He went on to say that rules like that were there just to see if you could follow them and most were not enforced. They only existed to test your personal truthfulness and honor. He says that one afternoon there was a parade, called a “bandbox review” going on in the Central Area, which was just outside his window. A plebe who lived on the other side of the building came to his room and said, “Mind if I look out your window?”
Schwarzkopf said, “You know you’re not supposed to do that.” The other guy said, “Don’t worry. I’ll stand on a chair way back from the window and no one will ever know.” So that’s what he did but Schwarzkopf never looked and when the parade was over, the guy went back to his room. But just a few minutes later an upperclassman at the Academy burst into Schwarzkopf’s room and accused Schwarzkopf of looking out the window which was, obviously, against the rules.
Schwarzkopf said that this upperclassman had always had it in for him and was just looking for something to accuse him of and couldn’t wait to drum Schwarzkopf out of the Academy. After the older guy chewed him out for a while, Schwarzkopf finally just said, “Sir, I did not watch the review.” The guy screamed at him and said he had seen him standing on the chair. But Schwarzkopf simply said again, “Sir, I did not watch the review.”
“You didn’t?” “No, sir.” “All right.” And he walked out the door. Schwarzkopf never told on the other guy and the upperclassman didn’t ask. But he knew that Schwarzkopf was a man of integrity and would never lie so he left him alone.
I love that little story and when I read it I knew it would make a good sermon illustration one of these days but I want to use it, not for the importance of being honorable necessarily, but for the crazy rules. How many of you have ever read something in scripture or been told by God in prayer or found out some other way that God wants you to do something or not do something and you thought that sounded crazy?
I hear it all the time. Surely God doesn’t say sex before marriage is wrong. It’s not hurting anybody for two consenting adults to live together. And yet scripture teaches that any kind of sex outside of the marriage of one man and one woman is a sin.
Or how about lying? We all know that sometimes you have to tell a little white lie, right? You don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. Or maybe God reveals to you that smoking is a sin for you. “Well, God, why? Everybody else does it!” Well, number one, not everybody is doing it and number two, as your mother would say, “If everybody jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” (Don’t you hate it when somebody – especially you – quotes your mom and you know they’re right?)
Some of God’s rules are hard to understand. At least they are hard to understand until one day you finally see how doing it caused a problem and you finally say, “Oh! Okay, God. I see now why you said not to do that.” I wish I had listened even when I didn’t understand. I wish I had just been obedient even when it didn’t make sense because maybe I wouldn’t be in this jam if I had.
Can you imagine how Adam and Eve must have felt? They didn’t have the privilege of growing up with parents telling them “Sit down! Be quiet! Don’t put that in your mouth! Just because I said so, that’s why! I’ll give you something to cry about. Just wait until your father gets home young man!” Right? Their Father was always home and evidently spent a lot of time with them in the garden and had told them plainly what He expected them to do and what He expected them not to do. But I’m sure it didn’t all make a lot of sense.
Let’s look at some of that in Genesis chapter three this morning. We are continuing our study going through Genesis with a focus on knowing God better. I love Genesis because of the cool, old stories that I grew up reading. Some of you older folks might remember, like me, going to the doctor’s office and in the waiting room there was always this big, light-blue book of Bible stories. I don’t think they still have those in the waiting room anymore but, then again, I haven’t been in a little kid’s waiting room in a few years.
But, anyway, in those books you could read or just look at the pictures of Adam and Eve or David and Goliath or Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. I remember how those Adam and Eve pictures always placed them strategically behind bushes, at least through chapter three. That’s where we are today. In our passage today, if you were reading from one of those little kids’ story books of the Bible stories, Adam and Eve would be discreetly behind a bush and the picture would show Eve taking a shiny red apple off of a tree that had a mean-looking snake slithering around it. It was fascinating to me when I was 4 years old and it is still fascinating to me today.
Let’s read chapter three of Genesis. I want to read the whole chapter. It’s not that long and it’s a great story with a lot to teach us so just sit back and enjoy the story as I read it. Genesis three says, “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’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 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. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Now, some of my commentaries tell me that Adam bit the apple and feeling great shame, covered himself with a fig leaf. Eve too, felt shame and covered herself with a fig leaf. Then she went behind a bush to try on a maple leaf, a sycamore, and an oak. I don’t know for sure that’s true but it’s probably not far off.
I give you a little joke there because this passage can be depressing. It is very confusing and often frustrating. It is depressing because we want to think that Adam and Eve messed everything up but deep down we know that even if they had resisted temptation and every ancestor after them had somehow resisted temptation, we know that we would have been the ones to mess it up for everybody else.
It is confusing and frustrating because it brings out so many questions and so few answers. I want to know how old Adam and Eve were. What did they look like? What language did they speak? Are they walking with God the Father physically or is this a Christophany? And what about this talking snake? Was that common? Did all the animals talk before the fall? Was that Satan embodied in serpent form? It is frustrating to not know for sure the answers to some of those questions. But, again, if scripture doesn’t answer our questions, then we don’t need to know them.
Like I said last week, the original readers of this would have just accepted everything at face value and not tried to squeeze answers out of verses that weren’t meant to answer them. What we do know is that God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that if they did, they would surely die. Those are God’s words in chapter 2.
