One turn to Genesis 3 verses 7 through 13.
If you don't have a Bible with you, no problem.
We'll have all the the relevant Bible verses on on the screen
for you. Let me catch you up if this is
your first week here last week in last week's episode of
expository preaching, what ends up happening is in this this
great environment, this lovely environment in the in the Garden
of Eden, Adam and Eve end up sinning.
It's the original sin, the first sin in a world of infinite
yeses. You can.
All these trees are for you. The whole world is yours.
Have dominion. They do the one no in a sea of
infinite yeses. They do the one no that God
tells them not to do. They eat the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. And the effect of that sin is
not just a singular event or a singular action that's committed
by the historical figures of Adam and Eve.
It's it is that, but it's far more than a singular action.
What ends up happening, and we'll dig more deeply into this
this morning, is that there's a distortion of the entire nature
of mankind. Sin enters into human nature,
and Adam and Eve upon sinning are corrupted by a sinful
nature. And So what we, what we see in
our text this morning is a surgical, precise, mathematical
look into how the sinful human nature operates.
And this sinful human nature is essentially an operating system
that's composed of 2 automatic responses.
And this operating system is not just built into bad people or
the people who end up on the news or the people behind bars.
It's an operating system that naturally exists within all of
us. And this operating system is
composed of 2 automatic responses which are hiding and
blame shifting. We'll take them one at a time.
Should be a happy go lucky uplifting morning folks.
So if you're able, let's go ahead and stand for the reading
of the Word of God. God creates everything.
He gives Adam and Eve infinite yeses, the world, all the trees
besides one, there's one No, the serpent slithers and deceives
Adam and Eve. They do the one no, they commit
the original sin. And then this happens in verse
7. What's going to happen Then?
The eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked,
and so they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves
loincloths. And then they heard the sound of
the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
and the man and his wife hid. They hid themselves.
They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among
the trees of the garden. But God will not be mocked.
But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are
you? Maybe that's God's question for
you this morning. Where are you?
And Adam said, Well, I heard the
sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was
naked, and so I hid myself. And God said, Who told you that
you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of
which I commanded you not to eat?
The man said it was her and it was you, it was the woman whom
you gave to be with me. She gave me the fruit of the
tree, and all I did was eat it. I ate.
So the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you
have done? And the woman said it.
It was the serpent. The serpent deceived me.
All I did was eat. Heavenly Father, I, I, I was.
I was struck by that line in the worship song.
Your perfect love has drowned out all my fears.
There's a lot of fear in churches.
A lot of people are afraid. What if people find out who I
am? What if people found out what I
did? What if people find out what
goes on in in my head, in my heart?
There's a lot of fear. And that fear produces a lot of
fig fig leaves and masks and hiding and, and pretending.
And all of that is the result of fear.
None of that is the result of faith.
And so, Lord, would you produce in us a deeper faith in the
Gospel that says I am? God already knows me.
He already knows all my past and present and future, since all
the stuff about me. And through the blood of Jesus
Christ, he still chooses to love me.
So what can man, what can man do to me?
May as well be myself, because what can man do to me if God has
forgiven me? That's faith.
Would you reach your heavenly hand down and give us that this
morning? It's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen. You can have a seat.
Sinful nature has an operating system composed of 2 automatic
responses. It's in me, it's in you, it's in
all of us. Hiding and blame shifting.
Everybody does them with no exception.
So we're just going to start with the first one, which is
hiding. We see that immediately when sin
enters into the picture we see, what do we see?
We see fig leaves. Did you notice that fig leaves
baby Adam and Eve? Sin, God comes looking for them
and then verse 7 ends up happening.
The eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked,
and so they sewed fig leaves together and made for
themselves, lowering claws. So let's talk about fig leaves.
I'm probably going to say some stuff in the sermon that's going
to make you uncomfortable, but that's actually like a pretty
big part of my job. And I'm not even going to
pretend to not enjoy that part of my job.
I love making people uncomfortable.
It's like my whole personality, right?
If you've been under my preaching for a while, you know
that I like to push the envelope.
I don't, I don't like to push the envelope just to be edgy.
I like to push the envelope because sometimes that's the
only way to make Christians think.
A lot of times Christians, they approach the word of God being
like, yeah, I know this story. I grew up with a story and they
shut their brains off. And so sometimes what you have
to do is you have to provoke a little bit, push the envelope a
little bit and jar Christians into thinking.
