In the Beginning | Genesis 3 | Micah Hales

Alright, alright, alright.

Alright, alright.

Y'all can go ahead and take a seat.

Okay, before I get started, who thinks they've got the best Australian accent here right now?

Other than Mac, obviously.

Who's got it?

Anyone?

Anybody want to be brave?

Brian?

I highly doubt Brian is the best in the screw.

No offense to Brian.

He's just, you know, I don't know if he's got the down on the down on to talk any Isaac, you want to try?

Okay.

All right.

Cam, you're you're calling him out.

I appreciate that.

That's called accountability here at Saul Company.

Um if we haven't had a chance to meet yet, uh, I see some new faces here.

My name is Mike.

Uh I get to serve here on staff with Saul Company.

Uh the Saul Company, as Max said, is the College Ministry of Ambassador Church.

Uh, we meet in the building that you're in right now on Sundays at 9 and 11 a.m.

We'd love to have you guys here.

I know a lot of you already come anyways uh to church with us.

But um this week is going to be our third and our final week in our In the Beginning series that we've been in.

Okay, and so we've been walking through Genesis one, two, uh, and now this week three.

And uh the first week, we answered the question of how did we get here on this earth?

Uh, week two, Jared preached on Genesis two and answered the question of who did God create and what were we, what were we created for?

Uh and now this week we're wrapping up the series in Genesis three, and we'll be answering our final question.

So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and open them uh to maybe the first, maybe the second, maybe the third page in your Bible.

Uh Genesis chapter three is where we're going to be.

If you don't have your own Bible, feel free to borrow uh the Bibles in the backs of the pews around you.

And if you don't have your own Bible and you want one, we would love to give you one for free at the Connect table.

You can take it home with you tonight.

We want you to take those.

Um so while you're turning there, very shortly, uh, I want to start with a question.

Okay.

And the question is, why?

Okay.

Why is anybody get that?

No?

Nobody, nobody gets that video.

A couple of you guys?

Why?

Why?

Do you know the preacher that does that?

Okay.

Anyways, you should look it up after this.

Uh, it's hilarious.

Um, much more funny than me.

But uh the question is, why is the world the way that it is?

Okay, why?

Why is the world the way that it is?

If you are alive in this room, you have asked this question before, right?

It doesn't take much experience in life to look at the earth and wonder, in the words of Michael Scott to Toby Flenderson, why are you the way that you are?

Right?

Why is the world the way that it is?

Like, why do oatmeal raisin cookies exist?

And why are they always next to a chocolate chip cookie?

Why?

Why is that?

I'll find you guys on this tonight if you want to debate, okay?

Why are there yellow jackets and wasps?

Has have anybody eaten has anybody eaten outside recently?

Like, nightmare, dude.

You have coffee syrup in your hand, and it's like the swarm is coming, and they're just they they just want to eat all that you have, right?

Why does work low-key kind of suck?

You know, why does work really not is not why is why is work not fun?

You know, why is that?

Why is it so hard to have kids and raise them?

That's a real question I'm asking right now.

Why is it so difficult?

Okay, I've got two at home.

Why do I do the things I swear that I don't want to do?

Why am I always hurting the people around me that I love the most?

Why is there suffering all around the world?

Like, why do people have to die?

All of these questions can be tied back to our question that we're answering tonight of why is the world the way that it is?

Okay, and there's a lot of theories that attempt to answer this question.

Okay, survival of the fittest, you've maybe heard before, right?

Or maybe fate decides what happened.

Or maybe, like for my Star Wars fans, the light side and the dark side, the Jedi and the Sith, and sometimes the Sith win.

Okay, no Star Wars fans in here, great.

Or my favorite theory, and not because it's true, is there's no meaning to anything, so just do whatever you want.

You heard anybody say that before?

Right?

All of these theories fall short in one way or another.

But there's one theory, and it isn't even really a theory, but it's a true and complete answer, and it's found in Genesis 3, where we will be camped out at tonight.

Okay, so hopefully that was enough time for you to get there three pages in.

If you got it, say got it.

You guys actually beat me there because it's hard to there's no flop when you get to the second page.

There's no flop here, so it's hard to like turn in your Bible.

Anyways, that's a preacher thing that you guys may or may not understand.

Okay, uh, Genesis 3, verse 1.

Genesis 3:1

If you got it, say got it.

There you go.

Okay, all right.

Uh now, the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

Okay, we're gonna pause right there.

Right away, we're introduced to this character who is called the serpent.

This is a real being.

