The Shed
4.26.26 Sunday AM
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- Testimony VideosRecap Gospel Season intentionMention Celebration Sunday next week and baptismFor those of you who are still unsure what this Christian life is all about, this season will be important for you as it is the Gospel that defines who we are in Christ, what our life should look like, and it is the power by which we are propelled into that life.For those of you who have experienced the power of the gospel to save, this season will be important to you as it is the central message of discipleship used throughout the epistles to orient the reader and bring clarity to the scriptures.In other words, the gospel is not just evangelistic, it is also the cornerstone of our faith..You don’t experience the gospel then move past it… You experience the gospel then grow deeper into it.If you read through the New Testament, you find out that the Gospel is not just preached to the lost, it is constantly taught to the believers as well.Because the Gospel is more than just a doorway to salvation, it is the lens through which we view life.It is the power through which we overcome.And in it is found the transformation that we experience as we journey through life.
Romans 1:16 NASB95 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…The Gospel the power by which we live as Christians!The Gospel is the root of our identity, having become a new creation!The Gospel is the lens through which we view all of life!The Gospel is the frame that shapes how we see others!My hope is that through this Gospel season, there will be those who answer the call of the Gospel and give their lives to Jesus, but also, as we look at many of the different images and illustrations of the Gospel through the scriptures, you who have experienced the transforming power of the Gospel can also learn to articulate it in your own testimony and from the scriptures.Last week, we talked about the absolute dominance of the light over the darkness in the beginning and how the power of the Gospel is to sin what light is to darkness.This week, we are going to move on a couple chapters to Genesis chapter 3. This is the place where it all seems to go wrong, yet as we look in the text we find that even in the worst moment there is a look forward to the Gospel.Genesis 3:1–3 NASB95 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”Now already we have an issue because that’s not actually what God said:Genesis 2:16–17 NASB95 16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”So the woman says we can’t eat, nor touch, but that is beyond what God had said.We see this same pattern in the lives of the Scribes and Pharisees, who would take parts of the law and push them to an extreme, attempting to somehow “help” the law or help God by putting extra barriers in place..And how many times do we do this ourselves when we try to make our own version of what God said… it’s either over exaggerated, or generalized, or flat wrong.“Scripture or Cap” game:“God helps those who help themselves.” - Benjamin Franklin - Actually the opposite of the Gospel. The Gospel says God saw you in your distress, and helped you because you could not help yourself. If you could have helped yourself, Christ died for nothing.“Follow your heart.” - CAP - Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful above all else.“This too shall pass.” - CAP - What the scripture actually says is “Weeping may endure for a night, but Joy is coming in the morning… Those who sow in tears will reap in joy… The Joy of the Lord is my strength… The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear? Of whom will I be afraid?He that dwells in the secret place of the most High shall abide in the shadow of the almighty… I will say of the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust..It is important to know what the Word of God says, not just what we think it says…That’s why you don’t just read it one time, then move on. This Word is alive and active! The more you read it, the more it does its work in you.Genesis 3:4–5 NASB95 4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”Notice the temptation presented here does three things:First, the temptation denies the truth of God’s word.That’s always the enemy’s first step: attack the truth. If he can get you to question the truth, it is easier to swallow the lie that follows.Second, the temptation questions God’s good intention.If the enemy can get you to question God’s word, he will then move on to questioning God’s intention and character…Do you see how he laid the stage for the woman to think, “Well maybe God is just holding out on me.”But God doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t withhold any good thing from His children.The third thing the temptation does is position disobedience as a form of freedom.In this sense, being “like God” is not an aspiration to be pleasing to God, but to elevate one’s self to the place of a god.So the temptation was not just to be more like God in a moral sense, but to actually take His place of judgement over her own life…In other words, taking control rather than allowing God to direct.Temptation today is the same, always questioning God’s word and good intention, and positioning the choice of sin as though it is freedom…What Eve didn’t realize is what is later revealed by Jesus:John 8:34 NASB95 34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.So what looked like freedom to gain control was actually a trap of disobedience that enslaved them to the power of darkness…Genesis 3:6–7 NASB95 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.The immediate result was shame…Before sin entered the picture Adam and Eve were said to be naked but unashamed…Genesis 2:25 NASB95 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.But when they fell to the temptation of sin, what they experience for the very first time is crippling shame…And that’s always what comes after sin.. Shame. Which is why it is our base instinct to do exactly what Adam and Eve did…We try to cover it up.It’s the same need for control, the same temptation all over again to look at the sin that was committed and think you can fix it or clean it or cover it to erase the shame…If you were to take a trek across the scriptures from this point on what you will find is a constant cycle of sin and shame, covering and hiding, denial and deceit.Because this isn’t just their story, it is ours…Romans 3:23 NASB95 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,We have all been there in the aftermath of our sin and felt the shame that floods in.And we have all experienced the deep need to try and do something about it, cover it up, hide it, straighten it out, ANYTHING to escape the shame of failure…That very shame then prompts us to isolate ourselves…Genesis 3:8–10 NASB95 8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”This is the danger in shame, not just the emotional toll it