The Worst Decision Ever Made - Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

What do you do when you've made a bad call and have to live with it? The Bible has many examples of this, and today we begin a series on making the best of a bad decision. We'll learn that there is hope, even if we've really messed things up. Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, we've all made bad decisions, but today you're speaking on the worst decision ever made.

You know, Dave, you're absolutely right. Of course, we've all made bad decisions. Some of the decisions that we have made have been minor.

The consequences were really not that great. But there are other decisions that have been made that have begun a whole series of dominoes and led to destruction. Now, I want to ask everyone who is listening this question, do you think perhaps that you have made the worst decision ever made?

Well, the good news is, I can assure you, you haven't. The worst decision ever made was made by Adam and Eve in the Garden, a remarkably terrible decision. And we're going to be learning about that, but I also want you to know that I've written a book entitled Making the Best of a Bad Decision.

It contains not only the content of the messages that you're going to be listening to, but in addition to that, other content. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here is what you do.

Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Making the best of a bad decision. No matter where you are today, God is there with you to help you. I begin today with a question. What is the worst decision that has ever been made?

That's the question. And I have some very, very, very good news for you today. You didn't make it. You thought you had, but it wasn't you. The very worst decision that has ever been made was made by Adam and Eve. No decision ever had such far-reaching consequences that go all the way to eternity. No decision had entailed within that decision so many other decisions that were wrong and destructive and hurtful and sinful.

Adam and Eve win the prize for having made the worst decision that has ever been made. There are two lies that we are tempted to believe. Lie number one is that one sin doesn't matter. After you have believed that lie, the devil comes to us with lie number two and says that now that you've fallen, there's no use standing up. I'm here today to tell you that no matter how far you have fallen, there's always good reason to stand up.

This is the beginning of a series of messages on making the best of a bad decision, and today we begin with the worst decision ever made. In order for us to understand the context, we need to realize that Adam and Eve made this decision to sin in the best of circumstances. The text of course is Genesis chapter 3, and we're going to invite you to turn there.

In a few moments I'm going to be paying specific attention to some of the verses. Genesis chapter 3, and let's begin by talking about the conditions or the opportunities that they had that they sinned against so that we might understand the magnitude of their mistake. First of all, Adam and Eve lived in a perfect environment, a perfect environment. Just think of Eve, she had no insecurities, no insecurities at all. She didn't have to compete with the super models that grace our newsstands. Eve didn't have to worry about the woman next door who was all too friendly with her husband. Catch this, she didn't have to lie awake at night wondering whether or not she had married the right man.

You understand? She didn't have that problem. She lived not only in a perfect environment, but she also had a perfect husband. If they had had garbage, he'd have carried it out.

He'd have been sensitive and caring and romantic and all of those other things that are so highly prized and rightly so. Did she want beauty? She had it. Was she hungry? There were many trees in the garden, the Bible says from which they could freely eat. Imagine the environment.

All of that was at her disposal. Sometimes we hear from psychologists, behaviorism. Behaviorism says that we are what we are because of the product of our environment. I remember when an assassination took place, someone said, I don't blame him, I blame the society that produced him. Well, there's some truth to the fact that poverty does breed crime, but also sometimes the richest homes and the richest people become criminals too.

Don't know that if you've noticed, but when young people shoot one another in school, those shooters sometimes came from pretty wealthy homes. Behaviorism is only partially true. It's not the whole story. Now, if you ask the question why it was that Eve made the decision to sin when she did not even yet have a sinful nature, we cannot answer.

We have some insight, as we'll point out in a moment, but we really can't answer that. She also had the advantage of direct access to God. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, and they and God would have long talks together. It was in this environment that she sinned. It was turning her back on the blessings of God. God says there is one tree of the garden from which you should not eat, and many trees from which you can eat. Satan, of course, zeroed in on that one tree, that one negative, but they were planted, that is to say, Adam and Eve grew up and were created in an environment where they could have many, many different trees, and she sinned against all those blessings. Just like some young people, some of whom I've known, brought up in fine Christian homes, good churches, good pastors, good ministries, they turned their back on all the blessings to do their own thing. So that's the environment in which they sinned.

That's the context. And then the decision that they made is, of course, in verse 6 of chapter 3. So when the woman saw 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 of its fruit and ate and she gave some to her husband also who was with her and he ate. He was with her in the garden, no doubt about it.

And he was there participating as well. What went into this decision? Well, it's obvious that one thing that Eve did is she elevated her desires above God's word. The tree was desirable.

It was pleasant to the eyes. It appeared as if it would make you wise and that meant more to her than the word of God, thou shalt not eat it for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die. And her desires therefore took precedence over God's word. What the serpent basically said to her is Eve, feel, don't think.