Okay, and if you're anything like me, you're like immediately not a fan of this dude.

Okay?

Why?

Because I'm not a fan of reptiles in general.

Are there any reptile lovers in the room?

No, we're gonna do, we're gonna talk later, Julia.

We might, you might have a role here anymore.

Um, but a lot of, I'm just kidding, Julia's great.

I'm not gonna fire Julia.

I don't think I can actually.

Um, but a lot of the people over the centuries that have studied this passage have depicted the serpent as a talking snake, right?

Like my least favorite creature, probably that God made.

I don't, I can't think of one worse.

I've got a little beef with God for even making snakes.

But I, okay, don't name the awful creatures.

That we're we're all wondering why they're still here, okay?

We don't have to list them all.

You can ask God when you get to heaven, hopefully, if you guys repent.

Uh that's too early for the guess for the gospel tie.

That's my bad.

Yikes.

This got off the rails quickly.

Um okay, but here's a hot take that I have.

All right, maybe it's not so hot after you listen to this tonight, but I actually don't think that the serpent is a snake.

Okay?

Here, let me explain why.

This word for serpent in Hebrew, it actually points to something different than what you would think of as like a regular garden snake, right?

But it literally can be translated to shining one.

Okay, and the use here points to something that uses its speech in a cunning way.

So this is a being, the shining, cunning, as the passage puts it, clever serpent.

And we don't actually get an explicit proper name for this particular being.

It's just labeled the serpent, but we know because we have the entire Bible, this is only the second page, right?

We have the entire Bible after Genesis 3 that this being is actually Satan.

Okay, the prince of darkness, the devil, or the evil one.

You've probably heard these terms before, but he is a fallen angel, okay, one who rebelled against God and is now an enemy of God.

And as we see in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 14, Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11:14

Okay, so Satan, he's in the Garden of Eden, and he's disguising himself as an angel of light, and he's trying to deceive Eve and Adam that he is on their side.

Okay, he looks normal enough, nice enough, harmless enough to Eve that when he speaks, she isn't described as being startled or like questioning, like, what is this?

Why is this snake talking to me right now?

Have you ever noticed that?

Like, she doesn't, she's not startled at all when he starts speaking.

Okay, verse one.

He says, Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God really say, You can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Okay, so the serpent looks at Eve, disguising himself to look like an angel of light, and what does he say?

He says, Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Okay, that seems like maybe a harmless question on the serpent when we read it.

Okay, misinformed, not fully true, but mostly harmless, right?

Here's what's happening here.

Satan or the serpent, he's gonna give us our first reason for why the world is the way that it is.

You ready?

God's truth was twisted.

God's truth was twisted.

So the serpent, he didn't take the approach with Eve of asking, like, why are you even listening to God?

Like he doesn't question why she's listening to God, or just he doesn't just outright say, like, you should follow me instead of God, I have better things for you.

No.

He takes this half-truth of what God had said in Genesis 2, 16 through 17, and he manipulates it, he twists it.

Watch this.

You don't have to read it uh in your Bibles, but it's gonna, I'm gonna read it for you.

Okay.

Genesis 2, 16 through 17.

And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.

Okay, so the serpent doesn't use this like force them into submission tactic for trying to manipulate people.

But he uses the deception tactic instead.

And what's interesting about what the serpent says is that Eve initially does what she should.

She actually corrects his twisting of the truth with the actual truth of what God did say.

Okay, verse two, she says this.

The woman says to the serpent, We may eat from the fruit of from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, that's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said, You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.

Okay, so Eve actually gives the truth right back to the serpent.

Like she remembers what God had said and actually declares it back to him.

Okay, so the first deception attempt doesn't actually work on Eve.

So the serpent tries another angle, verse four.

He says, No, you will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman.

In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Okay.

He turns to outright lying to them.

His serpent, disguised as a good guy, is just straight up trying to get them to believe him from being right in front of them, the being right in front of him over God.

Like, don't trust God, trust me.

I'm right in front of you right now.

And then he says in verse five, in fact, God knows when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Okay, so there's another twisting of the truth.

He's trying to get them to believe that God is holding out on them.

Like you won't die when you eat the fruit.

You'll be just like him, and you'll know good and evil.

You'll be equal to God.

That's the promise that the serpent makes here.

So the serpent downplays the death that God has promised they'd get if they ate it, and he hypes up the knowledge of good and evil as somehow better.

Like the serpent knows that God will follow through on his promises.

He knows that even Adam will suffer exactly what God had promised would happen, and he doesn't care.