And we'll probably do that this morning because what Adam and
Eve, what they don't do, I don't know if you noticed this, this
is kind of a small observation, But what Adam and Eve don't do
is just pick up a fig leaf and then cover their private parts.
That's not exactly what they do. Maybe you've seen paintings
where they're like, you know, doing this with like a little
fig leaf and just that's not actually what's going on here.
And we know that for a couple different reasons.
We know that because of common sense.
And we also know that because of the biblical text, common sense.
Common sense is that fig leaves, and I need you to get this, and
I'm going to say this without laughing because I'm an adult,
fig leaves, they were too small to cover up what needed covering
up. And so to the ancient world, as
sad as this text is, it also would have been, it also would
have had a comedic element to it where they're like, the idea of
hiding your nakedness with fig leaves is absurd.
How foolish that's supposed to be.
What's happening here? It's supposed to be a little bit
funny. And we also know that they're
not just covering themselves up by holding a fig leaf up because
texturally the Bible says that they had to.
What so And to sew the fig leaves together?
I've never sewn anything. You could probably tell that by
my personality. Not a big sewing guy, but I've
heard that sewing is really labor intensive.
What this implies is that the work of hiding themselves,
trying to cover up their sin and shame, was actually hard work.
They had to find stuff to sew the leaves together with.
That's hard work. They had to go through trial and
error. They had to go through
processes. Oh, that didn't work, this did.
Eve. Eve, how does this look right
here? Still buck naked buddy.
Keep sewing. Right?
How'd say Adam? How does this look?
Still naked honey? Keep sewing.
There was a whole trial and error process here, and the idea
here is that trying to clothe with yourselves by sewing
together fig leaves is exhausting.
And it's also crazy. And that's the point.
The point here is that every human attempt at self salvation
is foolish. It's human beings trying to
solve individually by hiding what can only be solved
communally by the grace of God. And this is an important
observation to make because you need to get this Sin doesn't
just make us guilty, although it does.
It also makes us stupid. It makes us very, very, very
stupid thinking that we can hide from God and hide from people.
And it makes us very, very, very busy trying to fix ourselves.
It's, it's, it's labor intensive.
The process of hiding is labor intensive.
It's labor intensive to clear your browser history and hide
your text messages and hide your receipts from your spouses.
Or let's just say it this way, it's labor intensive to put on a
mask for church people in order to fit in at clown show, isn't
it? It's just exhausting.
I I sometimes wonder, Everybody's tired.
There's so much fatigue. I feel it too.
Sometimes I wonder, like how much of our daily fatigue is the
result of how much effort it just takes to hide ourselves,
You know, is it like 50% of our fatigue?
Is it 95%? It's exhausting.
How we going to sew this together?
Let's find some materials and sew this together.
OK. Is this big enough?
No. OK.
I got to keep going. I got to keep sewing.
It's all just exhausting. How much time do you spend on a
daily basis sewing, Sewing fig leaves together to hide what God
already sees? And probably the closest people
in your life already see it too, I wonder.
Let's take the pressure off for just a second here though.
You guys notice verse 9. What do you guys make of that?
Something problematic or seemingly problematic in it?
Because after Adam and Eve sin and hide themselves, God goes to
Adam and what's he say? He says where are you?
Isn't that problematic? It's problematic because it
doesn't God's question. Where are you imply that the
hiding worked. I actually had a conversation
with this somebody a while ago and I and I heard this line of
argument. In this conversation, he was
with a non Christian solid dude, but he was seeking to disprove
the omniscience of God. Omniscience is God's all knowing
quality that he was everything that could happen and everything
that does happen. And he asked the question, well,
doesn't the question imply that he doesn't know the answer?
Why does? If God is omniscient, why does
he have to ask that question if he knows everything?
If you have to ask the question, then he doesn't know everything.
And so you're actually importing this concept of omniscience onto
the text, and it's not actually there.
See, Right. This is actually a pretty easy
question to answer. Why does God ask that question?
Because that's what good leaders do Read the Bible.
God loves to ask questions that he already knows the answer to.
It's actually just good leadership.
He's being a good parent. He loves, He loves to do that.
He loves because he loves participation.
What he's doing is he's inviting Adam and Eve to dialogue with
them and to participate with them, even though he already
knows everything. What this is, this is hide and
seek with your children. You guys play hide and seek with
your kids when your kid, when your kids hide as a parent,
like, you know, you know where they're at, right?
