Temptation - Putting on God's Garments of Grace

Hello everyone!


My name is Bob.


And I am a sinner.


How do I know that? Because the Bible tells me I am. But more importantly, the Bible tell me why. It tells me what got me caught up in it. And thank God it also tells me the way out. And Genesis 3 is an incredible chapter of scripture. Genesis 3 gives us a lot of news, and tonight, I hope to give you some news that you can use.


I don't know about you, but I want news I can use. I’ve watched the news but there’s not a whole lot in there that I can use. There’s a lot of negative stuff that I can’t use. There’s a lot of stuff about poodles and porpoises that I can’t use. And there is a lot of the tragedies at the beginning of the news, and that’s not useful. It’s depressing.


But what I am going to speak about tonight is news that you can use immediately, tonight.


Genesis 3 is an incredible chapter. I know it is in the Old Testament, and a lot of people just yawn when they here the words "Old Testament" - But Genesis 3 has a lot to say about what happened back then, thousands of years ago, and how it relates to my life and your life today. This is important, because it has been said that Genesis 3 in many ways is the most important piece of information ever conveyed to man. Because if you ignore the teaching of this chapter in history, the story of humanity becomes impossible to understand. And if you miss Genesis 3, you really cannot fully understand what Derek talked about last week with Noah and the flood. Because the most important thing about this Genesis 3 is that we find ourselves in this chapter.


Genesis 3 is about Adam & Eve, our original biological mother and father. You don’t have to be a Christian to have heard about Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam & Eve and the Garden have been perverted by our society into almost everything that is not biblical- from silly cartoon characters to the brand name of a Cranberry Juice. And as we take a look at Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, I’ve heard people say, “If only somehow we could get back to the Garden of Eden. If only somehow we could return to the beauty of that Garden, the water that was in that Garden. There’s something about that Garden that would make things perfect.”


Well, the Garden of Eden isn’t there any more. But hear me on this - Our need is not to find the Garden of Eden. Our need is to learn from what happened in the Garden of Eden so we can find the God who was there in the Garden of Eden. That’s what we want to find. Because Genesis 3 is the story of how sin first came into the human family.


Now the snake was the most clever of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day the snake said to the woman, "Did God really say that you must not eat fruit from any tree in the garden?"

The woman answered the snake, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God told us, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not even touch it, or you will die.' "

But the snake said to the woman, "You will not die. God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree, you will learn about good and evil and you will be like God!"

The woman saw that the tree was beautiful, that its fruit was good to eat, and that it would make her wise. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of the fruit to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Then, it was as if their eyes were opened. They realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made something to cover themselves.


You can think of any tragedy that you want. Maybe a tragedy in your own life. Some of you in here tonight have lost a friend or family member to disease, or an accident. Some of you in here knew Jim Whittemore, a high school sports star that was killed in July 2007. Some of you knew, or have friends that knew that football player that died in a football game a couple of weeks ago. And there are dozens of stories in here tonight of people with friends and family and family of friends who are battling cancer. And it rips our hearts apart. And then there are the tragedies we watch on TV and the internet all day everyday- people losing everything to hurricanes and tornadoes, families losing everything they have because companies are shutting down.


But Genesis 3 talks about the greatest tragedy in human history. We all know that. We all know it not just because we read it in a book. We all know it because of what we’ve seen in our lives. You and I can look at this tragedy and learn from it. It shows us very clearly what leads to sin. It hasn’t changed. Satan doesn’t need any new tricks because the same old tricks keep working again and again with every new generation. Your generation is no different from Derek’s generation, which is no different from my generation, which is no different from the generation before me. It's the same pattern that has been repeating itself in all of our lives since Adam & Eve were in the Garden of Eden. It’s the pattern of the “Big D” -


The first part of the pattern is


1. Doubt

Satan starts with doubt. He comes to Eve and says, “Did God really say…?” And you might be thinking, a serpent? A snake? “How in the world could Eve be tempted by a snake?”

I don’t know how Satan did it. I don’t know if he appeared in the form of an animal, if he took over an animal. We don’t know the answer to that. But somehow he came appearing as a part of God’s creation and he planted a seed of doubt in her head. “Did God really say…” She began to battle with him. She began to talk with him.


But she didn’t realize what we need to learn tonight- We need to realize that on our own, we’re no match for Satan. There is not one of us in this room tonight that’s a match for Satan. Some of you guys in here who think you’re tough might think so. You may think, well Bob, I work out, I’m a star athlete in school, I can handle some snake. Others of you in here tonight may be thinking- Bob, c’mon- I’m smart…I get good grades, I understand things pretty quickly- I can handle this devil stuff. Or maybe you’re in here tonight and have a different kind of smart- you think you are street smart, cool, can handle it all. But my bet is that if you are in any of those categories, and there was a match between you and Satan, you would lose. Because there is only person who ever did beat Satan, and who can continue to beat him everytime. And his name is Jesus Christ.