His sole goal is to destroy the human race that God had just declared in Genesis 2 as very good.

That's his purpose.

He hates humanity.

This angel of light who poses as someone who's on humanity's side is really trying to get humans to suffer and to stray away from God as much as possible.

It might be an emergency.

It might be the police.

He's a cop, but that's why it's funny.

It's Mormons.

I don't think they call you.

I think they still knock on doors.

Wow, we're off the rails again.

Thanks, Brian.

Um okay, so Satan, serpent, in the garden.

Okay.

His tactic with Adam and Eve, as we said, it's not brute force.

It's not trying to like force them into submission in the traditional sense we might think, but it's twisting God's truth.

Okay.

Remember, we're introduced to a cunning, creative creature here.

Okay.

He isn't going to just say things and try things that would just sound off all the alarm bells right away.

That's not his approach.

Okay.

He's going to trip twist the truth of God into something that it is not.

This is how he deceives.

This is how he still does this today.

And you want to know something?

His tactic actually works.

Verse 6.

Says this.

Okay, so Eve is full on deceived by the serpent.

And she takes the fruit.

We actually don't know that it's an apple.

A lot of people think it's an apple.

We don't know.

It could be it could have been a pomegranate, right?

She takes the fruit and she eats it.

God had literally just told them, You will die if you eat it.

But when the carrot of being equal to God was dangled in front of Eve, she took the carrot.

Okay, he says that you'll die.

And she looks at this fruit and she says, This fruit looks delicious.

And if I eat it, according to the serpent and what he just told me, this new intel that I have, I'm gonna have wisdom and be just like God.

She knew that God had told her not to.

Like she knew that she shouldn't do it.

But the fake carrot of being like God, being somehow equal to him, that is what won for Eve.

She was deceived by the lies of the enemy, and she believed the half-twisted truth of the serpent.

But where was Adam this whole time?

Right?

Off to the side, passive, like not saying anything, even though God had gave him the command first.

Okay, but Adam was the one who was first told not to do it.

Adam was the one.

He just sits there and he's silent when the death that God had promised was on the line.

He says nothing.

And his wife is being overtly deceived.

Guys, I just want to say, really quick to the men in the room, that's not biblical masculinity.

Okay?

If you have any questions about what biblical masculinity is, we have ambassador men coming up on October 10th.

You can sign up for that.

We'd love to talk with you more about that there.

Don't have time to do it today.

Okay.

But this is not biblical masculinity.

This is male passivity.

And this is not what we are called to as men.

Okay?

But both Adam and Eve fall prey to this twisting of the truth from the serpent.

And they eat of the fruit that God literally told them would kill them.

Okay, so what happens now?

Verse 7 says this.

Okay, a lot to unpack here.

First of all, when they sinned and they ate of the fruit of the tree that they weren't supposed to, they didn't immediately physically die.

Okay?

That doesn't happen right away.

Right?

Second, it says both of their eyes were opened.

This doesn't mean that literally they were just like walking around with their eyes closed the whole time.

Okay, it's not their physical eyes, but they had their spiritual eyes shut before this, in a sense.

Okay, all they knew was being with God and doing what he commanded them to do.

And it was all, as God said, very good.

Okay, that's all they knew, but after the fruit, they had their eyes opened to their evil, wrong decision that they had just made.

Okay, they realized that they had, as the Bible labels it, they had sinned.

Okay, for the first time in human history, a human being has actually gone against what God had commanded them to do.

This is not just any old sin.

This isn't just any old fib, but this is something that is much bigger than that.

It's the first sin.

Okay, why is that so important?

What happened when Eve and Adam both took bites of that fruit, it goes much deeper than a one-time mistake.

Okay, but it actually causes a chain of events and consequences that would far outlive the first humans.

And they lived a long time, like 900 years.

Scholars put this as original sin, okay, which the definition of original sin is just moral corruption that we all possess as humans, okay, that originates from Adam and Eve's act of rebellion that's passed to all of us in our inherented sinful nature.

The definition's not on the screen, I realize that's long.

But Adam and Eve sinned and it passed down to everyone.

Okay, that's original sin.

Original sin is why you can look at a toddler directly disobeying and hitting their sibling in the face.

It's a real story, right after you told them not to.

Okay.

My kids have got the sin nature, all right?

And they're adorable, all right?

But they are little sinners.

That's just true.

Okay?

Original sin is why you don't have to teach your kids to rebel against your parents, but you have to teach them not to rebel against their parents.