Like, this is like me walking around my house being like,
where's Jack? Actually, that's not a good
illustration because sometimes I don't know where he is.
It's like when I walk around the house, I'm like, where's
Russell? Wow, where's Della?
You know where they're at. Why are you asking the question?
You're asking the question because you want part.
Participation is fun. You want to participate.
That's what God is doing right here.
Where's Adam? Where's Eve hiding?
Where's Russell? Where's Jack at?
He knows he's inviting them into participation and relationship
with them and and they do what they hide and so do you and so
do I. And there are many forms of
hiding. There are endless forms of
hiding. We find what?
I think the fact that they sew fig leaves together is actually
pretty creative. Nobody has sown before they
invent it. Human beings are endlessly
creative and like all the different ways that we discover
and formulate in order to hide ourselves.
And so I'll give you a couple, even though there's more ways of
hiding than this. The first way of hiding from
God, from other people is the simplest form.
It's covering what ends up when we cover our sin or think we
cover our sin. Is you sin?
Because we all sin on a daily basis And rather than going to
the altar where the Father's arms are open wide, forgiveness
was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
Instead of doing that, we just cover it.
We decide to not talk about it, or we hide it, or we delete it,
or we pray that people won't ask questions, or we keep it hidden
in the secret drawer. And of course, all of this is
foolish. It's all fig leaves.
It's all based on this assumption that we can.
I don't know that we can. I'm going to take it to the
grave with me. No, you're not.
If you believe in God, you can't take anything to the grave with
you. All you can do is take it into
judgement day with you. But out with it.
No hiding, no covering. All you end up doing is taking
into judgement day with you. Covering is ineffective.
It doesn't work. It's fig leaves.
But there's other, more creative ways of hiding too.
Which brings me to the second way that people tend to hide,
which is performing. This is what church people tend
to love to do, perform when they sin.
When we sin, rather than coming to the altar where the Father's
arms are open wide, what we end up doing is we make a list of
religious things to perform so that we can go to God's presence
later on and try to earn his love back.
It usually looks like this. You sin and you say rather than
running immediately to God and repenting and asking for
forgiveness, what you end up doing, you say, OK, so here's
here's my game plan. I'll ask God for forgiveness
after I do an hour of Bible reading, 30 minutes of prayer,
lash myself on the back 40 times, do five hours of
community service, and then he'll accept me stupid.
Another attempt at self salvation, fig leaves.
And you know, this doesn't work because you know the way that
relationships work. Like imagine, imagine if
somebody that you love deeply sins against you grievously and
that person, that that person buys you flowers that day and
makes the dinner and says really nice things to you.
And you're like, wow, he's being really nice right now.
He does all the dishes and he says really nice things to you,
and then after doing all of these really nice things, sits
down with you and it's like, hey, I need to tell you
something. But if I tell you this, you
can't get mad at me. And then they confess their sin.
When that happens, how does that make you feel about all the nice
things they did leading up to that moment?
Makes you feel cheap, doesn't it?
It makes it feel cheap, like it was all just a strategic,
honestly narcissist, narcissistic attempt to
manipulate you into not being angry about what they did.
It feels like it was all just a performance, right?
It's like, I just want you to come to me.
We prepare, be sorry, allow me to be rightly angry and I'll
forgive you and we'll work through this.
But all the performing is hollow.
He was motivated by some attempt to make me less angry at what
you did, not because you love me.
This is the way it is with God and religious performing too.
You can't earn your way into the presence of God, so don't
perform with him. But there's also more creative
ways, like the third one, which is minimizing.
Minimizing is also a form of hiding.
And this is also something that religious people love to do.
What what minimizing is is this is attempt at self salvation and
hiding by, by strategically comparing your sins with the
worst sins in the world. You know, you sin and then you
confess it to somebody and you're like, well, at least I
didn't kill somebody. It's like, dude, at least I'm
not Hitler. Well, the well, the neighbor's
husband actually cheated on her. So at least I didn't do that.
It's all minimizing foolishness, fig leaves, hiding.
It's actually an attempt to use other people's failures as a
shield to hide behind, to try to manipulate God and other people
away from justice. What I think what it, what that
actually is, is it's actually a form of idolatry because you are
worshipping, you are worshipping other people's sins as your God
because you're treating their sins as a shield to hide behind.
