The Fall

Back in the nineties, we had these books. They were called Magic iBooks. Anybody remember Magic iBooks? And so you’d open up a magic iBook and it would have a picture where theoretically, if you looked at it right, an image would pop out. Now, I say theoretically because it never worked for me, which means everybody thought, Hey, you’re just doing it wrong. And so one method they’d say, you need to get it really close to your face, and then slowly back it away. And then they’d say, you need to try and focus beyond the picture. And that’s how your brain helps to focus on the picture. Or some people would say, actually, go cross-eyed. And if you go cross-eyed, and then when your eyes come undone, then it pops out. Nothing never works for me. But there are some other optical illusions that don’t just work for me.

They work for, I think, pretty much everybody. This is a really famous one right here where there’s a line up top and there’s a line down below. And you ask the question, which line is longer this line up here? Or this line right there? And your brain assumes that the top is bigger, that this line from there to there is longer than this line from there to there. And yet the lines themselves are the exact same size. It’s really only different because of the arrows. This is called the Mueller Liar Illusion. It was created by a German psychologist, Franz Carl Mueller in 1889. Been around a really long time. Now, if you still are looking at that, and you’re like, no, that’s not true. The top one is definitely longer. Here is the same image except they color coordinated it. And then they take the two color coordinated images or the lines, and they put ’em right next to each other to prove to you that yes, they are in fact the exact same length.

But if you’re like me, you still, there’s a part of you that still doesn’t believe that <laugh> because you’re like, no, I know that the top line is longer. There’s other optical illusions that just kind of mess with your head. Like this is a really famous one where if you stare intently into the black center, it looks like the black center is just growing and growing and growing and growing. It definitely looks that way if you hold it up close. And yet, if you look really carefully, the image has not changed. And so if you’ve looked at an optical optical illusion before, it’s interesting to think about this question. How do optical illusions work? ’cause I always thought that it was my eyes that my eye is somehow playing a trick on me. And yet that’s most likely not the case. We’re not a hundred percent sure why optical illusions work, but here’s the best guess. These are some researchers that came out of the University of London. They suggest that many visual illusions might be so effective because they tap into how the human brain reflexively processes information. If an illusion can capture a attention in this way, then this suggests that the brain processes these visual clues rapidly and unconsciously. This also suggests

That perhaps optical illusions represent what our brains like to see. So your brain constantly, all the time is processing the information that your eyes are sending to it and it’s adapted. Even right now, you have two eyes giving you two different pictures of vision, and yet your brain doesn’t receive it that way. It, it stitches the two images together so that in the middle you don’t have this overlap. It just sees one. So your brain is constantly processing information, an optical illusion, something about how they’re designed tricks the brain into seeing something that’s not actually there. Your brain is processing information in perceiving a reality that is not true. We’re in a sermon series on the Bible project where we really unpack what is the story of scripture. The Bible’s a confusing book. It’s a big book. It’s a long book. It’s a hard book.

And we’re really trying as a church to dive in and say, well, what is the story that God has for me, the redemptive arc of human history that God has wrapped up in the Bible? Now, how do we dive in and make it make sense, make it, make it understandable? Well, one of those things is to recognize the fall, the brokenness of the world. That because of the fall, the event that we’re gonna study today in Genesis chapter three, it causes us to see the whole world in a different way than it was intended to be seen. Genesis chapter three is only the third chapter of the book, and yet that chapter is so significant that nothing else in all of scripture makes sense unless I understand what’s happening in Genesis chapter three. If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Genesis chapter three.

