[00:00:00 – 00:00:33] you know Martin Newman um wrote this in a LinkedIn article which had a very provocative title it said unhappy marriages and unhappy work teams avoiding the four mistakes that lead to both uh he is a clinical therapist and he writes this article by taking some inspiration from another family marriage therapist where he [00:00:30 – 00:01:03] claims to have identified four mistakes that are common in both work as well as marriages that create some kind of dysfunctionality and stress you know and uh the person he quotes uh his name is John gotman and godman's research with thousands of couples over several decades enabled him to actually predict which coup's relationship will break down within the next 3 years with 94% accuracy you don't [00:01:00 – 00:01:31] want to go see him and have him evaluate yours right but what he found is he came up with a with a theory it's called the four horen of the Apocalypse Theory and based on that he says these four things are what make marriages as well [00:01:26 – 00:01:56] as teams not work in the real world and I don't want to go into those four things I'll leave it to your imagination and maybe you can look that up but what it points to us is the reality that we live in a very broken world you know it affects us very deeply and personally whether it's in our home or in our workplaces and even globally know as we look around there is [00:01:54 – 00:02:25] constantly war that is happening in some corner of the world you know the right now the war in ukra UK in Middle East and Africa every day people are dying and and and there is just so much of messiness in this world and they say we have fought more Wars in this Century alone than all the previous centuries put together so the question that comes to us in our minds is why is this world [00:02:23 – 00:02:55] such a broken place and why is there so much Brokenness in marriages why are relation relationship so hard why is there so much Brokenness in our workplaces why is it so hard to work together and I'm excited as we are doing this series on Walk Through the Bible we are going to the Bible to address the fundamental questions and answers that it has for us and last week we started [00:02:52 – 00:03:23] with creation and today in this very critical chapter which talks about the fall we will find answers to some of these questions and you see as I if you recollect last week as Moses is writing this to the Israelites at the end of his time he has seen two generation of Israelites he has been someone whom God [00:03:20 – 00:03:52] used in a big way to do Mighty Miracles and lead them and and and he gave him the Ten Commandments and and uh did tremendous miracles and brought Israel to the brink of entering into the promised land and he is writing to let the people of Israel know why did they do they have these same characteristics that they keep going back to that results in Brokenness in their own [00:03:50 – 00:04:23] lives and so when we come back to this Bible he starts with creation and the very first parents Adam and Eve and how it started and now in this chapter he talks about the fall so Genesis chapter 3 answers the question by showing us the origin of Brokenness in the fall but it also points us to the promise of redemption we have in Christ This Is Not Just Adam [00:04:19 – 00:04:50] and Eve's story it's a story of humanity and you will see why when we go through this the Brokenness we face today are echoes of of this very first Rebellion that we read yet through God's grace the promise of redemption offers a lot of Hope and restoration for all of us so I've titled the sermon as the fall and promise of [00:04:47 – 00:05:19] redemption and those are the two things we will look at we will look at the fall we're actually going to go very deep and try to understand some things we probably may have perhaps missed when we have read this text several times and then we will talk about the Redemption that we have in Christ so we'll start by talking about the fall and two things about the fall we it's important to understand the [00:05:16 – 00:05:47] nature of the fall and the consequences of the Fall the the reason we want to understand the nature of the Fall is as you read the book of Genesis very quickly we see within the first few chapters after this beautiful magnificent creation of the world and God creating man things start going down south pretty fast everything spirals [00:05:44 – 00:06:16] down immediately we see murder and all kinds of Brokenness surfacing it's not just with them this pattern continues with the nation of Israel it's not just with the Israelites it continues with you and me so it's important to first see what happens and what really constituted what we call as [00:06:13 – 00:06:43] the fall so the first two verses begins it says now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made he said to the women did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden know this very first verse is very very significant because we need to understand what was it that was getting [00:06:41 – 00:07:13] attacked you know the first thing that was attacked