18.1.09
INTRO
Computer virus analogy:
Story this week – Trojan virus. Had to deal with it.
The worm – infects everything
Best cure is a reformat = wipe clean and start again
POINT
A very good comparison to the origin and the effects of sin.
One of the most damaging computer viruses written was released in the year 2000. An email message was found on a computer which simply said, "I love you".
It looked innocent and romantic so the lady opened up the message and the so-called "Love Bug" was born.
It had the ability to replicate itself through the email address book and rapidly infected millions of computers including government and business software and caused millions of computer software programmes to crash.
POINT
How alike that is to the first single virus-like sin of much deadlier proportions that came through the sin and disobedience to God by the world’s first human inhabitants, Adam and Eve.
RECAP: The Drama of Scripture: The opening scene
Let’s read the ACCOUNT in
READING: Genesis 3:1-24
CREATION
God made Adam and Eve. He put them in a beautiful garden. Everything was perfect. It was paradise. And God walked with them in the garden each day.
They were not robots. God gave them the power of choice. I suppose if God had made robots instead of people who could choose then God would not have had the pleasure of seeing them choose to love Him. THIS WAS THE ONE THING THEY HAD TO DO FOR THEMSELVES. God could not make them love him. They had to choose to love God, trust God and to obey God.
OHP
POINT
God gave them Paradise. God did not make them as robots. There was only one thing they had to do = to choose to Love, trust and obey God. – We could call that worship.
It was only possible to choose to love God when at the same time it was possible not to = to sin instead.
The highpoint of the day was when God would come to meet Adam "in the cool of the evening" and have fellowship with him.
What would they choose to do once real temptation came along?
TEMPTATION
The Serpent
There now appears a new character in the human story - the serpent. This reptile was the agent or the tool of Satan. The serpent was Satan incarnate, the Devil.
Scripture declares him to be a real personality. He is described as "the god of this world" (2 Cor 4:4), "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph 2:2). He is the powerful being who lives in a world of lies and deceit, aggression and retaliation. He is still alive and well on planet Earth.
POINT
A serpent is a suitable disguise for Satan.
Snakes are very sly:
ILLUSTR –[ Poisonous snake in dressing gown]
When we were in Africa a snake entered our home and disappeared into the bathroom. It hid inside the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. I searched the bathroom but did not search the dressing gown. Later on we heard it drop and saw it slither away.
But this serpent was far more sinister and dangerous.
APPLIC
The fundamental nature of sin revealed in chapter 3 of Genesis is that:
SIN LEADS TO THE BREAKDOWN OF RELATIONSHIPS
Satan didn’t offer them freedom from rules. He just gave them a new authority to obey – himself!
The voice of temptation was saying: "Where is your freedom when God has prohibited the fruit of a particular tree? What is God hiding from you?" It’s typical of Satan to focus upon the single prohibition and ignore the bountiful provision that God had made.
Satan keeps up the pressure, distorting what God has said to the point that both Eve and Adam, in defiance of God, disobey the command.
Immediately they feel their shame. They seek to hide from God. They bring forth God’s curse on all that was good. Paradise is lost, and they are banished from the garden.
THE NATURE OF SIN
What was the temptation? And why was it sin?
They were tempted to automony (self law)
They could obey or defy God
Rather than rely on God’s word for direction they chose to determine what was right and wrong for themselves.
APPLIC
SIN is rebellion.
• It is also idolatry. We were made to worship.
• If God is not the focus of our worship we will worship something else – not just material things, but we will make ideologies our religion and our passion – whether it is vegetarianism, animal rights, green issues, the planet or spirituality without God.
• It is also an attempt to achieve autonomy – to find freedom outside of God’s good order.
• Sin twists and distorts creation rather than destroying it.