Because of His victory, Jesus’ victory over satan, you and I can have victory over Satan. But none of us should try to battle him on our own. Martin Luther, the guy we saw in that movie a month ago, said of Satan, “No man is able to outwit the devil.” He’s been at this for thousands of years. He knows all the tricks. He knows all our thoughts. Don’t try to outwit him on your own. We look at God’s word. We ask for Christ’s help. That’s where the power is. That’s where the ability to do it is.


I'm not trying to depress you and say it’s impossible to win. I'm trying to encourage you and say we can’t win on our own, but we have someone who can win for us.


So satan comes and he plants this doubt. Did God really say? Did God really say not to eat from any tree? And satan plants the same seeds of doubt in each of us here tonight. Do you really think you can play on a varsity sport? Are you sure you can pass that test in English? Are you sure your friends are being loyal to you? Are you certain that your parents love you? Satan – planting seeds of doubt. There’s a huge question here, an important question. Why did God let this happen? Here’s the Garden of Eden. Everything’s perfect. Why did God let there be a tree in the middle of the Garden that if Adam or Eve ate of it, they’d die? Why did God do that? Why did He let satan in to tempt them to eat of that tree? Why did God let Satan in?


The answer to that awaits in heaven – most of it. But as you read the Bible – here in Genesis, Isaiah, Revelation – you get this indication that there was a great spiritual battle, one that we don't know all the details to. A battle between good and evil...between God and satan.


But the real key is not what Satan said but what we did. We made a choice to take the fruit of the tree and eat it. Why did God put that tree in the middle of the Garden? Why didn’t He just leave it out of the Garden so we could just live forever and everything would be perfect?


It's simply this- it's because of the kind of relationship God wanted to have with us. God did not want to have a relationship with us like He had with everything else He created...God created us in His image. How many times have you heard that statement or read it in Genesis. He created us to be in His image. What does that mean?


Being “in His image” means you and I have a choice and the tree in the middle of the garden provided the choice. It’s very important to understand what that choice was. We call it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The choice wasn’t between good and evil. That’s not really the choice that Adam and Eve were making when they took of that fruit and ate it. The temptation was to become like God. The temptation was to say, “Maybe I have limits as a human being but maybe there’s a way I can overcome those limits and I can become God myself. Yeah- I like the sound of that...I'll be God!


Adam and Eve were a lot smarter than we think they were. A lot of times we think since they were innocent and ran around with fig leaves on and just listened to satan that they were dumb. But they had perfect brains. We use maybe 5% of our brain – maybe. I probably use a lot less than that. But Adam & Eve had 100% going for them. They were super intelligent. They knew the issues. The issue was, “Am I going to be satisfied to be God’s creation and worship Him and depend on Him, or am I going to step outside of that circle and try to do it on my own?” That has always been the issue when it comes to sin. That’s why we talk about it so much here at RISE708- do I do things God’s way, or my way? Do I want God big in my life, or do I want to be God?


Satan begins with a question. “Did God really say…?” Do you know what he’s trying to do? It’s what he tries to do in my life and your life everyday. He’s messin’ with your head. He’s was trying to change how Eve thought of God. He’s trying to make God appear to be something that He isn’t in her mind. Satan is trying to make God look like a miser. Someone who’s keeping something good from them. Has Satan ever sent that kind of temptation into your mind? Of course he has. How many times have you been tempted to do something you know is against God’s will, but satan keeps telling you its Ok…it’s OK to do drugs…it’s OK to drink alcohol…it’s OK to have sex before you are married…it’s OK to be addicted to porn…see how good all that stuff makes you feel. So satan tries to trick us – trick us into believing that God is trying to take things away from us that would make us feel good. Satan is trying to make you doubt.


So Eve began to doubt. That led to the next D-


2. Deception

So now satan has Eve reeling a little bit – she’s doubting. Then Satan comes and tells a bold faced lie. Satan is the father of lies. He doesn’t care about lying. It doesn’t hurt him to lie. It doesn’t hurt him to lie to hurt us, to lie to your boyfriends or girlfriends, to lie to your teachers, your parents, the leaders here at RISE7078, anybody. He lies. He says, go ahead and eat from the tree - “You will not die.”

That was a lie. Because they would die spiritually. They would die physically. They’d watch one of their sons be murdered. All because of this sin that came into their lives.


