Where Do We Go Wrong?

A couple of weeks ago, we started a brand-new series here at The Porch in the book of Genesis. It just felt fitting. You know, beginning of the year, beginning of the Bible. They just seem to be a match made in heaven, no pun intended. So, we've been journeying through Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. We had a conversation in the middle there whenever the snowstorm hit.

Tonight, we are sitting in what is one of the most iconic passages of Scripture. We are looking at Genesis 3. If you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there with me right now. While you're doing that, I'll just lead off with a story, because I think maybe my misery can set us up pretty well. Here's what happened a couple of weeks ago.

Brooke and I had just finished dinner, and we were playing with Kash right before bedtime. We were sitting in our sunroom. We were kind of closing the evening down. So, I get up and go to the kitchen. I know there are some dishes, so I start to make my way to do some dishes before we go and put the little baby boy to sleep.

As I'm walking into the kitchen, I step into a puddle of water. It just occurred to me, "Maybe it's a leak off of the fridge." You know, sometimes you get tap water and things spill. Maybe it's something off the dishwasher. Pulling out plates or dishes and finding that stuff kind of leaves a mess. Maybe it was Kash's water cup. He has a tendency to throw that thing around and leave a mess wherever it falls.

So, I step back to survey the damage of "What am I really dealing with here?" As I take it all in, what I realize to my horror is it's way worse than I thought it was, because it was not just a puddle of water; it was a pool of water streaming into our entryway from the utility room where our guest bathroom is. So, I pull back the pocket door, put on my slides, and begin to make my way into what is a damage zone. I mean, it is an absolute mess in there.

I know my way around some things in the house. I'm a DIY sort of guy. Yet one of the things I do not claim to have any kind of fame with is plumbing. I know next to nothing about plumbing, but… And, fellas, if you don't know this, you need to learn it. You know to turn off the water behind the toilet should ever the toilet be overflowing. So, I swiftly move and grab the knob and spin it righty-tighty, which shuts down the water. Then I grab a pitcher and start to drain it off into the sink.

As I'm doing that, as I'm repairing what appears to be a broken situation, the situation only seems to break all the more, because as I'm draining the water off into the sink, the toilet continues to overflow. I have no idea what's happening, because in this moment I've already shut off the water, yet the water is spilling. I'm racing. I go and grab not one but two pitchers. I'm double fisting, trying to get the water out of the toilet and into the sink to keep my house from becoming an absolute flood zone.

A moment comes where I realize I'm out of my depth, so I do what no self-respecting husband does. I look at my wife and ask her to call her father. As she calls my father-in-law, and she's explaining to him what's happening in this moment, that I'm draining the water out, that the toilet is continuing to overflow, that I'm racing around…

She just says to him, "Hey, we don't know what's wrong." I hear my father-in-law laugh on the other end of the line, and he goes, "You're what's wrong." Little did I know that we had a clog in the main kitchen cleanout, which just means that all of the water I was taking from the toilet and putting in the sink was just coming back up the toilet. So, where I thought I was helping the situation, I was only hurting the situation.

Now, why do I tell you that? Because the world has been asking that same question, "What has gone wrong?" for centuries. While they're not asking that question to deduce the problems of their bathroom, they are asking that question because they look at the landscape of life around, and they realize, "Something is wrong. Things are not as they should be."

You can look. No matter who it is you speak to, whoever it is you reference… You can go back into the history books and see how people have tried to explain the origins of evil. You can look at Plato and Augustine. They would say evil wasn't an alternative of good; it was a privation of good. It was the absence of good. You can go to Eastern religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, and what you can learn is that evil isn't necessarily a rebellion against God as much as it's a confusion about the way the world works.

You can go away from those Eastern religions and turn to dualism, which may be confusing to you, but it's actually a system of belief that many in our world who do not claim faith would ascribe to, that there's not just good but there's bad. They're equal opposing forces. It's the idea of yin and yang. There's a light side and a dark side. There are two dogs, and they're trying to get the better of one another.

