THE NATURE OF SIN

GENESIS 2:15-17; 3:1-7

The word sin isn't in the text, but sin is its theme nonetheless. In fact, this passage contains the familiar story of the origin of sin. Eve and Adam learned the hard way that sin delivers destruction into the lives of those who commit it. They had been warned by God that serious consequences would follow from their disobedience, but they paid no attention. Sometimes we may become careless in our attitude toward the consequences of sin. When that happens, we should beware. Look at the cycle of sin as described in the text.

I. We Become Aware of God's Gracious Will for Our Lives
Adam and Eve knew beyond doubt that the Lord was gracious to them. He provided them with every essential gift for fulfillment in life. He kept from them only one thing—the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He even explained to them the reason for that single prohibition: they would experience evil, and evil would issue in death. In that case death encompassed both spiritual death, which is separation from God, and physical death, resulting from their loss of access to the tree of life.

The couple also clearly understood God's will for them. Eve confessed such an awareness in her response to the serpent. His initial effort to mislead her was not successful because she detected his lie. Sin becomes a possibility for anyone who has insight into the nature and purpose of God.

II. We Are Tempted to Rebel Against God's Gracious Will
The serpent persisted in the temptation of Eve, and his strategy was successful. He first forthrightly accused God of lying. Then he himself told another lie. By that time Eve had already entered into the mentality that made her vulnerable. She doubted God's word. She doubted enough to consider the forbidden fruit, then she succumbed to its enticement and ate. Adam readily followed her lead. Satan has the uncanny ability to make evil inviting. From the urge to get more of this world's goods, to the drive to lust, to the inclination to cling to bitterness, we know that the devil has power to persuade us to sin.

However, we have an advantage Adam and Eve didn't have. We have revealed to us in this text and in other places in the Bible Satan's strategy and methodology. Understanding his tactics assists us in resisting temptation, and when we do, the devil will flee from us.

III. We Experience Conviction and Shame Following Our Sin
Normally, conviction of sin will hit the transgressor immediately after the act. Eve and Adam knew immediately that they had sinned. They felt guilty before God and shame before each other. A dedicated Christian confessed the guilt and shame she sensed following a verbal expression of hatred for a person who had hurt her. A young man told of the time he was so burdened with conviction of sin that he fell before God in a catharsis of repentance and confession. All of us have experienced similar feelings when we've failed the Lord.

The cycle of sin begins with an awareness of God's gracious will for us. Once we know how good God is and what God desires for us, Satan will entice us to reject God's purpose for our lives. When we fall to that temptation, we sin, resulting in a sense of shame before God. The cycle can be broken before it leads to sin.

It may be broken when we are tempted to reject God's will. Our Lord taught us how by example. When he was tempted in the wilderness, he resisted Satan by refusal to disobey God. As a result, Satan eventually left him alone for a season. As James wrote, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7) . (Jerry E. Oswalt)

BEING AN AUTHENTIC PERSON

ROMANS 5:12-19

The bold ideas of facing up to our sinfulness and placing our complete trust in the free gift of God's grace as given are not all that easy in a culture obsessed with ownership and earning. Paul, however, wants to make it clear that because we are human we sin, and that the only way out of our sinfulness is the acceptance of the gift of God's grace as shared in Christ. This passage can be a most helpful one in the season of Lent to broaden our understanding of self-examination and the difference God's grace seeks to make in and through such an experience.

I. Self-examination Helps Us See Our Need for God's Grace
The temptation with the idea of self-examination is to understand it as something we do for ourselves, out of a sense of duty and obligation to God, so that we can better serve God. Such a discipline, done in such a way, misses the point of Paul's understanding of the free gift of God's grace. Self-examination does not begin with us; rather, it begins as we see ourselves in the light of God's grace. Such grace given freely in the moments we live exposes the shadows of who we are.

In Paul's way of thinking, we can only be the humans God created us to be. Being human means we are sinners. If we are to truly be involved in a self-examination that will be honest, such an experience must begin with grace. With the emphasis in our culture on self-help, this becomes a most ambitious understanding to relate.

II. Self-examination Is Valueless without God's Grace
Paul clearly identifies where such thinking leads. Left to the self, we will be left with judgment, condemnation, and death. Any Lenten self-examination not rooted in the experience of God's free gift of grace will end up leading to a try-harder mentality so as to win the approval of God. To do so is to miss the whole point of grace and what graces does in us and through us. The Lenten experience must include feelings of sorrow and resolve, and it must also seek, to express with joy and thanksgiving the difference God's grace makes in our lives.

