January 10, 2010

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." Genesis 3:1-6

Temptation has been around longer than man. It goes way back to the Fall of Lucifer, the original sinner who influenced one-third of the angels into joining his rebellion. As a result, they were all booted from Heaven along with him. In my last post I began an examination of temptation saying that temptation begins with doubt. The Serpent got Eve to doubt the God's Word and His character.

Today, I want to take a look at the second aspect of temptation - delay.

When temptation comes to you, run from it as quickly as you can. Be like Joseph who ran right out of his garment when Potipher's wife tried to seduce him. If only Eve had been so inclined! But instead she stood there listening to the Tempter and looking at the fruit.

I believe it was St. Augustine who said, "I can't stop a bird from landing on my head, but I can keep him from building a nest in my hair." What was he saying? "Don't delay around temptation." If you do, temptation will become sin. You must leave before your resistence wears down.

The longer you think about sinning the more likely you are to do it, so why delay? Delayed obedience is disobedience. Disobedience, of course, is sin.

If you want to defeat sin and resist temptation don't say, "maybe" where God has said, "no!"

Doubt and delay are two powerful aspects of temptation that make it hard to defeat. Learn from Eve's mistake and don't repeat her delay. The moment temptation shows up, you ship out!

January 9, 2010

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." Genesis 3:1-6

Most of my posts during the New Year I have been talking about the destructive nature of sin. Today I want to examine the topic of temptation since temptation is what leads to sin. This historic encounter between the Serpent and Adam is instructive in understanding temptation.

Temptation often begins with doubt. The Tempter asked, "Did God really say?". When Satan wants to trip you up he will begin by underminding the character of God. He knows that if you don't trust God and if you don't believe God it will be difficult for you to resist temptation.

Where you to study the decline of our American culture you can clearly see this same tactic at work. For the past 150 years or so, the so-called "progressives" or "liberal" thinkers began a systematic attack on the Bible as God's Word. They have attacked its integrity, its authenticity, its authority and the intelligence of those who read it. Now, as we begin the second decade of this new century, the Bible has been widely discredited. The result? Rampant social decay and moral failure.

It is interesting to note that the same system of thought that underminded the Scriptures has also attacked the Constitution of the United States. They are not just anti-God, they are anti-absolute authority. They understood that if they could cast doubt on the absolute authority of the Bible it would be much easier to undermind the authority of the Constitution.

The first attack against God is doubt. Doubt in itself is not a bad thing. Doubt actually has a place in strengthening faith when it causes you to search for proof of why you believe. But the doubt that Satan used against Adam is doubting a direct command of God. If God makes His will clear to us and we doubt it - that is sin!

Are you being tempted to doubt? Are you struggling to obey a clearly stated command of God? If so, learn from Adam and submit to God. Confess your doubt and ask Him to strengthen your faith. The Psalmist promised that if you will "hide God's Word in your heart" you will be able to resist temptation.

Have you been in His Word today? Have you heard His voice?

January 8, 2010

"The Lord saw how bad the sins of man had become on the earth. All of the thoughts in his heart were always directed only toward what was evil. The Lord was very sad that he had made man on the earth. His heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I created man on the earth. But I will wipe them out. I will destroy people and animals alike. I will also destroy the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air. I am very sad that I have made man." Genesis 6:5-7

Another problem with sin is illustrated in these verses. Sin degenerates.

Once a person or a group of people are contaminated by sin, unless they aggressively address the problem, repent of the sin and turn from it, their situation will degenerate. Sinful behavior never makes things better but is extremely destructive.

This 6th Chapter of Genesis illustrates how badly the culture had degenerated. People had become so confirmed in their sinfulness that God was grieved that He had ever created them.

That is bad!

The same creatures and creation that He had once pronounced "very good" had now become "very bad". What a shame! Sin had degenerated God's Creation to the point that some divine intervention was going to be necessary.

I have never known anyone who ever sinned their way into a better life. They may have gained power, prestige, position, or possessions as a result of their sinful behavior, but at the expense of their soul.

Sin can't be managed. Sin can't be controlled. Sin can't be tolerated because sin corrupts, destroys and dehumanizes.

No doubt you know someone who has spent a lifetime trapped in sinful behavior. Is that person a better person than they were several years ago when they began living sinfully? Is their character stronger? Are their attitudes more positive? Do they have more spiritual virtues? I'll bet your answers are emphatic, "no's"! That is because sin degenerates.

