God Covers Us

Well, I am so glad you guys are here this morning.

It's uh it's been an amazing start to our year, and today we get to officially kick off something that we we did a brief overview of last week called the whole story.

And so we are taking the rest of this year and we're going to cover the entire story of the Bible.

And so last Sunday we walked you guys through it.

We've broken the story of the Bible down into 14 different series, and we're gonna spend the next 11 months going through each of those, going through Genesis all the way to Revelation, and uh we'll have to keep a steady pace, all right?

We'll have to keep a steady pace.

But here's what I'm so excited about God's word.

Fred talked about this last week.

What makes it so special?

Why do we even call it God's word?

It is it is revelation from God, and I don't use that word revelation in like the end of the world sort of sense, okay?

God reveals things about Himself and about life and about us through Scripture that we just can't observe on our own.

Because left to our own devices, that's the best we can do most of the time.

We just observe.

But God reveals things to all of us through Scripture.

And I know that whether you're a novice to this or you're like, man, I know God's word, I've I've studied, I've been in church for a long time, I know God's gonna show you things you've never seen before.

And you'll you'll see Jesus maybe in ways you haven't seen before, and all of us are gonna grow a lot as we go through the whole story this year.

And we get to get that started today.

And so here's where I want to start.

This is this is, I think, what makes sense.

We're gonna start in the beginning.

Right?

It's pretty obvious, it's not hard.

Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, interestingly enough, this is a bit of a sidebar, but this will be quick.

It's it has a purpose.

Um, about eighty years ago, this statement in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth would have been extremely controversial.

And not because of the word God, but simply because of this phrase in the beginning.

Because eighty years ago or so, uh, the academic world had a consensus, and that consensus was that the universe as we know it never had a beginning.

The universe had always existed, it had always been here.

So the academic world would have looked at the very first words of scripture, the very first words from the Bible in the beginning, and said, You silly religious people, the world never had a beginning.

And then that changed 80 years ago because all of these scientific discoveries happened about midway through the last century that showed that the universe in fact did have a beginning.

And so the scientific community, the academic world, changed its tune and said, you know what, okay, hear us out.

In the beginning, something created the universe.

And Christians were like, Yeah.

We've been saying that for a long time.

And so that there's actually this really interesting man uh named Robert Jasto.

Robert Jasto is not a Christian, not a believer.

He is an American, he's he's no longer living, he's an American uh planetary physicist.

He was a NASA scientist.

Uh in fact, he was the first chair of the NASA Lunar Project.

And so, if you're familiar with that history, all the Apollo missions to the moon, he was the chair of that for NASA.

And in light of all these discoveries, he he wrote this.

It's just really interesting.

He said, Astronomers now find they've painted themselves into a corner because they've proven by their own methods that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth.

And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces.

They cannot hope to discover that there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work, is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.

And he went on, he went on, yeah, you can clap for that.

That's cool.

That's a cool thing.

Robert Jasto, a professional smart person, that's what that is.

And then he said this, he kind of quipped humorously.

He said, For the scientist who has lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.

He has scaled the mountains of ignorance.

He's about to conquer the highest peak as he pulls himself over the final rock.

He is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Right?

And this is not a Christian man that wrote this.

I I bring this up just because I think it's so fascinating at the very outset of our study of the Word of God this year.

That even though these words began, the story of Scripture, these words, by the way, would have been written a little over 3,000 years ago.

And these words, the very first words of Scripture, have been proven true.

You know, it's amazing how God's word holds up.

It's incredible.

There really shouldn't be things that were written 3,000 years ago that are still relevant today.

That should not be the case.

That should be so outdated, so irrelevant, we should not be able to open an ancient document to which the newest parts, the newest parts, the most recent updates are 2,000 years old.

And have it speak directly into our lives today, and yet it does.

God's word is so, so powerful.

And it's been like that since the very beginning.

But of course, the story goes on.

And so we'll we'll read a little bit more in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

If you know Genesis 1, it's a poem.

It's an ancient Hebrew poem that talks about God creating the world, and and by day two or three, things are really starting to take shape.

In fact, day three, God says for the first time, Oh, it's it's really good.

He says, What he's made is good, calls it good.