It looks good, do it. If it feels good, how can it be so bad? And then, of course, there was also curiosity. God says, if you eat of it, you shall die. But what is death?

They had no example of death in paradise. So, you know, she was thinking, I wonder what death really is. Am I going to experience death?

Maybe death will be better than life. Furthermore, the serpent has said that you shall be like God knowing good from evil. What he didn't point out is that they would know evil experimentally, which was terrible.

God knows it from the standpoint of his knowledge, but he has not experienced it in the sense that he did it. So, the serpent comes and he says, if you participate, you will know good and evil and you will have enlightenment. And if she didn't eat, she would always wonder what it would have been like if she had eaten. It was that curiosity that made her decide to say yes to the serpent.

Eve has many, many sisters and many, many daughters. I remember counseling a young woman who was trying to overcome the effects of a sexual relationship. Now, suddenly, she was awash with all of the guilt, all of the regret, all of the shame, all of the implications. And I remember she said that this man asked her and then asked her again and she said no. But then she began to think of, if I don't, I'm always going to wonder what it would have been like. And so, because of that, she gave in.

Curiosity was at work here in the text. Eve was deceived, the Bible says, apparently a genuine deception. And by the way, how was she deceived? She was deceived thinking that the words of the serpent were more important than the words of God. That's a whole separate sermon about deception among false prophets and false prophecies where they confuse the word of Satan and the word of God.

But we must hurry on. The Bible says that Adam ate willingly. It says in the New Testament he was not deceived. He knew that this was wrong.

He knew that some of the consequences were going to be disastrous. And isn't that a picture of some of us? Some of us are deceived and so we're lured into certain situations which turn out to be wrong and others of us are willingly deceived. We long to be deceived so that we can do what we want to do.

We long for deception. And of course, in the midst of this, it is the human mind that comes along to justify now what the heart does. All of us basically, at the end of the day, are desire-driven. We say to ourselves, oh no, no, my lifestyle is a matter of rationality. Very probably your lifestyle is based on desires and then your mind becomes a slave to the desires and your mind has to rationalize what you've done so that you can live with yourself and live with your conscience.

So the mind comes along and says, oh well, everybody's doing it. Furthermore, it isn't really my fault. It's her fault.

It's somebody else's fault, not me. You can see this even in this text with Adam and Eve. And therefore, I'm not to be blamed and I'm just fine the way I am, thank you very, very much, and we refuse to see ourselves as we are because our mind now has rationalized and those rationalizations become deep and lasting and we're entrenched by them until God helps us to see the truth. Now, interestingly and very importantly, Eve had no way of predicting the consequences of her action. She thought to herself, well, you know, the consequences are within my power and if I eat and I don't like it and something happens, hey, we're still in paradise. Oh yeah, she didn't know that, did she?

Only God knew the consequences. She couldn't foresee the future. She couldn't foresee wicked Assyrians and their brutality in raping men and women and children in the early centuries of history. She couldn't foresee that. She couldn't foresee the Holocaust. She couldn't foresee the Turks in genocide wiping out the Armenians.

She couldn't foresee the unhappy marriages. She couldn't see the sex trade, the horrid sex trade, and yet in a sense all of these decisions were entailed by the decision that this couple was going to make because from now on all children born will be born with the taint of original sin. Some people deny original sin. I think it was Chesterton who said he can't understand why anyone would deny the doctrine of original sin. He said it is the only biblical doctrine that can be proven every day by reading the newspaper.

Isn't that true? She couldn't foresee that. Wouldn't it have been wonderful or a lot better from our standpoint if she had just decided to believe God and trust him that his way was best, but she had to find it out for herself and the devastation is evident. Now that background, the next question is what does God do about this? What is God's response? Well, the first thing that God does is he curses the serpent and then he makes a promise in verse 15 as he speaks to the serpent. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

First prediction in the Bible about the coming of Jesus. The seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the serpent and in this promise there is a contrast of wounds. The seed of the woman will inflict upon the serpent a mortal wound. His head shall be crushed.

Visualize a serpent, a snake, and then visualize someone just taking their heel and grinding his head into the dust. That's what Jesus will do, but the serpent in turn, he will think that he's winning a victory. Jesus is on the cross and he thinks I'm winning this one. This is the end of Jesus. Jesus rises up three days later, goes to heaven sometime after that, totally triumphant, and all that the devil was able to do was to nip his heel.

Temporary wound. That's the best the serpent could do, but Jesus, God rather, is saying right here in this text that redemption is going to be a matter of conflict and suffering and the seed of the woman will overcome the seed of the serpent. So that's the first thing God does. Then he curses the environment, but first of all, verse 16, to the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain in child bearing in pain.

