A Long Fall Part 1
Have you ever felt the pull toward something you knew was wrong and gone for it anyway? That impulse didn’t start with us. It started in a garden. Pastor Nick Gatzke takes us back to Genesis 3, to understand what he calls “the worst day in human history.”
Genesis chapter three, it was the worst day in human history. To this point, everything was good. Not just good, everything was very good. Adam and Eve had work to do and they had this work to do in the perfect setting for work, the Garden of Eden. They lacked for nothing. And even more than that, they had everything. God himself dwelt among them. There was no distance. They were able to bask in his glory while enjoying the type of relationship with God that only the two of them would experience in the history of humankind.
But then everything changed. Satan entered the scene. He tempted the woman. A choice for sin was made and the consequences are something that every person who followed would have to reckon with all of their days. There are layers upon layers of this day that are worth considering. And we’ll look at them closely because in these layers we see ourselves. And I understand that many of you, most of you, know this story all too well. And the temptation with stories that we know really well is simply to take the teeth out of it. To step back and say, well, this is one of those stories that we can trivialize because it’s so common in knowledge. And we generally understand its lasting effect. But today I encourage you. As the mood of the room has rightfully changed, let the weight of this rebellion rest afresh on you today. We begin where the story begins, and that is with Satan, the deceiver. Introduced in verse one as the serpent who was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. We’re soon to find out that this serpent is Satan, otherwise known as the devil or Lucifer, and he introduces evil into the world. It’s worth pausing at the beginning of the story and considering just what we know about him. We see in Isaiah chapter 14 that a description of a rebellion of angels against God as they attempt to claim authority and power that only God himself has. They want to be like him. And the fall of Satan as the leader of this rebellion, along with the angels that followed him, made clear the beginning of his role. Throughout the Bible, we see that Satan is not only against God and intends to continue to rebel against God, but that he does so with you in mind. Satan roams the earth and exercises power in this realm we see. He disguises himself even as an angel of light, 2 Corinthians tells us. 1 John 5, nine tells us that we know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. He is in some ways, the Lord of this realm. We see from scripture that Satan is very clearly out to harm humankind through deceit and through murder. He employs snares, we see in 2 Timothy, schemes in Ephesians 6, wits, 2 Corinthians 2, and disguise in 2 Corinthians 11:44. Jesus talks about him in John chapter eight, and he says that he was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 10, 10, referring to this same Satan, Jesus says the thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy.
We see in the Bible that we have a command and are empowered to stand against him. 1 Peter 5, 8 tells us to be sober-minded, to be watchful, why? Because your adversary, the devil prowls along like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And Ephesians 6, 11 says to put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. And so when you stand back and when you look from cover to cover in the Bible about this person, Satan, the picture that’s painted is one in which there is absolutely nothing casual about him, that he is the devil who is out to destroy you. And yet we are so tempted to take him all too casually.
Make no mistake about it, his goal is to devour you. From the very beginning, we see God versus Satan, the kingdom of light versus the kingdom of darkness, good versus evil. The battleground now is set as earth and the prize is you. And what we will see is that this devil has one goal to steal, kill, destroy, and devour. And it all begins here with Adam and Eve with one little lie. Following Satan’s deception, however, leads to our destruction.
That’s what we begin to see in Genesis chapter three, the following Satan’s deception leads to our ultimate destruction. And so with that in mind, let’s look at Genesis three and we’ll see how he exacts this plan, how he takes us from that point of temptation to the point of sin or rebellion. He starts by sowing a seed of doubt. Look with me at verse one. He comes to Eve and he says to her, did God actually say to you that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? He twists God’s word. God had not said that they couldn’t eat of any tree in the garden. He simply prohibited them from eating from one tree in the garden. And yet knowing that if he can get the woman to question God’s very word, then he can begin to sow the seeds of doubt.