For a little bit of context, we’re gonna look at a few verses in chapters one and chapter two. In Genesis chapter one, the very last verse of chapter one, it says, and God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. This is the first six days of creation. After each day, God is saying it was good, it was good, it was good. And at the end of the sixth day, God looks at everything and he says, it is very good. Then in chapter two, there’s one restriction that God gives to mankind. It says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat for in that day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So God gives man this crossroads. He say, here’s your options. I want you to serve me. You’re created my image. You can be my image bearer. You can rule over the garden and rule over my creation underneath the authority of God. And we can be in right standing relationship together. Or he says, you could also choose to go this other direction and become your own God and choose to go against my will. So those are really the options. And then in the last verse of Genesis chapter two, it ends that chapter by saying this, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now, if you read that verse down in junior high, there’s a lot of giggling and laughing. It’s an important verse because here’s what it’s trying to help us to understand that in God’s intention with creation, there is no shame that they often say that one of the greatest fears that people have, or one of the big nightmares that people have over and over again is being in front of a crowd and being naked.

Why? Because there’s a part of us that that just sounds so shameful. We would be so ashamed if that happened to us. The creation story tells us that God creates humanity and there is no shame. There’s no shame in our relationship with God, our relationship with each other, our relationship with creation. And then chapter three happens. Genesis chapter three, starting in verse one. It says this. Now, the serpent 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? Now, at this point in Genesis three, we’re not a hundred percent sure who the serpent is, but the rest of the scripture tells us in the book of the Revelation, it’s very clear that it is Satan who is working through the serpent to deceive Eve.

So, so Satan is saying, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Which is that true? No, that’s not what we just read. It’s not what he had said. Verse two. 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. Now, interestingly, that’s also not what God had said, verse four, 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’ll be like, God. The temptation that Satan is putting out before Adam and Eve is the temptation to be like God, to elevate their own standing to that of God’s knowing good and evil.

Verse six. 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 fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were open when they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And 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 themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, said, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, which I commanded you not to eat? The man, this is great. Says, the woman whom you gave to be with me. She gave me the fruit of this tree, and I a it’s her fault, not mine. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? Then she does the same thing. Not my fault. The woman said, the serpent deceive me and I ate. It’s interesting the tactic that Satan uses to entice them to sin. ’cause The same tactic that Satan uses to entice Eve is the same temptation that we all fall prey to when it comes to sin. That, that here’s the slippery slope of sin. It’s always deceit, doubt and discontent. At first, there’s this deceit that the serpent starts to deceive Eve, Hey, was it really that way?

Or is it this way? Start starts to really just kind of peck at the edges and say, man, this is a really great thing that you’re maybe you’re missing out on. And so starts to deceive her into believing something false that’s not true to be true. And that deceit leads to doubt. All of a sudden she starts to question, well, is that really what God had said? Or, or maybe is it different than that? Is God really wanting what’s best for me? Or is God actually just trying to hinder me and harm me, not let me enjoy myself and have fun? And so that deceit turns to doubt, and that doubt leads to discontent. It says that she was looking at the tree and she desired it. So she was sitting wherever she was, and she had every tree in the entire garden that she could partake in.

But the one that she couldn’t have was the one that she decided that she wanted, and that discontent caused her to fall into sin. The same thing happens in our own lives, that when we fall into sin, it starts with deceit. And that we start to believe the lie that this sin would be good for us, that it would be enjoyable, that it would make us happy, that it would be great. And when we’re deceived in such a matter, it leads to doubt. It leads us doubt and say, well, I, I know the Bible says that we’re not supposed to do that, but the Bible, it’s an old book. It was written thousands of years ago. Surely what it meant for them is not the same thing that it means for us today. And you can even really further push on that down. You hear people say, well, well, okay, I I don’t really believe all the New Testament.

I only just focus on what Jesus says. And if Jesus never said that I couldn’t do it, then, then I can do it. It’s fine. So now you’ve got doubt that has crept in, and then that leads to discontent. You just decide, I’m unhappy, and surely God wants me to be happy and because I’m unhappy, maybe I should do this thing even though I’ve been told it’s wrong. And that’s how we fall, pray sin. It’s interesting, the same temptation that Admir e fall into is the same temptation that all sin does. And that is, it says that they saw the fruit, and Satan told them that if they took of the fruit, that they would be godlike. That in the created order of things, that God had created mankind, and he was the authority over mankind. And there was perfect harmony, perfect, perfect bliss. But then what man decides to do is they elevate themselves to the same position of God.