And it keeps going, but things really take off when we get to Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.

Genesis 1:26

And here's what it says.

Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, all the small animals that scurry along the ground.

So God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

And then God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it, reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.

And then God said, Look, I've given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food.

I've given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the small animals that scurry along the ground, everything that has life, and that is what happened.

And then God looked over all that he had made, and he saw that it was very good.

Now, what makes this section so important in terms of the whole story that we're jumping into today is that it's in these verses that we actually meet the two main characters that we're gonna see all throughout the Bible.

We meet the two main characters.

We meet God, and we also meet not Adam with a capital A, but Adam.

See, the Hebrew word for human being is Adam.

And so when we we read Genesis 1.26, in our language, God says, Let us make humans to be like us.

In the Hebrew language, he would have said, Let us make Adam.

Means human.

Now, the last time I checked, I'm one of those.

I don't know how long it's been since you've checked, but I imagine if today you took some time and checked, you will confirm that you are, in fact, a human being.

You are this Adam made in the image of God, and what you're gonna find is that the entire story of the Bible, it is your story.

This is our story because it's the story of God and us.

It's the story of God and humanity.

And so this moment in Scripture is where God begins what we're calling the human project.

That's what we're gonna study this week and for the next few weeks, this idea of the human project, God creating people and beginning his relationship with us.

And we're gonna find that this is a project that God is extremely committed to, even though maybe, depending on how you look at it, he shouldn't be.

This is a project that God is committed to seeing through to the end.

Genesis chapter 2 gives us a little bit of a zoomed-in picture of when God makes us and how this relationship begins.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Genesis 2 7 says, Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground.

We're the only thing, by the way, Scripture says, is handmade by God.

He breathed the breath of life into man's nostrils, and the man became a living person.

Verse 15 goes on to say, The Lord God placed the man in the garden of Eden to tend and watch over it, but the Lord God warned him, You may eat freely from the fruit of every tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If you eat its fruit, you're sure to die.

Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper who is just right for him.

I love the fact that as soon as God gives the first dude any type of instruction, he's like, Oh, he's he will absolutely need help.

Um I'm making woman.

Right now, he has no hope on his own.

I don't even know what the I imagine that Adam was like, you know, nodding his head, and God was like, he is not processing this at all.

Uh hold on.

Gonna make make you some help.

And by the way, even that, like, so many details in scripture are so powerful.

Even that word, that help word, we tend to read that that word as a subordinate word, but in the Hebrew language, it's the word Azer, which means an equal partner.

In fact, that is a word used over 50 times in the Bible to describe God Himself.

And so He creates this amazing partnership, gives us very basic instructions, it says, now reign and rule, and then we get to the very last verse of chapter 2, verse 25.

It says, Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

This is amazing.

This is a miracle.

I just know because even in middle school, if if I had to play shirts and skins in a basketball game, it was like half naked me was a was full shame.

Half naked, full shame.

Shirtless, shame.

And they're like, no shirt, no shoes, no shame.

Life is really good.

They're in the garden, everything's great, everything's going wonderfully.

Doesn't stay that way for long.

So let's let's pull back for a second because we've met our main characters, and I want us to make sure that on the front end of us going through the whole story, we know who we're dealing with.

Let's talk about God.

We learned some things about God from this short section.

We learned, number one, God likes people.

Now, how many of you just I know it's we've been here for a while, you've been sitting down for a while.

Um, raise your hand if you've heard this before, if this is a familiar phrase to you.

Just show me that you're awake and alive.

How many of you have heard that the fact that God loves you?

Sometime in the like, God, God loves you, right?

That's almost become a cliche, even though it's amazing.

Because God, He loves you.

And He knows everything about you, and He still loves you.

Think about that.

I joke about this all the time.

In our world, a lot of times the love that we have for people is precisely the fact that we don't know them that well, right?

We love them out of ignorance.

And if we actually learned who they were, if we could hear their thoughts, if we could see what runs through their head all the time, we would love them far less.

God knows everything about us and he loves us.

That's amazing.

But have you ever stopped to consider the fact that not only does God love you, he actually might like you?

I guess a big deal.