I know that God has brought some of you here tonight because you’re struggling with some temptations right now. That’s why you thought you’d come tonight. You may not realize it right this moment. You may not realize it until next week, or next year, or when you are 60 years old. But there is a reason you are here tonight. You may be feeling cheated or deprived or limited right now. You’re feeling like, “God’s holding out on me!” or “I'm being cheated of something that life really owes me.” That’s the same feelings that Satan was trying to bring up in Eve’s heart and life. We all have them sometimes. If you’re feeling that way, you’re here tonight to read this chapter and to know whose voice it is that’s saying that. It’s the same tempter, saying the same things thousands of years later. He’s the one who wants to make us feel like we’re not getting out of life what life owes us when God has poured His grace upon us. He deceives her. That deception leads straight into the D of…


3. DESIRE

Eve saw three things. She looked and she saw this fruit that was on the tree and said, “It’s good for food! It’s pleasing to the eye. It’s desirable for gaining wisdom.” All those three sins are right here at the very beginning. The desire for pleasure, the desire for possession, the desire for power – God’s kind of power. So the desire grew into our 4th D-


4. DECISION

You know what it’s like to be tempted. You know what it’s like to get to the point of temptation where you’ve allowed the desire to grow to the point where it seems you just can’t say no. To a place where you make a thousand excuses of why its OK to do this bad thing- it’s only once, I promise, then I’ll never do it again. And besides, who am I hurting? No one will know. Sound familiar? If I smoke that joint, if I drink that beer, if I go on that porno web site, if I sleep with that guy or girl- just this one time. Eve was at that point. She had allowed the desire to grow so strongly that she felt like she couldn’t say no.


When I read this story there’s a difficult confession I have to make and I hope you can make. That is, if I were there in the Garden of Eden I would have done the same thing. I’d like to say that’s not true. I’d like to say that I would have loved God enough to say no to Satan. But Adam and Eve were there as representatives of us all. They were showing us what any of us would have done in any situation. So we can’t blame them for our sin. We can see in them the cause of our sin. And it led to the always ultimate result of sin…our final D-


5. DEATH

Satan says, “You won’t die!” and they take a bite. I don’t know about you, but if I was there that day in the Garden, I would have thought “If I take that bite am I going to fall over dead? What’s going to happen here?” But they didn’t just fall over dead. The died. Spiritually they died. All of a sudden a separation came between them and God. And they were going to face physical death like they wouldn’t have before. So immediately death came.


Romans 5:12 says:


Sin came into the world because of what one man did, and with sin came death. This is why everyone must die—because everyone sinned.


Not only would they die but all their children and their children’s children and their children’s children’s children would die. I look at this story and I see with some humility here that I would have done the same thing. But I also want to learn from this story. How could they have said no? How can you and I say no to the temptations that come into our lives? Because I am here to tell each and every one of you, without a shadow of a doubt, that without the power of Christ, it’s impossible to say no- but because you and I have the power of Christ we can learn from this story about how to say no.


How can we say no to temptation? It’s more than willpower. Kind of like me looking at that piece of chocolate cake and trying to use MY willpower to say no. The way that I respond to doubt and deception determines whether or not I will create a desire that provokes a decision that leads to death. That’s the process. The question is when do you handle temptation? You don’t try to handle it at the point of desire. If there are two kids parked in a car in the middle of nowhere, and then they decide to pray “Lead us not into temptation.” That may not be the right time to pray. It’s probably too late.

If you’re anything like me, you are probably sick and tired of desire coming into your life as a believer that you feel like you can’t say no to. You think, “How can I stop it? How can I have enough will power to say no?”


The teaching of God’s word is to start early. Start at the point of doubt. Start at the point of deception. Don’t go to those places where you know you’re going to be tempted. Don’t go to that party where people will be drinking and doing drugs. Don’t go on that date that may result in you making a bad decision. Don’t go in that car where the driver has been drinking. Don’t allow those thoughts to spin out of control in your mind. Talk to somebody about it. Talk to a trusted friend. Talk to any leader here tonight.


That’s not the end of the story. In Genesis 3:7-13 we see that sin leads to something. They do three things right away:

1. They sew fig leaves

2. They hide in the bushes when they hear God coming

3. They start pointing fingers at other people.


Same kind of things we do today, everyday. We sew fig leaves – we cover up. We hide in the bushes – we hide out. We point fingers at one another – we put down. That’s how we handle sin, how we deal with sin.


We sew fig leaves, cover up. That’s shame. That’s one of the human responses to sin. Shame.


We hide in the bushes, we hide out because of our fear. Fear is the second human response to sin.

We point fingers, we put others down. That is blame.


Shame, fear and blame. That’s what happens when we sin in our lives. Shame – nakedness. They noticed that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves for themselves and they covered themselves up. They were ashamed of their own nakedness. For the first time in their lives they were self-conscious. For the first time in their lives they were worried about what God thought of them. Shame had come into their lives.


They had fear. First they made fear by their sin and then fear began to make them. It began to make them act in certain ways and respond in certain ways and move in certain directions. It became their master.