And in that selfishness, they sin. Here’s the reality, the great temptation of sin is to elevate ourselves to the status of God. What does that mean? When we do that? It means that we decide we know better than God. Think about it. Every conflict that exists in your life right now, it’s because somebody in that conflict has elevated their needs above the needs of the other person. Or perhaps both people in the conflict are elevating their needs above the needs of the other person. Every conflict always at least one party is elevating their needs. If you’ve got kids, you see this all the time, or maybe you work with grandkids, and you see this all the time. A few years ago my older two kids they were playing the, the game with a balloon. Don’t let the balloon touch the ground. It’s an amazing game.

‘Cause You, you get a bag of balloons for five bucks, they’ll last you for like five years, and you blow up one balloon. You toss it out there, and then they just hit it up in the air for like an hour. Or if you’ve watched Bluey, they call it kipi Uppy Now, in my family, ’cause the bluey. And so my kids used to play this game all the time, and we’d go through a balloon, go through a balloon, go through a balloon, and I remember one day we had the very last balloon in the bag and they’d blown it up and they were playing. They’ll let the balloon touch the ground. I play with ’em for a little while, but like all kids activities, eventually it leads to discontent. And so they decided we don’t wanna play together anymore. And so the first sibling takes the balloon and says, I don’t wanna play with you.

I’m going to take the balloon and leave. And the other sibling says, well, you don’t have to play with me anymore, but you don’t get to take the balloon. I am going to take the balloon and leave. And so now there’s fighting. Now there’s arguing. And I did my parenting from the couch this day. And I I, I tell over to ’em, Hey guys, stop. It’s always great parenting this. You just say, stop. Hey, if you guys can’t work it out, then I’m gonna take the balloon away from you. So you need to solve your problem together. And it didn’t solve the problem. It led to more bickery and more fighting. Now there’s tears now there’s now there’s actual physical fighting going on. And so in, in a very not good parenting manner, I stood up, I walked over, I picked up the balloon and popped.

I just popped it right in front of him, <laugh>. And then I’ll tell you, they both turned to me with faces that were just mortified. They were like, just disgust it. Like, what did you just do? And, and really what I did is I elevated now my own selfish desires above theirs because I was tired of the fighting. And I figured if I just get rid of the balloon, then there’s no more fighting. And so they were fighting because they were both being selfish. And then I came in and I was being selfish and, and used some really bad parenting, effective, but bad parenting. But all conflict comes from that same way. It’s us elevating our own needs, our own desires, our own self above everyone else. The same temptation that Satan gives to eve and the garden is the same temptation that Satan himself fell prey to. In Isaiah chapter 14, verse 13, it’s a passage that is describing the fall of Satan. And it’s Satan talking in this passage. And he says, I will ascend into heaven. I’ll exalt my throne above the stars of God by elevating himself to be equal or above that of God. He gets cast out of heaven.

The root of sin is us elevating ourself. And then the consequence of sin that we see immediately in the Garden of Eden, the immediate consequence of sin is shame. That shame enters into the equation. Remember the very end of chapter two, there’s no shame. Everything is perfect. They’re naked and have none. And then as soon as sin enters into the equation, we see shame. Look what it says in verses seven and eight. It says, then the eyes of both Adam and Eve were open, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And so all of a sudden they’re scared. They, they say, oh, oh gosh. Hey, hey, God is gonna be aware of us. Then it goes on to say right after that, it says and 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 themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So understand the, the change that happens from chapters one and two to now in chapter three, chapters one and two, they’re walking in the presence of God, they’re naked and they have no shame. Sin comes into the equation and immediately they’re shame. They’re hiding themselves. They’re, they’re hiding their nakedness. And then God shows up and they’re hiding away from him as well. Why? ’cause shame makes us feel unworthy. Now, that word shame is the challenge. It were, because we often misunderstand the difference between guilt and shame. And, and there is a difference between guilt and shame. Think of it like this, that guilt, the opposite of guilt is innocence. Guilt and innocence deal with morals. I understand the difference between right and wrong, but shame is different.