In fact, Madison, who's our youth pastor, you guys know Madison, if you've been here for long, Madison will talk about the fact that that was one of the biggest light bulb moments in his faith when he realized that not only did God love him, like in that God loves us, and yes, he loves creation and whatever, he actually might like you.

It's not until he creates people that he says the world is very good.

That's the first time the very shows up in Genesis 1.

Right after we get here.

We have this special place in God's heart.

He loves people.

He actually likes us.

He made us to be like us.

It says that it teaches us that God values freedom.

That's freedom.

I ran out of space if you can't read it.

He values freedom.

I'm sure many of us who have grown up in church and you've heard the story of the garden, and there's the the two trees, there's the tree of life, and this represents this amazing relationship that God wants us to have with him, where we just go to him, we get what we need from him, and we're sustained by him.

But it's kind of like a childlike ignorance.

We don't really know what's right and wrong, we don't know the rules, we're innocent.

That's sort of the relationship that God desired.

And then he says, Hey, but there's this other tree I put in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I don't want you to eat from that.

In fact, if you eat from it, you'll die.

You may have asked the question if you grew up in church, why would you even put that tree there in the first place?

Like, what a terrible idea.

I have four kids and I can't imagine what it would be like if I left the house and I said, Hey guys, you can eat anything in the fridge.

But there's a cabinet above the fridge.

Don't open that cabinet.

Don't eat what's inside of that.

And then I left.

If I just put cameras in the house, I mean, like, all of a sudden, they would go from not even noticing that cabinet, they've never seen it before, it's been there their whole lives, they've never even noticed that it's there.

All of a sudden, just because I said don't do it, that cabinet would become the most important space on the planet.

And they would become obsessed with finding out what is in that cabinet.

You might you might ask, why would God even do that?

And we learn really early that God values freedom and choice.

He did not create us to be mindless, soulless robots that just followed him and obeyed him on some automatic setting.

From the very beginning, God gives us choice.

He gives us the ability to follow him, he also gives us the ability to reject him.

That's how much he values freedom.

We have choice from the very beginning.

God will never force your hand, he will never make you follow him, he will never make you submit your life to him.

That is a choice that he has given you.

He gave it to us from the very beginning.

We learn that God defines good.

God is the one who has the authority and the knowledge to look at the world and say, you know what, that is good.

Or to say, you know what, that isn't good.

Like he looks at Adam and says, It is not good for man to be alone.

God defines what is good, and God defines what is not.

These are just a few things we learn about God from the very beginning of the story, but there are things that we learn about us as people.

We are like God.

We were created to reflect God, to be his the the word, the language used sometimes is image bearer.

We're supposed to bear the image of God, to reflect God, to kind of look like God, resemble him in this world, and we do in so many amazing ways.

Like, think about how creative we are.

Every single person in this room is unbelievably creative.

Because I know this, like, think about fear.

Think about all the creative ways you've imagined something terrible happening to you or the people around you.

That's creativity.

Like, we can think of some some scary stuff really fast.

There's an interesting development in the last really year or so of you may have seen this, but a lot of artificial intelligence is starting to really like come to the forefront.

And a lot of people start getting real nervous because you've seen the Terminator movies and you know how the story ends, okay?

But we're not there yet, okay?

It's all good.

But there's these programs now that can generate artificial intelligence-designed art.

And it's art that has never existed before.

You go on, you put in some prompts, and you get art, original artwork that has never existed, created by this AI.

There's this one program called Midjourney.

We played around with it a little bit in the last week.

Um, and so the human project, that's the series that we're in right now, the very first part of Genesis.

So we're like, let's create some art pieces called the Human Project.

Let's see what this thing creates.

So the first one we got on, and we were like, okay, we had a lot of details.

Like, we want a painting, we want it to be really realistic, we want a human being being formed out of the dust, we want to see bones, hyper-realistic, and this is what it created.

We'll look at this for a second.

Uh, it made this in a minute, by the way.

Yeah, one minute.

And we were like, well, that's cool, but it's a little dark.

Um so we're like, let's let's go back to the drawing board.

Let's create, and we put in a lot of words like cartoony, humorous, bright colors, um, human being being made in a factory, and this is what it created for us in another minute.

Okay.

Interesting.

Again, it made that in a minute.