The underlying reason for the Lenten experience both begins and ends in grace. To focus on self to the point that we are going to do better, outside grace, is to miss the whole point of the Lenten experience. For Paul, the human experience must be lived from only one perspective: grace.

Katherine Ann Power lived a life of hiding. As a college student in the early seventies, she was involved in a bank robbery that led to the murder of a police officer. Just recently, she left the life she had created that included a husband, a son, friends, and a job to turn herself in to authorities after two decades as a fugitive. Emerging from the shadows into the light, she stated she did so "in order to live with full authenticity in the present ... with openness and truth, rather than hiddenness and shame."

That is what this passage and Lent are. It is a time whereby with the goodness and love of God's grace in Christ persons seek to live with full authenticity in the present ... with openness and truth, rather than hiddenness and shame. For Paul, the human experience must begin and end in God's grace. Anything less than that experience has somehow failed to find God's vision for each life. All God has ever wanted for us is to be the authentic human beings we are. Only God's grace will help make that so. (Travis Franklin)

IN THE WILDERNESS

MATTHEW 4:1-11

Lou Holtz, who coached football at Notre Dame, was interviewed after a Cotton Bowl game. People and the press were going on and on about the great impact of the game, and Lou said, "Wait a minute. The game isn't all that important. There must be three billion people in China who don't even care what happened." Sooner or later we must leave behind all our mountaintop experiences, and we must return to the valley below—down where the dangerous days are for life and for faith. The peril to faith and trust comes in the ordinary days when monotony and the commonplace stretch out, like forty days in the wilderness. The same Holy Spirit who brought Jesus the announcement of God's approval at baptism now leads him out into the days of temptation and letdown.

I. Temptation Often Comes in the Wake of Commitment
It is always true that once we have accepted a high challenge and made a great commitment, there comes the temptation to forsake the cause. There is always the temptation to give up the commitment to the best and settle for something less. Once we have made a commitment to be God's persons, there comes the temptation to compromise and to settle for something less than God's best. The long, difficult journey always brings the temptation to give up the painful pilgrimage to paradise.

II. Temptation Often Comes in the Days of Ordinary Service
If we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to recognize that such obedience is going to take us through long periods of wilderness, frustration, work, and the ordinary. We need to be prepared for that. That is why so much of the message of our consumerist economy is demonic. It is all part of the barefaced lie to convince us that we can escape the drab ordinary days of our lives by resorting to alcohol, new cars, trips to other places, new clothing, or sexual excitement. The devil tempts Jesus each time with the suggestion that he do something a little spectacular to escape the boredom of the day. Don't settle for soup and sandwiches—turn the stones into a real holiday buffet!

Jesus will not betray his commitment to God and humanity by escaping from our human limitations. Jesus knew that human life has its ordinary side. Jimmy Buffett sends his sweepstakes winner "Somewhere Over China" because it is his one chance in a million to "brighten up a boring day." But all of our human lives have drudgery and boredom.

III. God Gives Us the Grace to Defeat Temptation
Jesus was prepared for his long journey by his knowledge of Scripture. Everywhere along the way, Jesus' response to temptation was a response from Scripture. So it is with us. That is why the Christian community tries to spend so much time in making disciples by the normal means of grace—Scripture, prayer, worship, service, and giving—to develop the habits of faith to keep us faithful in the weary times.

It is not a matter of great feelings and passions. One suspects that Jesus did not glow with the great joy of being the Anointed of God out there in the wilderness being tempted. He was not being sustained by the warm spiritual glow or the power of positive thinking. It didn't matter whether he liked what he was doing or not. He continued in obedience and faith by his reliance on the promises of God in Scripture. The story gives us the promise that God will sustain us and minister to us along the way. After the forty days, angels came and ministered to Jesus. Somewhere along the painful pilgrimage to paradise as you stay faithful, suddenly and unexpectedly an angel of mercy, some act of kindness, some word of hope, some gesture of inspiration, will be given to you to minister to you and to encourage you in the midst of the ordinary days of temptation. Such is the promise of God's Spirit to those who are God's disciples. (Rick Brand)