takes on you, nor the feeling of shame itself, but the fact that shame pushes you to isolate and hide…Then while you hide, you disconnect from the Body, which leaves you vulnerable to even worse, which leads to more shame, and more isolation…It is a perpetuating problem that compounds on itself until the one sin that brought shame in the first place grows into a lifestyle of sin and shame and hiding…This is why vulnerability and transparency is so unnatural and difficult, because we have been given to a cycle of sin, shame, hide.The only way to break the cycle is through exposure… “WHERE ARE YOU?”God calls them out of their hiding, out of their fear, and into the light of His presence…Genesis 3:11 NASB95 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”WHO TOLD YOU?Who told you you should be ashamed? Who told you you weren’t good enough? Who told you to be afraid?Then God addresses the sin…This is the scariest part, because what we expect is more shame and we despise the correction or punishment or discipline..We have this idea of God and how angry He will be with us, so we hide in shame, but let’s look at God’s answer to all this:After they go through the blame game in the next few verses, God begins to speak. First, He speaks to the serpent:Genesis 3:14–15 NASB95 14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”The very first thing God says reveals a promise of a seed…It wasn’t the first action of God to kill them on sight.It wasn’t the first action of God to burn them at the stake.It wasn’t the first action of God to turn them back into dust!No, the first action and statement from God was to curse the enemy and promise deliverance…“He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel…”This is a look forward to the seed that God would protect through the lineage that eventually leads to Jesus as the embodiment of that seed who utterly destroys the work of the enemy and gives us a path to righteousness again…Were there consequences to their actions? YES! You and I are still living with those consequences today.We experience a life of hardship and pain and toil because of this first transgression, but even when it looked like all hope was lost, God had a plan!Even in the words of the curse is a preview of what was to come:Genesis 3:17–18 NASB95 17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;The thorns were grown for US… Why?Because one day, there would be a crown of thorns twisted together and pressed onto the head of the promised seed, who would crush the power of the enemy!This is the Gospel, that even in our weakness, His strength is revealed.Even in our failure, God has a plan to turn it around…Even when we don’t deserve it, God covers us…Genesis 3:21 NASB95 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.Even then, before any sacrificial system was in place, even before the plan for redemption was unfolded, God sacrificed an animal to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve…What they had tried to do themselves with the fig leaves, God did for them through a sacrifice of His own…This is the Gospel, that God loves you so much that He doesn’t confront your sin to embarrass you. He doesn’t bring your shame out of hiding to shame you further…He calls you out of your isolation to do for you what you could not do for yourself!He calls you out of where you were to heal you and set you free!But He doesn’t just call you out and leave you exposed, He offers a covering for you…This is the Gospel, that we do not have to try and put together our own covering, rather God puts together a covering for us and clothes us in it…Isaiah 61:10 NASB95 10 I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, My soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,This is the Gospel exchange that happens when you put your faith in Him… What you tried and failed to do for yourself He does for you and in you in a supernatural way, cleansing you and transforming you from the inside out.There’s one more passage in chapter three I want to look at:Genesis 3:22–23 NASB95 22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.What to the shame filled mind looks like punishment and exile is actually protection and provision.God is so gracious that He did not allow Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life and live forever in their broken state…Rather, he removed them from the garden so they would not be separated from Him forever…Today, we have the benefit of knowing that Jesus has come, lived and died, and was resurrected on the third day, we have this Gospel message that Jesus has overcome the power of death hell and the grave and now He holds the keys to them all.He was the promised seed in the beginning, the one who would come and bruise the head of the serpent…He was the sacrifice that was made to cover our nakedness and eliminate our shame…He is the freedom from sin we have so long been enslaved to…And He is the pathway to life where we will live forever, but not as broken and shameful, rather as victorious through Him!2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB95 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.And in the same way God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden so they wouldn’t live forever in their brokenness, He transforms us so that we can live a life of victory over sin and shame!Romans 8:1–2 NASB95 1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.Romans 10:9–11 ESV 9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”This is the Gospel, that you no longer have to be ashamed!You can come and answer the call of Jesus in this moment and be cleansed and renewed, set free and delivered!The old can pass away and you can be something entirely new!Just as God came to the garden and called to Adam, so too is He standing here today and calling to you…“Where are you!?”Do you think God didn’t know the answer? Of course He did! He knew where Adam and Eve were the whole time…So was the question for God or for them?WHERE ARE YOU?Do you think they looked around and realized? Because the next verse we read is Adam answering…God is calling you today… He’s calling you out of your isolation… He’s calling you out of your shame… He’s calling you into a life of wholeness and victory…WHERE ARE YOU?Look around you. Look at your life. Look at your circumstance.Will you answer His call?If that’s you, I would like to pray with you, and more than that, next week on Celebration Sunday, we are having a baptism!The tank will be full, why not be next? Will you answer the call? Romans 1:16NASB95
Genesis 3:1–3NASB95
Genesis 2:16–17NASB95
Genesis 3:4–5NASB95
John 8:34NASB95
Genesis 3:6–7NASB95
Genesis 2:25NASB95
Romans 3:23NASB95
Genesis 3:8–10NASB95
Genesis 3:11NASB95
Genesis 3:14–15NASB95
Genesis 3:17–18NASB95
Genesis 3:21NASB95
Isaiah 61:10NASB95
Genesis 3:22–23NASB95
2 Corinthians 5:21NASB95
Romans 8:1–2NASB95
Romans 10:9–11NASB95
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