You could go and ask an evolutionist, "Hey, what is the origin of evil?" and they would say, "Oh, it's the result of survival instinct. You know, in order for someone to win, someone has to lose." If you wanted to go and reference psychology, you would see that evil is the by-product of negative circumstances that results in a negative emotional condition. It's where fear and insecurity and trauma come out of. That's what everything in the past would say.

If you wanted to zoom all the way to the present and ask our current cultural moment, "Hey, what is it that explains why things are the way they are? What, in fact, has gone wrong?" you would see people present a variety of answers. It might be global warming or the industrial military complex and a lack of gun control. You might see that people would say it's political outrage. It's poor policymaking. It's people divided over issues that ultimately do not matter at the cost of one another.

You would see that it would be something along the lines of an ever-evolving sexual revolution. It could be economic strain, rising costs of living. Anybody say "Amen" to that one? If that's not enough, if the past and the present aren't enough, you could make your way over to L.A. and look at Hollywood. You could see what they have to say, because we have a thing for prequels all of a sudden, most of which are not very good. We have this fascination to understand what has gone wrong.

There's a reason we need to not just live with episodes four, five and six, but we have to go back to Star Wars episodes one, two and three so we can understand why Vader's voice sounds the way it does. There's a reason why The Rings of Power came out, because people have questions about where Sauron came from. If you wanted to go even further, you could look at Wicked (one of the rare good ones), and what you can see is an explanation for why we have the Wicked Witch of the West. Everyone is asking what has gone wrong.

Do you want to know what has gone wrong? We did. We went wrong. That's what the Bible tells us from page 3. In Genesis, chapter 3, we find one of the most iconic Bible stories ever written. It is a story that not only Christians but many non-Christians know, because the story of Adam and Eve and the snake transcends time. It's one that resonates deeply with people because it provides an explanation for that question which we can find no good answer to.

Yet here's the danger of this story. Because it is so iconic, we have a tendency to approach it and bring all of our preconceptions with us. We walk into it, and we don't take God on his terms; we take the story on someone else's terms. We don't listen to what he says; we recall what someone else has said in the past. I'm not telling you to just eject everything you've learned in the past. What I am saying is in this moment, it would serve you really well to read this story with fresh eyes alongside me. Does that sound good?

I want you to look at this text and understand what it's actually saying, because we often misunderstand its meaning. We're just going to walk through it top to bottom, and I'm going to explain to you what's happening. If you want to know what has gone wrong, and if you want to know why we go wrong, this is going to tell you. Verse 1:

"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"?' 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."'"

1. Things go wrong when we forget God's Word. Right out of the gate, once we start reading through this story, there are a few things that pop up and should appear odd to us, should seem strange. Some signal flares should be firing off into the atmosphere of your intellect. The reason why is because we see not just the woman but also the snake… Both misrepresent what God has said in the stories that we've already read through Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. They do not correctly identify his commands.

That begs the question, then…What were God's commands? Genesis 2:16-17 tells you. It's kind of a two-part command. The first command God gave was "Hey, you can eat of every tree in the garden," which is an amazing command, because what it tells us is that God has looked upon Adam and Eve and said, "Hey, everything in the garden is fair game. You can get out there, and you can take your pick.

You can enter into the proverbial grocery store and pick whatever you want off the shelves, and it is not going to add to your waistline. It's only going to lead to your joy. There's nothing here you have to earn. Everything here is freely given." How amazing is that. Then there's a second part. The second part of the command is "Just don't eat of one tree. Don't eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil."

"Why, God?"

"Because then you'll die."

It's funny. We read that command, and what we often hear is God say, "But do not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or I'll kill you." That's not what is actually said here. What's said here is "You'll die." God is not coming to us and saying, "Hey, you need to perform for my approval." That's not what he's saying. He's saying, "Joy is fully available to you."

