It's our choice.
00:38:09
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This morning, may we hear the one voice of God, and may other voices, all other voices, be silenced. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.