The Essence of All That's Wrong

Let me now invite Kelly to read to us from Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 to 7.

Genesis 3:1–7

Thanks, Kelly.

Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

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.

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.

Kelly read for us from the very famous story of the Garden of Eden when we read here about a talking serpent.

And in the New Testament, in the book of Revelation, John the Apostle tells us that this serpent is Satan who came to deceive humanity in the very beginning.

Now, this is a very famous story, and for Christianity, for Christians, we believe it's the explanation of everything that's wrong in the world today.

It comes from right here.

And sometimes people will come to the Garden of Eden story, and they will see a talking serpent and a garden and two trees.

And that the world was broken by eating fruit from a tree.

And they'll say, as modern people, what?

A talking animal?

These trees, this feels arbitrary.

This feels like a legend.

It feels like a myth.

And so I just want to say, hold on on that and press pause and come back next week.

Because next week I will talk about the serpent and the garden and the two trees a little bit more and why you can trust this.

So come back next week for that.

Today, I want to begin this series for a month in Genesis 3 by focusing on the main point of Genesis 3, 1-7.

And that's to tell us what happened to us, what's wrong with us, why we as human beings are broken.

And that's really the big idea here.

So let's think about that this week.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a series of detective stories in the 19th century about a detective called Detective Dupont, a Parisian, French detective.

And in one of the stories, there's a letter stolen from the queen's bedroom.

And the police think they know who did it.

And they go to the man's house.

And they ransack his house.

And they cannot find the letter anywhere.

And so they bring in famous Detective Dupont.

And as soon as he walks in the room, he sees at the entryway a rack of cards where the man kept his mail.

And right there at the very front of the rack of cards, on the top of the mail stack, is the queen's letter.

And he turns and he says to them, it was hidden from you in plain sight.

That's where we get that famous phrase.

And when it comes to the world, Simon was just praying about this, we look around and we say,

what is the reason, what is the cause for why we cannot fix our society?

Why can we not stop the next war from starting?

Why can we not stop the string of abuses that we're always discovering?

Why can we not stop the corruption in governments and businesses and corporate entities?

Why can we not fix our relationships and our families?

And we're always asking questions like that.

And I think the answer is hidden in plain sight.

And you can look today and say, it's me.

It's my heart.

That's why we can't fix it.

It's us.

It's humanity.

It's hidden in plain sight.

It's always been visible that no matter how good our technology becomes,

no matter how much education we give to people,

we can't stop these basic problems.

And it's right here.

It's in the human heart.

And this is what Christians call sin.

And so people today will say, they'll look at sin, a word like that,

and some people will be romantic about the concept of sin.

You know, they'll say sin is just that nice little indulgence,

the idea in the modern world that sometimes it's good to be a little bad.

And most people on the flip side, I think, in a modern city, in our city like Edinburgh,

will say this concept of sin, the Christian concept,

it's puritanical, intolerant, narrow position of traditionalism.

Right?

And actually, all the Bible means by it is that this is the word that just describes the fact

that we are not who we're supposed to be,

that we're broken from the inside out,

that we're not the people God made us to be.

That's all it means.

We miss the mark.

We have self-centeredness instead of Godwardness.

And so that's what this chapter is about.

What broke the world?

And the first answer we're given is, it's us.

It's us.

And so let's think about that this morning.

And here's my thesis for you.

I think it's fair to say, according to the Bible,

that you cannot really know yourself,

and you cannot really understand what's going on in the world,

what's wrong with the world,

until you've captured this,

that the problem is here.

In each one of our hearts.

And so, here's what happens.

How did the world break in four movements it broke?

With an attitude, a manipulation, a temptation, and an exchange.

All right, so let's think about those four movements.

First, an attitude.

If you look at verse 1, you'll see the serpent's more crafty,

the King James says subtle, either word, subtle,

than any other beast of the field.

And so he says to the woman,

did God actually say, or did God really say,

you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

So let me say that in a slightly different way.

You could read it like this.

The serpent is asking,

did God really say that you cannot eat of all the trees?

And so the serpent is not telling a lie here.

He's telling the truth.

Did God really say that you can't eat of all the trees?

And the answer is yes.

He did say you cannot eat of all the trees.

There is one tree you cannot eat of.

And so he's not saying a lie at first, not at all.

What he's doing is he's telling the truth,

but he's repositioning.

And what I mean by that is he's making the truth seem ridiculous.

So he adds one little word.