that began as the start of man's rebellion was what is known in the Bible as the very first Covenant that God makes with Adam and Eve you know our God is a covenantal God and we see here the first Covenant he makes we read about that in Genesis chapter 2 if you have your Bibles you can read that and follow along to see [00:07:10 – 00:07:41] what is the difference verse 16-1 17 this is the Covenant that God makes with Adam and Eve he says you may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die now this is what some people call us the adamic Covenant or the Covenant of works that God makes with man basically [00:07:38 – 00:08:11] he tells him in this Covenant hey you have just one law to obey just one law if you obey it you can have life but you need to obey it perfectly and perpetually and it is the same principle you will see repeated throughout the Bible that God gives his law for us with a command that he wants us to [00:08:07 – 00:08:39] obey all of it perfectly and perpetually they had just one command but it was not just given to Adam alone you know in Adam was hidden the entire human race we all Trace our Origins to him and in that sense he's called the federal head of man kind so his actions and consequences did not just impact him alone it impacts every [00:08:36 – 00:09:06] single one so in one since everyone who is born in this world is in a covenant relationship with their creator the day you are born the day you start disobeying and breaking God's command you're a covenant breaker so how does this fall [00:09:03 – 00:09:40] happen you know the fall begins with the doubt with Satan's question did God actually say the first words he SS the seeds of distrust and that's exactly what he does even today all over the world the people of all ages he asks the question how can you believe that that doesn't sound fair that doesn't seem fair and Eve's response is even more [00:09:37 – 00:10:09] astounding she actually distorts God's command and she adds to it by saying not only did just God say that she messes around with a few words if you read it carefully he also said neither shall you touch it which is not what God was saying it was not part of the adamic Covenant so you see it starts with doubt that's always the case doubt led to Distortion and Distortion led to [00:10:07 – 00:10:40] Disobedience and Disobedience led to death it's the same pattern it's always you know the Disobedience led to the breaking of the Covenant and God said if you break it you will die and it's very interesting Satan asks did God say any tree when God actually said every tree you can eat and omits that and adds all of this but let what I want to draw or [00:10:37 – 00:11:07] attention to is what happens next in those next few verses how it actually unfolds how does it play out in Eve what happens to her mind what happens to her emotions and what actions does she take you see it says verse six she saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the [00:11:04 – 00:11:38] eyes you know the first thing that gets drawn or affected is her mind and her senses and then it says the tree was desired to be desired to make one wise once the feelings told her her feelings made her think this is going to be good and when she started acting on her feelings and convinced her mind she took action she took off the fruit [00:11:34 – 00:12:05] and it was the beginning of the downward spiral what we read in Genesis 3:6 is a pattern that repeats itself throughout history the nation of Israel and even today in your life and mine you can see here how Eve's desires her mind and her will were not working synergistically to what God wanted [00:12:02 – 00:12:36] her first was the physical desire where she saw that the tree was good and which led to her getting emotionally attached was a delight to the eyes and created a prideful ambition to go and do something about it this principle is what fuels the algorithms of of modern day social [00:12:32 – 00:13:03] media where it Fosters discontent first a person sees someone else's perfect vacation or new car or an EnV sets in it's a modern echo of Eve struggle but let's back up for a minute if we want to understand this disconnect more what do we mean by saying Man was created in God's [00:13:00 – 00:13:32] image you know God created man with a body a physical body he created man with a mind he created man with a will and a heart you know we have all we all have a body and it is through our body that we interface with the world around us you know what we feel is seen through our body psychologists call this psychosomatic expression like if you're [00:13:29 – 00:14:01] angry you show it with your body God also created man as a rational human being we all have a mind we are created with rational faculties mankind is the only species that has a rational mind compared to animals and the Reason God gave us a mind was so that we will be able to know [00:13:58 – 00:14:29] God and he gave us a heart so that we will be able to love God because we have a mind we can look at the creation and the Bible says you can put your faith in God in contrast animals don't do that have you