On the occasion of Cornell University's second annual
Darwin Day, which I might add, it sounds like the kind of thing
where you ever hear of like the Darwin Awards.
These are these are like joke awards that are meant to get at
people who who don't necessarily understand survival of the
fittest. So maybe, perhaps they do
something stupid or foolish. That's, that's what I think of
when it, when I, when I read this Darwin Day is like, like
that. But no, that's not what they're
doing. They're actually celebrating
Darwin at Cornell University on their second annual Darwin Day.
William Provine opened his speech saying naturalistic
evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood
perfectly. No ultimate foundation for
ethics exists. That is, if there's no God, then
there's no foundation on which the evolutionist can claim
anything is morally right or wrong.
The atheist actually needs God in order to be able to make such
a claim. I know, it's funny.
This morning we'll examine where right and wrong actually come
from. The origins of sin in this
world. So if you're able, would you
stand as we read from Genesis chapter 3, We'll read verses one
through 7. Now the serpent's was more
crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had
made. He said to the woman, Did God
actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit
of the trees in the garden. But God said, You shall not eat
of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,
neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die,
for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that
it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of its fruits and ate, and
she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he
ate. Then the eyes of both were open,
and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves
together and made themselves loincloths.
You may be seated as we begin our time in this passage.
It's it's important to say that this is not a fable or a myth.
There are streams of Christianity that that treat
passages like this as a simply myth.
Their goal is to ascertain any principles that can be derived
from the passage. These sects aren't concerned
with the historicity of accounts like this.
However, I think it's important to understand this moment as
history since the New Testament presents it and treats it as
history. So the first thing we will look
into here is the solicitor, which I know is a weird word but
you know alliteration. So have to go with what we can
do. The solicitor chapter 2 left us
in an idyllic world of perfection.
Right? The water is flowing down from
the mountain of God. There is an abundance of rich
natural resources. The the man now has a wife to
help him rule and subdue the world's.
Then suddenly the serpent shows up on the scene.
So what are we to to make of this serpent?
Well, let's start with some basics first.
The serpent is is new to the woman.
She's not seen him before, perhaps because he was he was
from the field is what's what the text says.
And she wasn't close to the animals that that lived out in
the field. He's crafty, but I think it's
best we probably understand this craftiness, this cunning to to
apply specifically to this one serpent.
Those who want to mythologize the text will point to what they
call a talking snake. I might add, by the way, that
the serpent has legs at this point, It seems we'll we'll talk
about that next week. But but those who want to
mythologize the text point to a talking snake.
Serpents were part of God's good creation in the world of these
two humans was actually marvelous and wonderful, filled
with all manner of creatures to discover and learn about.
And a talking serpent may well have just been another
intriguing creature that the woman had yet to meet.
Now I'd like to remind you that the relationship between animals
and humans was not yet one of fear, as life in the garden was
good and and the woman didn't have any reason to be suspicious
of of this serpent that that shows up.
She'd yet to experience what Ephesians 6 calls the Wiles of
the devil because everything was innocent there in that moment.
Still, the serpent apparently knows God in some sense at
least, as he's able to call God's words into question.
He knows what God said, he speaks with great intelligence
and and he's shrewd with his choice of words.
He's opposed to God and he's deceptive and and he's hostile
to the moral innocence of this first couple.
There are a number of perspectives on what's happening
in this passage, but my belief is that Satan is Co opting the
form of the serpents. He masquerades as whatever he
would like and his economy is deceit and that's likely what's
happening here. In Revelation 12 we see a
spiritual battle with Michael and his angels fighting against
the dragon. Verse 9 says the great dragon
was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil,
and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.
Clearly John is identifying Satan with the serpent who had
deceived the woman back in Genesis 3.
Now when it comes to Satan's back story, we have to piece
some things together. There's there's no passage in
Scripture that specifically says this is where Satan came from.
The name Satan is actually a transliteration, a spelling into
English of the Hebrew word Satan and it means adversary or
opponent. His sole job is to stand against
followers of God, to oppose them and to accuse them.
In the first couple chapters of Job we see a bit of this and and
how he tries to work against humans.
To ascertain Satan's origins we look at a couple Old Testament
passages as well as a couple New Testament references.
Back to the Old Testament. First we look at Ezekiel 28.