And then we were just playing around with it, and we said, okay, how about a human being being formed from the dust, but do it in the style of uh Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.

And this is what it created in a minute.

Isn't that cool?

Now, here's what's amazing about that.

We look at that and we go, some of you are panicking right now.

Like, you're like, I don't want to live on Earth anymore.

I want to go somewhere else, right?

The only reason that it can create things like that is because it has studied all the things that we've created.

It's pulling from everything that we have ever created, and it can read it and look at it and interpret it.

And here's what's even mind-blowing to me, at least, like theologically.

I geek out on this stuff.

God created us, He gave us the capacity to create something.

We've actually gotten to the point where we've created things that can create things.

That's amazing when you think about it.

Because we're made in the image of God.

We are the only part of creation that can do that.

This is just us being like him.

We we create, we make things.

Things that don't even need to be made.

We just we make them.

Because we are like God.

We have a purpose.

He created us to reflect him and to reign and rule over this world.

What an unbelievable purpose.

I mean, stop for a moment and recognize that is your purpose.

And whatever, whatever small corner of God's world that you have influence in, you have the ability in that place.

Whether it's your office, whether it's your home, a classroom, wherever you might be, you have the ability in that place to reflect God and to run things in such a way, to influence things in such a way that people see what God is all about.

You have an unbelievable purpose.

God from the very beginning makes us special.

We're the last thing he makes in his story, and he gives us a purpose to reign and rule over all creation in such a way that reflects him.

And here we are today, we're still doing that.

Those of you who are parents and you're raising kids, you're you're molding another generation.

You're trying to make them in the image of what you hope to be, a healthy adult human being with a functioning brain and the ability to make good decisions because you want them to reflect who they are, who they're meant to be, to be like God.

It's incredible.

We have such an amazing purpose, so much bigger than what we often describe our purpose as being.

But we are not perfect.

We are like God, but as we learn in the next part of the story, we are not God.

There's a big difference between being like God and being God.

And we go to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It begins by saying that the serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.

One day he asked the woman, Did God really say that you must not eat fruit from any of the trees in the garden?

And she responds, and right away it's over.

Because if you find yourself talking to a snake, you've already lost.

Like it's it's done.

You the right response is just nope, and you walk away, not doing that.

And look, the serpent, like this is this is illustrative language, right?

This is always indicative of Satan.

And could he have been in the form of an actual serpent?

Sure, why do Eve not seemed to be bothered by that?

I don't know.

Maybe that's the thing that happened.

I'm not really sure.

I wasn't there.

But she finds herself having this conversation with an enemy.

And she says to him, after he twists the word of God, of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden.

It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we're not allowed to eat.

God said, You must not eat it or even touch it.

If you do, you will die.

You won't die, which is a lie.

The serpent replied to the woman, God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.

Now, here's the amazing thing.

We were already created to be what?

Like God.

And so here we have this serpent tempting us, saying, Hey, if you do this, you will be like God when we were already created to be like him.

Sometimes our enemy tempts us with something that we already have.

If we would just stop and think about it for a moment.

But it says the woman was convinced.

And by the way, men, if you get mad at Eve in this story, Adam's there the whole time.

He's just not even saying a thing.

He's just like he's just doing this.

I mean, I'm not dogging on men, because I'm one of you.

Um I'm just saying we don't really have anything to say in this scenario.

The woman was convinced, she saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her.

So she took some of the fruit and ate it.

And then she gave some to her husband, who was with her.

He has said nothing up to this point, and he ate it too.

And at that moment their eyes were open, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness, so they sewed some fig leaves together to cover themselves.

Now, there's a lot that happens right here.

And there's a lot that we still see happen in the world.

There's this moment where they're convinced by the lies that they've heard, they see something that looks good to them, even though God has said not to do it.

God is the one, remember, He's God, He's the one who gets to define what is good and what is not.

But in this moment, Adam and Eve, they look and they see that fruit and they go, you know what, it looks good to us now.

It looks good, it looks delicious, and well, if it looks good to us, it must be.

So we're gonna take it for ourselves.

This is a moment where we as people, for the very first time, did something that we do all the time now.

We decide for ourselves what is good and what is not.

That is the way our world operates.

Operates.