The opposite of shame is honor or glory. And shame deals with falling short of our ideals. And so there are times when something wrong happens and you feel both guilt and shame. A a good example would be lying. That if you see yourself as an honorable person, that your ideal is that you’re, you have honor and that you don’t lie, and that you get caught in a lie. First you have guilt because you’ve done something wrong, but then you also have shame because you’re not living up to your ideal. Not, not too long ago, my youngest daughter she, she drinks chocolate milk in the morning and mom was gone. And typically she gets two cups of chocolate milk. And she comes up to me sometime in the afternoon and she says, Hey, dad, can I have my second cup of chocolate milk? I said, well, have you already had your second cup of chocolate milk?

She said, no, I haven’t. Of course mom’s not there for me to double check with. And I said, so, so you’re telling me you’ve only had one? You’ve definitely not had two. She said, Nope, I still haven’t had two. I said, if I call mom right now, is she gonna tell me that you’ve had one or two? She’s like, no, I, I’ve, I’ve only had one. And I called her bluff. I called mom. And as the phone was ringing, she starts to cry and she runs away <laugh>. So it’s a perfect example of, okay, there’s guilt. She’s been caught in doing something wrong. But then there’s this shame where she wants to go hide from the relationship. So sometimes guilt and shape go hand in hand. But then especially in our culture, now, there’s times where there’s guilt, but there is no shame if someone does something wrong.

But they’re not ashamed of it. In fact, sometimes they flaunt it. You see this with Hollywood couples, a Hollywood couple, one of them will have an affair. They’ll admit that they did something wrong, they shouldn’t have had affair. But then they flaunt that relationship. They have no shame in that new relationship. They lean into, Hey, I’m proud of this. So sometimes guilt and shame go together. Sometimes you can have guilt and no shame. Sometimes you can have no guilt, but half shame. You ever shown up to someplace and you felt inadequate, like you’re looking around and, and the car that you drive is not as nice as the car that everybody else is driving. Or the house that you’re in is not as nice as their house. Or the clothes that you’re wearing are not as nice as their clothes. You haven’t done anything morally wrong.

There’s, there should be no guilt, and yet there’s some shame. Why is there shame? Because you’re holding up this ideal, this standard that you are not adequate to. That’s why oftentimes we have shame with our body image, that, that you’re at the gym and you’re looking around and you see someone that is in more shape than you, or bigger than you, or stronger than you. And you feel shame not because you’ve done something wrong, but because they are a better image of the ideal than you are. And you feel shame as a result of that. And so shame did not exist until the fall. But the consequence of the fall, the shame that enters into the world is very real and very damaging. Dr. Julie Slaty, who we’ve had preached here before she did a conference for our staff recently. She said, this was, which stuck with me.

She said, guilt is for what you did. Shame is for who you are. Here’s one of the challenges though in our culture with shape, is that we tend to, especially if you grew up in a church, around a church, you would say that I get my morals maybe from conservative values or from Christian values or from the Bible or from my parents. But oftentimes our ideals come from culture. It’s what culture says is right or is successful, or is good or is great. Most teenagers, even if they get their morals from scripture, their morals from mom and dad, they most likely are getting their ideals from TikTok, their ideals from what they see elevated as the picture of success. Whether that’s success with looks, whether that’s success with finances, whether that’s success with, with just how people operate and how people treat one another. And so when culture sets our ideal, especially when it’s a standard that is not a godly standard, it’s going to lead to a whole lot of shame.

And here’s what shame does, that shame is what makes us feel unworthy of relationships. If I feel unworthy to be in a relationship with someone, whether it’s a spouse or it’s a kid or it’s a friend, it’s because whatever that thing that makes me feel unworthy, that is the shame that exists in my life. And so, if we are gonna fully understand the picture that God has for us in all of scripture, understanding chapter three of Genesis is critical to understanding everything that comes after it. Why? Because the fall of Genesis Chapter three broke the world, and it changes how we perceive the world around us. Everything is changed because of the fall. An optical illusion exists because your brain perceives reality different than what is true. The the fall causes every single one of us to be born into a broken world where we’re perceiving things in a broken way that is different than how God intended.