It takes that which is good and corrupts it –
• sex turns to lust and adultery,
• possessions to greed,
• technology to weaponry,
• authority to dictatorship,
THE EFFECTS OF SIN
PRIMARILY IT DESTROYS RELATIONSHIPS
Between humankind and God and between people
POINT
We see its effects between Gaza and Israel
[Traced back to Abraham’s two sons: Ishmael and Isaac]
When we sin something dies in our relationships.
Adam and Eve felt shame for the first time and they try to hide from God because their relationships with God is also broken.
Sin’s effects drive us apart.
APPLIC Sin should not be trivialized. It is not a mistake. It is a deliberate choice to do things our way rather than God’s way and it always leads to harm in our relationships – esp with God. –
Craig Bartholomew: The Drama of Scripture:
QUOTE: When we try to find our own way in the world, instead of seeking out God’s way, we reach out for what we think will be more than God wants us to have – and we end up with far less: with broken friendships, marriages and families; with corrupt governments and legal institutions; with starvation in many parts of the world and plague of obesity elsewhere; with the oppression of the weak by the strong, of one race or one gender by another. In rejecting God’s word and embracing the serpent, we reach for a bigger slice of life and find out that it tastes like death. And sadly, we have come to see all of this as normal.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN
Satan, the ground and humankind all cursed and blighted as a result of sin.
God confronts them and pronounces his judgement – judgement on Satan, the ground, childbirth and work – and banishes them from the garden.
APPLIC
There are consequences for all our sin. But the greatest consequence of sin was for God himself and the sacrifice God had to make in order that it might be forgiven and our relationships and paradise restored.
THE REMEDY FOR SIN
God had a plan of redemption:
Hint on redemption Gen 3:15 – enmity will be put between the serpent and the Offspring of the woman.
The serpent’s head will be crushed, though at great cost to Jesus Christ.
God also covers the shame of Adam and Eve (through a sacrifice of blood) already the cost of redemption is being made clear. God has not given up on them.
Winston Churchill once gave the tribute:
"Never did so many owe so much to so few". Those famous words need to be slightly adapted when we think of what God in Christ has done.
It is that "so many owe so much to only one person". How can that be?
The apostle Paul devotes a chapter in his letter to the believers at Rome to demonstrate the principle that many can be affected, for good or ill, by one person’s actions.
He presents Adam and Jesus as the respective heads of the old and new humanities.
• He argues the case that it was through one man, Adam, sin entered the world.
• The result of that sin was death, and so death came to all because all share in Adam’s sin of self-assertion and deviation from God’s command. That’s the bad news.
The good news Paul writes is that Christ’s self-sacrifice on the Cross brings eternal life to all that come to Jesus in repentance and faith. The apostle’s logic is to see it in terms of cause and effect: "Just as the result of one (Adam’s) trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness (Jesus on the Cross) was justification that brings life for all men" (Rom 5:18).
Paul then confirms the message in terms of Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience: "Just as through the disobedience of the one man (Adam) the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man (Christ) the many will be made righteous" (19). The wonder of the Gospel is that, although we were once "in Adam", we can be "in Christ"!
The First Adam, the representative head of the human race, brought mankind under the power of evil, but Christ, the Second or Last Adam, is the representative Head of a new humanity of the redeemed. In my opening illustration I said that the computer virus could be likened to "sin".
BUT GOD WAS NOT ABOUT TO ABANDON US – GOD PLANNED TO REDEEM US
CONCL -
Paul says: "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
The Genesis story began with Paradise, but because of man’s sin it became Paradise Lost. God’s purposes for this world will ultimately triumph. The last book in the Bible, Revelation tells of a new heaven and a new earth. The apostle John saw in his vision: "the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven." He heard a voice saying: "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God." (21:2,3). This is Paradise Restored!
POINT
In our sweep through the drama of Scripture we have visited the opening scene: CREATION
And now the drama begins – The story of what has gone wrong and needs to be put right.
There will be a few twists and turns before we meet the hero who restores all things. But we remember him today in the bread and wine.
Communion