What began several generations earlier with just two people in a small act of disobedience had now degenerated to the point where God was offended by the rampant wide-spread evil that now infected the human race. God could no longer abide their evil and was about to destroy everything He had made.

God takes sin seriously because He understands the degenerative nature of sin. It was killing Him to see such sinfulness and it would literally kill His Son. He hates sin because He loves people and sin degenerates people's spiritual nature, their character, their judgment, their health, their morality and their happiness.

Sin separates, sin alienates, sin complicates, sin contaminates, and sin degenerates. Deal with sin before it does you in.

January 7, 2010

"So the Lord God drove the man out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground he had been made out of." Genesis 3:23

Sin separates, sin alienates, sin complicates, and sin contaminates. These are a few of the ways that Adam's sin destroyed Paradise.

Another consequence of sin that is fairly obvious is that sin devaluates.

Look how far Adam and Eve fell once they sinned. Observe all that they lost! In trying to elevate their status to become "like God", they seriously devaluated their situation.

Once they had unlimited personal access to God. They walked and talked with Him face to face. Now, they had to hide from Him and flee from Him and lie to Him. What a tragic demotion!

Once they had the rule of Eden. God gave them authority to name the animals and the plants and go where they wanted, when they wanted to do what they wanted. He trusted them and gave them freedom to do anything except eat from one tree. They were honored as the crowning achievement of God's creation second in authority only to Him. Now they were banned from the Garden.

Once they had a heart and mind like God's, pure, loving and sinless. Now they were fearful, suspicious, calculating, self-centered, and - well, sinful.

Can we just state the obious? Apart from God we have no worth or value. We are valuable only because He created us and placed His image within us. Our worth is tied into His unbelievable unconditional love toward us!

The sin nature deceives into believing that we can add value to ourselves apart from God. Humanism says that if we just get the right environment and the right education and the right position and the right possessions we will be more valuable.

You have to look no further than the first few Chapters of Genesis to understand the source of our value and how sin devalues you! The more you sin the more separated, alienated, complicated and contaminated your life becomes - the more devalued your life becomes.

There is only one way to add value to your life - declare spiritual bankruptcy and value God above all else!

January 6, 2010

"The woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good to eat. It was also pleasing to look at. And it would make a person wise. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. And he ate it." Genesis 3:6

So, what's the big deal about sin? That is a question I am examining as we begin this New Year in Genesis.

Thus far we have seen that sin separates, sin alienates, and sin complicates. Not one of those is a good thing but each one of them is an unfortunate consequence of sin.

In this post we will discover one more problem caused by sin. Sin contaminates.

Adam and Eve had basked in the pure and pristine presence of God, their Creator, in the Paradise He had designed just for them. Their all-wise and almighty Father had anticipated everything they would need and had provided it for them. It was bliss! We can only imagine.

But the Evil One, the originator of sin, the selfish, self-deceived fool Who dared to rebel against God in His very presence, could not be content to corrupt himself but contaminated other angels in Heaven who were cast out with him.

Sinning against God was terrible in itself, but the fact that it contaminated other holy beings shows the corruptive influence of sin. Its malicious nature is demonstrated in the fact that it is not content to merely destroy itself, but is driven to contaminate as many others as possible.

Incidentally, the reason that Adam was able to be redeemed from his sin and Lucifer wasn't, was because Lucifer originated sin and did so in the very presence of God. But Adam's sin was due to the contamination of the Evil One. And the contamination spread to you and me. We are certainly able to infect others!

Sin is insidious enough by itself. But it never exists in a vacuum it has to drag others into its grip.

Don't think you can handle sin. Don't think that a "little" sin won't matter. One sin was enough to contaminate the entire human race! You are contaminated. You will contaminate others.

Never underestimate the power of sin. And never underestimate your need to depend on the salvation of Christ, the cleansing power of His blood, the sanctifying power of His Spirit, and the purifying effect of His Word! Your only hope for decontamination!

January 5, 2010

"The Lord God said to Adam, "You listened to your wife. You ate the fruit of the tree that I commanded you about. I said, 'You must not eat its fruit.' "So I am putting a curse on the ground because of what you did. All the days of your life you will have to work hard to get food from the ground. You will eat the plants of the field, even though the ground produces thorns and thistles. You will have to work hard and sweat a lot to produce the food you eat. You were made out of the ground. And you will return to it. You are dust. So you will return to it." Genesis 3:17-19

Again today I am going to comment on the tragedy of sin that warped our race and wrecked Paradise.

In our last several posts I have established that sin separates, and sin alienates, and today we will show that sin complicates.