You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. Very difficult verse to interpret and you have various commentators struggling with the meaning, but what's going on here in the text is not a good thing. That's why some translations have your desire shall be against your husband.

It is the prediction of marital conflict and the brutality and the insensitivity of men throughout the centuries is a reminder of the curse and the conflict between the sexes. And then the Lord says also of Adam, he says, Adam, because you listen to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree, cursed is the ground because of you. What God was saying is it is impossible for a sinful man now to work in a sinless environment. Therefore your environment is going to be cursed. And when you plant seeds, weeds are also going to grow up.

And it says in verse 19, by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you shall return. Life is going to be difficult. Earning a living is going to be a real sacrifice. Things are going to work against you. The environment is going to work against you.

You're going to have to overcome it. Conflict now is going to become a part of the human experience. All that happened as a result of sin. So God says, first of all, I'm going to give you a promise. Secondly, he says, I'm cursing your environment and you yourself are under the curse. You're under a judgment because of what happened and your offspring also will be. But in addition to that, God says, I'm going to show you some mercy. There's going to be mercy available in your situation.

Because I need to ask you a question today. Most people think that God had plan A. Plan A was that man wouldn't sin. In fact, I heard a sermon that was sent to me on cassette one time entitled, God the Gambler, in which the message went like this that God gambled that Adam and Eve wouldn't sin. And then when he lost the gamble, he upped the ante and he sent Jesus and maybe nobody would believe on Jesus, but God is constantly gambling. I have no idea what Bible he's reading.

And if he's reading it, I don't know whether or not he believes it. You read the New Testament, you discover not only that God was not gambling. I'm going to say this, and I know it's going to raise a lot of questions in your mind, but God from eternity past, it was read today in our scripture reading and you do listen to the scripture reading when it's read, don't you? God chose us in him from before the foundation of the world that we should walk in love. It says in Second Timothy chapter one nine that Jesus Christ loved us and saved us in the mind of God from all eternity.

Wow. The scheme was known to God and looked at properly. It was part of his eternal purpose.

The lamb slain from before the foundation of the world God created that he might redeem. This was not a surprise to God. God wasn't in heaven saying, well, you know, I was hoping that they'd obey.

And what do I do now? If that's your God, it's not the God of the Bible. I know, of course, that that raises objections.

I'm sure that we have with us today some motor boaters, you know, motor boaters. Yeah, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, And yet God knew, God understood, and God was more than ready. Now notice the mercy that he shows. He gives a promise, he curses Adam and Eve along with the environment, but notice what it says in verse 21. And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them. If you're in the habit of underlining your Bibles, that is one verse to underline, to ponder, and to think about God's mercy. Now, the scripture says earlier that they clothed themselves with fig leaves. What was wrong with fig leaves?

If you had lots of them, you could make dresses, and you could make shirts, and you could make all kinds of nice clothing with fig leaves. But God says two things in this verse that are critical. The first is this, that when it comes to sin, the soul that sins will die.

That's a basic principle. And if you are to be forgiven, and if your shame is to be covered, and if your sins are to be taken away, and no longer held against you, first of all, you need someone to die in your place. Fig leaves can be taken from a bush, they can grow back, they're basically inanimate, and they don't qualify to cover you.

It has to be an animal. Because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins, and this animal now becomes a type of the coming of Jesus Christ, who is going to die, who is going to shed his blood. Because if we are to be exempt from our sins, someone had to die for us, and that's why the Bible says Jesus died for sinners. He died for sinners, and he shed his blood, that we might be covered, and that our sin might not be held against us. My friend, right from the early chapters of Genesis, we discover that there is no cheap covering for sin.

Animals had to be slaughtered, and of course, as I mentioned in the message, they typify the coming of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, because of our bad decisions, decisions that perhaps we made, or others made for us. No matter where you are today in your spiritual life, God is there to help you in the midst of bad decisions. I've written a book entitled Making the Best of a Bad Decision. The subtitle is How to Put Your Regrets Behind You, Embrace Grace, and Move Toward a Better Future. This is a book of hope. It's a book of encouragement. It's a book that perhaps you need, or you know someone who also desperately needs it. For a gift of any amount, we're making it available to you.

Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Thanks so much for your generous gifts, because together we're getting the gospel around the world.

Simply go to RTWOffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. The book is entitled Making the Best of a Bad Decision. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. When Adam and Eve sinned, paradise turned sour, and man's fate was sealed. Were it not for the grace of a redeeming God, there would have been no hope for our rebellious race. Next time, the story continues. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.