Now Ezekiel 28 is a prophetic judgement against the king of
Tyre. The king of Tyre was wealthy and
he saw himself as as a God. The 1st 10 verses talk about
this and and verse 11 changes in You realize it's talking about
something beyond an earthly king when you read it.
Ezekiel 2812 says you were the signet of perfection, full of
wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden.
Obviously the king of Tyre was not in Eden, right?
You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Every precious stone was your covering.
Verse 14 says you are an anointed guardian cherub.
I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of
God. You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found
in you. Then jumping to verse 16, you
sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing
from the mountain of God. Your heart was proud Because of
your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom.
For the sake of your splendor, I cast you to the ground.
The spiritual being being written about here is Satan.
He was a a cherub. The cherub being actually,
technically speaking, are to be differentiated from angels.
People will sit what people will call cherubs.
Oh, there's such a cherub. They're an Angel cherubs are a
different category of spiritual being than angels are angels
actually is more is more about a role being a messenger is really
what angels are about South. A cherub is a is a higher
spiritual being than some of the others in Their primary purpose
is to serve and to protect God's holy spaces.
This particular cherub was beautiful, wise and and was in
the garden on the holy mountain of God there.
But then pride overtook him and he corrupted his wisdom.
He started to redefine rights and wrong on his own terms.
Then Isaiah 14 is the other passage we examined to learn
about Satan's back story. Isaiah 1412 reads how you are
fallen from heaven, O Day star, Son of David.
I'll pause here as an aside. If you are reading the King
James Version of the OR the New King James Version, you will
instead read the word Lucifer instead of O Daystar or
Morningstar is the other words that are used.
The Latin word Lucifer actually is not a translation.
It doesn't appear in the Hebrew text.
The text says hello, Ben Shakar, which is son of the morning.
And the translators of the KJV decided they wanted to honor
this tradition. That was in place of using the
word Lucifer to refer to Venus, which is a star in their eyes,
right? They didn't know that Venus
wasn't wasn't a star, that it's a planet.
They refer to Venus as the Morning Star or the Evening
star, and Lucifer is actually a reference to that.
So that's what's happening in the KJV.
However, our modern translations have chosen to actually
translate Son of the Morning Star instead, rather than say
Lucifer. So it says how you were falling
from heaven, O Daystar, Son of Dawn, how you are cut down to
the ground. You who laid the nations low,
you said in your hearts, I will ascend to heaven above the stars
of God. I will set my throne on high.
I will sit on the mounts of assembly in the far reaches of
the north. Then it says in verse 14, I will
send above the heights of the clouds.
I will make myself like the Most High, but you are brought down
to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.
So when you read that, you can see that there's something,
something else in view here. And then in Luke 1018, Jesus
says, I saw, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
And when he says that, that's a clear reference back to this
passage of Isaiah 14. And it also is saying Jesus is
saying I was there, I was there before that moment I was there,
which means he was already pre existent as God.
Now I believe there's a lot of discussion as to what happened.
My belief is Satan rebelled shortly after day 7 of creation.
Why do I believe this? Because all of God's creation
was good, some people will say, oh, maybe it happened.
Maybe the rebellion was before creation, maybe it was sometime
during creation. I believe God's creation was
good, His spiritual beings were good.
So that's why I believe that it happens.
After day 7 when he rebelled, he deceived 1/3 of the other
heavenly beings and they fell with him.
We arrive at this conclusion again by jumping to Revelation
12. Verses 3 and 4 tell us the
dragon swept 1/3 of the stars out of the sky and the stars
being the other angelic like beings, swept 1/3 of the stars
out of the sky and threw them to the earth.
And then a few verses later we learned that the dragon is of
course Satan. So that's the solicitor, the
person who's going to make the proposal to the woman.
Next, we examine his strategy. How does Satan work?
Well, the way Satan works is through deception.
Deception is the name of the game for Satan.
He takes the truth and he distorts it.
That's his. That's his MO in John 844 Jesus
was talking to the Pharisees and and he has some strong words for
them. I love this.
Can you imagine talking to the your religious leaders and
telling them these things? Here you are of your father the
devil and your will is to do your father's desires.
He's basically saying your little devils is what he's
saying. He was a murderer from the
beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no
truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of
his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Satan is a liar. In Second Corinthians 11/14,
Paul wrote about false apostles who who make themselves out to
be on the same side as Paul. They tried to look like genuine
apostles, but they aren't. Why?