Okay, original sin is why people think that it's okay to hurt others, to steal, to lie, to kill, and to do all the things we know are wrong, but we do them anyways.

Original sin has been passed down from generation to generation, from human to human, ever since this very moment in Genesis 3.

As soon as they bit out of the fruit.

And right away, what we see is we see the immediate consequences of that rebellion unfold in our passage.

Okay, verse 8, it says this.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees in the garden.

Okay, so as soon as Adam and Eve eat the fruit, their eyes are open to their sin, and they hear, literally hear the sound of the Lord walking in the garden, and they hide.

Okay, can we just pause there for a moment?

God, God is walking in the garden with them.

They can hear his footsteps.

Okay.

I'd imagine normally, prior to Genesis 3, that's a good thing for Adam and Eve.

Like their creator is coming.

Their God who loves them and says that they are his most special prized possession, that's who's coming.

Okay, but this time it's not a fun visit for them.

Okay.

Verse 9, it says this.

So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, Where are you?

Like God knows the answer to this question.

He isn't playing some like super serious spiritual game of hide and go seek.

Like he knows where Adam is.

He knows that he is hiding, but he asks Adam anyways, why?

Because he wants Adam to confess what he has done and the sin that he has committed.

But Adam does not fully confess.

Verse 10.

And he said, This is Adam, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

Adam admits that he feared the Lord.

He was fearful of the Lord after he sinned, and that he knew that he was naked when he didn't know before.

Like he gets to dwell with God in the garden and happily participates in creation.

And as soon as he sins once against God, he hides.

He feels the need to cover himself when he did not before.

He feels shame.

But he still doesn't fully confess what he has done.

Okay, instead, he tries to hide and cover it up.

Verse 11.

Then he asked, This is God, who told you that you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Okay, God serves up an Alyop, full confession opportunity for Adam.

He describes in detail what Adam did, explicitly asking him, verse 12, the man replied, The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.

Okay?

Adam still, even after God tells him what he did, he still doesn't own his own sin and mistake and confess fully to God.

But he blames Eve, even though he passively stood by when Eve sinned and partook herself.

But Eve, when given the opportunity to speak and confess, she answers God like this in verse 13.

So the Lord God asked the woman, What have you done?

And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

So Eve realizes and tells God that the serpent deceived her by twisting the truth of God, and she confesses that she ate of the tree she wasn't supposed to eat of.

Like she finally says what happened, but she does not take ownership of her sin either.

And unfortunately for them, the damage of original sin was already done.

See, what happened was our sin, this is the second point here, our sin caused separation.

Okay, our sin caused separation.

Like Adam and Eve, they had been so close with God.

They were dwelling with him, living with him in the garden in perfect harmony in God's good creation.

And God, when he created Adam and Eve, he didn't create them as these like mindless robots.

Okay, he didn't create them to just do whatever God said to do.

He gave them minds of their own.

He gave them free will to make decisions and to take ownership of their lives with the decisions that they made.

Like he gave them the ability to choose to follow God and do good, but he also gave them the ability to sin and to go against God.

And before they choose to sin, everything is great.

God can dwell with them.

They can dwell with God because they had never sinned.

A perfect God and his humans, his most prized creation, dwelling in perfection.

But when Adam and Eve chose sin, the relationship between them and God would never be the same as it was.

There had to be consequences.

Okay, first for the serpent, verse 14.

So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock, more than any wild animal.

You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.

I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

Okay, so God, interestingly enough, he curses the serpent and he has to like remove something.

Okay, remember I told you I didn't think it was a snake, right?

He removes something.

He removes whether that's legs, arms, wings, something, and he tells the serpent that he will move on his belly like a snake all the days of his life.

Okay, if you were here last week, Jared talked about humans being created from dust and the insignificance of dust.

Now, God says to Satan, you're gonna eat dust the rest of your life.

Okay, that's what he does to him.

But even more than that, he places hostility between the serpent, Satan, and mankind.

Okay, and God actually foretells this struggle between humans and the enemy in Satan.

But most importantly, he foretells a coming savior that will take down Satan at the end of verse 15, but we'll more on that later.

Next, God doles out the consequences to Eve.

Verse 16.

He said to the woman, I will intensify your labor pains.

You will bear children with painful effort.

Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.

Okay, being fruitful in multiplying through childbirth, like they're commanded to do, it's going to be brutally painful now because of sin.

Adam and Eve's relationship, it's going to be strained now.

It's not going to be perfect, but rather it's broken.

Okay, last Adam gets his consequences.

Verse 17.

And he said to the man, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, do not eat from it.