Did he really say you can't eat of all the trees?

Did he really say that there's one tree you're not allowed to eat from?

And you see the subtlety of the beginning of what's wrong with the world.

The subtlety is it's attitude.

It's an attitude.

It's snarkiness.

Did God really, did he really do that?

And it's the same way that you might sit around the water cooler at work

and your boss comes to a group of people

and maybe the team didn't quite get the job done exactly right.

And the boss says, can you guys go and fix this?

Can you guys go and take care of the business that you were supposed to take care of?

And the boss comes and he has every power and every right to do that

if he does it with respect, right?

But as soon as he walks away, somebody in the group inevitably does what?

Did he really just come and say that to us?

You know, immediately it's snark.

It's an attitude.

And what has happened in that, you see what the sin is?

It's repositioning.

And here's the reposition.

Is that when, as soon as Satan takes Eve's heart and gets her to snark at God like he does,

she has placed herself as the judge over God.

God is the one who gave the rules, but now, did he really say that?

Now, I'm now the judge over the person who said it to me.

The person who said it to me was seeking to tell me what to do,

but now, if I snark at them, I've become the power.

I've become the judge in the situation.

I've inverted that pyramid.

And in other words, he's trying to get her through this word,

actually, really, to say, did the creator of the universe actually just tell me what to do?

Did he really just do that?

Richard Dawkins, a very famous atheist of our lifetime,

in one of his books, he writes this,

The unhealthy preoccupation of early Christian theologians with sin.

That's the headline.

They could have devoted their pages and their sermons to extolling the sky splashed with stars or mountains

and green forest seas and the dawn choruses.

These are occasionally mentioned,

but the Christian focus seems to overwhelmingly be sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin.

What a nasty little preoccupation to have always dominating your life.

Now, the irony of what Dawkins writes here is he says,

the one immoral thing, the one sin that must never exist is to actually believe in sin.

So he believes in sin in order to condemn sin.

He thinks there is something immoral, and that's you actually believing in sin.

Right?

But you see, if you read this paragraph, if you read his books,

one of the things you realize is these are not arguments.

These are not arguments against God.

This is not, here's the ten reasons the cosmological argument doesn't work.

No, not at all.

What is this?

It's attitude.

It's snark.

And, you know, I don't want to point out Dawkins here,

though it's very apparent with him, but it's in all of us.

The attitude is in all of us.

Our problem is not arguments.

Our problem is our attitude.

Snark at God.

Did God really say?

And most of the time we see that come out in our relationships,

in the way we treat other people,

in the way that we say to other people in our lives,

probably the people we love most,

did you really just say that to me?

Snark.

Attitude.

It's the beginning of all that's wrong with the world.

And so what's happening here is a pyramid.

If you think of a pyramid, you know, traditional pyramid, triangle,

God, the maker, the creator is at the top,

and all of us creatures are at the bottom.

But as soon as Satan says, did he really?

What has happened?

Eve's heart, Adam's heart, who was right there with her,

has started to invert the pyramid and put ourselves,

put me at the top and put God at the bottom like a creature.

I am now, I have now become his judge.

Now, sometimes the theologians, they'll say this,

the commentators, they'll say, what is this posture?

What is this attitude in one word?

And I think in one word you could say it like this,

it is ingratitude.

So it's the attitude that begins to say,

God the maker is not actually good.

God the maker, he's, you know, did he really,

he's withholding something from me.

What is he withholding?

That's the beginning of all sin, an attitude.

Now, secondly, and we can do the next two very quickly,

because they're really just the development of the attitude.

And secondly, it's manipulation.

So if you look down at verse three, you can see what happens.

Verse two and three, the woman says 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.

Now, what's happening here is we see very subtly,

and you've got to pay close attention to see this,

but the snark, the attitude is starting to grip hold of Eve's heart.

And the way you know that is because of a very common practice

maybe you've experienced.

I've never experienced this.

You'll know why I'm joking in a second,

but have you ever been in the kitchen,

in an argument with your beloved,

or your friend, or your sibling,

your partner of any kind,

and you know that you have an argument.

But what you do is you add one or two clauses to the argument,

one or two words,

just to twist the truth slightly

to guarantee victory in this argument, right?

You say, you know, you don't just say,

you did this, you say,

you always do this, right?

I don't know if you've had that experience,

but Eve here does exactly that.

We know that something's going on

because if you notice closely,

what does she say?

She said, yeah, he did give us a command.