Paul says even Satan disguises himself as an Angel of light.
Satan disguises himself as an Angel of light.
He can make himself look good. So if he can make himself look
like an Angel of light, then he can make his servants, these
false apostles, look like the real thing.
Satan loves to deceive Christ followers.
As we look at his strategy, let's briefly review what God
said in Genesis 2 verses 15 through 17.
You see it there on the screen. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat
of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, you shall not eat, for the day that you eat of
it, you shall surely die. God gave the humans permission
to eat of nearly every tree in the garden.
He'd given abundant provision and freedom.
They even had the freedom to eat of the tree of life, But God put
a limit on that freedom and prohibited them from eating the
fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
They could eat of every tree in the garden except for one.
This is this is a pretty good deal.
They had everything they needed. Now, Satan's strategy here is to
distort God's provision. He likes to distort God's
provision is what he's doing here.
He approached the woman, He said, did God actually say you
shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
No, that is not what God said. They could eat a basically the
entire garden and Eve's responses we may eat of the
fruit of the trees in the garden.
But God said this is this is her, her remembrance, if you
will, she's saying, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit
of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
Satan had portrayed God as narrow and restricting, focusing
her attention on the limitations that were in place rather than
on the abundant provision and freedom that was to be enjoyed
there in the garden. And Satan, part of distorting
God's provision is he also loves to manipulate the truth.
He manipulates the truth. He gave the woman a distorted
view of what God had supplied. And now he has the opportunity
to give her a distorted view of what God actually said.
He's misleading her, causing her to question God's words and and
actually trying to paint himself in a favorable light.
I think in a sense trying to prove that, oh look, I care more
about you than God does, he retorts.
You won't die. God knows that if you eat of the
fruit from that tree, your eyes will be opened and and you'll be
like him. You'll know good and evil, and
in a single interaction, Satan had called God's goodness and
his forthrightness into question.
He planted seeds of doubt in the woman's mind, speaking half
truths and essentially convincing the woman that God
was just being selfish and and preventing her from being like
him. Satan is a master manipulator.
Sure, her eyes would be open to the existence of right and
wrong, but actually she would become less like God rather than
more like him. Satan still uses this tactic
today. He manipulates the truth through
false religions and and cults. False religions and cults take.
Bits of truth, things that, oh, that sounds right or that sounds
interesting, and then they distort it.
They manipulate the truth to suit their own purposes.
I love when in our connect group, as we've been talking
about heretics, this phrase was, was brought up that said, you
know, some false religions or, or cults, they may use the same
language, but they're using a different dictionary, same
words, but they're using entirely different meanings.
We can see this in the new age. We can see this in the LDS
church, the Latter Day Saints, Mormons.
We can see this in a number of places.
Same words, different dictionaries.
So we've met the person, we've examined his strategy, but how
would he actually pull it off? So now we look at the seduction
of sin. First.
John 215 through 16 reads, 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.
For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the
desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the
Father, but is from the world. This is John writing, like
thousands of years later. He's writing this.
The desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the
pride of life are the very same sins.
These are the very same sins the woman gave into in the garden.
That's what John is has in mind when he's writing these things.
He's recalling what happened there in the garden.
Genesis 36 tells us the tree was good for food.
That's the lust of the flesh. The desires of the flesh we we
need to eat, right? The tree also looked good.
That is the desires of the eyes. The lust of the eyes and the
tree would make her wise. That's the pride of life rearing
its head. The issues she dealt with are
the very same issues that we deal with today.
Nothing new is happening now. A couple weeks ago, when talking
about gender and sexuality, I made a comment that desires in
and of themselves aren't bad. I should have clarified that a
little more. So I'm doing that now because
it's entirely appropriate to what we're what we're examining
this morning. The point I was actually trying
to make was that temptation in and of itself isn't a sin.
You can be tempted, but not sin when you choose to not act or
entertain that temptation. However, entertaining sinful
thoughts, sinful desires is a sin because sin is a matter of
the heart. It's a matter of the heart.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says everyone who looks at
a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with
her in his heart. So the law dealt with the
externals and the Pharisees would focus on that as well.
