Did God Really Say?

SERMON: 2011-03-27--g0311--did-god-really-say-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:40:55.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with conversational material [0]. The main body of the sermon concludes with a prayer/benediction in [457], after which the recording transitions into sustained acoustic music (worship song) starting at [458]. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:38:31.060-00:40:55.000 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, Lord threw me, I think, a little bit of a curveball this past week. I was all prepared to carry on with the subject that we've been looking at the last little while in terms of the intellectual arguments that need to come down in order for people to come to faith, and Lord willing we'll be picking that up again in the future. But in the meantime, he's led me back to Genesis chapter three, the story of the fall, particularly the question, "Did God really say?" And it ties in very much with what we've been talking about in terms of the findings of science versus the reading of the Bible and the supposed contradictions between the two. Because it occurred to me that as I've been pondering this a little bit, that at the bottom of that whole controversy is what's known as an issue of epistemology. That's a big word, but it really means how you arrive at the knowledge of truth. And the big question in the controversy between science and scripture sometimes is the question of how do we decide what is true? Is truth determined by our experimentation, by our sense experience, by our own knowledge? Or is truth determined by who God is and what God says? Those are very, very fundamental issues, and they go back all the way to being at the heart of our collective fall into sin. So let's read together the first seven verses of Genesis chapter three, and then I'll talk about that a little bit and point out some things. Genesis one and two, of course, is the story of creation. Genesis three, the story of the fall. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" Notice how he words that. The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman, "for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. And the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Well, as we take a look this morning at the story of the fall, recorded here in Genesis 3, the verses that we've read together, there are four observations that I'd like to make in the time that is available to us. And the first is this. Adam and Eve's security depends on trusting God and trusting His word. Trusting God and trusting God's word. Think this through with me just a little bit. Adam and Eve, of course, according to the biblical story, find themselves in a rather unique situation, don't they? Here they are, presumably created as adults, placed in a whole brand new world without, in fact, having a history or experience in this known world. It would be a little bit like you and me being plucked out of our environment, placed in some advanced nuclear reactor complex and being told, "Well, here it is. Now run ahead." Well, first of all, how do you even know what you're supposed to do? And even more importantly, how do you know what you're not supposed to do lest it blow up on you? Well, that's where Adam and Eve found themselves, they're in this brand new creation. It's incredibly beautiful. It's wonderfully complex. How do we know what to do? More importantly yet, how do we know what not to do? Well, that's where the word of the Lord comes in. Because if you read the earlier creation story in Genesis chapter two, God tells Adam, who supposedly passes it on to Eve, a two-fold mandate. The one mandate is to govern the earth, develop it, subdue it, multiply, build a civilization that will honor God. And among all the positive commands that God gives him, there is one negative command that God gives him. What is it? Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why not? Because it's bad for you. It's going to kill you. So Adam and Eve's security is found in obeying the voice of God. God says this is bad, don't do it. And just for the record, that's how authority in scripture is intended to work. It's intended as a protection for those who haven't the experience or the know-how to know how life works. See, in a fallen world, we tend to think of authority in a negative sense, don't we? Somebody's going to boss me around. Somebody's going to tell me what to do. Somebody's going to restrict my liberty. And every child growing up tends to long for and think about the day when I can finally be big, I can do what I want to do, and nobody's going to tell me what to do. Even as God's people, we have an intuitive reaction against authority. We sort of have a love-hate relationship. We kind of know that we need it, but it's okay if you tell me what I want, then I will listen to you. But don't tell me what I don't want, because I want to be independent. Well, that's not how authority functions in scripture. Authority functions in scripture in the way a parent parents children. Children don't have life experience. They don't know what's dangerous. They don't know what's going to kill them. They don't know what's going to hurt them. And so the Lord says to children, "Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you." A commandment that Paul says is the first commandment of the promise. Why? Not because parents want to be in a power kick. No. But because they know better. And their authority serves as a protection for you because the alternative is what? Well, you learn by trial and error. And there's something to be said for learning by trial and error, but if you put me in a nuclear reactor and I'm going to learn by trial and error how to