The main justification for most human beings' behavior on a daily basis is simply, but I want to.

And we come up with all kinds of more intellectual sounding versions of that.

But most people's justification for their behavior, for the decisions that they make, even if those decisions go against standard human morality or the standards of Scripture, is like, yeah, I know, but I really want to.

I really, really want to.

Like it looks really good to me.

I really, really want to.

And man, if I want to, if I think it's good, if it looks good to me, then surely it must be good.

And that's just us being like Adam and Eve deciding that we will be the ones to define good and evil for ourselves.

And we're not good at that because we're not God.

Things get really messed up when we decide we'll be the ones that define what is good and what is not.

So we eat from the wrong tree.

And guys, we we've all done it.

We do it all the time.

We eat from the wrong tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It's like it's us deciding, hey, we'll figure it out for ourselves.

It's religion.

Like we say all the time, and if you're new to his hands, this might sound confusing, but but one of the things we say pretty often is that this is a place that's about Jesus, not religion.

By religion, we don't mean the reverent worship of God.

I mean, we do that all the time.

We live that.

We mean this system of rules and regulations that we've created to try to figure out how we can be in the right in our own eyes when it comes to how we stand with God.

That is the wrong tree.

That is obsession with right and wrong, good and evil, and the rules and trying to define yourselves by that, and we're just not good at that.

We were never meant to play that game.

And when we play it, we lose.

Because Adam and Eve look at the fruit, it looks good to them, they eat it, and then do they feel good?

Now immediately, what's the emotion that they feel?

What's the feeling that comes over them?

Shame.

Shame.

They felt shame.

And human beings do not like to feel shame.

Like there are certain certain things that we feel that we can sort of just absorb and deal with, kind of shake it off.

Like you can feel frustrated and just get over it.

You can feel hurt and it'll be better.

But feeling shame is shame is one of the deepest, most difficult feelings to shake.

And as soon as we go against God, as soon as we stop trying to be like God and chose to be God, showing how imperfect we are, the first thing we feel is shame.

And here's what this results in immediately.

And this is a word I want to focus on for the rest of our time together.

Cover.

So it said that they felt shame at their nakedness.

And so they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

The immediate response in the human story to shame, the human project, the immediate response to failure is how can we cover this?

Now, it's so funny, again, this is you know 3,000 plus years old, and here we are today, and we still have we still have sayings, phrases in our culture today that reflect this.

Like, we all know what it means to cover yourself.

Like in the business world, maybe you've heard someone say, I'm I've got to cover my you know what, right?

It's it's not a good word.

I can't say it.

I can't.

But you you gotta cover yourself, you know, cover your tracks.

Cover your butt.

There I said it.

I said the bad word.

That's not the bad word.

Right?

Like if someone makes a mistake and they do something, and their first priority is not, I gotta make this right.

The first priority is I gotta make sure no one can pin this on me.

I gotta cover myself.

This is a normal human response to failure.

Like we all know that a cover-up is a bad thing.

When the government is involved in some sort of cover-up, that's that's a huge deal.

I researched this.

Cover girl is actually only the 17th highest grossing cosmetics brand.

It's not even in the top 10.

Because cover is not a good thing.

Cover bands and cover songs are almost never as good as the original.

This word typically is bad.

Cover, not good.

But have you ever had a situation where someone had to cover for you?

You found yourself in some type of struggle, some type of situation where you realize I cannot get myself out of this.

Someone's gonna have to cover on my behalf.

So I did, and I'm gonna tell this first time I've ever told this story on stage.

So usually I tell stories so often, I've been here for 16 years, I only have so many stories.

But this one I've never told on the stage before.

So I almost got expelled from college my junior year.

And the only reason I didn't get expelled is that it was a cover-up.

I had a friend, and it wasn't Drew, it wasn't Drew, the pastor in Turkey.

I can say that definitively.

Um, it wasn't Drew that covered for me, it was another friend of mine named Dwayne.

Here's the story.

So I went to a college in Kansas City, Missouri, and it was a fairly small school, and the nature of the college was such that about half of the students were independents, and the other half joined a fraternity or a sorority.

Now, I'm not saying that if you were someone who was in a fraternity or a sorority, you're a bad person.