The externals of of how we maintain our relationship with
God. That was that was the primary
focus of the law, I would say. But in the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus double s down on what righteous living really is.
It's not just the externals. It's a matter of the heart what
happens in here. If we have a desire for
something outside of God's design, then that's is lust, and
that desire is considered sinful.
Once the woman started to entertain Satan's thoughts and
to be moved by the seduction of the tree's fruits, she'd already
sinned. She'd lusted after the fruits
and her pride brought a hunger that she'd not experienced
before. Prior to this moment, you see,
she was content with all God's provision, but now suddenly she
needs this one piece of fruit in a way that she'd not ever known
before. Did sin come from Satan?
No, He loves to tempt us and to pull us off course.
But sin comes from inside us, our own desires.
Sin comes from inside us, our own desires.
Where do we see this? James 1 verses 13 through 15
tells us how this works. Let no one say when he is
tempted. I am being tempted by God, For
God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he was lured and enticed by his
own desire. Then desire, when it has
conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown,
brings forth death. We'll talk about death more next
week, but God is not the author of temptation.
He doesn't tempt anyone, James said.
Each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed.
By what? By his own desires.
The Greek word exelco pictures a fish.
Actually, in this passage, the the fish is naturally lured.
That word lure, the net, it's naturally lured in by the worm
or whatever it is that's being used as bait.
The fish doesn't ponder that worm and think, is this a good
worm? Is this a safe worm?
Can I have this worm or, or is this one of those bad worms that
that took one of my friends away?
The fish doesn't think about this, right?
The fish is simply one of God's creations, one of God's
creatures. It acts on what we call
instinct. It sees, it likes, it bites.
This is a primal desire importing the metaphor into the
human realm. We're tempted when we are lured
by our very own desires. This is where sin comes from
inside of us. In Matthew 1519, Jesus says out
of the heart come evil thoughts. Murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
The heart is the foundation of who we are.
It's the root of our emotions, our desires and our will.
All these evil acts Jesus mentioned start in the heart as
it is the seat of our desires. The now late pastor and
theologian John MacArthur wrote. When sin penetrates the mind,
emotions and will, it will always be manifest in sinful
actions. Let me repeat that when sin
penetrates the mind, emotions and will, it will always be
manifest in sinful actions. The woman's first sin was in her
heart. Before she'd taken any steps,
before she'd done anything and rebelled against God physically,
the rebellion started internally in her heart.
Once that happened, she didn't have any defenses up to keep her
from taking that next step. She took the fruit and ate,
completely unaware that this simple act could have such a
massive impact. And she gave the fruit to the
man and he ate. But interestingly, though
scriptures clear, the man is at fault and all the women said the
man is at fault for bringing sin into the world.
Sure, the woman took that first bite, but the words of the text
basically let her off the hook. It says she was deceived by the
serpent, so it kind of casts her in a little bit of a different
space than it does the man. Romans 5 tells us sin came into
the world through one man, and death is now part of the human
experience because of that one man.
Then First Corinthians 1522 For as an Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall shall all be made alive.
First Timothy 214 Adam was not deceived, but the woman was
deceived and became a transgressor.
So Adam knew what he was doing. He wasn't deceived is what that
verse just told us. The onus of responsibility in
Scripture is clearly placed on the man.
The woman was deceived, but man engaged in a willful act of
disobedience. His actions then caused sin and
death to be passed on to the entire human race.
Satan had entered the scene set on plying his trade, which was
deception, by enticing the woman with the fruit of the tree.
She took it, she bit into it, gave it to the man, and he bit,
and the result was shame. The result was shame in a
metaphorical sense. Their their eyes were open to
see that they'd violated God's command.
Their eyes were now open to see they'd violated God's command.
In the aftermath of sin. They realized that there was a
right and there was a wrong. The innocence in their minds and
their and their bodies nakedness was now replaced by shame.
Shame for what they had done and shame at the realization that
they were naked. They quickly sought to cover
things up by making the first Speedo and bikini out of leaves
and hid from God. When they took a bite of the
fruit. They they probably expected to
have a greater understanding of life and how to live well in the
garden. Instead, they got more than they
had bargained for when they chose to redefine right and
wrong on their own terms. What happens when a child does
something wrong that they know they're not supposed to do?
They hide right. They make themselves scarce.
They they don't want you to see them.