Look what it says in Psalm chapter 51 verse five. It says, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin. Did my mother conceive me? What? What is it saying? It’s saying that you’re not born and then eventually sin. No, it’s saying you are born into sin. It’s trying to help us to understand we’re born with a sin, nature, a tendency to drift towards elevating my own personal needs to the top. I I’m born with a tendency to trend towards selfishness. There was a season there in the 17th century and the 18th century where in 19th century, where we had this idea that the world was just getting better. The the humans, mankind was innately good. And if given enough time that that people would, would pursue goodness and treat others well. And then what happened was the 20th century, what happened in the 20th century war basically happens from 1913 till the end of the century, 187 million people are killed and murdered in that century.

The human ideal, that humans are innately good. It just shatters, it falls apart. Why? Because we’re innately broken. Human nature has this sinfulness, this selfishness where I’m constantly elevating myself. Why is that there? Paul tells us in Romans chapter five, verse 12, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, he’s talking about Adam and even the garden in death through sin. And so death spread to all men because all sin that God tells him that if you eat from this tree, that you’ll surely die. Now, what God says and what happens are true and are the same, but their perception of what was gonna happen is different. Does someone physically die? Yes. Then as soon as they eat from the tree and God, God comes and has a conversation with them, he recognizes their nakedness. And then what happens next? It says that God kills animals in order to provide clothing for Adam and Eve. So there is a physical death that happens as a result of sin. The Adam Eve, their sin, there’s a consequence, there’s a physical death. But more significantly, there’s a spiritual death that they’re cast out of the Garden of Eden and, and their spiritual death. Now, every single human for the rest of all time is born into that same spiritual death.

It should cause us to perceive and understand and look at the world differently if I’m a Christian than I would otherwise. Have you ever had something where you thought one thing was true your whole life and then all of a sudden you find something else is true and it’s like this epiphany moment and you’re looking back, you’re like, are you serious? My whole life, I’ve been wrong. I used to be a youth pastor. Every year at camp, we would bring this guy with us named Dr. Richard Bradley. Brilliant doctor. He was an er, emergency room doctor. And he had the craziest stories of, of injuries that, that people would have, that they would come in, and especially what people were doing and, and the dumb things that people were doing when they injured themselves and came in. And so fascinating guy to talk to, dealt with all kinds of different stuff. And so we were over at the pool and one of our youth kids gets, gets hurt. He’s playing some type of game. He gets the air knocked out of him. So he, he kind of comes over to the side and, and he never had the air knocked out of him before. And so he, he’s kind of bent over trying to breathe like this. And I walked up to him like, Hey, no, no, no. Don’t, don’t, don’t bend over. You need to put your hands above your head.

‘Cause When I was in seventh grade, that’s what my football coach said my football coach, we’d be running sprints. And you’d you’d go like this after you’re in the sprint and he’d say, no hands above your head. It’ll help you breathe. It’ll help you breathe. Don’t bend over back for your lungs, hands above your hand. That’s the best way to breathe. And so I’m, I’m telling this kid, Hey, no, don’t bend over. Hands up. It’s gonna help you breathe. And, and he’s, he’s never had the air knocked outta him. So it’s kind of surprised him. He’s kind of tearing up. So I’m like, Hey, let me walk you over to the doctor. So we walk over to the doctor. He’s walking in like this. He’s, he’s dripping wet ’cause he was in the pool, doesn’t have a shirt on. His hands are up a little bit of a weird sight.

