Trouble in Paradise - Part B

It's a fallen world. It is not a world that God intended. You're not going to escape this environment that we're in.

You're not going to escape the winds and the mist as you try to navigate the tightrope. You are doing marriage in a fallen world. There's no escaping the fact that we're living in a sin-infested fallen world, and that's going to affect your marriage. But as Skip explains in today's teaching, when you tether your marriage to the truth of God's Word, you can have the joy in marriage that God wants for you. Then stay tuned after the teaching as Skip and Lenya share personally how important forgiveness is in the marriage relationship. A successful marriage is a union of two forgivers, and if you are willing to accept the person as they are and forgive all of the shortcomings, if that's just sort of your opening act, your mentality, life's going to get a lot easier.

Now, we want to tell you about a resource that helps you explore the Psalms. Betty White said, it's not easy being a mom. If it were easy, fathers would do it.

That's not a sly shot at dads. It's a compliment to the wonderful work of mothers. Here's a great way to show your appreciation for a mother in your life. It's the heart songs package, which features a teaching series on the Psalms led by Lenya and Janae Heitzig. Psalm 45 is a love song, and in it, you're going to find a groom and a bride, and it's their wedding day, and it includes an ornate dress and bridesmaids and perfume and gifts and guests. The heart songs package also includes a beautiful theology quiet time journal and a bag of Skip's library roast coffee. It's a great gift to honor a special woman in your life with encouragement and strength as she studies God's Word and spends time in prayer, all while enjoying a delicious cup of the coffee Pastor Skip loves. The heart songs package is our thanks for your gift to help share biblical teaching and encouragement with others through the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig.

So be sure to request yours when you give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Now let's turn to Genesis three as we listen to Skip's teaching. So Satan challenges God's love. He challenges God's Word. Number three, Satan substitutes his own lie.

Hit verse five. For God knows, he's just making this up, that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. God's trying to keep you from something, and what's going to happen is you're going to be as good and as big and as powerful and as mighty and as all-knowing as God.

It's a perversion of what God did in creation, making man in God's image. Now the thought is, why don't you make God in your image? Let's just replace God with you. Once a person starts questioning God's love and questioning God's Word, he will even start questioning the whole notion of God.

Here's the thought. Well, the Bible isn't enough for my problem. Church isn't enough for my problem. I need real help, not from the Christian group, not from the biblical group, real help from the secular community.

I need to pay a hundred dollars an hour to get psychobabble. That's real help. That's the only thing that's going to fix me. The whole notion of God is thrown out, because once you push God and his blueprint out of the picture, well, then you can just start making stuff up.

You can insert it with just about anything you feel, anything you want. I've stood at this platform on these steps a few weeks ago with a woman who said, I prayed about it and I feel a peace about leaving my husband, dumping him. I said, well, what did he do?

He goes, well, we're just not getting along. But I prayed about it and I feel a peace about it. I said, you feel a peace about it? Have you ever read deeply into this book? Because you don't have to feel anything about it. Your feelings can become the caboose that is pulled by your will with God's principles.

Are you willing to do that? She said, I'll pray about it, see how I feel about it. Satan challenges God's love, his word, and substitutes God's word with a lie. Now, look at the temptation in verse 6. Look how good this looks to eat. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, nothing wrong with that, that it was pleasant to the eyes, it's beautiful, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Hey, let me remind you of a scripture in 1 John that fits in so perfectly here.

It's a dovetail. John writes, for all that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, remember that verse, and the pride of life, that is not of the Father, it is of the world, and the world is passing away, and the lust thereof. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Now, think of that verse with verse 6. The lust of the flesh, tree looks good for food, the lust of the eyes, it was pleasant to her eyes, and the pride of life, it's desirable to make one wise. Your enemy and my enemy, Satan, is incessant, incessant. He keeps coming back and, you know, it's like a woodpecker, and woodpeckers will go on a tree and they're trying to find the soft spot, and once they find the soft spot, they're in. Satan and his satanic host, they've been studying humanity for a few thousand years, I think they've got us wired. And I think individually, whatever demons are assigned to you, know your weaknesses, your weak spot, and that's where he hammers.

He carefully studies our character to mount the attack. Be aware of that. There was a woman married to a miserly man. He wouldn't give her anything.