And we'll see in the next verse that the man and woman in the
next week, that the man woman's response was to hide.
They'd already hidden the parts of their body over which they
felt shame and and now they would hide themselves completely
from God. The first game of hide and seek
ensues and God wins. Now, when people argue that
nudity is a return back to humanity's innocence, they're
dreaming. The page has been turned, and we
can't go back. To do so now is to be in denial
of the realities that set in on that fateful day, that day shame
enter the world, and to not experience shame today, which
there are people like this. To not experience shame is a
sign that someone has cast off all restraints that God had
previously put in place for our own good.
There are people who have cast off all restraints.
Everything is within the realm of possibility in their world
because they've lost shame. So how do we defend ourselves
against sin? Satan prowls around like a lion,
is what it says in First Peter, seeking whom he may devour.
He wants to chew you up. So what are our defenses?
In the last few minutes I want to share 4 defenses that we
have. First of all, the Holy Spirit is
a defense. Galatians 516 tells us to walk
by the Holy Spirit. That means that the Holy Spirit
controls us and all our actions and decisions, that even even
our thoughts are under His control.
I know this is hard, but the result of a life completely
surrendered to the Spirit's power and authority is growing
in Christ's likeness. We grow in Christ's likeness by
walking in the Spirit and daily being filled with Him.
So the Holy Spirit is is the first thing in our our arsenal
of defense. Next is the word Scripture.
That is, the word Second Timothy 316 and 17 says all Scripture is
breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness, that
the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Then Hebrews 412 For the Word of God is living and active,
sharper than any 2 edged sword, piercing to the division of soul
and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, discerning the thoughts
and intentions of the heart. God's inspired Word is
profitable for our daily lives and to bring us to maturity.
It tells us how to live, what to do, what not to do, what to
believe, what not to believe. It pierces the intentions of our
hearts, and it exposes our true motives.
That's the power of the Word. And God's Word longs to be
mulled over, read, studied, meditated on, memorized.
And when we do, the Word becomes a weapon in our battle against
Satan, just as Jesus himself modeled in his temptation that
he endured with Satan. 3rd is prayer.
Ephesians 618 encourages us to pray at all times, keeping alert
while also offering our request for others up to God.
When we're tempted, we should pray for the Holy Spirit to work
in us to overcome that temptation.
Prayer says I need God and I can't do this on my own.
Prayer is my declaration of dependence on him.
And our last weapon is the church, not the building I love.
The other night in Awana, Mike Meyer was up here teaching a
lesson. He's, he's asking what are some
good things about the church? You know what he's talking about
people. There's air conditioning.
I was like, that's great. Yes, yes, the building does have
air conditioning, but that is not what we're talking about.
The church is the people. Ephesians or Ecclesiastes 4/9
through 10 2 are better than one because they have a good reward
for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift
up his fellow, but woe to him who was alone when he falls and
has not another to lift him up. We weren't meant to live the
Christian life alone. God gave us a gift when he gave
us the church. The body of Christ makes us
better. It provides ample resources for
us to be encouraged in the faith.
That provides an opportunity for us to be real and authentic with
others about sin in our lives. And when we live in community,
we are stronger and better able to resist Satan's attacks.
Sin doesn't exist in a morally neutral world.
Sin is a self coronation. Choosing to say what I say
matters most. When the man and the woman
seated themselves on that throne, the throne of selfish
desires, everything collapsed and LED to chaos, brokenness,
and alienation. Humanity's relationship with God
had been severed and everything changed.
We'll talk about that next week. Let's bow our heads and close
our eyes. God, I pray that you would use
the words that's. I've just delivered that we
would each look into our hearts and lives to examine ourselves.
What is a specific area that I need to bring into conformity to
be like Christ? God, I pray that we would all
take that sin, offer it to you, confess it to you, Say, God,
will you forgive me for this sin?
Holy Spirit, I need you to fill me up so that I'm walking by the
power of the Holy Spirit and not walking in the flesh.
And may we not live in a place of shame, but understand that
our shame was crucified with Jesus on that cross.
We thank you for your forgiveness that you pour into
our lives and that you have made a way for a broken people to be
made right with the Holy God. We're broken, sinful people, but
we have a relationship with you through the blood of Jesus
Christ. So we thank you for that.
It's in Jesus name we pray, Amen.