This is not about being performative; this is about being preventative. God is saying, "Hey, there is a whole world for you to enjoy, all of this goodness that I have blessed you with, yet there's one thing that'll mess it up, so just don't do that." God's first command is not a prohibition to your joy; it's an invitation to joy. That's what God is inviting Adam and Eve into from the very beginning of the story.

Yet look at the way the snake twists God's command. He says, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" It's interesting. This is the way the Enemy works. He doesn't need you to start by denying God; he needs you to start by just doubting him. He just wants you to see that there might be something else available on the table. He doesn't need you to just reject God. That would be a really hard sell. But because he's crafty, he looks at you and says, "No, you don't have to reject God, but I do want you to accept sin."

He doesn't approach Eve with a smoking vial of poison. "Take and drink." That's not what he does. He comes to her with something that is delightful, that is pleasing to the eye. He comes in and presents an option that appears satisfying, and what we see is that as she accepts sin, she takes the first step in forgetting God. We can just read her words, and we can see that that's true.

What are her words? Her words are, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden…" That's what she responds to the snake with, which is incorrect. Why? Because the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, according to God's estimation, is not in the middle of the garden. God has said that the Tree of Life is in the middle of the garden. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is nearby, but God distinctly identifies the Tree of Life as the middle of his garden.

But for Eve, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the center of her garden. It's the middle of her affection. It is the orbit around all of her attention. Why is that? Well, it tells us something really important about human nature. We are so very quick to forget all that God has given, and we are so very quick to focus on all that he hasn't. Don't we do this? Don't we focus on what we don't have as opposed to what we do have?

"I've got a great job, but I don't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend." "Man, I've got an amazing personality, but I hate my body." "Man, I've got people who love me, support me, and are cheering for me, but they're not the right kinds of people. I want to be with those people instead." Do you see how this works? Figure it out for yourself. We all do this. We all look at what we have and identify it as insufficient. We want something else. We want something more.

I think… And that's important. I think this. I don't actually see this clearly from the text, because it doesn't tell us explicitly, but I do think that what we get an eye into from this specific moment, as Eve has centered her attention on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as being in the middle of her garden… What we see is a heart of ingratitude springing up, which is the root, the first step to all sin. It's an ungrateful heart, which begs the question…Where in your heart are you ungrateful for what God has given?

The second thing we see her say, which helps us to understand that she is forgetting God's Word, is she says, "…neither shall you touch it…" That isn't just a misunderstanding of what God has said; it's not even included in God's command. God never said that. It's an addition that she adds on to what God has said.

It's interesting. When you read through the Bible, the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of Jesus' day… Those guys who were most biblically informed were the ones who were notoriously bad at this. They were horrible about adding things on to God's Word. They actually, rabbinically, had these things known as fence laws. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of these laws that served to protect them from going too far, disobeying God's Word. Yet for fear of going too far, do you know what they did? They never went far enough.

Too often, this happens to Christians, particularly good Christians. We find ourselves, for fear of going too far, not going far enough. We become legalistic. We start thinking about what we do and what we don't do as opposed to what God has done. As a result, do you know what it does? It evokes within the spirit of a person this deep fear of losing the life they have as opposed to enjoying the life that God has come to give.

These are Eve's two mistakes. She has fallen prey to a very dangerous trap. Do you want to know what the trap is? The trap is she knows just enough about God, which is something we so very often fall into ourselves. We know enough about God to believe in him, to claim the identity of Christian, but we don't know enough about Jesus to know what we actually believe, to actually articulate the gospel.

We know enough about God to love him, but we don't know enough about God to give all of our life to him, to surrender our every affection, to make sure there's no part of us that's divided in any other place but is totally united in loving him and him alone. We know enough about God to trust him, but we don't know enough about God to surrender every single inch of our life. There are things we hold back, pieces of ourselves we don't want him to touch, because though we say we do, we don't actually trust him.

We know just enough about God to be dangerous at this whole Christian thing, but we don't know enough about God to keep ourselves from being a danger to ourselves. Psalm 119:9 says, "How can a young man [or woman] keep [their] way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you."