And God is your shield. God alone is your shield, not
what somebody else did. And so all these forms of
hiding, they don't work or worse sometimes when people they do
work. And that's a scary thing,
because one of my least favorite things about unhealthy churches
is that they some sometimes unhealthy churches have.
They have the habit of rewarding hiding.
Have you ever noticed that, like in certain church cultures, if
people pretend to be a certain way and put on a mask and just
regurgitate what they hear their church leaders say and just act
like they're church leaders and minimize their own struggles and
addictions? What ends up happening is the
church often rewards those people with leadership
positions. What ends up happening is it
creates a culture where everybody's like, yeah, we
pretend. That's what we do here.
We're religious, so we hide. That's what we do.
We perform. And This is why so many churches
contend in the direction of just being a clown show.
Because, yes, leaders in the church need to set the tone with
truth. Can't minimize that.
But the leaders in your church also need to set the temperature
so that repentance and transparency is actually normal
and expected and not weaponized against people.
If I mean, if I were you, I just, I would actually.
I wouldn't trust religious leaders or religious people who
also aren't transparent. It builds A performative culture
covering, performing, minimizing.
I wonder which of those three you struggle with the most.
They're all fig leaves. It's all hide and seek with God.
And of course, if you keep reading the story, just when you
think, oh gosh, they're hiding themselves with fig leaves, they
can't get any worse. It does.
It gets worse. When they get found out and
there's nowhere to hide, what do Adam and Eve do?
They relate and resort to the second default operating system
of the human heart. Hiding doesn't work.
So they go shoot. OK, flame shifting.
Isn't that what's going on in verse 10?
Right. Look at him.
God's like, where are you? And Adam's like, well, I heard
the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was
naked. And so I hid myself.
God says, well, who told you that you're naked?
Did you eat of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
Did did you sin? And the man said, the woman whom
you gave, it's not a good start. Adam, did you sin?
It was you and her. So those are probably the last
two people you want to blame is your spouse and your God.
That's what he does. There's the woman you gave to
me. She gave it to me.
I just ate. So the Lord walks over the one
and he says, what is this thing that you have done?
And she says, well, I do it. The serpent that you created,
the serpent deceived me. All I did was eat.
What is this? What is this?
What's happening in this back and forth?
What's happening in this dialogue?
Adam, what'd you do? Wasn't me.
It's her evil. What'd you do?
Wasn't me. It was it.
What is this? This is this is blame shifting.
And so before blame shifting, we all have the tendency to do
this. And so before we approach blame
shifting bluntly, I want to I want to approach it
metaphorically. So let's let's start right here.
Imagine. Imagine you have a cell phone.
Most of you do. And you've got your cell phone
cable that came with the phone. Sorry, Joseph.
I think I stole this from you this morning.
I came up with this idea last minute.
He's not in the room. Don't tell him I did this.
Oh, I think I stole this from you.
I'll give it back. So imagine you got your iPhone,
right? And it dies.
Panic ensues. Oh, no, My phone's dead.
You grab. What do you do?
Grab your charger. You put it in this end, and I
want you to imagine what you do with the other end is you just
drop it on the floor. What happens?
You look at your phone and it goes from 0% to 0%.
What? What's happening?
You didn't plug in. And so let's assume you assume,
OK, the cable isn't working. OK, I'm done with this, done
with the cable, it's not working.
So you go to Amazon, same day shipping, baby, Praise the Lord.
You look at you look at the reviews, you look at the
reviews, you find a good one. You're like, OK, I'm going to
order that one. So you order a new cable because
the previous cable didn't work. The cable comes in same day
delivery. Like, OK, I need to text my
parents back. So let's get this thing charged.
Take one end, put it right there.
You take the other end, you drop it on the floor.
You don't plug in. You wait a couple minutes.
You're like, this one's not working either.
What is? Gosh, what is going on?
So you assume it's the cable. That one didn't work either.
So you get rid of that one. You Chuck that one.
So what you do is you end up going to the nice tech store in
town. I'm going to talk with somebody
who understands tech, you know, you talk with and I want, I want
the best one. I ain't the one that charges the
best because my other chargers didn't work.
So you spend like 50 bucks and you get the best 1.
So you get the best one. You're right.
You take it home. What do you do?
You put it in this end. This is going to be the one that
works. You take the other end and you
lay it on the floor. You're like what?
What in the heck is happening? None of these cables.