But if you happen to live on my campus circa 2003 to 2006, and you were in a fraternity or a sorority, it just was a little much.

Okay?

That's all I'm saying.

So I'm not judging you, I'm judging the people that I went to college with.

I'm joking, I'm not judging anybody.

But I was an independent, and I was what's called an RA, a resident assistant.

Just out of curiosity, anyone else ever serve as an RA in college?

Just me, cool.

So um anyone know what that is?

You know what an RA is?

Okay, for those of you who don't, you're a hall monitor, that's what you are.

You're just a glorified hall monitor.

You're an older student who lives in a younger dorm, and you're just there to make sure stuff doesn't get too crazy.

And so I was a junior and I lived in the freshman guy's dorm.

I lived in the freshman guy's dorm for three years.

It was a lot.

And you know, when you're a junior and there's freshmen, you guys know that dynamic.

Some of you remember high school, right?

You just you're supposed to like, there's a pecking order, and it's very frustrating when the freshmen act like they're they're better than the juniors because they're not.

Okay?

They're just not.

Clearly.

So here's the here's what happened.

Every year, a number of freshmen would rush.

They would become pledges to the fraternities.

These are the guys that lived in the dorm that I lived in.

And once they decided to pledge, they would just get a little bit like, they just got a little inflated.

Does that make sense?

Like all of a sudden, as an RA, I'd be like, hey man, we need you guys to make sure that you know you don't do that.

They would just kind of look at you like, who are you?

And I'm like, I'm the RA.

I'm the hall monitor, all right?

I have no actual authority.

I can't enforce anything that I'm saying.

But I can write this little note, and you'll have to go talk to someone.

I don't know how, you know, I really don't know how it works, but whatever.

There would just be this like, these freshman guys would just get really, really into being in the frat, and and their level of treatment to everyone around them, especially those of us who weren't, was just, it was, it was rough.

It was rough.

And again, if you were in a fraternity sorority, I'm not saying you were like that, but my campus, that's how it was.

So we decided, man, let's have some fun at their expense.

This became a tradition.

And uh, and I was the I was the ringleader of this.

So here's what we did.

The school, a few years before I had gotten there, one of the frats had gotten in a lot of trouble for hazing.

You're not supposed to haze, but if any of you were in a frat, you know.

They haze.

And they haze hard.

But some some students had gotten caught in some hazing thing that got out of hand, and so the school was cracking down, and there was a strict no-hazing policy at my college, which just meant the hazing still happens, but we don't talk about it.

That's all that it meant.

And so we knew that the hazing thing was still a thing, and these freshman pledge guys were like really, really intense.

And so, my junior year, we wait until the middle of January, and in the middle of January in Kansas City, it is it is cold outside.

Like we're talking super cold.

And there was this freshman.

I don't remember his first name, but I remember his last name was Tebs.

Tebs, because we just called him by that.

And he was the freshman pledge class leader.

And Tebs, if you're listening to this, I don't know why you would be, but sorry.

Um, and so, uh, midnight or so on some random day, I call Tebs, pretending that I'm from the frat.

This is, by the way, young people, this is in a day when we had phones that were attached to our walls and they didn't have a screen, so it would ring and you'd be like, I wonder who that is.

And it was a big surprise every time you picked it up.

It was amazing.

Okay.

So here's what I do.

I call Tebs, call his room.

He picks up all disoriented because it's midnight.

He's like, hello.

And I just went, Tebs, I'm trying, I don't know what like the frat, I don't know how they talk to the pledges.

I assume it's intense.

And so he's like, Who is this?

And I said, Shut up.

And he's like, if she goes at you shut your mouth, Tebs.

This is I'm this is me talking, there's other guys in my room.

And I just said, Do you really want to be a?

And then I named the frat that he was pledging to, and he was like, Yes.

And I was like, All right.

Then you wake up every other pledge, and you guys get here in nothing but your boxer shorts in the next 15 minutes by foot, or you're gonna have the longest night of your life.

And he goes, but and I click, hang up the phone.

Okay.

So then we start hearing all this pounding, right?

Pound, pound, pound on all the doors.

And I walk out pretending to be like upset about this because I'm an RA.

And I pretend like I'm like half asleep.