Do you hear it, that kind of ferocious faith that depends wholeheartedly on the words of God? Let me ask you something, because I think this is a helpful litmus test. Whenever your life goes sideways, whenever things kind of fall off the normal path and things become very, very difficult, what comes out of you?

Like, whenever you get fired unexpectedly, what's your natural response? Whenever that guy you've been dating for years breaks up with you instead of going into marriage with you, what comes out of you? Whenever you find some loved one, a family member, a dear friend, comes down with some sort of fatal diagnosis, what comes out of you?

Jesus faced the three most pressure-packed moments in his story: tempted in the wilderness before he began his ministry, the garden of Gethsemane the night of his arrest, and Calvary, dying for the sins of the world. Do you want to know what came out of him? The words of God. Virtually every single word he spoke in those moments that were the most pressure packed were God's words.

Why? Not because he was just trying to fulfill prophecy. He does that. That's true. He does fulfill prophecy in the process of saying these things amidst these difficulties, but that's not why he does it. He speaks these things because out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth is going to speak. He speaks out what he has engraved on his mind. God has etched into his heart the very person he has become as he has walked with God. That person is particularly exposed in those moments of greatest difficulty.

You see, Jesus knew things go wrong when we forget God's Word, but things go right when we remember it. That's the first one. Look at verse 4. "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 opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"

2. Things go wrong when we question God's character. It's a really subtle detail mentioned in here. We talked last week about how, over the course of chapter 1 and chapter 2, which is actually the narrative we're a part of in this moment… Chapter 1 is the creation story from 50,000 feet. It's up at God's level. It's seeing everything come to be all at once. When you get to Genesis 2, it's a different vantage point.

Like, if you were watching instant replay on the Super Bowl, you might get one angle to show one side and then a different angle to show a different side. Genesis 2 is a different angle to the same story. What we see, as we zoom specifically in on humanity, is that story continues into chapter 3. As we move into chapter 3, we see a pattern that was established last week. That pattern is that Moses, who authored this book, talks about God in a twofold title.

He calls him Lord God 20 times, on repeat. Like, he hit that button mistakenly on Spotify, and the song just keeps playing over and over and over and over again. That's what's happening right here. He calls him Lord God or Elohim Yahweh. It's a twofold title. It's a bundle deal. Yet, though that happens 20 times as the particular title of God, do you know what pops up in this story? A different title. That title is not Elohim Yahweh; it's Elohim.

Guess who calls him that? The Serpent. The Serpent takes "Lord God," throws out the "Lord," and just calls him "God." What he's trying to do is impersonalize the character of God to Eve. He wants her to know, "Hey, that caring and covenantal nature, all that is good and represented in the personal, intimate identity of God through Yahweh… Don't pay attention to that. Just focus on the fact that he's transcendent. He's all-powerful. He's distant, and he's disinterested.

Sure, he's in control of things, but he doesn't really care what's happening in your life. He's not really holding you to the things he said. He's far off and not paying attention right now. He is all-powerful, but he's not all-personal. Don't worry about that." Why does he do it? Because he wants to render God as an impersonal God.

I remember years ago, I applied for this job. I was really excited for the opportunity. It was a great organization. I knew some of the people who worked there. I was thinking this was going to be a great next step. Yet, though I knew some people, I got rejected, not by way of a phone call; I got rejected by way of an email. Has anybody been there?

What happens in that moment is it feels cold and calculated. Though we had relationship, some distrust came out of me. I started to feel a kind of way about these people. Why? Because it lacked a personal touch. The Serpent wants Eve, and Satan wants you, to forget the personal touch of God. He wants you to question his character.

Yet we know God's character is not in question. The reason we know it is there are a couple of reasons, specifically, in these two verses. The first is found in that false promise the Serpent gives Eve. He says, "Once you eat of it you'll be like God." Here's the sad irony of that false promise: she's already like God. That was declared by God in the last two chapters. He looked at her and said in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…male and female he created them."