And he said, you may not eat of it,

but she adds a little clause in verse three.

And the little clause is, you may not touch it.

And if you go back to chapter two,

you will find that nowhere did God ever say that.

And so what she's doing is she's manipulating the truth.

And Adam is right there alongside her,

letting it happen all the way.

And she's twisting it.

And you see that something has gotten a hold of the heart.

And she's starting to manipulate the truth a little bit.

And the attitude of ingratitude

has become a twisting of what God actually said.

And two great mistakes here happen at the same time.

One, the beginning of world history,

the beginning, the first moment in all of world history

where people tend to start thinking

the real God is a God of rules, rules, rules, rules,

rules starts in that moment.

That God is not a God of love.

That God does not love me.

That God is not out for my good.

God is just out to tell me what to do

and to control me

and to keep me away from things.

And he's withholding something from me.

And there it is, the twist, the turn,

the manipulation of language.

He always does this.

Doesn't he always tell me just to control,

to take away my freedoms?

And you see it happening right here.

And it's Satan saying to her,

God is a, you know, he's saying,

he's implanting a seed

in the lives of the first humans

that said God is a cosmic killjoy.

And you need to know that.

You need to believe that.

And that is exactly what's taking place here.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's series,

The Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth,

one of the great characters,

the most important character maybe,

is the ring, right?

And what is the ring?

What happens, the ring of power in his stories,

the ring of power,

when it's placed upon the finger,

we're told by Tolkien in the books

that it takes over the heart

and slowly corrupts.

And one of the interesting things in the books

is that Frodo, the lead character,

the protagonist,

he is able, unlike almost everyone,

in a surprising way,

to stand against the corrupting power of the ring

for longer,

though it will get him eventually.

And you see, the snark, the attitude,

did he really just say that?

Was the first moment in human history

where Satan slid that ring

on the finger of humanity.

And then the twisting of the language,

the manipulation of what God actually said,

is the unfolding of the corrupting power.

That now the heart is beginning to corrupt.

It's changing.

There's a transformation taking place.

And we see that even in the subtlety of her language.

And so that leads, thirdly,

to the objective temptation.

So if you look down at verse four and five,

but the serpent turns and he says to her,

you will not surely die.

God had said,

if you disobey, you'll choose death, not life.

But he says, you won't actually die.

God knows that if you eat of it,

your eyes will be open

and you'll be like God,

knowing good and evil.

So here, an objective external temptation

comes in through his words.

You will be like God,

knowing good and evil.

Now, the essence of the fall,

let me bring it to a head and say,

here's the essence of all that's wrong,

our title today.

The essence of all that's wrong

is the belief in the heart

that I, we cannot trust God.

That he is not good

and that he does not want our good.

That's really what took place here in this moment.

And again, it's not an argument.

It's not,

what's wrong with our hearts,

it's not that we've been convinced

that the problem of evil

and the cosmological argument

doesn't work

and that all the arguments out there

intellectually don't work

and so we don't believe in God.

The issue, that is not the issue.

The issue with all of us,

disbelief in God,

our unbelief,

the issue is attitude

that says,

I cannot trust him.

That's the real issue at the heart.

And so what Satan does

is he says to her,

he says to her,

it's not just that,

it's not just that you will be like God.

He says,

you will be like God,

but it's not just that you'll be like God

knowing good and evil.

What is he tempting her with?

What is he asking her to believe?

And this is it.

He is saying to her,

it's not just that you will be like God,

but you will be God-like.

You know, when Satan said,

look, if you disobey,

if you reach out and you take and you eat,

what should Eve have said

in that moment to him

when he said,

you will be like God,

she could have said,

I already am like God.

God made me in his image.

He gave me harmony and peace

in a garden and a home

and a life of joy

and righteousness and glory.

I'm like God as much as I can be.

But what he's saying is not,

you will be like God,

but if you eat,

you will become God-like.

And so he says,

there is one thing

God does not want you to know,

and that's that

if you will just reach out,

you will eat.

You will be like him

knowing good and evil.

And so this language

of knowing good and evil

is tricky for us

as modern people,

but this is actually

just a Hebrew euphemism,

and it's a Hebrew euphemism

for wisdom.

So we say,

like God,

knowing good and evil,

what exactly does that mean?

It just simply means

you will have the wisdom,

the status of God.

You'll have the mind of God.

You'll have the divinity of God.

You will be like God

and being able to know

as much as God knows.