He helps her along the path from temptation to sin. The second way we see in verse four, Eve corrects him and tells the serpent that God told her not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Satan said to the woman, you will not surely die. He sows the seeds of doubt and then he directly challenges God’s word. And calls him a liar from the very beginning. What God said is that you will die. What I’m saying is surely this can’t be the case. He moves her along from temptation to sin. Verse five, as he accuses now God’s motives.
God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you’ll be like God, knowing good and evil. He knows that these three little lies within one larger lie, all of them with regard to God’s plan, all of them with regard to her own wellbeing, in another way, one way or another, excuse me, all of these lies are a direct affront to what God has revealed about himself. Think about the substance of the lie for a minute though. The substance of the lie is big enough to reinterpret all of life and to redirect the goals of this woman. The substance of the lie is that you can be like God, to be self-determining, to be self-ruling, to have greater knowledge and ability to fully comprehend the reality around you. Clearly, God was short-sighted in the way that he made you. Clearly, God himself left you lacking, but you can be like him. And he struck a chord in this area of selfish ambition. And in so many ways, the false notion of freedom in action and freedom from consequence that only God enjoys, this is at the root of all of our problem of sin. Pause and think about that for a second. At the root of all of our sin is this notion of freedom of action and freedom from consequences.
God is the only one who enjoys that. But that is something, that selfish ambition or what we’ll see in a minute, self-fulfillment, is something all of us desire. And in so, we desire to be like God. But the irony is thick, isn’t it? Satan promises the woman that she will be like God, when in fact, we’ve already seen that God has made man and woman to be like him. He’s made them in his very image. The perpetuation of this lie is not only destructive, but it’s ironic. And that’s how temptation works.
It takes what God has made as good. It twists the promise, the fulfillment or the application. It does so by challenging God’s word all the way along. For Eve, she listened to the creature instead of the creator. She followed her impressions instead of her instructions. She made self-fulfillment her goal. And the temptation starts in challenging God and then it moves to her field of the senses. It moves to her view. Look at verse six. When we read it carefully, it says, so when the woman saw with her eyes that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes. And the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took the fruit and she ate. This tree was really good looking to her.
The temptation is strong now. The mind and the senses are engaged. And you can see, I almost feel that as the serpent was standing there and she was processing the things that he was saying, that she begins to believe the lie. Because as we see in verse six, the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She had no desire to this very moment. Temptation is always seductive in its nature. And you can never have too many reminders of Satan’s purposes in temptation.
When Satan incites us to indulge in pleasures beyond what God has designed for us to indulge in, he’s not concerned that we might miss out on the good things of God. He’s not concerned that you would have maximum self-fulfillment. He’s not concerned that somehow your existence would be made more clear and plain and enjoyable for you. He’s concerned with one thing, capture and control. When we follow, we walk into a trap. Because following Satan’s deceptions ultimately leads to our destruction. Now consider with me how now Satan moves this from sin to destruction. We’ve moved from temptation to sin, and now sin, Adam and Eve both ate, immediately experienced something they had never experienced before, shame, realizing their nakedness, they covered themselves up. Now, why was nakedness significant? Scholars go back and forth on this, but I think the reason why this type of shame was so powerful to them was because now they no longer focus on God’s provision and God’s protection, but in an attempt to make themselves like God, their eyes were open to realize how vulnerable they really were, and you never feel more vulnerable than when you’re naked. And so they stood in the garden and they looked at each other and they looked around and they said, we gotta cover up. And God approaches and he does so lovingly. I mean, surely God knew what had transpired. He’s God after all. However, in verse nine, his simple question, where are you? draws them out of hiding instead of drives them further into it. Even in the midst of their rebellion, God is gracious to them. He wants to redeem them. And Adam responds to God, verse 10, that they were naked and afraid despite God’s graciousness to them, despite everything he has given them, despite the fact that he has given them the very food that they eat and the very garden in which they work, they’re afraid. This is another consequence of sin. And here comes another opportunity for choice. Having sinned and having experienced shame, Adam could go two different directions. He could fess up, he could seek forgiveness, but he chose to go another way. Verse 12, he says, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit, and I ate. It’s not my fault, God, it’s your fault. You gave her to me, and it’s her fault. I mean, she was the one that took the bite when all along the indication was right there that Adam was probably watching the interaction between the woman and the snake, and she took the apple. Our initial response when being caught in sin is typically to cast blame or to make justification for our actions, isn’t it? So Adam blames God for the woman, woman blames the serpent for the apple, and the damage is done. And there’s an important aspect to realize how temptation moves to sin and how sin moves to destruction. We might even categorize it in this sort of diagram of a wheel. You see how temptation comes into your life on the top, and you have a choice to make at that point. And the choice is, do I believe God and what he says is right for my fulfillment, what he says he’ll provide for me, what he says is good for me, or do I believe the lie, whether it’s from my senses, whether it’s from my experience, and I make that choice to seek fulfillment elsewhere. When we do choose the second option, we enter into sin. And just so we’re clear, when you sin, you’re directly rebelling against God himself. And as the text says, this sin ultimately results in our death. And as we see, this sin will also result in a broken relationship with God as he drives the man and the woman straight out of the garden. They can’t dwell with him anymore. Why? Because he is perfect and holy and cannot possibly abide evil.