Eve has failed to remember that a God-given identity is not something you achieve; it is something you receive. It is something you cannot do anything to earn, say anything to earn, or think anything to earn. There's no place you can go to actually earn it. It's everything God has done instead. You see, this is so tragic. In Adam and Eve's effort to become like God, they become less like God. They become more like the Serpent. They decide for themselves what is good and what is not good. They choose their own way. In the process of doing so, they become sinful.

The second reason we know God's character is not in question here is because though Adam and Eve wanted to know the knowledge of good and evil, there's no implication here that God never intended to teach them that. Actually, according to ancient tradition, there's a widely held belief that God did want to teach them the knowledge of good and evil, what the Scripture also articulates as wisdom.

We know it's true that God does want to teach us wisdom, because James 1:5-6 tells us, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." God gives wisdom to those who do not doubt, who don't question his character.

So, let me ask you, because I think this is going to hit home. Why, then, do we question God's character? Why do we seek wisdom on our own? We know he gives it freely. Because he often does not give us wisdom nearly as quickly as we want it. That's what happens to them. They don't want it later; they want it now.

Some of you can relate to that, because you're dealing with the thought that the things you want from God are taking too long for him to actually be loving. Getting over the loss of a loved one, moving on from the betrayal of a friend, dealing with the difficulty of being single… I don't know what it is for you, but whatever it is, what you need to realize is, often, the fastest route to your happiness is not the wisest route. God might have you in a season of suffering because he wants to walk with you through that season and help you learn not just who you are but who he is.

That's what we see in Romans 5. He says, "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings…" What a crazy idea. "…knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." That's why we trust God. We trust God because he has poured his love into our hearts. Yet the knowledge of that love does not come without suffering; it comes through suffering.

It's fascinating to me. Recently, I was watching this reel on YouTube, and it was doing a before and after on drill sergeants. They would start talking, and it was like, "Hey, guys. My name is [whoever], and I'm really excited. I'm thankful to serve my country." Then in the after, it was like, "My name is [whatever]. I've yelled a lot over the last several years, so my vocal cords are completely strained." It was like they were completely different people.

It begged the question…Why are these guys so hardcore? Like, why is it that over the course of these boot camps, they feel the need to yell at all of these people? The reason is they know conflict reveals character. You go through BUD/S, it's hard. You go through Pararescue, it's hard. You go through Ranger camp, it's hard, because they want to see what people are made of.

Here's the amazing thing. We know what God is made of. We know his character because he suffered. We witnessed, by way of the Word, Christ endure on the cross all the indulgence of our darkness. We saw when we gave up on God, he did not give up on us. When we indulged darkness, he endured our darkness by way of death. We have seen that he is who he says he is. He has done what he said he would do. He is good. Things go wrong when we question God's character, but things go right when we trust it. Thirdly, look at verse 6 with me.

"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 opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths."

3. Things go wrong when we justify sin. It's interesting. It says their eyes were opened. The Serpent was actually consistent in that promise, because their eyes were, in fact, opened. As their eyes were opened, they realized, "Ah! We're naked," which is kind of a weird detail if you read over the course of chapters 2 and 3, because it says they're naked four different times. That word naked should stand out as a peculiar piece to the rest of the story.

Again, if we're reading it freshly, then we should see it as something that is a little bit abnormal. We often don't do that. But we need to see why nakedness is a theme in chapters 2 and 3. It causes us to lean in. Well, in chapter 2, when everything was good…there was no problem at all, no sin had entered the world…what we know is the husband and the wife were naked and unashamed.

For some of you, that's your favorite verse in the Bible, but it's not supposed to be your favorite verse in the Bible for the reason you're thinking it's your favorite verse in the Bible. It's, in fact, a favorite verse in the Bible because what it's expressing is that there was no shame between them. They had nothing to hide. They were totally safe. They could be transparent with one another. They had vulnerability in relationship to each other. Doesn't that sound amazing? Having safety in a relationship. That's what chapter 2 talks about.