In other words,

he's saying the very secret

that he's holding from you

is that he doesn't want you

to know that if you eat,

you will be equal to

or greater than him.

You will be God.

You will be able

to define yourself,

your own life,

your own way.

You'll be able to say,

it's my choice

who I'm going to be.

It's expressive individualism

of the ancient world.

That was the real temptation.

And Adam, Eve,

both in this moment

begin to believe

God is not a giver of gifts.

He is hiding the truth from me.

He is power hungry.

I've got to take things

into my own hands.

I've got to define

who I'm going to be

with my own life.

And so the exchange.

In verse 6,

Eve,

fourthly the exchange.

She saw that the tree,

notice the sight verbs,

she sees the tree

is good for food.

She sees that it's a delight,

a delight to her eyes,

that the tree was desired

to make one wise,

to achieve this goal

of divinity,

of divine status.

So she takes and she eats

and she gives some to Adam as well

who was with her all the way.

Now, when it says that

she saw that it was good,

you've heard that language before

if you've read the Bible so far.

In Genesis 1,

seven times,

it says that God made something

and then what?

He saw that it was good.

And now she looks out at the tree

and she saw that it was good.

What's happening?

Moses, the writer,

is taking the language of creation

and trying to show you

Eve in this moment

believes that she's becoming

a creator.

She saw that it was good

just like God saw

that His creation was good.

She sees this really can

make me my own person.

I can be a creator.

I can be like God.

I can take divinity into my life.

And so this great reversal

takes place.

We could call it

an exchange takes place

where in this moment,

Adam and Eve choose

not to be creatures.

They seek to be the creator.

And in that moment,

the total undoing

of all of humanity takes place.

Everything is broken.

You might look at this today

and say,

what in the world is wrong

with picking fruit from a tree?

It feels incredibly arbitrary.

Why would God say,

don't eat of a tree

or you're going to break

the whole world?

And I'll say a little bit more

about this next week.

Let me just say this now.

These two trees,

the tree of life

and the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil,

this tree of wisdom,

they're there as a choice.

We might call them

with a little lowercase s

like sacraments,

signs, symbols,

true historical realities,

physical entities

pointing to something

bigger and greater

beyond themselves.

And what is that

that they're signaling?

What are they signing?

And it's simply this.

Look, you come to a passage

like this and you read through it

and you say,

there is so much mystery here.

There's so much I don't know.

There's so much I don't understand.

Yes, you've got to just

take what you're given.

And when you take

what you're given,

what are you being asked

in the tree?

Not don't eat of the tree.

What are they being asked?

In the infancy of humanity,

in the youth of humanity,

the earliest days,

they're simply being asked

to say,

I trust you.

I don't know exactly

what the trees are all about

and we still don't.

There's a lot of mystery here.

But what they're simply

being asked is to say,

I believe God made me

and I believe he's good

and I trust him.

And instead,

they chose to be the creator

instead of the creature.

And they exchanged

all that's good

with all that's wrong.

And in this moment,

they broke the world.

And so we could say

that the fall,

the fall,

that's what we call

this moment,

is pride that leads

to ingratitude,

that leads to an exchange

of creator-creature relations

where we said,

I don't want to be

the image of God,

I want to be God.

I want to be God.

Friedrich Nietzsche,

famous atheist

of the 19th century,

he wrote a book

called

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

And in it,

one of the characters,

Zarathustra,

who it's about,

he has,

boy,

a compelling moment.

He says this,

But to reveal my heart

to you,

friends,

if there is a God,

how could I stand

not to be God?

Therefore,

there is no God.

You see,

it's not argument,

it's attitude.

Did you hear,

he says this,

But to reveal my heart

to you,

my friends,

Zarathustra says,

if there is a God,

how in the world

could I stand

not to be?

Therefore,

there is no God.

And all the arguments,

I think,

that are out there

are from a place

where we actually

all believe in God,

but our attitude

is preventing us

from seeing it.

The snark.

It's at the bottom

of who we are.

And when we say,

I don't know

that God exists,

I think science

has replaced God.

That's not an argument,

it's an attitude.

It's a position.

It begins

with an attitude.

When we say,

every time we say,

the pleasure

of giving in

to all my lust

is okay,

what's going on

in that moment?

It's an attitude

of unbelief.

It says,

I don't think

that God's way

can actually fulfill me,

and so I'm going

to take it

into my own hands.

Every time,

boy,

this one,

I heard somebody

say this one recently,

it came close to me.