I'm like, guys, it is midnight.

What are you doing?

Calm down.

And they're like, don't worry about it.

And so they all go running out in their boxer shorts, super cold weather.

They get back three hours later.

They are very upset.

They're like making all this commotion, they're talking about they're gonna figure out who did this, they're gonna they the phrase bust some heads kept being said.

So I walk out again and I'm like, guys, it is three o'clock in the morning.

What is going on?

And they're like, oh, someone messed with us and pranked us, and come to find out they had gone all the way to the frat house, and the frat guys were like, we didn't call you, but since you're here, and they had they had had a really rough three hours, you know.

And they're like, We got we're finding out who did this, and you know, we're not taking this.

And I go, guys, guys, guys, calm down.

I'm your RA.

This is what I'm here for.

So why don't you just come in my room?

Let's write down what happened.

I'll send it along.

We'll see.

We'll see if we can figure out who did it, you know.

But I I do know that the school's technology is such that we're not able to trace phone calls.

I I knew that.

I did, because I was in, I was in RA.

I knew those those things.

Hopefully, we'll figure out who did it.

I don't know, but this is why I'm here to help you.

And so they went back to their rooms.

Well, turns out, turns out, and this story does have a point, I promise.

Turns out, um, I guess a security guard saw them running in their boxers, and so that led them to think that the frats were still hazing, which they were.

And then the frat got talked to, but they were like, we didn't, we didn't do this, and someone else pranked phone called them, and they're messing with our guys, and so basically what happened is the administration decided we will find out who did this and we will make an example out of them.

And and I'm just gonna be honest, I was the prime suspect immediately.

Because everyone who went to that school, if you were like, who do you think would have done that?

They're like, Oh, that's Justin McTear.

No, like, not even a question.

And so people are trying to find out.

I live off campus at this point, so I'm just laying low.

I'm just kind of like not popping my head in, you know, that kind of thing.

And my buddy Dwayne, who's an honest dude, super honest guy, he gets called into the Dean of Students.

And Duane's really well trusted, super well trusted, very honest guy.

One of my groomsman to my wedding, lovely guy.

And they just looked at Duane and said, Duane, did Justin McTear do this?

And Duane looked at them and said, No.

Just flat out lied.

I could have just come clean and done the right thing, but I was young and it never even crossed my mind.

I'm just gonna be honest with you.

Didn't even occur to me to do that.

And Duane, who full who knew that it was me, just went against his nature and he covered for me.

And I didn't get expelled.

Now, someone from the school might hear this and take my diploma away, but I'm pretty sure the Statute of Limitations has passed.

It's been 20 years, okay?

It's been 20 years.

I can finally talk about this.

Get it off my chest.

I feel so good.

So, Tebs, I'm sorry.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where we need someone to cover for us because we're in a lot of trouble.

And it's so interesting because in this very first story of our failure in the Bible, what often gets focused on in the immediate aftermath of our failure is the consequence.

What's often called the curse.

And you can read this in Genesis 3, and there is a severe consequence for sin.

There always is, guys.

Sin always has a consequence.

And the consequence for this sin is that this perfect, unified relationship between husband and wife was going to be fractured, and it was gonna be this sort of power struggle, and childbirth is gonna be painful.

And he looks at Adam and he says, Man, you're gonna have to fight and work your fingers to the bone just to eke out a living.

Sin has consequences, it always does.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, and every single one of us believes that.

Even if we wouldn't say that we believe it, because we all know how sin, how selfishness destroys everything it touches.

The wages of sin is death, which is why if you break trust in a relationship and you lie, you see trust die.

You see friendship die.

You see love die because sin just kills whatever it touches.

And we so often focus on the consequence for the failure in this very first story of God and people.

But what we often forget about is the fact that God doesn't end with the consequence.

Genesis 3.21 says, And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.

God covered their shame.

The best they could do were fig leaves, which I imagine are uncomfortable, and they're gonna like get brittle and useless real fast.

And here's what happens.

I want you to think about this, because we're gonna see this as we we wrap up.

The very first story of human failure in the Bible ends with God, in some ways, like my friend Dwayne, going against his nature, as the creator and author of life.

