Sermon on Genesis 2 – What’s Wrong With our World



Sermon on Genesis 2: 7 – What’s Wrong With Our World?

Take a look at the news and you hear stories of murder, corruption, scandal, school shootings and stabbings and acts of terrorism. Take a look at some of the things you might see on television or at the movies today, some of which the mere titles are enough to make a person blush. Take a look at work and you might see fellow employees doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Take a look at your own life and you might find turmoil in your relationships with others where tempers flare, gossip and rumors abound, feelings are hurt, sinful pride rears its ugly head. Have you ever thought to yourself, What’s Wrong With Our World? In our text for today we see, I. A once perfect world now spoiled with sin. And yet we see, II. An imperfect world with a Savior in Jesus!

When God created the world, he created a perfect world with perfect people. Perfect people who had a perfect relationship with each other and with God. Perfect people living in a perfect garden with the perfect job and no worries whatsoever. It’s easy for us to look back and say, “Adam and Eve didn’t know how good they had it. Boy did they ever ruin it for the rest of us!” And it’s easy for us to look back and wonder, “Why did God have to put that one tree there in the first place?” To answer that question we need to look at how God created mankind. Up until the creation of mankind God simply said, “Let there be…and it was…and it was good.”

But notice how God would change gears when it came to creating mankind. Living in a land where many of our products are mass produced overseas, it’s rare that you come across anything handmade anymore, and if you do it must be pretty special, and it’s probably pretty pricey as well. In our text we see the great love and care God took in creating man by hand as it were. “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Getting down on his hands and knees as it were, God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living, rational, thinking human being of body and soul. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and as such they had a perfect knowledge of God’s will. And God gave them the ability to thank him by obeying one command, “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Martin Luther once commented that this tree was sort of like an altar in the Garden of Eden by which Adam and Eve could worship God by obeying His Word.

Why couldn’t they listen? They only had one command! It’s not like they had 10 of them like we do! Our text gives us more insight into the matter. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” What a foolish looking tempter we have here, a snake, and not just a snake, but a talking snake! Were Adam and Eve really that naïve? But who of us hasn’t fallen for temptations packaged just as irrationally and just as silly. Be honest. Let’s move on.

“Did God really say?” was the first temptation the devil would use. A temptation that would try to plant a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind. A temptation Eve would ward off by saying, “we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” Before we accuse Eve of wrongdoing by putting words in God’s mouth by adding the words, “you must not touch it,” can we do something here that we often fail to do with others and put the best construction on her words? I remember a pastor making the point some time ago that this is how Eve applied the absolute seriousness of God’s command to her own life. This tree was to be hands off! Besides, if what Eve said here was sinful, the devil would have had no need to press on, but press on he did.

“You will not surely die” was the second temptation the devil would use. A temptation that would flat out accuse God of lying, but before Eve could say anything, the devil would add the words, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Adam and Eve already knew good. Why would they want to know evil? But the point of this temptation was to lead God’s children to think, “Maybe God’s holding out on you. Maybe he doesn’t love you as much as he says he does.” How absurd! That God would hold out on his children?!?! But how often doesn’t the devil use that same temptation on God’s children today and how often doesn’t it work? The thought that God wants people to be happy, even if it should come at the expense of being holy. Temptations that say God’s withholding happiness from you, happiness that could be found in an affair with a coworker. Happiness that could be found in a bottle or maybe six or twelve of them. Happiness that could be found by taking those offerings of time, talents, and resources that you could give to church and using them on yourself instead. Happiness that could be found in making others look bad with the hopes of making yourself look good. Happiness that could be found in having things your way, who cares how it might affect others! God’s withholding happiness from you, because if he truly loved you he wouldn’t let all these bad things to happen to you, maybe you’d be happier without God in your life.

That’s what temptation is all about. Making sin look fun and enjoyable or leading people to despair with the hopes that he can lead them away from God. The devil isn’t going to warn you about the consequences. He’s looking to seal the deal. He could care less about how you’re going to pay the bill when the debt comes due. And for Adam and Eve the debt would come due, “when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” And men before we shake our heads and say “it was all the woman’s fault,” take a look at where Adam was during all this. He wasn’t working on the other side of the garden. No, our text tells us, “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” You’ll notice that two of the hymns we sing today and our second Scripture lesson puts as much if not more blame on Adam, the one to whom the command was first given, the one who failed to say or do anything that might have prevented Eve from disobeying God.

In a sense the devil was right, their eyes would be opened, but they wouldn’t like what they saw. For the first time they felt shame, they felt guilt, they felt regret. And as God would later tell them the consequences of their sins would bring pain and suffering and bad things into this world and ultimately death, “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” What’s wrong with our world? Take a look at the Garden of Eden. There you’ll find the problem. There also you’ll find the solution. A solution that would come in the form of a promise. A promise that said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” The apostle John sheds a little more light on this promise when he writes, “He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” And destroy it he did. Today we saw how Jesus destroyed the devil’s temptations using the power of God’s Word. In a few weeks we’ll once again see Jesus destroying the devil’s power once and for all through his death and resurrection.

In Jesus we see the perfect life and innocent death that means forgiveness for you and me. Forgiveness for the times we’ve hissed out at others with words of anger and contempt. Forgiveness for the times we’ve slithered our way in to and out of sinful conversations and situations in life. For these and all of your sins, look to the one who crushed the serpent. And for the power to fight temptation, look to the same. Look to Jesus, the one who gives us His Word. Remember the words of Joseph, who when tempted to sleep with Potiphar’s wife said, “How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Remember the words of the Apostle Paul who tells us, “If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you do not fall. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

What’s wrong with our world? It really depends on who you listen to. The devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh will try and tell you that it’s not your fault, nothing is ever your fault. God’s Word tells us otherwise. A famous Christian author writes, “the heart of the human problem is the heart of the human.” Echoing the words of Jesus who tells us, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” In other words, before I get riled up about what’s wrong with our world, I need to get riled up about what’s wrong with me. Before I blame others for making a mess of things, I need to blame myself for the mess sin makes of my own life and my need to repent of it.

The book of John records a situation where some Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to Jesus with the hopes he would give them permission to stone her to death in accordance with the Law of Moses. And Jesus would give them permission to do so, but only he who was without sin could throw the first stone. Thankfully the greater law of love and forgiveness would prevail that day as one by one all these men walked away starting with the oldest and moving down to the youngest. It would lead Jesus to say to say to this woman, “’Has no one condemned you?…’Neither do I’… ‘go now and leave your life of sin.’” And with those same words the stones we might be tempted to throw at others sometimes must fall from our hands.

And the question that asks what’s wrong with our world must be preceded by the question what’s wrong with me? Sin is my problem. Jesus is my solution. The solution that can only be found in the pages of God’s Word where the temptation to think that God is holding out on his children is met with the promise, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Because of Jesus the day is coming soon when paradise will be restored, when God will make all things new by taking us home to be with him forever.

Amen.

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