He walks into the doctor like, Hey, Dr. Bradley. I, I think he got hit in the solar plexus. He got the air knocked out of him. And Dr. Bradley looks at him and says, why are his hands above his head right now? I said, well, you know, to help him breathe better. And he said, well, he looks ridiculous. And he says, go ahead and put your hands down on your knees like this. He said, that’ll help you breathe better. I was like, yeah, that’s good advice there. And so I just kinda walk off and I’m like, wait, what was that? That’s completely contrary to everything I had believed at that point. And so the kid leaves and I, I go to the doctor, I’m like, Hey, doctor. My seventh grade football coach always said we were not supposed to do this ’cause this was bad for brien.

We were always supposed to do this. And he looks at me and said, what medical university did your seventh grade football coach go to <laugh>? And then he said, oh, and by the way, there’s no such thing as a solar plexus <laugh>. I was like, I was like, well, now I know you’re wrong. All right. And so I pulled up Google and I’m gonna try and show him the medical part of the body that is the solar plexus. And there’s not one, it does not actually exist. I mean, my mind in that life was like, my whole life, I’ve been like, no, don’t bend over. Hands up. So now it’s affected how, how I go forward. I, I coach my son’s basketball team when they’re running sprints, they get tired. I’m like, just bend over, man. That’s what I mean. If your body naturally wants to do it, that’s probably what you should be doing right now.

Instantly change everything that I thought was true transformed how I looked at everything going forward. If we get the fall in chapter three, correct? If we can understand it, it should be this epiphany moment where we recognize this. We recognize, Hey, I, I do have a sin nature, and my tendency in every area of my life is going to be to elevate myself and every relationship. And so I’ve gotta be aware of that tendency and that danger because it can affect my marriage, my friendships, my relationships with my coworkers, my relationship with my kids. And, and in addition to that, I need to recognize why does shame exist in this world? Shame exists in this world because instead of being underneath the authority of God, I try to elevate myself to be equal to God. I start elevating other ideals above him. Here’s the cool part. In Genesis chapter three we read the first 13 verses. It’s just two verses

Later that God starts to give an answer to the problem. Look what it says in Genesis chapter three, verse 15, God’s cursing the serpent cursing Satan. He says, I’ll put enmity between you and the woman. He said, I’m gonna make war between you and between your offspring and her offspring. And he, the offspring of the woman shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This is the first prophecy we see in all of scripture pointing ahead to Jesus. But what’s it saying? It’s saying that the descendant of the woman, that that one day she would have a child who would’ve, a child who would’ve a child who would lead to a child, who would be Jesus, and that Satan would strike his heel, but that Jesus would crush his head. Then when shame enters into the equation, that immediately God recognizes the need for a savior.

And so right off the bat, he starts pointing ahead to say, Hey, you can’t do it by yourself. You’re not gonna be able to do it by yourself, but I’ve got you. You see, the reason that we have shame is because we so often elevate the ideals of culture when we say, I’ve gotta be that, and I want to be that. I’m gonna, I’m gonna subscribe to that. But what Jesus does on the cross, what it clearly says in the New Testament is that Jesus takes our shame upon himself. And that when instead I make Jesus the ideal of my life, and I fall underneath his authority, and I say, I am not going to just run after what the world has for me. Instead, I’m gonna pursue the life that God has for me. Guess what? It helps that shame in my life to begin to melt away.

First 13 verses of Genesis three is the fall, the problem that exists in scripture. But immediately afterwards, God starts pointing ahead and saying, Hey, I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful to come to worship you today. God, help us to recognize and understand the significance of Genesis three. That for us to, to fully comprehend the narrative that you have laid out in all of scripture, your redemptive plan pointing ahead to Jesus. God, for us to get that, we have to first comprehend, truly wrestle with and grasp the fact that we are in a broken world, that we ourselves have a sin nature, we fall into the trap of, of elevating ourselves. So putting our own selfish desires, our own vain conceit above you, above others. God, we live in a culture that where we hold up cultural ideals, that that leads to nothing but shame in our own life. And so, Lord, I, I pray for those in the room that, that are carrying the burden of shame with them. God, that today can be a day that they, they lay that at your feet. Surrender to the hope there’s only found at the cross of Jesus. Pray all these things, the name of Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.