It's the cables. None of these cables are
working. So you take that cable like I'm
done. I'm done with that cable.
You Chuck that one and then you keep on recycling through it and
all of a sudden, days later you've spent hundreds of dollars
on phone cables and none of them work.
You just recycle through phone cables and you still got a dead
phone. Why am I telling the story?
Because this is mostly everybody's life.
I have to say this. It's not the cable.
The cable's not the problem. Listen to me most times, some
exceptions, extreme exceptions. Most times the cable isn't the
problem. You didn't plug in.
It's you. You didn't plug in and as long
as you continue to blame shift the cables, you're going to keep
recycling through more cables and losing more money and losing
more time. But the solution to your problem
isn't more cables. Different cables is actually
really simple. You're just not plugging in.
And this is true pretty much everywhere.
This is true spiritually. So many people are like, well,
you know, I tried Jesus, but Jesus isn't doing anything for
me. He's not changing my life.
Are you reading your Bible daily?
Are you serving the church weekly?
Are you praying regularly? Are you repenting of your sin?
No. No wonder there's no power.
You're not plugging in. It's not the cable, right?
This is true relationally. So many spouses blame their
spouses. I want a different husband.
I want a different wife. I want a new one.
I don't feel connected. Are you initiating deep
conversation? Are you praying for your spouse?
Are you encouraging your spouse? No, no wonder there's no power.
You're not plugging in. You don't need a different
cable. You just got to plug in, right?
This is you don't get to not plug in and say, I don't feel
connected, right? This is true with church
community. You stop worshipping at church
every Sunday. You stop going to community
group, you stop pursuing people. Then you say, nobody in this
church pursues me. You're you unplugged.
Do you know what unplugging feels like?
It's literally synonymous with feeling disconnected.
You know why? Because you're not connected.
Literally, right? What?
Adam and Eve will do anything besides look at them and say,
maybe I'm the problem, right? What should Adam have said?
I think Adam probably should have said, you know, Adam,
what'd you do? Well, you know, God called me to
be a sacrificial leader for my family.
That's clear in chapter 2. So maybe just freaking, maybe
when a serpent slithered up to my bride and stuck his forked
tongue in her ear and lied to her, maybe I shouldn't have let
it happen and should have crushed him.
Maybe Adam take responsibility. Instead, he blames Shifts.
What is the woman you gave to me?
Eve's also not innocent, right? Eve, what is this thing you have
done? Eve should have said, you know,
God gave me clear instructions in his word.
It's actually really clear that that was the tree I wasn't
supposed to eat out of. And so maybe I should have
believed the one who created me rather than this creature who
had yellow eyes. Maybe it's me.
I nobody says this in our world anymore.
Nobody says maybe it's me. We follow Adam and not Jesus and
we say it's the woman you gave me God.
We follow Eve and not Jesus and say, well, I was a serpent that
you created. Rare are the women of faith and
rare are the men of faith who say who say it's me, Hi, I'm the
problem. It's me.
It's rare. Maybe it's my heart.
Maybe I unplugged from the Lord. Maybe I unplugged from the Word.
Maybe I unplugged from the truth.
Maybe I need a man up. Maybe I need to step up and take
responsibility and repent rather than deflecting.
Because if you do that, if you take responsibility for your
spiritual life, your sin, your relationships, you will succeed
in every area of your life as a Christian, as a leader, as a
spouse, as a friend. Health naturally flows to those
who take responsibility for themselves, and it naturally
flows away from those who blame shift, taking responsibility,
that's godly. But your sinful nature, it wants
to, it wants to bully you into hiding and blame shifting.
Don't do it. Crucify the flesh, mortify that
impulse in you. It doesn't work even when it
feels like working right? And there are times where you're
like, I'm getting away with hiding this now.
You aren't. It's, it's God's most severe
judgment, and I don't say that lightly.
It's God's most severe judgment to allow you to hide your sin.
That's what Romans 1 teaches. He gives them up to their sinful
desires. Yeah.
You think you're hiding? OK, go for it.
Have it. I'm getting away with it.
No. That's the worst thing that
could happen to you. There's no thought more damning
than I think. I'm getting away with this.
There's no getting away with anything in the eyes of the Lord
Jesus Christ. You won't hide from him.
You won't run from him. You won't escape him, you won't
cover yourself up before him with fig leaves.
You will not save yourself to present a more religiously
informative, acceptable version of yourself.