Every time we struggle

with anxiety

and worry

and we constantly think

things aren't going well,

what if things don't go well,

what are we doing?

We're saying,

boy,

every time I say,

I've got a plan

for success

in this local church

here,

St. Columba's,

and it's not going

exactly the way

I've mapped out,

what am I saying?

I'm saying,

I don't know

that God

is going to get this right.

As I heard

a pastor say recently,

you know,

I better take it

into my hands,

and that is

the attitude

of the garden,

the snark.

I do not trust him.

I'm not willing

to believe,

to trust

that God

has my best interests

at heart.

And so there's

an exchange of truth

for who we are,

made to be created,

dependent,

trusting the good God

for saying,

I want to define

who I am,

I want to be

my own God.

Boy,

let me reveal

my heart to you.

Zarathustra said,

is this you?

He said,

my heart is,

if there is a God,

then that means

I'm not him,

and boy,

that means

there is no God.

What can we do?

The solution.

We've got three more weeks

to really dig

into the depth

of what this means,

the consequences,

the hope

that's going to come

later in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And to think

really deeply about it,

but let me finish

today with this.

What can be done?

What is the solution?

Is there hope?

For this situation,

Adam and Eve

in the garden

exchanged

the harmony,

the peace,

the home

that we were made for

for something

far lesser.

For this broken world

that we now live in,

for self-centeredness

as a pattern of life,

for the fact that

because we all have

this attitude

deep down in our hearts

against God,

we all pretend

we're all gods,

and so we're in

a constant state

of anger

and discord

and war

and argument

with people

all the time

all around us.

This is the exchange

that took place

in the beginning

of human history.

Can we fix it?

Can we fix it?

And people have come along

and said,

here's what we can do.

In the 18th century,

we said,

if we can just create

better societies

fraternity,

brotherhood and sisterhood,

if we can give

better measures

of equality

in every way

across the board,

if our educational

work increases

and we really educate people,

then we can reach

a society

where we see

these problems

of self-centeredness

and brokenness

and corruption,

they'll all go away.

And so Karl Marx

came along and said,

you know,

if we get rid of classes,

if we have a classless society,

then that will finally

be the thing

that will turn it around.

And just before him,

a guy named Rousseau,

he said that,

you know,

the issue is adults,

not children.

And he said,

so if we could just

return everybody

to a state of

a wild infancy,

you know,

if we get rid of buildings

and societies

and we go back

to the woods

and we all live

in the woods together

and we live in a childlike,

animalistic state,

then that will fix the problem.

Every single proposal

that has been tried

led to World War I

and World War II.

Every single proposal

leads to where we are today.

The world is still broken

and bent and bruised

and we still struggle

with the same exact issues.

And that means

that what we need today,

what we all need today,

is an ability

to answer this question,

how can you be realistic

about the state of the world

and yet not become hopeless?

Right,

so people come at this

in two ways.

They start off young

and they say,

I'm romantic about the world.

I don't really think

it's that bad.

I don't really think

I'm that bad.

I think I'm generally

a good person.

And then life comes along

and the truth about the self,

what we're capable of,

comes out

and the suffering comes in

and a lot of times

romanticism gives way

to hopelessness.

And the question

that we really have

before us today

is,

is there a way

to look out at the world

and ourselves

and be realistic

about the truth

of what's wrong

with this world

and yet not hopeless,

not cynical,

not so broken by it

that either we snark

about everything

or we end up

in utter hopelessness.

And the answer

that Christianity gives

is to say this,

the world is broken.

I am the problem.

But because of the love of God,

it will not be that way forever.

And so,

at the beginning

of human history,

there's an exchange

between what should have been

and what actually is.

And in the middle

of human history,

there is a better exchange.

There's a better exchange

that came along.

And, you know,

we as creatures,

we put ourselves

in the place of the Creator.

So what did God do?

The Creator put Himself

in the place of the creature.

In the middle of history,

Jesus Christ,

the Son of God,

who is the Maker of the world,

became the image of God.

We were made to be

the image of God.

We rejected that

and so Jesus became

the image of God.

We tried to trade places

with God,

so what did God do?

God traded places with us.

We tried to take His divinity

so He took on our humanity.

We wanted Him to die.

We wanted Him to die

and so He came and died.

We went to Him

with pride and the knife

and He came

and He put the knife

to His own throat

in the middle of human history.

And you see,

the good news of Christianity

is not rules, rules, rules, rules, rules

because of your sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin

as Dawkins thought.