The ground is cursed because of you.

You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

But you will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it, for you are dust, and you will return to dust.

The earth that was once good and fruitful and abundant is now cursed.

Labor that God had brought in to be a good gift of participating in the stewardship of his creation, it's now going to be difficult.

Work will be a literal grind and no longer just a joyful time of co-laboring with God.

Okay, and lastly, did you catch this at the end of verse 19?

He says, For you are dust, and you will return to dust.

Okay, there it is.

That's death.

That's mortality.

He's referencing how Adam was created from this seemingly nothingness of dust.

And now he's saying he's going to return to dust.

Like that's mortality.

That's the full life cycle in bodily form that doesn't seem to be present before, but it is present now.

Okay, these are the consequences of sin.

But the worst one, it's not even death in this world.

That's not the worst consequence.

Verse 22.

The Lord God said, Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out and take from the tree of life, eat and live forever.

So the Lord God sent him away from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.

He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.

Okay, a lot there.

But because of that first rebellion, humanity inherited not just a physical death, but something far worse.

Separation from God.

And they don't get to dwell with God anymore, but they're separated from him.

They're driven out from him.

Like this is by far the worst consequence of sin.

Okay, all they know is dwelling closely with God in paradise.

And now that's taken away from them.

All because of a choice to go against God and his word.

All because they chose to believe a twisted, deceitful lie of the enemy.

And now they face separation from their creator.

All they've ever known.

Now you have to imagine that Adam and Eve were thinking as they got driven out of the garden like, is there any way back?

Like, is there any way that we can return to Eden, to our perfect paradise with God?

Like, and when you read that last verse, it doesn't seem like that's gonna happen.

Okay, a flaming, whirling sword.

Okay, you don't want to mess with that.

I don't even, I can't even picture that in my head.

You don't want to mess with that, right?

A cherubim, if you don't know what a cherubim is, it's mentioned over 90 times in the Old Testament.

So if you read through the Old Testament, you've probably seen that word before.

Okay, here's what a cherubim is: it's the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the face of a human.

Like, I don't even know if there's a mythical creature to compare that to.

But this is the cherubim.

They're literally these terrifying guardians of the gates of Eden that were not to be trifled with.

Okay, God made it very clear that they are not going to get back to Eden on their own power.

Okay, that's what I want you to understand here.

They're not getting back in on their own.

But here's the thing: God doesn't just punish them with this like unbreakable curse on them forever and from ever returning to dwell with God.

Okay, they're banished from the garden.

But if you notice that God puts Adam to work outside of the garden, okay, God actually is gracious to Adam and Eve.

Okay, you may have noticed we didn't read through verse 20 and 21.

We're gonna do that now.

Verse 20, it says this the man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

Verse 21 the Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.

Okay, Adam names his wife Eve because it means the mother of all the living.

And like God doesn't kill off Adam and Eve and start over.

Right?

When they sin, they don't just die right away.

But Adam and Eve still have a job to do.

Eve is still the mother of all the human race.

She is still meant to steward her role in creation that God has given her.

Okay, her responsibilities have not gone away because of sin.

Adam is meant to be fruitful and multiply with Eve.

He's meant to subdue the earth and steward it well.

He's meant to be laboring and working for God.

That responsibility has not been taken away.

God even sacrifices animals, and he gives Adam and Eve their skins to wear for clothing when they try to cover themselves with a temporary solution of leaves and hide.

Okay, God by no means is giving up on Adam and Eve in the whole of humanity.

But God cannot be unjust towards them either.

Like God just can't let them come right back into Eden like they didn't just outright disobey him and take the risk of dying, anyways.

They chose sin, and now they have a penalty against them.

And the penalty, this is our third point, requires payment.

Adam and Eve, they can't just pay off God with something that they can give.

Because God gave them all that they have.

They can't give him anything that he does not already have himself.

They have nothing to give.

So what are they gonna do?

Okay, remember I mentioned that in verse 15, when God is cursing the serpent, that there would be a coming Savior.

Okay, God knows that we, as descendants of Adam that have this sin curse on us, we can't fully pay the penalty for our own sin.

He knows that.

But God also loves Adam and Eve and humanity so much that he could send them a savior who can.

And if God had treated us the way that we had deserved, he could have just scrapped the whole project.

Like he could have just wiped the slate clean.

He could have walked away, he could have started over.

Instead, because of that very same delight and love, that special bond between us and God, he made a way back.

Jesus is a way.