When you get to chapter 3, that word naked pops up three more times, yet every time it does, their relationship to shame has changed. Where they didn't have anything to hide from, now they have good reason to hide. Where they had nothing to be ashamed of, now they feel a deep sense of shame. Where they once were totally vulnerable, now they're closed off and concealed. They don't want to be totally exposed to the other.

Why? Why does that happen to them? Why the massive change? Do you want to know why? They looked at that stupid fruit for too long. They entertained temptation. That's what we see. It says that Eve doesn't just take the fruit; it says she notices the fruit. We're going to talk about what she notices, but here's why it's significant for us to understand. Sin is never a flip of a switch; it's always a slide into depravity.

I was joking with my team. Nobody goes and serves at the local food bank and, the next thing you know, hops in the car and starts trolling everybody on the Internet. That doesn't happen. Why? Because that would be a misappropriation of priority. It would be an absolute division between your character in one place and your character in another. We don't do that. What happens instead is we slide into sin.

James 1:14-15 says, "But each person is tempted when he is 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." I think that word lured is so helpful because it paints this picture of putting out bait to entice a Christian to do what a Christian should not do. The image here is of throwing out a lure. What does a lure do when it's appealing to the appetite of a fish? It shines and it splashes and it swims.

That's what sin does to you. It splashes and shines and swims in such a way that it appeals to your carnality, your appetite, until you start to move toward it. Yet, again, it's not a switch; it's a slide. That's why a single scene from a show or an advertisement on TV can lead you to pull out your phone and look up that girl or that guy on Instagram, and as you look at them, the next thing you know, you're looking up stuff on the Internet that might lead you someplace, scratch the itch a bit. Then, as you do that, what you realize is now you're looking at pornography and masturbating in the bedroom or bathroom. You slid.

For others of you, it's going to be something different. It's drinks with coworkers after a really long and stressful day. That was awesome, so you head home, and you want to have a couple more. As you have those drinks, you end up deciding, "You know what? I would love to just forget this day," so you black out and drink yourself to sleep.

For others, it's not something of substance like that; it's something more internal. It's managing self-perception. It leads you to venting and validating with your friends just so you can feel good about who you are, yet that venting and validating leads you into gossiping about other people. As you gossip about those other people, ultimately, it creates within you a deep harbored hate for someone who didn't do anything to deserve it until at last you realize, "It's not them I hate; it's myself."

Some of you have this desperate need for control, so it leads you to obsess over your image and causes you to control your diet until, eventually, an eating disorder comes out. Do you see how that works? Sin does not switch; it slides. It moves in. That's what happens to Eve. She notices it before she takes it.

It says she saw it was good for food. Meaning, it was appetizing. She was feeling kind of hungry. She thought, "A girl has got to eat. That'll do the trick." It says it was a delight to the eyes. It caused her to linger a little bit longer. It wasn't just appetizing; it was attractive. Then it says it was desired to make one wise. Meaning, it wasn't just appetizing, it wasn't just attractive; it was advantageous. It could give to her what she wanted and could not find elsewhere.

That's how sin works. But listen. Sin never works. I don't know what your personal vice is. I don't know if it's lust, comfort, control, approval, or power. I don't know what your thing is, yet what I know is it might be appetizing, it might be attractive, it might seem advantageous, but it's not good. It is not of God.

Isaiah 5 tells us, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!" Friends, listen. If you want to kill your sin, you must stop justifying your sin. The way you kill sin, at least the first step, is you kill the temptation. You do not wait for a moment of high temptation to figure out what you're going to do in the fight.

No one enters into combat sports and thinks to themselves, "I'm just going to hop in the ring and duke this thing out. And you know what? It might go my way." They don't do that. They train for months on end. Why? That way, when they get in there and things start to get crazy and the chaos starts to circulate, they're able to hear from their corner, "Remember the game plan. Take him to the ground. Do whatever suits your strength."