She had to fight for everything she had. She said one day, honey, I'm going shopping. He immediately said, look, but don't buy. Look, but don't buy. She said, I'm just going window shopping. Look, but don't buy. So she goes out, comes home a couple hours later with a bag with a brand new dress. He gets all upset.

I told you to look, but not buy. She goes, I know, I know, but when I tried the dress on, Satan was there. And he said, boy, that dress looks great on you. And her husband said, well, you should have said, get thee behind me, Satan. She said, I did, but he said, you know, from the back, it looks really good too. Here in the text, the temptation looks really good, really pleasant.

He comes on with such soothing and reassuring words and speech. Notice the rapid fire verbs in the text, four of them. She took, she ate, she gave, he ate. And there, friends, is the darkest day in human history. It's when it all began, all the troubles began. A new virus was infected into the human bloodstream, the S-I-N virus.

We're all S-I-N positive. Paul summed it up by saying, by one man, that is Adam, by one man, sin entered the world sin entered the world and death through sin and death has spread to all men. Sin. Nobody even uses that word anymore.

Preachers don't even use that word anymore. They like to say, well, we all have many vices. We all deal with our own hang-ups.

All of us have baggage. Okay, call it whatever you want, but eventually get down to what the Bible calls it. It's sin. I have sin. I'm a sinner. The quicker we admit that, the better we are, because if we want help for a problem we have, if we keep denying we have the problem, we'll never go to the doctor for the cure.

When I realize what I need to do because of who I am, the better off I'm going to be. No, we like to blame our sin. Well, you know, it's my Irish temperament. You know how it is. It's my German exactness.

It's my Spanish passion. Whatever are the little peculiarities of who we are. And so we get really good, I mean really good, at playing the blame game. It's never, ever, ever my fault. It must be somebody else's fault.

You're going 75 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. You get a ticket. Whose fault is it? Well, the police officer could have been more compassionate. Really, it's his fault? You spilled something in the restaurant on yourself.

Well, the waiter didn't have to fill the cup up that high. You go into a store, you want to buy something. You can't afford it.

You can't buy it. Who do you blame? Obama. It's his fault.

Bush. It's his fault. It's my wife's fault. She won't let me have it. Or my husband's fault.

Or the devil who said, looks good from behind. So sin enters and contaminates the marriage. What does the couple do? Well, let's look. This brings us to the second layer. The first layer is the honeymoon ends, trouble begins. The second layer is innocence ends and the cover-up begins. The cover-up begins. Verse 7. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked.

Duh. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. I'll show you in a minute why that wasn't a great idea. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden, as if that's even possible. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you? And so he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? And the man said, the woman you gave me to be with me. She gave me of the tree and I ate.

Great guy. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Of course, the serpent, you know, he's the end of the line.

He can't point the finger at anybody. Everything changes now. Innocence ends, the cover-up begins.

Now look at something here. First off, they become self-conscious. Verse 7 says they knew they were naked. I read that and I go, you mean they didn't know that before? This is like the first time they discovered that? You don't think like the cool breeze blowing across the skin would like give them a clue?

I think I'm naked. Here's the point. Their nakedness was never an issue before. Now that sin enters, it is accompanied with guilt. And they become very, very self-aware, very self-conscious. Second thing to note is they become isolated. The idea of covering themselves, withdrawing from one another, covering themselves up with foliage.

Sin now complicates the relationship. They're not vulnerable anymore. They were selfless. Now they're selfish, self-absorbed, self-consumed. They're uncomfortable with each other. A wife said to her husband, we have a strange and wonderful relationship.

You're strange and I'm wonderful. They were both strange after this. Third thing to note is they became afraid. They became afraid. You notice that God starts walking toward them in the garden and they run away from Him in the garden. Now we are told that the Lord God came to walk with them in the cool of the day. A better translation, in the breeze of the day. I won't belabor it, but the text seems to suggest that there was a daily time, probably early in the morning, maybe late in the afternoon, where God would meet with His creation to fellowship with them.

That's why He created them, that He might be with them. The word to walk means to be at ease among or to be conversant with. It suggests an easy way to be at ease with it.