God didn't leave his creation to fend for themselves just outside of the garden, but instead he sends Jesus, who's fully God and fully man, down into his creation to take on flesh just like you and me.

Jesus doesn't disobey God.

Jesus lives the perfect and sinless life that we could never live.

He fulfilled every part of God's design that Adam and Eve and us all failed to keep.

And then he willingly, not begrudgingly, willingly took the penalty for our sin, your sin, upon himself, even when he didn't deserve it.

He absorbed the wrath that we deserved by dying a brutal death on the cross.

But here's the thing about Jesus, and this is why he's the new and better Adam.

Because he was able to pay the penalty, but he didn't stay dead.

Okay, if Jesus stays dead, none of us are here.

If Jesus stays dead, we're not gathering in this place.

But three days later, after Jesus was pronounced dead, seen dead by everybody, he walks out of the grave, resurrected, alive, like nothing even happened.

And what he did was he shattered the power of sin and death once and for all.

The curse that drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, Jesus paid for it in full.

And created not just a path, but he became the way.

And it's because of this, it's because of what Jesus has already done, it's finished, that our Creator God has opened the door to be fully reunited with Him.

We can get back to Eden.

But it's only through Jesus.

You don't have to clean yourself up.

I don't know what you're carrying in here tonight, but whatever you're carrying in, Jesus wants it all.

You don't have to fix yourself up to come before Jesus.

All you have to do is bring yourself and bring your mess and come before God and confess that Jesus is Lord.

Believe in your heart that God actually raised him from the dead, physically in bodily form.

Believe that he is Lord.

And when you place your faith in him, and only Jesus, there's nothing else.

There's no asterisk, there's nothing that comes after this.

When you place your faith in Jesus and Him alone, your debt that kept you from Eden is paid.

Your eternity is secure and you are welcomed right back into relationship with God, just like we were in the garden.

Your loving creator has made a way through Jesus.

So what do we do with all of this?

Okay, if Genesis 3 shows us the reality of our sin and our desperate need for a savior, how does that change how we actually walk out of this room tonight?

Okay, it's easy to hear this, but I want to give us three practical ways to live as we go from here.

The first is this stop hiding from God.

Adam and Eve tried to hide behind fig leaves and bushes when they sinned.

And so many of us walk around and try to mask our mistakes, our shame, our brokenness.

But the gospel means that we don't have to hide anymore.

Bring your sin into the light.

Confess it to God who already knows where you are.

Just like Adam hiding in the garden, he knows what you're dealing with.

He knows what you're struggling with.

Come to him.

Stop hiding and receive his grace.

Second, stop trusting in your own performance.

We spend so much of our lives trying to prove that we are good enough to make up for our failures.

Trying to pay a penalty that we could never afford to pay.

Your hustle cannot save you.

Trying harder will not save you.

Doing enough good will not save you.

Step away from trying to earn your standing and rest entirely in the finished work of Jesus.

You cannot work your way back to Eden.

The last is this step out of the cycle of the fall.

Okay, Genesis 3 in original sin tells us to shift blame, to point fingers, and to look out for yourself.

But as people rescued by Jesus, we are called to a different way of living.

We're not called to hide in shame, to point fingers, to shift the blame.

We're called to take ownership of our sin, to not half confess, but fully confess.

We're called to extend grace to other people, knowing that they also are going to sin and make mistakes just like us.

We need to walk in the freedom that Jesus bought for us and get out of the cycle.

And just imagine what would happen if this room tonight actually believed this.

Imagine if we stopped hiding in our shame and running from our creator, but instead we lived like people who have been completely forgiven and brought right back to paradise with God.

Like imagine if we stopped pointing fingers and blaming others for our brokenness, and instead we took radical ownership of our lives under the grace of God.

Imagine if the freedom that we would experience if we stopped trying to pay for our own sins through good deeds or performance, and we simply rested in what Jesus has already done.

When each of us start living out of who God has redeemed us to be, it doesn't just change our individual lives, but it changes the people around us.

It changes the people in your dorm, in your classes, in your labs.

It changes our city.

And ultimately it can and will change our world.

God thank you for pursuing us, for never giving up on us, for sending Jesus to pay the ultimate penalty in our place, and for making a way the way back to yourself.

That we would be people who start first confessing to you and confessing to one another, that we would be people who would stop trusting in our own efforts and rest fully in what Jesus has already finished.

I pray that as a result of this, as a result of the grace that we have undeservedly received, that the world would be changed as a result.

I pray that our dorms, our campuses would be changed as a result, that we would live as people who have been given away back to you.