Some of you need to not wait until you're on the battlefield to get in the war room. You need to spend some time and not go on a trip and stay in a hotel room all by yourself just so your lust can creep up and take you out. Don't do that. Some of you need to not wait until you go see your family for whatever holiday is on the horizon just to get there and realize all of your old friends want you to come and hang out with them and all of the hurts and habits from your past are now in your present. You don't need to wait for that either.

Some of you are so stressed out and anxious. Instead of trying to control your life and produce whatever outcomes you want, you just need to choose instead, "You know what? I'm actually going to invite some friends whenever I know stress is coming. That way, they can pray for me, and I can feel strongly supported." You need to start planning for moments of high temptation and not falling prey to them. Does that make sense?

Goodness gracious. Sin is never justifiable. This is why it's in me so bad for you to get this. It's never justifiable. It's always condemnable. The wages of sin is…what? Life. No! Death. That's why it cost Christ his own life. He had to give himself up for those who would not give up themselves, yet he did so willingly.

Here's the crazy thing about it. There's nothing justifiable about us that would ever beg him to come in. We're not appetizing. There's nothing good about us. He can't see us and think, "Man, you know what? I do want to come close to them." There's nothing good about us that would ever beg him to come close. There's nothing attractive about us. There's no beauty that would garner his attention, yet he comes anyway. We have no advantage to offer him. None. He doesn't need us.

Why then does he do this? Why then does he not only come but takes on our condemnation? Because he wants us. "Why, Kylen?" I don't know why. Because God chooses for that to be the case. How great is the love of God in this: that Christ gave himself up while we were yet sinners. Fourth thing. Verse 8:

"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 and said to him, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'I heard the sound of you in the garden, and 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 of which I commanded you not to eat?' The man said, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.' Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate.'" If you want to know why things keep going wrong, you need to know the fourth thing.

4. Things go wrong when we stop taking responsibility. That is absolutely what's happening here. Adam and Eve start blame shifting. Adam goes first. He blames God. "It's the woman you gave me. I didn't pick her." He blames Eve. "She brought me the fruit." It's Eve's turn. "It wasn't my fault. The Serpent deceived me." Everybody is blaming somebody, but nobody is taking responsibility. We don't do that, do we?

It's funny. I was visiting with a friend earlier today, and he was like, "You know, the number of conversations I'm having with people where I'm having to convince them of their sin is just crazy to me." Do you know what resonated as I heard him talking about that? Repentance does not come from a convincing of man; it comes from a conviction from God.

If someone is having to convince you, "Hey, you shouldn't treat people like that. Hey, you shouldn't speak to people like that. Hey, the things you're doing with your boyfriend or girlfriend… You really need to stop that. That's not God honoring at all…" If someone is having to convince you of those things, the issue is not with them; it is with you. More than likely, if they've come to convince you, the Spirit has been knocking, and you've not been listening, because conviction comes before anybody tries to convince.

So, what does God do? When all the blame shifting starts happening, when no one is willing to actually own their sin; they're just willing to acknowledge it… What happens in this moment? Well, contrary to popular belief, he doesn't show up with a ruler in hand. Growing up, my mom had a paint switch, and it was labeled "Kylen's attitude adjuster." God does not do that for Adam. Adam does not have an attitude adjuster. God doesn't show up and condemn him. He doesn't rebuke him. He does not in any way execute him. He does nothing that we often think God has come to do.

Instead, what does he do? He just shows up for their daily walk. Yet where are Adam and Eve? They're hiding. Why are they hiding? Hear me on this. This is really important. They are hiding because, for the righteous, the presence of God is delightful, but for the wicked, the presence of God is dreadful. They are filled with a fear. They know they are wicked. They are not as they should be. They have been disobedient and, as a result, they are to be despised above all men.

Yet God doesn't pull them out by their hair. "Found you! Guess what? It's time to take your lickin'." That's not what he does. I love it. He just starts asking questions. Why does he ask questions? Is it because he's not omniscient and doesn't know what they did, doesn't know what happened, and doesn't know what he's supposed to do? No. God is all-knowing. He knows exactly what to do in this moment.