Then came blame. This famous story of Adam and Eve and Eve and the serpent. God comes and says, “Adam, what happened?” and Adam says, “God, I'm going to be real honest with You. She made me do it!” It goes right down the line, “Eve, what happened?” “God, it was the serpent who made me do it. It was his fault.”


It’s so easy to blame someone else for my sin. Isn’t that true for you? It’s so easy to blame somebody else. It’s my boyfriend’s fault. It’s my girlfriend’s fault. It’s my teacher’s fault. It’s my parent’s fault. It’s my sister’s fault. It’s my brother’s fault. It’s Derek’s fault. It’s Bob’s fault. It’s Matt’s fault. It’s Pastor John’s fault. It’s Barak Obama’s fault. It’s President Bush’s fault. And somebody else may have contributed someway to the sin that’s in your life but it’s there because you chose it. No matter who invited you to do it, no matter who hurt you and made you do it, the truth is you and I just have to face up to it – “I chose to do it.” Even though I live in this terrible world, it was my choice. We need to get past the blame.


And, in the end, God’s relationship with Adam and Eve changes. God comes into the garden in the midst of this shame and blame and fear that’s going on and God calls out to the man.


“The man and his wife heard the sound of God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. The Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?"


It’s the first question of our faith. Most other religions besides Christianity – which isn’t a religion by the way- it’s a relationship – begin with the questions, “How can I find God?” but Christianity begins with God coming and looking for us. That’s our faith - that God came to this earth to look for us and He started in the Garden of Eden. He calls out “Where are you?” and their relationship immediately begins to change.


Then God did an amazing thing…


“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and He clothed them.”


At first you might be thinking, well, of course God made them garments Bob- they only had fig leaves for goodness sakes. But I don’t think that’s why he made them garments. I think God made them garments because they were ashamed. Ashamed because they had sinned. So God comes and He makes them garments to cover them up and the only reason they needed those garments was because they’d sinned.


Jesus Christ came and died on the cross to forgive my sins. That’s grace. That’s Jesus making garments of grace for me. I don’t deserve it but He makes them for me everyday, anyway.


To some of you, God is ready to come to you, right now, with those garments of grace and say, “Here. I know you’re embarrassed. I know you’re ashamed. I know you gave in to temptation. But’s OK. I love you. Take these garments, and cover yourselves up. I made them for you because I love you and I don't want you to fell ashamed.”


But you’re saying, “God, it was my fault. It was my fault that I did it. You don’t have to do anything for me. Just keep the garments. I’ll work this out by myself.” Even some of you who are believers. Maybe you’ve been believers for a long time but you’re rejecting God’s garments of grace because you feel too ashamed to take them, that you’re not worthy. Of course you’re not worthy and neither am I. But grace is all about being able to let God love you despite the fact that you’re a sinner.


Tonight some of you just need to hear this. Take the grace that God wants to show to you. Put those garments on and live the rest of your life with a sense of God’s love and a gratefulness for His grace that could only come because He has given something to you that you could have never earned by yourself.


Two things I would ask that you do next week and then we're done-


1. I encourage you each day this week to pray, “Lord, lead me not into temptation.” Many times we wait until we get into temptation and then we pray, “Lord, lead me out of temptations.” But Jesus taught us to pray in a different way – “Lead me not into temptation.” You’re never going to outgrow temptation as a believer. Jesus was tempted and He was perfect. We will never outgrow temptation. It’s impossible. But we can begin to have daily victories over temptation. Start each day of this week praying, “Lord, lead me not into temptation.”


2. Put on God’s garments of grace. Stop holding yourself accountable for something Jesus forgave you for when He died on the cross. Stop playing God. The garments that He sewed for Adam and Eve from the very beginning was to show grace to us in our sin. The cross is the clearest symbol, the most powerful symbol that God could have ever given. When God forgave you of your sin, He took that sin and put it as far away as east is from west. The Bible tells us that he threw it in the deepest part of the ocean and it sank. It’s to be remembered no more. God has forgotten it. And although you may remember it, I encourage you each time you remember it, put on God’s garments of grace again. The way you do that as a believer today is picture the cross and you recognize that Jesus died for this sin. You may have to picture the cross 1000 times tomorrow if there is a sin you’ve been struggling with for a long time in your life. It maybe 900 times the next day, then 700, 500, then once a week, once a year. That’s the way you begin to put on God’s garments of grace.


Prayer:


Some of you right now just take a deep breath and say, “Jesus, I don’t deserve it but I accept it. I am forgiven. I can never make up for my sin. That’s why You went to the cross. Lord, tonight, I'm deciding to stop being God and to receive Your forgiveness. Thank You for Your grace.”


Then together, Lord, every one of us wants to pray this prayer. We look to You in our hearts and say, “Jesus, as You taught us to pray lead us not into temptation.” Thank You for Your grace God. In Your name we pray. Amen