Instead, let me say it like this

as we close.

If you could just put yourself

for a moment

in the first century,

the day Jesus was crucified,

into the court setting

that Pontius Pilate,

Pontius Pilate,

he gathered all the people

in Jerusalem

and he brought Jesus out

and he brought Barabbas out

and there were two prisoners

and he said,

I will give you Jesus back.

You can choose here.

You can have whichever one

of these two people you want.

And in that moment,

what did the crowd do?

The crowd snarked.

The crowd mocked.

The crowd jeered.

And I was reading this week

an editorial from a book review

by David Denby

who wrote a book called Snark.

And Tim Keller pointed me

to this in one of his books

and this is what the review said.

Snark, jeering and mocking,

aims not just at refuting

somebody's position

but also at destroying

their cool,

erasing their effectiveness,

trying to get control of

and sully the person's image

in the public.

Opposing views are never treated

with respect

but instead with snarling disdain

and ad hominem mockery.

The internet has put snark

on steroids.

He says, David Denby says,

snark is the attitude

in the heart

that seeks to erase someone,

to destroy them,

that seeks to erase

and destroy a person.

In the middle of human history,

Peter says that every single one of us

snarked, sneered, mocked, and jeered

at Jesus Christ that day.

That we were the ones

who yelled, crucify him.

That we were the ones

that said,

if he can save himself, let him.

If he says,

if he really is God,

let him show it.

The attitude of the beginning

of all of human history

that broke the world

is the very attitude

that put Christ on the cross

and it was me.

It was you.

It was all of us.

That's what the Bible says.

And you've got to see

that in the beginning,

humanity,

we fell from grace.

Jesus Christ walked down the steps.

Jesus Christ came and chose.

You see,

we began with mockery,

with jeering,

with snark.

He chose to be mocked.

He chose to be jeered.

He chose to be snarked at.

In the middle of human history.

He who knew no sin

became sin for us.

He took our blows.

He took our jeers.

He took our mockery.

He became the chastisement

that would bring us shalom,

peace,

the peace of the garden.

And so,

in the beginning,

in the garden of Eden,

Adam and Eve

ruined the garden city

that God made as our home.

Jesus Christ was murdered

by our hands

and he was buried in a garden

so that at the moment

of resurrection,

the garden could become

our home again.

In the beginning of human history,

Adam and Eve

took of the tree

and cursed the world.

Jesus Christ,

in the middle of human history,

hung upon that cursed tree

in order to heal the world.

You see,

the gospel is the great reversal

of Genesis 3.

Everything that we did wrong,

Jesus came and took our place

to make right,

to heal the land.

And I just want to ask you this morning,

if you will,

for a moment,

look at the truth

about yourself,

about your self-centeredness,

about your struggle

with the snark,

the jeer,

the attitude

that begins maybe

in your experience

with other people

but extends all the way

directed at God himself.

And then you'll turn

and you'll look at the cross.

You can realize this.

My heart every day says,

my heart every day

says to my brain,

God does not love you.

God does not have

your best interests at heart.

God is not good.

And then I have to lift my eyes

and look at the cross

and see that Jesus Christ,

God loves me

to the point of death for me.

Every day,

I've got to look at my heart,

the truth,

and then I've got to look up

and look at the cross

and say,

heart,

look at the truth again.

God is good

and he loves you.

And he's going to heal the land.

And so I'll finish

with a quote

from John Newton.

John Newton

was the captain

of a slave ship

that traded slaves

off the coast of West Africa.

And he found God's grace.

God's grace radically

came into his life

and showed him

how big of a sinner he was

and how broken he was.

But it's not very well known

that John Newton

did not stop

in the slave trade industry

for a number of years.

until after he came to faith.

And he was a very broken man.

And later on in life,

he wrote a hymn

that we now sing.

We're not singing it this morning.

I should have put it in.

But you'll recognize it.

He wrote later,

thinking about his ongoing involvement

in such atrocity.

He said,

Our sins are many,

but his mercy is more.

Our sins are great,

but his righteousness is greater.

We are weak,

but he is power.

Let's pray.

Father,

we confess our sins.

There are many.

Your mercy is so much greater

than what we've given you.

And so,

we confess this morning

our snark

and our attitude

that broke the world.

And we look for hope today

and we thank you for forgiveness.

And so right now,

as we sing,

we pray that the Holy Spirit

would turn our eyes

and our hearts

to the power of the cross.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.