Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 3-11

 

! Introduction

            Mom leaves the house cleaned up and goes out to visit a friend.

When she comes home several hours later, the house is a mess.

One plant is knocked over, there is dirt on the floor, water dripping from the counter and pieces of balled up newspaper all over the place.

What is the first question she asks?

“Who’s responsible for this mess?”

You set up your tent and organize your camp site and then get into the boat for a few hours of fishing.

When you return, there is a rip in the tent, things are dragged all over the place, containers are opened.

With fear in your voice, the question pops into your mind, “Who or what is responsible for this mess?”

God created a world which was ordered and organized.

There was a place for everything and when he had finished creating everything it says in Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Today we read about volcanoes ready to blow, gunmen shooting pre-school aged children in Argentina, a humanitarian crises in the Sudan caused by genocide and hurricanes killing over 1500 people in Haiti.

Who is responsible for this mess?

That is the question which is answered in Genesis 3 and in numerous stories in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

In fact, I believe that these stories are written for the purpose of communicating how seriously and deeply sin has caused the mess that we are in today.

As we examine these stories, however briefly, there are several things which I hope that we will learn.

One is to understand the depth of sin, another the seriousness of sin and another the way of sin.

As we examine this, it is not for the purpose of depressing us, but for two other purposes.

One is to show us the desperate need we have of someone to help us out of this mess and the other is to equip us with tools to have victory over sin by knowing how it works.

!

I. Who’s Responsible?

Have you ever wondered to yourself, or out loud, what would it have been like if Eve hadn’t listened to the serpent and if Adam hadn’t sinned?

Would we still be living in the garden of Eden?

Would Adam still be alive?

What would the world be like without the influence of sin?

It is hard to imagine this because our whole world is so steeped in sin that we can’t escape it.

When the effects of sin in our own life, or in the life of those around forces us to face discouraging and negative consequences, we sometime want to blame “this mess” on Adam and wish that he hadn’t sinned.

But he did sin.

God had given the command in Genesis 2:16, 17, saying, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

After being tempted by Satan, Eve chose to disobey this simple command.

We read in Genesis 3:6, “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.

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”

With this choice, the deed was done, the evil way had entered into the world, the path of sin was begun.

But can we really blame Adam for the mess we are in?

He was the first one to sin, but was he the only one?

Did others after Adam and Eve sin because of Adam’s sin or are they as responsible for the mess we are in as Adam and Eve?

What do the stories which follow tell us about this?

In Genesis 4, we have the story of the children of Adam and Eve - Cain and Abel.

They were farmers, Abel keeping flocks and Cain working the soil.

They both brought something of their produce as an offering to God.

Why Abel’s was accepted and Cain’s was not we do not know for sure.

Various explanations have been given, and the explanation that seems most reasonable to me is that there was something wrong with the attitude of Cain.

What was wrong may be indicated in the text when it says that Abel brought “fat portions and some of the firstborn of his flock” whereas Cain brought “some of the fruits of the soil.”

The difference is that of attitude.

Abel may have said, “I am glad to thank God for his gifts.”

Cain may have said, “do I have to?”

Hebrews 11:4 suggests why there was a difference when it says, “By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.

By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings.”

When Cain became angry because his offerings were not accepted, God warned him about his anger.

It seems that at this point he had not yet sinned, that he still had a choice about his reaction.

A critical verse is Genesis 4:6,7 - “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”

What that tells us is that sin was not inevitable because Adam had sinned.

Cain had a choice.

Cain, however, allowed jealousy to become anger, anger to become hatred and hatred to lead to murder.

Just as his parents had chosen to sin, Cain also chose to sin.

God held Cain responsible for his own sin.

What is worse, however, is that we see a progress of sin.

When God confronted Adam, he responded with guilt.

When God confronted Cain, he lied, was careless and sarcastic.

“Cain rejects the divine entreaty and then grumbles about his sentence.”

Sin not only continued by the choice of Cain, it also multiplied.

As we read the stories that follow, we see further choices to sin and a deepening evil.

In Genesis 4:23,24 we have the story of Lamech.

As we read his boast we realize that he is even more calloused about sin and much more violent.

Eye for eye became eye for whole body.

Retaliation and hatred and murder were multiplied and again we see how sin becomes worse.

By the time we get to Noah’s day, God’s evaluation of the people on the earth is declared in Genesis 6:5, “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

A similar evaluation is declared in Genesis 6:11,12, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.

God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.”

The evil has now become so great that God intends to wash it all away and brings the flood to do just that.

After the flood, we hope for something better, but that is not the case.

People continue to multiply in sin.

In Genesis 8:21 God says, “every inclination of his heart is evil.”

That evil is manifested in the story of Noah’s son Ham.

He saw his father naked in his tent, after having gotten drunk.

The story never comments on Noah the righteous man naked and drunk in his tent, but does comment on what Ham did.

He sinned by failing to honor his father and instead of covering him up, went and gossiped about what his father’s condition was.

The sin of humanity is once again seen in the story of the tower of Babel in which people made some conscious choices to do things without God and to “make a name for themselves.”

The judgement of God in confusing the languages tells us that once again people had stepped over the boundary.

One writer says, “the humanity that begins with Noah fully parallels the humanity that preceded the flood.”

The litany of evil multiplying as it does from Adam and Eve onwards speaks to the question of who is responsible for the mess we are in.

In the midst of the many wicked people and multiplication of sin, there are a few who were righteous.

Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him.

In the midst of a wicked generation, we discover that Noah was a righteous man.

Their exception tells us that sin was not inevitable just because of Adam.

Each person is also responsible for his own sin.

We can’t blame Adam.

Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”

Who is responsible for this mess?

You are and I am!

!

II.

How Sin Works

            How could this come about?

Why did Adam sin?

Why are we so susceptible to sin?

!! A. Satan’s Part

            The story of Genesis 3 says that the serpent came to the woman.

I don’t know why it was a serpent that was used, but that the serpent is Satan is proved from Revelation 12:9, which says, “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”

Whenever sin happens, Satan is behind it.

He is a deceiver and he uses deception to entice people to yield to temptation.