It suggests an open fellowship. God walks toward them. That was typical. That's what He would do, but they ran away from Him. That's instinctive with guilt.

Guilt makes us hide. What do you do when you see a police officer? What do your hands do? They tense up. What do criminals do when they see a police officer? Do they run toward Him? They run away from Him. That's fear.

It's instinctive with guilt. My son was young, and he got a bad report card. I'll never forget. He usually would come home, be happy-to-go-lucky, throw his backpack in the kitchen on the sink and hang out. But this day, I knew something was up.

He came home, had his backpack on, kind of hunkered down, walked into, I don't know, a closet and locked himself in it, hid, because he had a bad report card. And I looked at that. I looked at that. We dealt with it, but I thought, who taught him that? And I thought, oh, Adam taught him that, just like he taught me that and you that. We hide when we feel guilt.

Now, listen to what Adam says about what happened in verse 12. It's the woman you gave me, blame-shifting, passing the buck. It's her fault. Actually, think of it.

You know what he's saying? God, it's your fault. It's the woman you gave me.

This is your idea. You gave her to me. It's not my fault. It's her fault. But I tell you what, when Eve heard Adam say, it's the woman you gave me, that must have crushed her heart.

Don't you think? This is the man who said, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Now he's throwing her under the bus. There was a woman sitting in the front row at her husband's funeral, grieving, grieving widow. Somebody walked up to her and said, I am so sorry. Tell me, what were your husband's last words? She said, you really want to know? She says, yes. She said, he said, you don't scare me with that shotgun, Martha.

You couldn't hit the side of a barn. They'd been in an argument blaming each other, throwing each other under the bus. It's your fault. No, it's your fault. No, it's your fault. An article in Psychology Today said, the road to marital ruin begins with blame.

People hide behind blame. So the honeymoon ends, trouble begins. Innocence ends, the cover up begins.

And it's been continuing ever since. Cover up, cover up. I want to close with this thought. Deception ends, redemption begins.

Let's go, here's Adam and Eve. They feel guilty. They look for a shrub.

They cover themselves up with fig leaves. We don't have time to go through it, but in verse 15, God prophetically introduces the redeemer who's going to come and destroy the authority of the serpent, Satan, in verse 15. Look down to verse, well, look at verse seven. The eyes of both of them were open. They knew they were naked.

They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Look down to verse 21. I'm skipping ahead. Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. Let me give you a thought.

It's just a fun thought. In chapter one, God is the creator. In chapter two, God is the surgeon, taking a side of Adam to make a woman, and the matchmaker, bringing the woman to the man. But in chapter three, God is the tailor, making them animal skins. You see, the fig leaf coverings wasn't a good idea for this reason. They would dry up.

They would lose moisture and they would fall off. And Adam and Eve would once again be naked. So to help them, now that they understand sin and guilt and they want to cover themselves up, God makes animal skins for them. You know what that means? That means an animal must die. Innocent blood must be shed to cover Adam's sin. What does that sound like?

It sounds like a preview of coming attractions. Now, I don't know what animal it was. It doesn't say. My guess is it was a lamb. I don't know if you've ever felt lamb skin, but there's nothing like it. It feels a lot better than fig leaves. It's smooth and it's silky and it's warm.

It's luxurious. In order for them to be clothed because of their guilt due to their sin, God provides a sacrifice. An animal dies, sheds its blood because without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin.

Okay, now think of this. As soon as Adam and Eve sinned and they knew we're naked, we have a problem, let's run from God. You know why they ran? Because they thought they were going to die. They thought they were going to die. God promised back in chapter 2, in the day that you eat thereof, you will die. So that they sinned and they thought, they hear God in the garden, Adam, we're dead, let's run.

But now, something dies and it's not them. It's an innocent animal. And I'm suggesting, though I can't prove it, it was a lamb.

Now, I'm going to place another thought in your mind as we're bringing this to a close. With Adam and Eve, it was one lamb per person. If you're going to clothe with an animal skin, you need two lambs, one for her, one for him. Later on, when there's the exodus out of Egypt, the Lord will say, take one lamb per household and shed its blood and put it on the lintels and door posts of the house. So it's not one lamb per person, now it's one lamb per family. Later on, under the covenant of the law, the high priest will take the blood of the lamb and sprinkle it on the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant to make atonement for the nation.