A thorough study of how God has dealt with His Creatures will reveal that He has always desired for our lives to be simple. He wants to make it as easy to be with Him.

What am I talking about?

When God placed Adam in the Garden He put him in charge of it, He gave him just one rule. Adam was allowed to do whatever he wanted and go wherever he wanted but he could not touch the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

God had to give Adam an option or his free will would be meaningless. But He limited the options to one.

Well, unfortunately, we know how it turned out. Adam, rather than enjoy all the freedom he had, chose to disobey at this one point! One simple rule and Adam deliberately violated it.

As soon as Adam and Eve sinned, life became complicated. Nature that had been in harmony with them began to work against them. God's presence that they had enjoyed continually was now denied them. Paradise was lost. Adam and Eve began to experience trouble and strife in their relationship. Their intimacy with one another and with God was lost. They began hiding from God and from one another. When God confronted them with their sin, they began to play the blame game. For the first time in their lives they knew fear. Life would never be as simple as they had enjoyed prior to their rebellion.

God began to devise a way to simplify life again. Eventually He would give Moses Ten Commandments. Again, He was giving them just a few prohibitions and numerous liberties. Over the years, the Jewish religious leaders began to complicate life again by expnading those ten commands into some 632 rules complete with detailed descriptions of how the rules were to be kept and what constituted violations of these rules. It was hard to know all these rules let alone trying to keep them!

Jesus was born into a world laboring under bondage to a multitude of complicated regulations. But He came with good news as He reduced the number of rules to just two - love God completely and love each other. Once again He was attempting to simplify serving Him.

I am sure you have experienced the complications of sin in your own life. Relationships are complicated. Knowing God and serving Him has been complicated. You live with regrets and consequences of your sins. You live with the complications and consequences of other's sins. Life is hard. Loving is messy. Fear is familiar and sorrow is a common companion.

God never intended for our live to be complicated. He just wanted to enjoy loving us and wanted us to enjoy loving Him. Our love for Him was to be expressed in worship and celebration. We were to demonstrate our love for Him by loving one another!

The mark of a mature Christian is the simplicity of his life. He has saturated his mind and spirit with the Word of God and been filled with the Spirit of God. Therefore, he has victory over sin and lives in obedience to God. He enjoys freedom in Christ and has shed the bondage of self-centered living.

Sin complicates life. It always has and always will.

God seeks to simplify your life by providing you with victory over sin. It wasn't simple for Him to do, He suffered on the Cross. And now He offers His grace and power in exchange for your simple surrender.

Ready to simplify? Simply obey.

January 4, 2010

"I heard you in the garden," the man answered. "I was afraid. I was naked, so I hid." Genesis 3:10

One of the devastating effects of sin is how it separates man from God - creation from Creator.

This morning I want to deal with another tragic effect of sin that turned Paradise into pain central. Not only does sin separate but sin alienates.

We see this in verse 10 where we find Adam hiding from God. The man who was created to walk and talk intimately with God was found hiding from God. Sin alienated Adam from his God.

In verse 10 there are several aspects of this alienation that are mentioned. The first is self-consciousness. When they awoke that morning, Adam and Eve were conscious only of their God. He was their north star, the focal point and center of their universe. While they were mindful of each other, their relationship with each other was bound up in their interactionn with God. Adam and Eve weren't just a couple, they were a one in Him. It was in God that they lived and moved and had their being.

But, when God came to meet them He did not find them and knew something had changed. They had become conscious of their sinfulness. Self-awareness had degenerated into a negative self-consciousness. The self-consciousness brought with it another consequence - shame. Shame is a terrible and debilitating condition. It is an unfortunate result of being separated and alienated from the Creator. We were designed to have our identity in Him. Sin changed that! That brought shame.

Shame is the emotional response to our self-consciousness. Adam and Eve, who were designed for perfection and who had known perfection were suddenly painfully aware of their imperfections.

The alienation of sin resulted in self-consciousness which caused shame which led to strife. When Adam and Eve were alienated from God they were put at odds with each other. Rather than working as one, it was now everyone for themselves. Where they once completed each other they now competed with one another.

Separation and alienation wrecked Paradise. We are still cleaning up the mess!

Sin is bad news. Once you understand that you can fully appreciate what Jesus, the Second Adam, came to accomplish.

"Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." Romans 5:9-11

"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—" Colossians 1:21-22

This morning, thanks to Jesus, you do not have to remain in your alienation and shame! You can be reconciled to God and regenerated and redeemed from your sin! If you choose to remain in your sin - shame on you!