Obedience Produces Life. Scripture: Genesis 3. Sunday, May 18, 2014.

- "The Maker of all human beings is recalling all units manufactured, regardless of make or year, due to a serious defect in the primary & central component of the heart.

- "This is due to a malfunction in the original prototype units code-named Adam & Eve, resulting in the reproduction of the same defect in all subsequent units.

- "This defect has been technically termed, Subsequential Internal Nonmorality, or more commonly known as SIN, as it is primarily expressed.

- "Some other symptoms are the loss of direction, foul vocal emissions, amnesia of origin, lack of peace & joy, selfish or violent behavior, depression or confusion in the mental component, fearfulness, idolatry, & rebellion.

- "The Manufacturer, who is neither liable nor at fault for this defect, is providing factory authorized repair & service free of charge to correct this SIN defect. The Repair Technician, Jesus, has most generously offered to bear the entire burden of the staggering cost of these repairs. The number to call for repair in all areas is: P-R-A-Y-E-R.

- "Once connected, please upload your burden of SIN through the REPENTANCE procedure. Next, download ATONEMENT from the Repair Technician, Jesus, into the heart component. No matter how big or small the SIN defect is, Jesus will replace it with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness & self-control.

- "Please, see the operating manual, Holy Bible, for further details on the use all of these fixes. As an added upgrade, the Manufacturer has made available to all repaired units a facility enabling direct monitoring & assistance from a resident Maintenance Technician, the Holy Spirit. Repaired units need only make him welcome & he will take up permanent residence on the premises." (Bramer & Dangle, Genesis, 39)

- As we think about the third chapter of Genesis & examine this passage I want us to think about a question: Why choose rebellion & disobedience when obedience produces life?

- Let's notice Satan's strategy & how the woman, Eve, responds.

- 1. Doubt the Word.

- The first phase in Satan's strategy was to get Eve to doubt God's word.

- The serpent planted doubt in Eve's mind when he asked, "Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees of the garden?" (3:1).

- Of course, that is not what God said. What God said was: "You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die."
(Genesis 2:16-17, NLT)

- Rather than focusing on God's generous nature, the serpent focused on what they were not allowed to do, on what God had forbidden.

- Many people do the same today. Humanity tends to doubt the Bible is God's word & questions its trustworthiness.

- We tend to focus on what God forbids, what he does not allow, rather than on the freedom he gives by his generous grace.

- How did Eve respond? Was the serpent successful in planting the seed of doubt?

- Yes, as we will see, Eve began to question God's good & generous grace by choosing to see only what God withheld rather than what He generously provided.

- Doubting the word opens the door to knowing evil, which brings us to the next phase of the serpent's strategy…

- 2. Deny the Word.

- "You will not surely die!" said the serpent. God won't punish your disobedience; you won't die!

- Through the serpent, Satan directly denied that God will do what he says he will do.

- He denied the word of God & defied the living God.

- Satan denied the first biblical teaching about the doctrine of humanity that sin results in death. (The wages of sin is death, Rom. 6:23)

- Evolution does the same by teaching that death has always existed as a normal part of the struggle to survive rather than as a consequence of sin.

- Just as doubting the word opens up the door to knowing evil, denying the word opens up the door to choosing between good & evil. Either God is right & Satan is wrong, or Satan is right, & God is wrong.

- We now come to the third phase of Satan strategy.

- 3. Defame the Word

- After doubting & denying the word, Satan, via the serpent, then defames the word, attacking the goodness of God.

- "God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, & you will be like God, knowing both good & evil." (V. 5)
- Satan defames, or attacks, God's character in two ways: i) implying that God lied, as the serpent said, you won't die; & ii) implying that God is selfish that he kept something from them, as the serpent said in verse five.

- Remember we are keeping in mind the question: why choose rebellion & disobedience when obedience produces life?

- As we think about Satan's strategy we have to ask one question, did it work? YES!

- Eve allowed her God-given desires to be wrongly satisfied in three ways.

- i) She saw the fruit was good for food. She didn't need it. There was plenty of other food around for her to eat. She was surrounded by abundance, but Eve craved the forbidden fruit which she didn't need.

- ii) She saw the tree & its fruit were beautiful. The garden was filled with an abundance of beauty. There were plenty of other fruit trees in the garden the beauty of which Eve could appreciate, but that was yesterday's news. This was today! Here, now, before her very eyes to enjoy in this moment was something else, something new. She craved the fruit with her eyes.

- iii) She saw the wisdom it would give her. This delicious, delectable fruit, which God selfishly forbid, held the secret of true wisdom (Morris, Beginnings, Vol. 1, 182). Eve already had perfect fellowship with God & Adam in a wondrous garden & all the time in the world to learn all wisdom. What else could she have possibly gained by eating the forbidden fruit?

- The serpent's words, shaped by Satan himself, echoed in every corner of her mind: "You will be like God, knowing both good & evil."

- All she had to do was eat, so she took some of its fruit & ate it.

- While Eve was tricked, deceived; fooled into eating the forbidden fruit, the Bible is silently pointed about Adam.

- Adam had not yet sinned & in that dreadful moment, he could have acted, but he did not.

- Instead, Adam deliberately chose rebellion & disobedience over faithfulness & obedience to God's command.

- Why choose rebellion & disobedience when obedience produces life?

- In the moments that followed, Adam & Eve came to know three things.

- i) They knew shame. Ashamed of their nakedness & aware of the new evils they were capable of committing in their flesh, they sewed together fig leaves as a covering.

- ii) They knew guilt. Their relationship with God, each other, & the world was somehow not right, broken. So they hid from God among the trees.

- iii) They knew blame. Rather than taking responsibility for the wrongs they had done, first Adam then Eve (following the example of her husband) played the blame game.

- Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent & the serpent was left without a leg to stand on.

- After those horrible moments, God pronounced his judgment tempered with grace & promise.

- i) God judged the serpent & revealed the seed of his promise of one to come who will defeat sin & death.

- ii) God judged the woman. Physically altering her & altering the husband-wife relationship. She would have pain in childbearing & desire to control the marital relationship rather than be content as the equal & complementary partner God intended.

- iii) God judged the man. Because he listened to his wife & disobeyed God, the ground was cursed & his relationship with the land forever altered.

- Life would now be filled with sorrow, pain & suffering, sweat & tears. That was the new normal.

- So when God sacrificed animals to make clothes of animal skins for the man & the woman he had compassion on them.

- Until the time of fulfillment, animal sacrifice would be a covering for human sin.

- The tree of knowledge did provide knowledge but at what great a cost.

- Adam & Eve judged & expelled from the Garden; prevented from eating from the tree of life, which brings eternal life; & they surely did die.

- Of course, they didn't die immediately. By God's grace their physical death was delayed, but they could no longer be in his direct presence, face-to-face, because of sin.

- What about us? How will we deal with the serpent's lies?

- When times of doubt, denial, & defaming God's word come upon us, will we respond as Eve did or will we choose another way?

- Will we side, like Adam did, with the serpent in open rebellion?

- Or will we accept the sacrifice God has made for us? Will we let him wash us & dress us in the garments He has prepared?

- When we know & trust God's word, our obedience produces life.