But then the serpent comes along and whether he was Satan or just used by Satan, we don’t know, but he comes along and twists God’s words. Did you see that? God said don’t eat of this certain tree or you will die. Satan asks Eve, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree”? It’s sort of like asking somebody, “So, do you still beat your wife?” Wait. What? No. I mean…
Satan twists God’s words to sound like there is a bit of truth to it and that is quite literally the oldest trick in the book and Satan still uses it – because it still works. He twists love into sex, work into greed, pleasure into abuse and on and on. He rarely tells an obvious bald-faced lie. He is still too crafty for that. Satan takes the loving union between a man and woman that God blesses and says, “Love is love. Does it really matter if it is between two women or two men or a man and a monkey or a woman and a tree? God says don’t judge.”
We can’t get too mad at Eve or Adam in this deal because we have all fallen for Satan’s lies. We do it every day. He is still crafty and we have to be aware that Satan was then and is still prowling around like a roaring lion looking to see who he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)
But here is what I really want us to see this morning. Look at Adam and Eve’s responses to God’s justice. God told them plainly what He expected and what the consequences would be and, yes, Satan was tricky but they have no excuse. But that doesn’t stop them from trying. Look at verses 12 and 13.
Cars and trucks had yet to be invented but Adam threw Eve right under the bus. Eve does the same with the snake. The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Now, who advised them it would help their situation to blame somebody else? Where did they learn that? That’s just our old sinful nature, isn’t it? That’s what all of us sinners do. At least that is our nature to do that. As Christians, we know that Jesus has put to death that old nature. Our job is to just keep it dead.
Numbers 32 says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Isn’t that the truth? But when it does, we rarely go quietly. If we are going down, we are taking somebody with us. It is what Adam and Eve did and we still do it today.
Now, before I go any further with that, I want you to understand what God meant when He said, “If you eat of this tree, you will die.” Did Adam and Eve die when they ate the fruit? Not physically. But they most definitely died spiritually. Their innocence died. Their hopes died. Their peace most certainly died. They had everything they could ever want in the garden but sin cost them all of it and it does the same for us today. And so often we react to God’s justice in the same way the first couple did.
So many times when we are confronted by our own sin, we lash out at somebody else. We blame somebody else or something else or we make excuses for what we did to shift the guilt, at least partially, to something else. We try to distract from our own injustice to the injustice of somebody else. We love to compare ourselves with somebody else because we can always find somebody that is worse than we are. And when we find that other person, we cry out for justice and it makes us feel better about ourselves.
Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God in the garden was a snowflake that rolled into a massive snowball that has developed into a world-shaking avalanche of sin. With it has come a tsunami of hatred for our fellow man, a tornado of anger and an earthquake of guilt and it all leaves us desperate for what we think is justice. We think if we can just get the other guy to act right, we will have peace, but it never comes. That’s what sin does. Sin robs us of our peace and so we blame somebody else. Then because of our sin, we rob somebody else of their peace. Sin rarely affects only the sinner and Satan laughs at us just like he laughed the very first time.
Unless you live under a rock, you know that our world and especially our country is falling apart. I have tried to make sense of it and I just can’t. Part of me wants to believe that it is just because I am a white guy living in a white area and I just can’t understand what black people have to go through and I’m sure that is part of it. I know there is racism in this world and it is unacceptable. It is just dumb to me to think that somebody is not as good as I am because of the color of their skin. That’s crazy.
But it’s also sinful and the problem in our world today is not skin but sin and our reaction to God’s justice when we sin. God is just. He always has been and we should be glad for it. He demands perfection and when we can’t be perfect, He has provided a way to Himself through His perfect Son, Jesus, who gave His life for our forgiveness. If you choose not to believe that then you are choosing to be judged according to your deeds. That is just. That is fair. But in this life, don’t expect justice. Don’t expect peace. Don’t expect the other guy to have it either.
One day there was a knock on the king’s door. King David said, “Hey, Nathan, come in. What’s up?” Nathan said, “My king, I want to report a grave injustice! There is a rich guy down the street that stole the only little lamb of the poor man who lived next door. The rich guy had everything but stole from the poor man.”
David puffed up with righteous indignation and said, “I will make that rich man pay! He can’t do that. He won’t get away with it! I will see justice done!”
Then Nathan said, “Oh, by the way, you are that man.” (2 Samuel 12)
And David knew it was true. Do you think David still wanted justice done? Turn to Psalm 51 and read the very first verse where David cries out to God, “Have mercy on me, oh God!” Have mercy. He goes on to say in verse 4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.”
God is just but we don’t want God’s justice. We want His mercy and we need to go to God before God comes to us and we need to admit, “I am that man. I am that sinner. I am that racist. I am that murderer. I am that liar and that thief and that pervert and that gossip and I am sorry. Please forgive me. I have no excuse. I can’t blame anybody else. I made the choice.”
Before we pray for God to change the world or this country or even change one other person, we need to pray, “God, change me. Please change me. We will talk about that other guy later but right now, I beg of you, Lord, please change me.”
There will be no real justice in this world until the great judgment in Heaven. The Book of Revelation tells us about that in chapter 20. John says, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 15Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
There is only one way to get your name in that eternal book and that is to admit to God that you are a sinner. Ask Him for forgiveness based on His grace and allow Him to come into your life and change you from the inside out. We can do that because Jesus died a perfect sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sins. God is just. Sin always requires death. But all we have to do is believe that Jesus paid that price for us and we get to live eternally in Heaven by God’s amazing grace. Your life WILL change when you truly believe. Have you done that today? Do it right now as we pray.
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