Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We continue today in our series “Beginnings.”

This series has led us through many different beginnings already, including the beginning of the world and universe, time, man, marriage, society, and so much more.

But last week we looked at the beginning of evil -or sin- in man.

We talked quite philosophically last week about evil and how it was introduced in the garden.

Today I want to take us into a more practical application because I realize that the presence of evil is far more complicated in our lives than a philosophical discourse.

In essence, pain is the by-product of evil.

Some of you know that I’ve had extensive abdominal surgery.

On one occasion, at the change from day shift to night shift after my surgery, the night nurse came into my room for her rounds.

She did her assessment and in the process, pressed on my belly.

I screamed out to which she jumped back, “Oh! You’ve had surgery!”

I’ve counseled many people and walked with even more through dark and evil times.

I’ve learned over the years that no matter your position, you must be careful when touching the areas of pain in people lives.

To merely explain away someone’s trauma in philosophical or theological terms can be insensitive and coarse.

I’ve determined over the years that life is a series of pain management.

How we manage our pain is crucial to our health and relationship with God.

How we manage the pain of others is just as important.

The third chapter of Genesis is an important chapter in the Bible because it explains why things are the way they are today.

Why there is decay.

Why there is disease, racism, tyranny, and violence.

Why there is ultimately death and judgment.

Those things plague our entire universe, Genesis 3 is tells us why.

Even more, they point us to Revelation.

Understanding Genesis 3 helps us better understand what and why the events in Revelation will unfold.

Up until this point, Adam and Eve are sinless and living in the peace and splendor of the garden.

This is a place absent of death, disintegration, dysfunction, decay.

It is the perfect Edenic creation of God and they live in it without sin, enjoying all the wonders of God’s creation.

Genesis 3 is not legend or a fairy tale.

It is the written and inspired Word of God.

And it explains to us exactly why things are the way they are and how sin came into our world and how it began to affect our world.

The first 7 verses start of the solicitor of sin, entering the garden as a serpent.

With craftiness and deception, he convinces her to doubt God’s goodness and His love.

The Fall took place then when she stopped loving the Lord her God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving Him means believing Him and trusting Him.

Last week, we saw the entry of sin into the woman’s mind in doubting God’s Word and the man’s inaction against this enemy.

Today we will see the completion of that doubt into action that will seal their fate.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie.

It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

(Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda)

Satan’s lie is that you have to pay for your sins.

The lie is that there’s no judgment.

That’s the lie that Satan wants the whole world to believe.

Nowhere do we see this lie played out more than with those living in LGBTQ community, living it blatantly.

And it is always in hostility to the God of the Bible and believers.

So here is the lie that enter’s Eve’s mind.

The doubt of God’s character.

Up to this time the goal of Eve was to glorify God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength.

That’s perfect righteousness.

There was never any thought about self-satisfaction or self-fulfillment.

There was never any thought about personal pleasure, personal gain.

Now, not only is that her thought, that has become her goal.

Self-fulfillment has taken over her love for God.

For the first time ever what is driving her own satisfaction.

Sin moves from the mind to a feeling.

Now the sin is going to work on her emotionally.

From there it will course through her heart to action and the results of that action will lead her to pain and death.

in exactly the pattern of James 1:14-15.

This is the trap of sin.

“I’m entitled… I deserve… I need...” It’s the self-seduction, where the feelings follow the mind.

Look at verse 6. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food” – that’s not intellectual.

We don’t know what kind of tree it was.

Some think it was an apple tree.

The reason people traditionally have called it an apple tree is because in the Latin the word for apple is malum.

The word for evil in Latin is malus.

And then there’s the legend that Adam choked on his apple and that’s why men have an Adam’s apple.

She saw the tree was good for food, it was a delight to the eyes, and it was desirable to make one wise.

What is going on here is that self-satisfaction is driving her self-destruction.

It isn’t the glory of God any more.

She is being seduced by her physical appetite.

First, she looks and she sees this as good for food- it was physically appealing.

Now let me ask you a question.

Do you think she was hungry?

Of course not.

But she had come to believe that there was something more satisfying in this food that she had never enjoyed in any other food.

And this is lust.

She sees that the fruit is good for food and that it will fulfill her more than what God has already provided.

It tells you that stolen waters are sweeter.

Secondly, she not only sees that it’s good for food, but she also sees that it’s a delight to the eyes.

There’s a certain emotion going on here.

Oh, it’ll taste so good.

Oh, it’s such a beautiful fruit.

It’s exciting her aesthetic appreciation.

It’s not as if there wasn’t anything – as if everything else in the garden was brown and ugly.

It wasn’t.

But here again is a selfish discontent.

And once the mind went, then the emotions begin to take over, and it looks like the only food you really care to eat.

Oh, it’s so beautiful.

And you can just see that the appetites are taking over and conceiving the behavior.

Third, she also saw that the tree was desirable to make her wise.

The wisdom part here, I believe is superiority.

This has emotional power.

There is something here that will elevate her beyond the wisdom from God or in the deceiver’s word, “That she would become like God.” What is happening here is her imagination is shaping sin into something that is more than it is and it is going to make her into something more.

She saw the tree was good for food, it was a delight to the eyes, and it was desirable to make one wise.

These were the same appeals: (physical, emotional, and power) that Satan used to tempt Jesus.

These are the same three approaches that Satan still uses against us today.

1 John 2:15-16 “15 Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

Did you hear that?

Everything in the whole evil domain of Satan the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.