So why hide? We can answer that question
textually. Why blame shift?
Why hide? I think it's in verse 9 and this
is so stunningly psychologically accurate it's actually insane.
Verse 9, the Lord God called the man and said to him, where are
you or why are you hiding would be an accurate parallel.
And Adam said, well I heard the sound of you in the garden and I
was I was afraid. Fear is why we hide.
Fear is why we blame shift. Every time we royally screw up,
we have one of two choices we can make.
That's it. Fear or faith?
Oh man, that's pretty oversimplified.
I think life is more nuanced than that.
No it's not. Those are the two options you
have, fear or faith, and what nobody tells you is that fear
and faith, They both demand you to believe in something that you
can't see. Both of them.
Both of them require trust. You've thought about that.
Fear and faith both demand you to believe in something that you
cannot see. Fear says, Well, if God finds
out what you did, he'll crush you.
He'll strike you with lightning bolts.
He'll hate you forever. If people find out who I really
am, I'll be isolated and alone the rest of my life.
You can't see that. That's a form of trust, right?
Faith says if God finds out what you did, let's be honest, he
already knows. He'll forgive you.
He'll cover you. Yeah, there will probably be
consequences, but he'll love you.
That's also believing in something that you can't see.
Which one are you going to do, fear or faith?
I think this is this is going to sound kind of silly, but I
actually think it's a really important story This week.
I was texting my dad back and forth.
We were texting about stuff I didn't.
We were just texting back and forth about baseball.
You know, the Yankees, the Mariners, Mike Trout hitting
five harm runs in four games, which is crazy.
We're just talking like there's just nothing.
We were just texting back and forth about baseball.
And suddenly my dad started texting me and my phone started
blowing up. And I looked at the text
messages that were rolling in and the text message I was
getting from my dad's phones. It literally said bubble one
you're a loser bubble 2 nobody likes you bubble three dork
bubble 4 not going to say it at church.
How would you feel if you got that text message from your dad
or a loved one? I would imagine if if if
somebody you loved or your dad told you that you were a loser
and that nobody liked you and that you were a dork, I would
imagine that would cut right. That hurt a little bit.
It didn't hurt me though. You know why?
It didn't hurt me. It didn't hurt me because I know
my dad. I know his character and it was
voice. I've made a treasure chest in my
heart of the things that he said to me like I love you and I'm
proud of you and I think you're doing a great job, buddy.
And so when those text messages came in, I didn't have to walk
around wondering, oh, does my dad think I'm a loser?
Am IA loser? I, I, it didn't hurt me.
I knew it. I know my dad's character, and
you know why? You also know why it didn't hurt
me. It also didn't hurt me because I
knew my big sister was hanging out with my dad that day.
And our love language is making fun of each other.
And if you think those texts are brutal, you should see the reels
we share with each other. And so when I got those text
messages in my head, I wasn't like, oh, no, my dad hates me
and he thinks I'm a loser and he thinks nobody likes me.
I got that text message and I was like, oh, Brooke stole his
phone. She's 411, has a big mouth.
Of course she's talking smack right now, right?
Immediately I knew that. I knew it wasn't my dad's voice.
And the reason why I'm drawing a lot of attention to this, the
reason why I'm bringing a lot of your attention to this is, is
because of a really simple but really important recognition.
And here's what I'm getting at. Both God and the enemy can speak
to you through the same phone number, your conscience, the
same event, the same sin. One voice encourages faith,
trust me, come to me, repent, I'll forgive.
The other voice encourages fear. That's the enemy.
You're a loser, nobody likes you.
Hide this. And so when you sin, you're
going to hear 2 voices. One says you're a loser, nobody
likes you, if God finds out we did, he's going to hate you.
And the other one says, repent and turn to me, and I'll forgive
you and clothe you and love you. They both can come to you
through the same phone number, through the same event, by
looking at the same sin. Do you know your Father's voice?
Do you know the truths of Scripture?
Do you know which one is from Jesus and which one is from the
enemy? If both fear and faith demand
you to believe in something you can't see, which voice did you
believe? Fear or faith?
And the answer is really simple. Whichever 1 is in line with the
character of Jesus according to the Bible.
And So what does the Bible say Jesus's voice is like?
What does the Bible say Jesus is like?
When we sin, Jesus biblically is the voice that clothes, not the
voice that shames. Let me say that again.
Jesus is the voice that clothes, not the voice that shames like,
did you? This is phenomenal.