The next step is that sin will inevitably result in shame. And certainly this shame comes before God himself. And it often happens in a relationship with other people. Now some of you say, well, Nick, I know so-and-so who’s saying, and it doesn’t seem like they’re experiencing shame. They will. You do not escape this part of the judgment. And as one mentor of mine always said, there’s always a payday for the things that are left undelt with in our life with God. And that shame, whether it’s immediate, whether it’s five years from now, or whether it’s before the judgment seat, will indeed come. And it’s a terrible consequence, isn’t it? but at this point we have another choice. We can choose to break the cycle of sin by choosing to confess to God, to ask for forgiveness. Adam did not do that. Adam could have said, God, you’re right, we screwed up, help us, what should we do now? But there’s no evidence of contrition at all. He simply puffs up with pride and this is the choice that we can make. Do we humble ourselves or do we puff up in pride? If we humble ourselves, we break the cycle, if we leave the wheel, there’s a chance for restoration. However, if we enter into self-justification for our actions, the cycle continues. And they’re real feelings and they’re real struggles, but they’re also real lies as to how God meets us in our personal place of need. Following Satan’s deception ultimately leads to our destruction.
There’s a real enemy, a real battle for the hearts and minds of people, and on the day when sin entered the world, all of creation was set on this path toward demise. Sin is the reason why your life is so hard. Sin is the reason why our relationship with God is strained. Sin is the reason for corrupt rulers in our society. Sin is the reason for the broken relationships in your family, for your harmful patterns, for your destructive habits. Sin is the reason for our physical death, and sin is the reason for our spiritual death, because following Satan’s deception leads to our destruction. But we cannot leave this worst day in human history without talking about the best day in human history. Because the story doesn’t end here.
God does not desire for you to experience destruction. Even though each and every one of us has made an active choice to rebel against him, he still doesn’t want that for you. You don’t have to follow Satan’s deception into his destruction. There’s another person to follow. And that person is his son, Jesus. We can follow Jesus, we can experience new life. We can experience a transfer in citizenship from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his beloved son. Jesus, after all, was tempted three times by Satan in a very similar fashion, mind you, as Eve, except he didn’t sin.
He would go on to conquer Satan, living a sinless life, taking on our sin as his own on the cross. And when he did this, Second Corinthians 5:21 tells us, for our sake, he made him, Jesus, to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. There’s a redemption plan that God sets in place, that the sinless one would become sin to pay for your sin. Colossians 1:21 reminds us that even though we have all followed Satan’s deception and the destruction is rightfully ours, that once we were alienated and hostile in mind and doing evil deeds, but he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.
And in response, our response is to continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we’ve heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation and under heaven. My friends, we remember Christ crucified in the midst of this worst day in history. And as we do, it is so important for us to recognize the weight, the gravity, and the specificity of our own sin.
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* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