ever heard or seen a bear that sees a water fall and says wow this is [00:14:26 – 00:14:57] amazing Bears don't do that when a bear sees a waterfall or a pool of water for them it's a place to grab fish it's their fast food joint that's how their minds work and this is what melanon you know one of the early theologians says ultimate reason God made us is to create as creatures of knowledge and love is he [00:14:53 – 00:15:25] wanted to speak to us and he wanted us to speak back to him and have that loving relationship that's an integral part of our image we are dependent on God's word to understand this world around us and God wanted that he gave us a mind so we can hear what he says and use that to interpret our life in the world around us and that's why God says [00:15:23 – 00:15:56] through Moses in Deuteronomy 8 man does not live by bread alone because for our day daily survival he wants us to be dependent on the very words that come from the mouth of God which is what Jesus refers to when he is tempted so in our natural when God creates Man In His Image in our natural state of being our mind our body and our feelings are in a state of Harmony as long as they are being informed by the [00:15:52 – 00:16:28] words that come from God's mouth there is order in in creation and fall disrupts that fall completely disrupts it it disrupts this harmony that exists with our heart and our mind and our will and [00:16:24 – 00:16:57] so when we are now born in this world not with the image of God but with the image of Fallen Adam our minds are messed up our heart is messed up and so our actions end up being messed up know 2 Corinthians chap 4:4 says this in their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of [00:16:52 – 00:17:22] God our mind it says has been blinded by the god of this universe who is Satan which was what he did exactly in the Garden of Eden secondly in Ephesians 4:18 it says they are darkened in their understanding alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their Hardness of Heart our heart is no hardened our mind is darkened it can't [00:17:19 – 00:17:50] clearly receive God's word our heart is Harden it will not feel what it is meant to feel what it was created to feel and when our mind and our heart are like this what happens to our will you know John 3: 19 says light has come into the world but men loved darkness and will not come into the light for their fear that their deeds will be evil you know one of the best [00:17:48 – 00:18:19] definitions of Sin from the early church fathers St Augustine is this says the essence of sin is disordered love can you all repeat that it's a simple sentence the essence of sin is disordered love let me unpack that for us you know what he means by that is what he means by disordered love is that [00:18:16 – 00:18:47] we often love less important things more and more important things less than we ought to and this wrong prioritization leads to unhappiness and disorder in our lives and why it's because our minds and our heart and our will are not working the way they were supposed to work being informed by God's word because the moment Eve and Adam decided they're not going to listen to God's word they're going to listen to [00:18:44 – 00:19:15] this other voice everything was thrown out of carear disordered loves we creatures of disordered loves our various internal appetites are out of whx intellectually and physically what that does is it exaggerates what ought to be diminished and it diminishes what ought to be [00:19:10 – 00:19:44] exaggerated so sin often leads to an error of either excess or defect and what does what does disorderly love mean rather than letting the animal instincts of food and pleasure be moderated and informed by the knowledge that God gives and a love for God and neighbor they become the ruling [00:19:39 – 00:20:12] desire and impulse with which we make decisions a good appetite that God made to be ruled by the knowledge of love has disordered internally that's what is happening to Eve once she rejects her relationship with God who is the source of knowledge who wanted her and Adam to have that relationship cut off the harmony was [00:20:09 – 00:20:40] gone her love becomes disordered her feelings are telling her mind something is good which is not good and that's our problem even today why we do certain things that we don't want to do and Paul says that I do what I do not want to do what I do not want to do I do this is where it originates from and the body starts acting based on what the mind says that's what the Israelites did as a collective Nation they should have known [00:20:38 – 00:21:11] better isn't it of all people God delivered them from the nation of Egypt through seven amazing plagues and miracles including the Passover land he delivered them by splitting the Red Sea a mind that has seen that God in action should be for that mind it should be easy to trust in that God yet when they saw an army behind they start [00:21:08 – 00:21:38] grumbling God gave them food for 40 years supernaturally never happened before or after in human history yet their mind told them that food is not enough they need more and they grumbled God took care of them and protected them from all their enemies who were trying to attack them wherever they went yet they felt they needed more Prosperity than what they had they [00:21:36 – 00:22:08] wanted they built a golden calf which was a symbol in agricultural societies for wealth because a calf was the primary source of bringing in money they could not trust God their mind was messing them up and their hearts were disoriented and they started acting it out and that's sin and we do the same thing isn't it God has provided and blessed us and [00:22:05 – 00:22:37] we still think we need more because it's messed up and that's why marriages are in Conflict God in his own plan and Providence brings two people together and you have a loving husband and a wife and still you think there can be pleasure found in something or someone outside of the relationship and that's why even as k kids you think that toy or that thing is what you [00:22:33 – 00:23:05] really desperately need to give you pleasure than what it could do you see that's the essence of sin it exaggerates what ought to be diminished and it diminishes what ought to be exaggerated our love for God and it SP it spills over into work if you see and here there are only two kinds of statements you can hear from your leagues people love their work they idolize it and have no boundaries [00:23:03 – 00:23:35] and give everything to it or they hate their work and they live for the weaked and both are distortions you know Tim Keller has this very simple he has a gift of taking complicated things and putting it in a simple way he says this he defines idolator says idolator means turning a good thing into an ultimate thing and that's what this disordered love does to us this [00:23:32 – 00:24:05] disordered love in US makes us take a good thing something that is good and makes it into an ultimate thing and so he says this continuing he says if you don't live for Jesus you will live for something else if you live for career and if you don't do well or something happens in your career it may punish punish you all of your life and you will feel like a [00:24:02 – 00:24:32] failure if you live for your children and they don't turn out right you could be in torment because you feel worthless as a person disordered love that's the essence of the Fall that's what happened and that keeps repeating itself every time so what are the consequences of the Fall what happens after this fall happens three things [00:24:29 – 00:24:59] happen the three things we read in verses 7 and 8 and 6 7 and 8 first there is separation from God and from one another when God comes they run and hide they're no longer able to enjoy that beautiful relationship with him and even between themselves there is a separation now they feel they are naked they feel [00:24:57 – 00:25:27] there's something different about one another they want to cover themselves even from each other second they experience guilt they start hiding from God and third they experience shame you know one of the things that happens when you are guilty guilt does is you can't see someone face to face isn't it in verse 8 it says and they heard the sound of the Lord Walking In [00:25:26 – 00:25:56] The Garden in the cool of the day and the man and and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God Among the Trees of the garden this is why it is very very hard incredibly hard or even impossible when you lie you can't look into the eyes of another person and lie for parents with children you can see this one of the easy ways to detect they're lying is they're not making eye [00:25:54 – 00:26:25] contact with you because it's very hard to do that maybe as adults you figured out way to deal with it so how do we usually deal with guilt no one likes guilt isn't it I don't like when someone tells me I'm wrong I don't know if many any of you have received traffic tickets for speeding the First Response people get when they have a speeding ticket is I'm going to fight this I wasn't going that [00:26:22 – 00:26:53] fast deflection that's the standard strategy we want to deflect and find find out and we see this when children are fighting and two kids fight and you ask them who started it you can see both of them pointing their hands at each other and it's not just kids even in marriages when there is a conflict you ask them who's wrong we tend to always Point our fingers at the other person that's how Adam and Eve it [00:26:50 – 00:27:22] happened so Eve deflects it to Satan and Adam deflects it to Eve so in marriage is if you're experiencing this this is not new it's just history repeating itself and second the shame they covered themselves with fig leaves you know once you are exposed you see that someone has seen through your Brokenness your vulnerability you feel a sense of Shame [00:27:19 – 00:27:50] and the default way people tend to deal with shame is to cover with fig leaves and everyone tries does has different kinds of fig Lees we've tried to cover it in different ways for some it may be by trying to aggressively putting up I'm a nice guy I'm a nice girl image to hide all the murkiness that's inside so even if you're offended when someone offends you you will not say it but you will deal with it passive [00:27:47 – 00:28:19] aggressively because if you deal with it the real way they may know that you're not fine for some of us we deal with it by more performance you just start doing more you start just you know getting the being like the best person out there in accomplishing big things so those accomplishments and performances can hide your Brokenness and there's possibly a myriad different ways we do each one of us [00:28:17 – 00:28:47] differently isn't it but the real effect was the separation that the fall did with god with each other and creation and that's something evident in verse 16 this separation had real consequences especially in marriage and parenting it says to the women he said I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children your [00:28:45 – 00:29:17] desire shall be contrary to your husband but he shall rule over you now we've addressed this words in our marriage conferences that we've had here in Love For Life in a more detailed way but basically to protect ourself we men tend to try to rule over women and women try to tend to control men as a form of defense [00:29:13 – 00:29:44] mechanism because disordered love has begun to dominate our relationships power and control it spills into work God says your work is going to be burdensome you're not going to enjoy work the way you did Adam before you fell it's going to be hard you're going to meet people who are as self-centered as you are you're going to work with other people who have exactly the same disordered loves like you and it's going [00:29:41 – 00:30:11] to be hard and that's probably what this clinical therapist found out and what he found out was not new it's in the Bible it's the same principle but here's the beautiful part of it the Genesis 3 leaves us with it doesn't stop with the the fall it reveals to us the beautiful Act of the grace of God in Redemption you see what is wonderful is [00:30:07 – 00:30:38] that Adam and Eve do not go finding God but God still comes finding them you think God did not know what they did he absolutely knew what they did and yet he comes and he calls them where are you God initiates Redemption it's always the same was the same with Adam and Eve it's the same with you and I none of us can run as far away from [00:30:36 – 00:31:06] God as possible no matter how far we run from him he still comes his grace will find us and draw us back to him and that's you know the response God's response to the fall was another Covenant too it's called the Covenant of Grace you feel that you find that littered throughout the Bible God [00:31:03 – 00:31:34] reveals this Covenant of Grace progressively it's very hard for you to read a few chapters in The Bible without finding a covenant lit there or an expression of the Covenant through a promise or a sign or or or a testimony or a symbol so even as go Adam and Eve rebelled God initiates his plan of of redemption in revealing his Covenant of [00:31:30 – 00:32:03] Grace to them and Genesis 3:15 is called the First Gospel the Proto Evangelion in the Bible we didn't have to wait till the gospels to hear the gospel the gospel is built in the very first book of the Bible right after the fall smack in the middle of this chapter describing the fall where he says I will put enmity between you and the woman and between [00:32:00 – 00:32:32] your Offspring and her her Offspring he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel he talks to the serpent Satan when Satan thought he got God's creation he disrupted God's plan and Mankind is now doomed forever the Proto evangelon breaks through God pronounces this Covenant of [00:32:29 – 00:33:00] Grace that he's going to start unfolding it replaces the Covenant of works and he knew that you and I can never do enough to earn that so he says the first Adam broke it and now I'm sending a second Adam who will fulfill it while Adam brought sin and death as [00:32:56 – 00:33:28] our for father and our Humanity's Federal head Christ brings life and righteousness as the new federal head for all who believe Romans 5: 19 says for as by the one man's Disobedience the many were made Sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous where Adam failed Christ succeeded his perfect obedience and sacrifice revers the curse of sin and [00:33:25 – 00:33:56] restores our relationship with God God all of Grace and Christ was the shity of the Covenant we read that in the New Testament we'll talk about it when we get there and as a sign of this Covenant verse 21 we read and the Lord God Made For Adam and for his wife garments of [00:33:53 – 00:34:23] skins and clothed them it's the very first time there is a sacrifice in a hidden form that's being revealed to have a garment made of animal skin an animal had to be killed so this first sacrifice foreshadows the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ we will see further down the line and when Jesus was sacrificed it is his righteousness that [00:34:22 – 00:34:52] covers Us and when