operate this thing, I'll likely be dead before I learn my lesson. Wouldn't you agree? Now, maybe you're a much faster study than I and you can pull it off, but our little experiences in Japan with nuclear reactors ought to tell us a little bit about how incredibly complex this gets. So Adam and Eve's safety and security lies in trusting God and trusting God's word. Secondly, we need to note that Satan's aim therefore is to undermine their trust in God. Because if his strategy is to wean them away from God and get them under his control, then he's got to convince them somehow or another that it isn't their good that God is interested in, but rather that he is trying to take from them. He knows that as long as they think God loves them and has their best interests at heart, and that's why he gives them a negative commandment, he knows that he hasn't got a snowball's chance in the proverbial, you know what? He just cannot possibly wean them away from God. But if he can convince them that there is a secret agenda operating, that God is not interested in giving to them, but interested in taking from them, then maybe, just maybe he can drive a wedge between the God who made them and their own selves. And so how does he do that in this story? Well, he does it by challenging the integrity of God. Notice how it goes in verse 1, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" Did God say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden?" Now, isn't that fascinating? Because what did God in fact say to Adam? Well, you find it in the previous chapter, very clearly spelled out, God says, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die." So here's what he does, try to get this, very important to get our heads around this. He takes the one negative commandment that God gives to Adam and Eve out of a desire to protect them, and he turns it around to cast doubt upon the goodness of God and upon the integrity of God towards his people. Has God said, "You shall not eat from any of the trees of the garden?" No, God did not say that. He said, "I could eat from everything, but he doesn't want me to eat from this one." And there's a profoundly important lesson there, because that is always Satan's strategy. He will always make us question the goodness of God's intentions towards us. And it's not unlike a child with its parents again. You know, a parent will say to let's say a 15-year-old girl, "You're not going to that party because there's going to be drinking there, there's going to be drugs there, there's going to be older young men there whose motives towards you will not be very pure. I love you too much to expose you to that risk. You are not mature enough to take that chance. And so under my authority, I'm telling you, you're not going there." Now as long as that teenager knows that her parents love her and are interested in her good, she'll grumble and she'll complain to all her friends, but she'll secretly be glad that her parents love her enough to put boundaries around her. I mean, lots of kids will use their parental authority to be able to get their friends off their back and say, "Well, you know, my old man, my old lady won't let me go, sorry, can't do it." Great, convenient excuse. But now let's suppose this girl has a friend and the friend begins to place doubts in her about her parents' integrity. The reason they don't want you to go is because they don't want you to have fun. The reason they don't want you to go is because they want you to stay home and work so they can go out and party next weekend. And they begin to sow the seeds of doubt and the seeds of suspicion. And now the girl begins to think about that and rebellion begins to take root because if the authority of her parents is not coming out of a place of you love me and you want what is my good, if it's coming out of a place where I'm not sure that I can really trust you to understand me and to look after my needs, well, then I don't need to listen to you. And so lots of people are talked into wrong behavior by the pressure of their peers or whoever who try to distort the motivation of those who are in authority. We run into that upon occasion in the church, for example, where somebody's trying to get their life in order. And in order to get their life in order, they place themselves under the authority of the church or people in the church who help them sort out what's good and what's bad. And then sometimes what will happen is that friends or family will come along and they say, you mean you're not doing this because the church has told you not to do this? Don't you know that that is like cultish behavior? How do you know they're not out for your money? Or how do you know they're not after your whatever it is that you've got to offer? And before you know it, the strategy is if I can drive a wedge between God and God's people and those who are being ministered to, distrust sets in and we become easy picking for the devil. That's not to say church is always right, not to say authority is always right, doesn't even mean parents are always right. But you know, even bad authority in the life of a child is better in many instances than no authority at all because God is bigger than all of that. He institutes authority not to rob us or take from us, but he institutes authority to keep us safe until we're grown up enough so we can see the dangers firsthand. So you see what the devil's after here? It's driving a wedge between the woman and her God by casting doubt on the trustworthiness of God. Did God really say, "You shall not eat from any of the trees of the garden?" Brings us then to the third observation I want to make, third thing in this passage I want us to note, and that is now the woman makes a fatal mistake. She engages in conversation with a serpent. Listen to the story, how it goes on. The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees of the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the midst of the garden. You must not touch it or you will die." Now here's what's interesting, to her credit the woman is defending the integrity of God and that's probably a good thing, although she adds to his words just for the record because there is no record in Genesis chapter two about don't touch the tree. God only said don't eat from it. So I think maybe she's adding a little bit, but let that go for a moment. What's happening of course in conversing with the serpent who as we know represents Satan's power and presence is that she is engaging the devil. Now I don't know if in your life or your Christian walk you've ever made the mistake of engaging the devil and he probably hasn't appeared to you in the form of a serpent, but I'll bet you anything you will have had thoughts coming to you questioning the goodness or the integrity of God, temptations coming your way, but perhaps you thought were simply your own sinful flesh which was really the serpent just jabbering at you trying to take you away from the true and the living God. Anybody here ever talk with the devil? What happens when you do? Who wins? Well I can tell you it's not you because he's been around for a long, long time. He knows all the arguments and he knows exactly what you're made of on the inside and he knows exactly what to feed you in order to win you over. And so in this story he plays on the woman's naivety. She's got no experience in this. Now understand, she's without sin, but she's a creature and he appeals to her creaturely desires because listen, what happens now? What does the serpent say? "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman, "for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Now think the three with me. What does it mean to be like God? Well it's related obviously to knowing good and evil. Because you see, being like God for Eve here is the temptation. As a creature with no experience in the garden, remember, she is subject to the authority of God and she needs to take God's word for what is right and what is wrong. The knowledge of good and evil is not experientially a part of her life. It has to be told her by God. But see, that's kind of a bummer because it means you're at the mercy of somebody bigger. And so the enemy's lie is a very clever one and one that every last one of us, because we're the product of this, can identify with. Being like God means that I don't have to listen to authority to tell me what's right and wrong. I'm smart enough to figure it out for myself. Do you understand what I'm saying? I have the ability inside me to decide what's right and wrong. I don't need outside authority to tell me anything because I can trust myself. Have you ever given any thought why the serpent picks on the woman and not on the man? Dangerous territory, I know. But let's step into it for a moment. Some people would say, "Well, it's because women are more sensitive and so they're more easily deceived in that way." That may or may not be the case, but I think there's more. Eve has more to gain, and this is just my opinion, so feel free to disagree, but I think it's right. I wouldn't tell you otherwise, Eve has more to gain by a declaration of independence than Adam does. You know why? Because she's under two levels of authority. He's only under one level of authority. What do I mean by that? Well, if you go back to the Genesis story where God says, "Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," Eve has not yet, according to the story, if you read it in a linear fashion, she has not yet been created. In fact, Eve does not get created until a time later when all the animals have been marched by and then God makes Eve out of Adam's side, of course. But here's the point. If Eve was not there when God told him, "Don't eat from that tree or it's going to kill you," how do you suppose Eve knew about it? Adam, most likely, had to tell her. So here's Eve, she's got to listen to her husband, she's got to trust that what her husband is saying is accurate and true and represents God, and if you want to know how difficult it is, you wives, you just ponder that with regard to your husband's observations. How easy do you find it to trust him when what he says is at odds with what you think or feel, just for the record, and she's under God's authority? So the temptation is, "Chuck it all off. You don't need anybody to tell you anything. You can figure it out for yourself. You're smart enough. You are straight from the hands of God. You don't have any sin in you. You can be like God, totally independent." And that, folks, always lies at the heart of sin and of deception. And if you learned nothing else at all this morning, please really put that in your pipe and smoke it, so to speak, because all through life in today's world, there is a rejection of authority at every level, at every generation thinks it can figure out afresh the difference between right and wrong. You know, why is the province of Quebec on the forefront of sexual liberation in North America today? Because for many years, they were strongly held under the pressure of Roman Catholicism and there were plenty of faults with that, but during the '60s and '70s and so on, there arose a sexual revolution that said, "We want to be done with that, and we just want to find freedom in our own selves." And to a lesser or a greater degree, I'll tell you, apart from God's grace and God's presence in your life and mine, we all live that way. And we all think we can get away with it, because we all think, apart from Jesus, that we're little gods on the inside. Oh, you know, we wouldn't go bragging about that. But we all think our own thoughts, our own feelings, and our own ideas are certainly superior to those that are coming at me from other places. Why should I trust you, especially when I know that you're not perfect and that you've got your own struggles or your own problems? So fertile ground for the devil. So first of all, Adam and Eve's security lies in listening to God. The devil knows that, so he's got to create suspicion towards God. The woman now engages in conversation, and she gets bowled over by his logic. Wouldn't it be great to be like God? You know, and frankly, she's so naive, she doesn't even see the logical inconsistency that somehow or another, you're going to be like God by disobeying God. I mean, that's just really fascinating. God says, "It's going to kill you." Satan says, "It won't kill you. You'll be like God by disobeying God." Not very clever. But now notice what happens because she gets sucked in to the lie. Observation number four, the woman is deceived. Notice how scripture goes on. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Now think this through with me. Here is this tree, tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What did God say about the tree? Eat it and what will happen to you? You're a dead duck. She looks at the tree after having entertained the idea of, "I can be free. I don't have to listen to anybody. I can decide for myself. I'm smart." Now what happens? Does it look like it's going to kill her? No. What does it say? Good for food, delight to the eyes, desired for gaining wisdom or making one wise. And so what does she do? She eats and by the time she wakes up to what she has done, the spiritual death has already set in. And here's the lesson. If we reject the authority of God, if we think we are like God, smart enough to figure out what is true and what is false on the basis of our own cleverness, then we will almost inevitably be deceived because the devil knows exactly what we are like, what we are needing, and he plays on all areas of our pride in order to bring us down. And the fascinating thing about this according to the New Testament is that Adam was not deceived but his wife was. But nevertheless, he listened to his wife and he also ate the forbidden fruit. And I don't want to read too much into that except to say that if Eve was deceived, Adam was not deceived, and the only conclusion that I can reach is that he deliberately disobeyed God in order to please his wife. And so they both fell into sin and with them the whole world. Just as sin entered the world through one man, says the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, and death through sin, in this way death came to all men. And so here is the lesson that I think we learn from this story. And it's a profoundly important one because it is very counter-intuitive. If we make a decision to trust our own senses, our own experience, our own wisdom, and our own knowledge, and in that process reject the authority of God and God's word, then it is only a question of time before we will be taken down the garden path and enter into deception. Because if it is true, now listen to this, if it is true that Eve, before she has even fallen into sin, gets deceived by the serpent because he knows how to play on her creaturely pride that says I can be like God, and you may remember that was at the heart of Lucifer's rebellion over against God. It's always the creature saying to the creator, I want to be where you are, and I want to pretend I'm just as independent as you are. I'm saying that if Eve falls into that without yet having sinned, then how much more likely are you and I, who are the product of that process, who apart from Jesus have been enslaved by Satan and by his authority, how much more likely are we to fall into that trap where the enemy feeds us what he thinks we want, and before you know it, you're plunged into a direction that is simply not good or healthy or wise. And that is why we need to be careful about the discoveries of science. Does it make any difference in the long run, whether you're a young earth creationist, whether you're an old earth creationist, or whether you're a theistic evolutionist? Does it matter a lot about what you believe about the origins of life, the origins of the universe, the origins of the solar system? Well, on one level, it really doesn't matter very much, because we're not saved by what we believe about origins, we're saved by what we believe and confess in terms of the person of Jesus Christ. And the world is filled with people who have differences of opinion about how God caused all of this to come into being. But I'll tell you what does matter, regardless of what you believe about origins, what matters is where does your source of authority lie? Do you believe that when all has been said and done, truth is determined by God and by God's word, or is it determined by life, by life's experiences, and by scientific discoveries? Remember I talked last week, just briefly, about Richard Hoover? Richard Hoover is the astrobiologist, a group leader at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and he's the one who claims to have found fossilized bacteria in a meteorite, which he says is evidence of life in outer space. Here's a copy of the book, "The Discovery of Alien Extraterrestrial Life, Our Cosmic Ancestry and the Origins of Life," Richard Hoover. Now he said last week he was pooha'd by his own NASA scientists, and they couldn't put him down fast enough. Well, what if he were to be right? Ever think about that? What if, put that picture back up for a moment, you see that little thing there in the middle looks like somebody's colon or something or another. Bad, I know, I know, real bad, sorry. That he says is evidence of extraterrestrial life. What if he were true? What would that do to your faith? Take it a step further. What would happen if at some point next year, 10 years from now, little green man in a spacesuit from outer space were to verifiably come to earth and say, "Oh, by the way, you may think God created you," but it was really us, as certain scientists have been saying for all these many years, who planted life on earth many hundreds of thousands of years ago. And we really are your God. What would that do to your faith, or what would that do to the faith of multitudes of people all over the world? And some of you are saying, "Well, that's never going to happen." How do you know that's never going to happen? Jesus himself says, listen to these words, Luke chapter 18, verse 8, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" More than that, he goes on to say, "Matthew 24, 24, false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect." Matthew, if that were possible, how do we know that Satan's deceptive power will not try to drag us into places where it's almost impossible to hold on to biblical faith? And if you think that won't happen one day, listen then to these words from the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the coming of the lawless one. This is the antichrist, and the antichrist in scripture is the full embodiment of everything that is opposite to Jesus. He is the one who puts himself on the throne in the temple one day, and he says, "I'm God." He is human pride come to its ultimate conclusion. The lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan, displaced in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and thus be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. God sends them a powerful delusion because they have not loved the truth. So here's my point, and with this we wind up. What's our protection? Our protection is a heartfelt commitment that says, left to our own devices, thinking that we're smart enough to find out what truth is, we are wide open to deception, and one day most of the world will be deceived by the antichrist. The tragedy will be that when the Christ comes, nobody recognizes him, or very few people do. But when the antichrist comes, the whole world will bow at his feet because he will give them exactly what they all want, which is, you can be little gods. And our only protection in that day will be in a commitment that we have made whereby we say, I submit myself to the authority of God, and God's word trumps everything in my heart in terms of what is right and wrong. So let me conclude with this question, when it comes to the values you embrace, when it comes to the lifestyle that you lead, when it comes to how you engage the world, at the end of the day, who decides for you what is right from what is wrong? Do you decide because it makes good sense to you, or does it make good sense to you only in the context of submitting to the authority of God's word? And because historically, whenever God's people have begun to buy into the lie, did God really say? Their spiritual life goes down the tube, because after a while, black is white, and white is black, and it's a blooming free-for-all. Never be ashamed of saying, I hold up the word of God as my only source of faith and life. Pray with me. Lord, there are such profound implications of all the things that we're talking about this morning, because by nature, we're the product of Adam and Eve's choices, and by nature, there is in each one of us this notion of being a little God. We measure our perceptions, our understanding of reality on the basis of whether it makes sense to us, even when it's at odds with you, and when we have to choose between our interpretation of how life ought to be lived and your interpretation, Lord, we can come up with a thousand reasons why you're wrong and we're right, and we confess that is just blooming arrogance. And we confess that when we've come to Jesus, we have surrendered that, and we have submitted to his Lordship, and you've granted us your Holy Spirit, and your Holy Spirit renews our minds so that we can in fact learn to think the thoughts of God. So Lord, help us, even afresh today, to make a new commitment that says, "This is the Word of God. I may not understand everything, there may be differences of interpretation, but at the end of the day, God and God alone has the right to tell me how this universe works, how my life works, how my relationships work, what's right and what's wrong." And Lord, help us to never be ashamed of being your people and believe in you. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:38:31.060; remove through 00:40:55.000] We pray it in [CUT] Jesus' name, and God's people said, "Amen." ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand ♪ ♪ When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace ♪ ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand ♪ ♪ When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace ♪ ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand ♪ ♪ When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace ♪ ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand ♪ ♪ When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace ♪ ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand for other ground is sinking sand ♪ ♪ When darkness veils His lovely face I rest on His unchanging grace ♪ ♪ My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness ♪ ♪ I dare not trust the sweetest prey but only Thee on Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Christ the solid rock I stand for other ground is sinking sand for [CUT] other ground is [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:40:55.000; resume after this marked segment]