Did you know? Did you know that the Gospels
record that when Jesus was crucified, he was stripped of
his robe and crucified naked? Did you know that?
Why? Why would it include that
detail? Well, because Jesus didn't die
so that he could offer you fig leaves.
Do you know, fig leaves are when they get dry, they're really
brittle. They crumble really easily.
Jesus didn't die to give you something that crumbles really
easily. He didn't give you little leaves
that don't really cover the shame that it's covering.
And so the gospel, it doesn't offer some like naive brittle
little hope. You know, sometimes we all screw
up. So don't worry about it, or at
least try not to worry about it. That's so brittle.
So why the Gospels record that when Jesus was crucified, he was
stripped of his robe and crucified naked?
Because he had to be. Because in that moment he was
substituting himself for naked and ashamed Adam and Eve, naked
and ashamed Cold Ike, Naked and ashamed you.
So that when he, Jesus, was crucified, he was crucified
naked and bore their shame on that cross.
He became a real substitution for every human being, every
Adam, every Eve who sends. So you know why the Gospels
record that when Jesus was crucified, he was stripped of
his robe and crucified naked? Not for fig leaves.
He was stripped of his robe so that you could wear his robe.
That's why he didn't want to give you fig leaves.
Who wants to give you his robe? Why would we ever say yes to fig
leaves and no to a robe? Right to misquote CS Lewis on
purpose. When we hide, we're like half
hearted children who continue to sew together fig leaves for
clothing because we're too ignorant to understand what silk
and cashmere and a robe is when it's offered to us.
I'll take blame shifting. I'll take hiding.
I'll take the fig leaves, dude, cashmere robe, righteousness of
Jesus, his perfection, his achievements.
Why would you say yes to fig leaves to that?
Because by grace, through faith in Jesus alone, his robe is
given to you so that when God looks at you, he doesn't see
your nakedness. He didn't see your shame, He
didn't see your sins. He doesn't see your mistakes, He
doesn't see your errors. When Jesus looks at you, he sees
the righteous robe of Christ. Do you know how that makes God
feel? Happy.
Well, pleased over the moon, intoxicated with affection,
zealously singing over you. So I hope you see how the gospel
speaks to this text, right? There's only one human being in
the history of the universe who's never blame shifted.
It's not you, it's not me, it's Jesus.
It's actually pretty amazing. Adam sins and what does he do?
What does he do? He blames his wife.
Jesus doesn't sin, and what does he do?
He takes the blame of his wife, the church, upon himself to make
her innocent. Does exactly the opposite of
what Adam does. So there isn't a safer place in
the universe to run to when you screw up than Jesus?
You ever read the songs where it's like you God, you're my
rock and in you I hide myself. Do you know what that means?
It means you should hide yourself in Christ and not
excuses or blame shifting or religious performance ISM.
It means Jesus is enough to hide you.
So when you send, not if, when you send, say no to fear.
Fear will have you sewing fig leaves together for the rest of
your life, hiding and covering and blame shifting and living in
the misery of fig fatigue. Say no to fear.
Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of stuff.
Don't be afraid of people. Don't be afraid of the judgment
of others. Don't be afraid of being found
out. Be afraid of faith.
Say yes to the voice of faith. Run immediately because of the
grace of Jesus. Run right away to God.
Confess, repent, receive forgiveness.
Collapse into his arms as the hymn O, Come to the Altar says,
Come to the altar. The Father's arms are open wide.
Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
That's what you should do that that would actually be a great
song to sing this morning will do You know it, you've heard it.
Cool. Let me pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that we wouldn't just sing it, but that
we would do it that we would come to the altar because the
Father's arms are open wide. Why?
Because forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of of
Jesus Christ. I pray our church wouldn't be a
church that hides, wouldn't be a church that performs, but
instead would be transparent and honest and would be the happy
recipient of the grace that we say we believe in and we preach
about. And so for those who need
conviction, convict, For those who need comfort, comfort,
there's there's clothing available to us.
It's not fig leaves, it's a robe.
And the only thing that gets that robe off the hangar and
onto our shoulders is faith. If you don't know Jesus, I don't
know how you plan on dealing with your shame and your guilt
for the rest of your life. I imagine it will exhaust you.
And so run the Jesus, believe in the Gospel, and receive that
righteous robe of Jesus Christ, and become a new woman and
become a new man. So it's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen.