The First Sunday in Lent

SERMON

INI

Text: Genesis 3:1-15

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.”

In Christ Jesus, our Champion, dear fellow redeemed:

Tom and Mary Jacobs entered their home with arms filled with grocery sacks. They immediately sensed that something was wrong. After setting the grocery sacks down, they saw the shattered glass of Mary’s great-grandma’s crystal vase lying on the floor with a football nearby. They heard noises down the hall, and so proceeded to investigate. They found their daughter, Sally, sitting on the floor of her bedroom sobbing with a bloody tissue held around her finger. The open door of their sons’ bedroom revealed Tom Jr. wrestling with a crying Timmy, pinning his arms to the floor while Timmy’s legs kicked wildly. Frustrated Tom cried out, “What’s going on here?!” Tom Jr. blamed Timmy for not catching the football, while Timmy blamed Tom Jr. for throwing it too hard. Sally blamed Timmy for running into her as he tried to catch the ball that Tom Jr. should not have been throwing in the house in the first place. It was their fault that the vase dropped, even thought she was not supposed to be handling great-grandma’s precious vase. What about her cut finger? Timmy had pushed her as she tried to clean up the glass, after she called him a name, which is when Tom Jr. decided to teach Timmy a lesson about hitting his sister by beating him up.

Do situations like this sound familiar? Do you ever wonder whether God gets tired of all of the bickering, fighting, and blaming of others that goes on in this world? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Why is there so much sin in our world and why does sin so often cause problems even in Christian homes and among Christian friends? Is there a solution? Will there ever be an end to this dreadful situation? Let us consider our text to find out exactly what is going on here and what can be done to help the situation.

I.

We see, first of all, that Satan is trying to separate us from God and destroy our souls! When Satan approached our first parents in the Garden of Eden, his fiendish purpose was to separate them from their good and gracious Creator God. He wanted to draw them away from the circle of God’s influence and destroy their souls in hell. Dear friends—that is Satan’s goal for us today! Satan is not a cartoonish figure merely bent on mischief. Rather, he is a powerful and malevolent spiritual being, living in rebellion against God and raging against everything divine. He is jealous of God and his wounded pride make him just what the apostle Peter calls him—“a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

What are Satan’s weapons of choice? We see them in our text. May the Spirit of God lead us to recognize that they are the same weapons Satan uses against us today, so that we might be prepared to defend ourselves! Satan began his deception with a question, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Be aware of Satan’s goal—he wanted to create doubt within the hearts of Adam and Eve regarding God’s goodness. Notice his strategy—he wanted to cause Eve to forget the many blessings she had received from God’s hand and focus her attention on the single item God had withheld from her…the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s command regarding the tree was not given to Adam and Eve in order to deprive them of something, but rather to provide an opportunity through which they could willingly show their appreciation for all of His goodness. Satan, however, wanted to plant seeds of doubt within Eve’s mind. Perhaps God was not as good as He seemed. Perhaps His commandment was not actually an opportunity, but was in reality an attempt to deprive them of something necessary and good.

Does Satan ever do this is our lives—does he by his questions focus our attention on insignificant parts of our lives with the goal of causing discontentment to grow in our heats? Do we ever overlook God’s many blessings? King David was certainly aware of Satan’s tactics and this human tendency. In Psalm 103:2-4 he reminds himself, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeemed your life from destruction, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” Satan wants us to believe God is not looking out for our best interests and so is not to be trusted!

Consider now the other weapons in Satan’s arsenal—the lie and the lure! “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan will lie through his teeth, and the bigger his lie, the more it seems that people believe it! He will promise you anything, but he seldom delivers, and what he delivers is never what he has promised. Satan’s lies are often even more effective because they contain at least some truth. For instance, Adam and Eve did not die…immediately! Yet from the moment of their first sin, they began to die and they ultimately did die. They also did learn to know “good and evil,” but certainly not in the way that God does and indeed they learned it to their sorrow. Satan always promises seemingly wonderful things, but he delivers nothing but sadness.

Think of how it works in our lives…a young lady looking for love, loses her virginity and her Romeo abandons her for a different Juliet not wanting the responsibility that comes with being a husband and a father; a husband and father leaves his wife and children behind to regain his freedom, but becomes involved in a series of one night stands, finds himself in declining health, and on the edge of financial ruin; a young man is promised the excitement of living in the fast lane, only to become addicted to drugs and spends time in prison. This is reality, and these realities can and do devastate our earthly lives. They are nothing, however, when compared to Satan’s ultimate goal for our souls—the utter and desperate hopelessness of hell! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Satan is trying to separate us from God and destroy our souls!

II.