He does what parents do whenever they catch their kid doing something they shouldn't do. He sees they're guilty and just asks them, "Hey, what happened?" He's trying to maintain relationship. Do you see it? God does not show up in a way where he ignores what has happened, but he does not show up in a way where he ignores what's happening to them. That's big. He does see the source of their shame, but he also sees the effect of it, so he takes care of his kids first.

He starts asking them questions, some of the questions I think he may be asking you tonight. He asks them, "Where are you?" He wants them to know that even when they're lost, he will still seek them in their hiding. He asks them, "Who told you?" He wants them to know that even when they're misled, he'll speak to them what's true. And he asks, "What have you done?" because he wants them to know that even when they're guilty, he'll still save them from their sin.

Don't you see? This is big. This is what Genesis 3 is about. God's fundamental response to human failure, to your failure, is not condemnation; it is compassion. I wholeheartedly believe, which is why I'm taking the time to get it out of me and give it over to you, that he is asking some of you the same questions tonight. He's looking at you and asking, "Where are you? You're not where you're supposed to be. We're supposed to walk. We're supposed to be with one another. We're supposed to be in relationship. Where are you? You're not where you're supposed to be."

"Who told you that? Why are you listening to those lies? I didn't tell you that. I've told you what's true. I've declared to you that you're mine. You're my son. You're my daughter. You're safe. You're secure. You're sealed forever in Christ Jesus by way of the Spirit into eternal life. I don't want you just now; I want you always."

He's asking, "What have you done? What have you done that I cannot clean, that I cannot fix, that I cannot solve?" He's asking you tonight, "Where are you? Who told you? What have you done? I can be right when you have been wrong. You may not take responsibility, but I can take responsibility for you."

Last story. Just last week, as I'm sure many of you did and so, too, did people from all over the globe, I sat down to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The event was amazing. Toward the end of the time, they do what is ceremonially true of every opening ceremony at the Olympics. They bring in the Olympic torch. I don't know if you know this about the Olympic torch, but the Olympic torch is riddled with symbolism.

It is so very significant, because that torch is not lit by just any regular old flame. No one just struck a match or pulled out the flamethrower and decided to light the Olympic torch. Instead, it is lit with a different fire. It is lit with a fire from another world. It is lit with the fire from the sun, and that fire is carried from Olympia, Greece, every single games. It travels thousands of miles to reach its ultimate destination.

As I saw them bringing the torch in, I was thinking about this moment that I was going to have with you. I couldn't help but wonder, "What happens if something goes wrong?" It travels that far. Surely it has been extinguished. Surely it has been quenched. Surely it has burned out at some point. What happens in that event? Do you want to know what happens? There is a second flame. There is a substitute that stands in the gap that burns where the first failed to burn brightest.

Friends, we have a second flame. We have the second Adam. We have gone wrong, but he has stood in the gap. He has taken our place. He is from another world, but he has stepped into yours that you might know him, that you might trust him, that you might believe in him, and you might be saved by him. Do you know this compassionate, not condemning King? If you don't, he's asking, "Where are you? Because I'm here." Let me pray that you would take the invitation.

God, I thank you for tonight. Thank you, God, for the power of your Word, the sufficiency of it. I'm grateful, God, that you've produced in me, produced in us, this posture of heart that says we're not playing games anymore. The world is filled with distraction and division. This will not be a place like that. We will not be distracted. We will not be divided, God. No. We will be devoted. We will be united.

Yet, God, as we claim that, we know there is only one name that unites. There's only one name that saves, and it's yours. It's Jesus. O God, I pray, as we said at the beginning, in an evening that matters, won't you prove it to us? Won't you pierce the heart that is within? Pull it out and hold it forever. Christ, we thank you that you lived the life we couldn't, that you died the death we deserve, and you rose forth, and you have made eternal life available to all people if they would place their faith in you. We sing to you now. O God, do we sing. It's in Christ's name, amen.