his righteousness covers Us and Pres presents us before God it also does something internally to us he starts realigning our disordered loves because our connection with God is reestablished our identity is being to be restored and we are beginning to [00:34:49 – 00:35:20] experience his grace in this restoration and you read those promises throughout the Bible Ezekiel chapter 36: 26 and 27 he says how he realigns our distorted loves says and I will give you a new heart and the new spirit I will put in you within you and I will remove the Heart of Stone from your flesh and give you a heart of Flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to [00:35:17 – 00:35:50] walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules you see the grace of God he knows that you and I cannot do it so he says I'm going to give you a new heart and even if I give you a new heart that may not be enough for you and your loves to get ordered but I'm going to give you my spirit and I'm going to cause you through my spirit to restore your disordered loves 1 [00:35:48 – 00:36:19] Corinthians 1:16 we read for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him but we have the mind of Christ says now not only am I giving you a new heart I'm going to give you the the mind of Christ himself this is the essence of discipleship resetting of our disordered loves is what discipleship is all about you a lot of discipleship is [00:36:16 – 00:36:47] trying to teach us how to think right how to feel like and how to love the right things in accordance with what we are made to be and that is what is offered to us in this Covenant of Grace you know the adamic Covenant reveals the Humanity's failure but the Covenant of Grace through Christ offers hope as the second Adam Jesus secures [00:36:45 – 00:37:16] our Victory on our behalf again Tim killer summarizes the power of the Gospel beautifully he says we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever D believe yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope that's the beauty of the Gospel my dear friends and this gospel calls us to [00:37:12 – 00:37:45] respond by embracing this Jesus who in order to restore our love on the right things he bore the wrath of God rather than his love on the cross when our feelings wanted us to go after the pleasures and things of this [00:37:42 – 00:38:13] world he fought them and won over them and Satan tempted him in the desert in the wilderness by reemphasizing that it is the word of God that he needs and not the pleasures of this world and in that he lived the perfect life that you and I never could have lived and died the death that we ought to have [00:38:09 – 00:38:41] died and that is the wonderful Redemption the promise of redemption that the rest of the Bible is going to talk about through different people and Nations life and stories and we hopefully will unpack so how am I going to apply this in my life today perhaps we can begin by taking a love inventory of ourselves what are my disordered [00:38:37 – 00:39:07] loves and a simple principle is to think and ask what good things have I made to be absolute things and what absolute things have I made to be just good things my job is not who I am which college or what I study does not define who I am and if I making that a big thing then what I ought to be [00:39:05 – 00:39:38] perhaps that's an area of disordered love and if that's driving our life that's an area of disordered love how successful I am in my career doesn't Define who I am so I don't know what it is for you in your life this perfect relationship that I am chasing may not be the perfect relationship you desire which only Christ can offer and that could be an area of disordered [00:39:34 – 00:40:05] love so perhaps you can pray and ask God to reveal to you what is your disordered love and write it in a Post-It or something and have it in your Bible because we need to be reminded constantly and let God's word help us and second we can Embrace Grace rather than Perfection when we recognize those disordered [00:40:02 – 00:40:33] loves rather than deflecting and resisting to deal from it there is this oldage that goes I'm not sure if it's familiar it's probably something more common in the South says when you mess up you fess up it's a short form of confession you know the antidote to deflection is confession and that's the reason we have the [00:40:30 – 00:41:03] communion and if you're parents perhaps that's something you may want to reward in your children confession rather than Behavior right behavior and use that to lead them to the gospel and same in marriage when you when your Brokenness meets each other when you're disordered loves Collide perhaps Begin by praying together every night so that you can hear from God [00:40:59 – 00:41:28] where the disorder is and you can run to Christ and confess and receive forgiveness and that's the reason we are going to celebrate communion every week it's an opportunity for us to restore let God restore our disordered loves in us so we can love the Lord Our God with all our heart with all our soul with all our mind and our strength let's pray