Secondly, we are now by nature sinful and must deal with our frailties! Adam and Eve were created in God’s image. They were perfect in every way, but when they sinned they lost their perfection. We are told that their “eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” They had lost their moral innocence and those things which were created as holy and pure were now viewed with impure hearts filled with shame. When God came to walk and talk with His highest creation, what happened after the fall into sin? Adam and Eve were afraid of God. The original love and trust that had once filled man’s heart were gone. Guilt and fear had replaced them, demonstrating that man’s spiritual perfection was now gone. What did they attempt to do? They tried to hide from God among the trees of the garden, as if anyone can hide from God in a bush. The evidence is obvious—the mental perfection Adam and Eve had possessed and which Adam demonstrated so clearly by naming the animals was gone.

Dear friends, are we not plagued with the same frailties in view of our sinful natures? We certainly are! We are not morally perfect, but rather we must confess that our thoughts, words, and deeds are by nature sinful. We too tremble before a holy and righteous God and must confess with the psalmist, “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). Our minds do not provide us with perfect insight and, in fact, all too often we too deceive ourselves into believing that we can hide our sins from God. We think evil thoughts and assume no one can see inside us. We say things in private, for which we believe we will not be held responsible. We do things in secret thinking no one will be the wiser. These things are simply not so! God knows, God hears, and God sees!

How do we deal with our human frailties? First of all, our human frailties ought to lead us to humble repentance. We are not perfect and indeed sin often. Let us not be afraid to admit that and pray that the Holy Spirit might lead us to genuine repentance and spiritual renewal. Let us not allow Satan to stoke our sinful pride and cause divisions where Christian love and unity are to be present. As we deal with the frailties of others, may we pray for patience and compassion. God has given us to each other as gifts. We are to work together to build each other up in our faith and lives and thereby to further His kingdom in our midst. If Satan succeeds in dividing us; if he is able to move us to deal with each other in hardness of heart; then all of the good that God intends for us will be lost, and we will suffer immeasurably and unnecessarily. WHAT IS GOING ONE HERE? We are by nature sinful and must deal with our frailties!

III.

Yet there is hope, for as we see in our text, God has chosen to deliver us through Jesus who has overcome Satan! God was both gracious and merciful when confronting our first parents with their sins. Like Tom Jr., Timmy, and Sally in the introduction to our sermon today, Adam and Eve did not accept responsibility for their actions, but rather blamed each other and even blamed God. Still God, who would have had every right to destroy them in an instant, responded with loving concern. He pronounced judgment upon Satan, that deceiver, and then announced that He would save mankind from sin. He stated, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel.”

When God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” what did He mean? By nature we sinful human beings are not at “enmity,” that is in opposition to Satan, but rather in league with him, either knowingly or unknowingly. But God comes into our lives with His message of law and gospel and instills faith within our hearts through the power work of the Holy Spirit. It is our faith—the gift of the Holy Spirit, which puts us back on God’s side and moves us to hate Satan and his evil ways. That division exists as well between all unbelievers and the “Seed” of the woman, who is Jesus Christ. Jesus explains in John 3 the reason for the world’s hatred—a hatred we can certainly see in our day with all of the opposition to the public presence of Christianity within our own country. Jesus tells us that the men of this world love the darkness of their own wicked deeds and do not want the light of Jesus Christ to reveal their deeds or condemn them (cf. verses 19-20). But the key idea in this final verse of our text is that Jesus Christ, the “Seed” of the woman was to enter a conflict with Satan and overcome him as our Champion. The conflict would involve pain. God says here that Satan would “bruise His (Jesus’) heel”—a phrase referring to Jesus ultimate sufferings and death upon the cross, but which implies the resurrection for a bruise to the heel while painful is not deadly! But Jesus would “bruise”—a better and more powerful word would be “crush” Satan’s head, which implies a mortal wound from which Satan would not ever recover. The Scriptures are clear that Jesus Christ destroyed the power of Satan through His death and resurrection. He has removed forever for us the judgment of hell and has turned physical death into a mere entrance to heaven.

My dear friends, as we consider our personal lives, and I would always encourage you to do so within the wider framework of God’s calling to all of us in His kingdom, may we recognize the spiritual situation in which we find ourselves. Satan will until the last trumpet sounds be at war against us attempting to separate us from our Savior God and drag our souls into hell. His goal is twofold—to defeat us personally and to prevent our joint efforts to further our kingdom work. Be aware of that fact, for he is truly deceptive. Recognize the frailty of our human flesh and the results of our sin. Let us be sensitive to this spiritual reality so that we can guard against personal sin, but also so that we might become more sensitive and compassionate towards each other. Finally, let us look to Jesus—the “Seed” of the woman, God’s Savior who entered this world to overcome Satan on our behalf. Let us entrust ourselves to Him, love Him sincerely, and walk with Him all the way to our eternal victory celebration in heaven! Amen.

Soli Dei Gloria!
—Pastor Paul D. Nolting