One lamb per person, one lamb per family, now one lamb per nation. And then the best part has become to the New Testament when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming and says, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The whole world can be forgiven. The whole world can be atoned for.

So here's the deal. We have two choices in dealing with our sin. Number one, we can run from God or we can run to God.

Where are you running? Our two choices are separation or redemption. We've got to get this thing covered up, look for a shrub, look for a bush, or you run to God and let him clothe you. What's your choice?

Well, you're going to have to let him clothe you. What's your choice? I don't know what you expected when you got married, but I've discovered many couples have unrealistic expectations. There's two truths I want you to walk away with. Number one, we already stated it, we're doing marriage in a broken world. It's a fallen world. It is not a world that God intended. You're not going to escape this environment that we're in.

You're not going to escape the winds and the mist as you try to navigate the tightrope. You are doing marriage in a fallen world. Second truth, and I'll close with this, you are a sinner married to a sinner. And the happiest marriage is the union of two forgivers. Forgivers. Forgivers. I forgive you. You know, we say to our spouse, I can't believe you did that.

You can't? Like you've just now figured out I'm a sinner? I could have told you, well, she figured it out and he figured it out pretty early on. We're a sinner married to a sinner. And the happiest marriage is the union of two forgivers. And the best way to experience forgiveness in a marriage is to know that you've been forgiven by God. I look at it this way, if God can forgive me after all that I've thought and done in my lifetime and says, skip, I'm willing to wipe it clean, clean slate, you get a do-over, and I'll give you my heaven free as a gift.

I'm giving that to you. I forgive you. And I can't turn around to my spouse and say, I forgive you because I've been forgiven by him. A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers. You're a sinner married to a sinner. You're doing marriage in a broken world.

So am I. We need to be tethered to the truth of God's word, the principles of the blueprint. Even though the suggestions are going to come, God doesn't love you. Look at where you're at.

You can't trust that book. Get away from it. Get away from church. Get away from God's people.

Run for your life. Stay tethered to God's word. Stay tethered to a biblical accountability. Have couples in your life who can hold you up.

Keep you walking. That's Skip Hyten with a message from the series, Keep Calm and Marry On. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com.

Now, let's go in the studio with Skip and Lenya. You know, they always say after every wedding comes a marriage, and at some point the honeymoon's over. And we heard today in your teaching that it was the end of the honeymoon for Adam and Eve, as sin entered the very first marriage. And we're reminded of how important forgiveness can be, and remembering the forgiveness that God demonstrates to us in learning to forgive one another. Perhaps our listeners who need to walk that path of forgiveness can start today. Are there things that you can encourage them with, or are there things we aren't obligated to forgive?

Well, yeah, that's a great question. Well, first of all, if you're listening, and you're married, you're a sinner married to a sinner. You're living out your marriage in a fallen world.

So that's just, that's the landscape we live in. But a successful marriage is a union of two forgivers. And if you are willing to accept the person as they are and forgive all of the shortcomings, you know, if that's just sort of your opening act, your mentality, life's going to get a lot easier. Are there things not to forgive?

No, there's not. Be kind one to another, Paul said, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake, or in Christ, has forgiven you. Well, and that's a beautiful text, but also just right there in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our deaths as we forgive our debtors.

And there's no disclaimer if it's your husband or your wife. No matter who the debtor is, we're to forgive. There are certain things that mar a relationship that give an option to a believer to sever the relationship. The Bible speaks about that. But as far as forgiveness, Jesus even said, love your enemies. And I've had a woman come to me and my husband is my friend and I can't forgive him and I can't love him and he's become an enemy. I said, well, the Bible says love your enemies.

So there's a way to approach that even situation. Thanks, Givin Lenya. We hope this helps you shape your thoughts with the priorities and perspectives of heaven. And we want to invite you to help encourage others to do the same with a gift to keep these biblical teachings on the air as we expand into more major U.S. cities this year. Just call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskiff.com slash donate. That's connectwithskiff.com slash donate. Thank you. Join us again tomorrow as Skip begins a message all about the battle between man and woman that started with Adam and Eve and continues to this day. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.