And he goes out, I don't know what poor animal donated his skin, but God sheds innocent blood to cover our sin.

And he finishes this moment by saying, Here, your shame is covered.

And it's a picture of Jesus.

Jesus says in John chapter 5, you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me.

John 5 · chapter mention

We're gonna see that play out so many times as we go through all of Scripture this year, guys.

Everything's about Jesus.

I love the way our kids team puts it as they teach the Bible to our kids.

Everything either points to Jesus, looks like Jesus, or comes from Jesus.

And this is one of the first really clear moments in the Bible where we see a foreshadowing of Jesus.

We have these two people, and they've sinned, they've messed up, they've broken trust and relationship with God, and now they are full of shame.

And they feel exposed and ashamed.

And God covers their sin.

Innocent blood is shed as a covering of their sin.

Do you see Jesus in that?

He's right there.

Paul wrote in Romans 13 that we should clothe ourselves with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus has died on the cross.

What we celebrated is we took Lord's Supper this morning, because Jesus has died on the cross, our sins have been covered.

We are no different than Adam and Eve because we are Adam.

We are human beings.

And we are like God, but we are not God.

We have an amazing purpose, but we are far from perfect.

And we fall short all the time.

And when we do, we often feel ashamed, we often feel guilty, we often feel like failures.

And in that feeling, very often what we do naturally is we try to cover that up somehow.

We make excuses, we feel like we're a victim.

Maybe we turn to some addiction, some substance.

We get our phone out and we just start scrolling through to turn our brains off.

We binge watch whatever's in front of us.

We develop obsessions, we become obsessed with our jobs, we become obsessed with our bodies and trying to be like perfectly fit human beings.

I'm not saying anything negative to those of you who are in good shape, but some of you guys need to just stop.

You've won, you're done, you're good.

But like we become obsessed with success, we become obsessed with money, we become obsessed with sex, and all of that stuff is just us trying to cover the shame and the guilt that we feel because we are not at peace with ourselves, just like Adam and Eve were not at peace with themselves after they sinned.

But we don't have to do that.

We don't have to cover ourselves.

All of that stuff is just fig leaves because we have a God who is so good and he loves us so much that he died on the cross to cover us, to cover our sin, to cover our shame.

That's amazing.

So we have been covered.

And we see it play out in the very first story of God and people.

We mess up, we feel shame, there's a consequence.

There's always a consequence for sin.

But there's also a covering.

God covers your shame.

So practically speaking, what are you gonna do when you feel shame this week?

What are you gonna do when you fall short, when you inevitably, whether it's this week or next week, or next month or next year, if you're like an amazing person, when you pull an Adam and Eve, and you decide what is good in your own eyes, and you inevitably feel that fracture and that shame and that desire to cover it, what are you gonna do?

And the answer is rest in the fact that Jesus has already covered you.

You have been covered, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

He is perfect, he is spotless, he is blameless, and he willingly died as a sacrifice so that you would not be clothed in shame, but clothed in Christ.

You're covered.

From the very beginning of this story, we learn we are covered.

Whatever your greatest mistake is, I don't care if it's recent, ten years ago, still haunts you.

That doesn't define you.

This defines you.

The blood that was spilled on your behalf, that is what defines you.

You are covered, and we learn it right away in the story.

A God who creates us, and a God who covers us when we fall short.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you, Lord, for covering us.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for being our covering.

Because, Lord, we all mess up, we all fall short, we all sin, and we all find ourselves in situations where we we just cannot seem to shake it on our own.

We're fully aware of how short we fall.

We're fully aware of how far, Lord, we are from maybe what we ought to be.

And it can be hard for us, Lord, to actually believe that we are made in your image, that we are like you.

Because we don't feel that way.

But you teach us from the very first moments in our story with you that you are committed to us, that you don't cast us aside because we fail, because we mess up.

You're committed to us.

You love us, you like us, and you're willing to cover all that we need, Lord, all that we need covered.

You're willing to do it.

You've done it from the beginning, you do it all the time.

So, Lord, we pray that this week we would rest in the fact that we've been covered, that we would have peace with ourselves.

Because we have peace with you.

Thank you, Lord, for covering what we can't.

Help us trust that.

We love you, Jesus.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.