What Went Wrong

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer talks about the difference between a mistake and sin. What do you call a person who plans out their mistakes and then carries them out over and over and then lies about it to everyone?

A serial mistaker, is that what you call them? We have to have a better word, folks, and that's where the Bible offers, I believe, a better explanation. It's going to explain that there is a disease that has corrupted all of us, a disease that has absolutely destroyed our lives, and you're going to see the outbreak of that disease in Genesis 3. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Let's start today with a telling question. Do you think of yourself as a pretty good person?

Sure, you might mess up sometimes, but your heart is in the right place, isn't it? Well, today, Pastor J.D. challenges that notion. He's showing that if we're honest with ourselves, we know we're really not as good as we think we are and definitely not as good as we could or should be.

So why is that and what is the solution here? It's part of our new teaching series called The Whole Story, and Pastor J.D. titled today's message, What Went Wrong? I would like to begin with what I think we all know and can agree on, whether you're a Christian or not. Whether you embrace Christian faith or not, we understand that something is not right with the world. A lot of times it's easy to see that in other people, but in our more reflective moments, we have to acknowledge, if we're honest, that there's a problem in our own hearts also. Do you ever have one of those moments where in the heat of some moment, something slips out of your mouth that totally embarrasses you? Maybe it's an outburst of anger or you say something about somebody or to somebody, or you verbalize some desire that you have and later you feel bad about it.

So what do you do? You go back to whoever you said it to and you say something like, I'm sorry, I didn't really mean that. That's not really me. But really, though, in fact, maybe what's snuck out of your mouth in that moment is the best reflection of what is actually in your heart. Maybe that's the real unfiltered you.

Maybe it is not the exception, but the reflection of what's really going on down there. Or think about it this way. When you were dating, did you ever play that game? What are you thinking right now?

You learn not to play that game after you get married, because when you're totally infatuated with the other person, it's always safe. What are you thinking about right now? How beautiful you are.

You know how cute that little snort is when you giggle. But after you've been married for a while, they might ask it when you're thinking, how much weight have you gained over the last five years? How would you like it if there were somebody who, whenever they wanted, could just read out loud whatever you were thinking?

How awful would that be? Recently, I was on a trip and I had to rent a car and they gave me, the rental company gave me a Jeep Cherokee. And I had this new GPS feature on it where they could tell, you know, as they can tell what the speed limit is on the road you're on. And every time you go over the speed limit, this pleasant little voice in a slightly alarmed judgmental tone would come on in the car and say, the speed limit is 55. Now it was totally embarrassing because I'd be driving down the road talking to whoever was in the car when this little self-righteous voice would come on announcing my sin to everybody in the car. But it made me think about how uncomfortable it would be if a little voice did that out loud every time I sinned in my heart. When you're in a restaurant looking at the dessert menu, a little voice announces, you are already 12 pounds overweight.

Or if you're walking through the mall and you see a pretty girl, the little voice says, your wife's name is, you know, and then just puts my wife's name in there. You got to acknowledge however you get there that there's a lot of stuff going on down there that it's not good and you can't just brush it away. Andy Stanley points out that we like to call dumb decisions that we make mistakes. Oh, I made some mistakes in my previous marriage.

Oh, I made some mistakes at my former job. Or when a politician or a celebrity is discovered to have been involved in a multi-year affair. And he always will refer to those recurring rendezvous as poor choices or mistakes. But does mistake really capture the magnitude of an affair? The offended spouse doesn't usually think so. Your kids don't see it that way. A mistake is what happens when you forget to carry the one in a math problem. Offended spouses feel something different.

They feel betrayed. Or think about it like this. Andy Stanley says, sometimes we make mistakes on purpose, don't we?

Don't you? Sometimes we plan our mistakes. You are probably guilty of some premeditated mistakes in your life. So what do you call a mistake that you make on purpose? What is the best term to describe a mistake that you make on a recurring basis? What do you call a person who plans out their mistakes and then carries them out over and over and then lies about it to everyone?

A serial mistaker, is that what you call them? We have to have a better word folks. And that's where the Bible offers, I believe, a better explanation. It's going to explain that there is a disease that has corrupted all of us.

A disease that has absolutely destroyed our lives. And you're going to see the outbreak of that disease in Genesis 3. Genesis 3, God created us perfect and that lasts about 10 seconds.

Adam and Eve appear to have the moral attention span of a two-year-old hyped up on pixie sticks. And so just a few verses after their creation, this whole thing comes unraveled. Genesis 3, verse 1, Now the serpent, now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.

Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Now, technically God had never said the don't touch it line. She added that to what God had said. And I'm not sure if that is supposed to reveal at the beginning of this resentment, she feels toward God like, oh, he is so unreasonable.

He won't even let us touch it. Or if she's just ignorant of what God's word actually said. Either way, distortion of God's words is dangerous. Verse 4, But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. You see, God knows the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

That's why I didn't want you to take it because he didn't want you to be like him. So 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 to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Who was with her means in Hebrew, that they were right there together, literally elbow to elbow. He was standing right there like an idiot, waiting to see if she would drop dead when she ate it. 1 Timothy 2 tells us that Adam was not deceived. Eve was deceived, Adam was not. He knew exactly what God had said. He knew what God said would happen if they ate it. And so he was like, I wonder what's going to happen now. And if she drops dead, then I'm not going to touch it.

And if she doesn't, then it's not that bad. Verse 7, Then the eyes of both of them were open and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. In this story, we're going to see four very crucial things about our lives. Number one, we're going to see the nature of our sin. Number two, we're going to see our instinctive response to our sin. Number three, the devastating consequences of our sin. And then number four, the only cure for our sin. Number one, the nature of our sin.

There are several components that make up this temptation. The first is letter A, unbelief. Unbelief. The serpent launches his offensive with the words, did God really say?

Are you sure he said that? Then Satan assails the character of God. You know, God doesn't really have your best interest at heart. He doesn't really love you. You can't really trust him. You know, Eve, you would make a much better Lord of your life than God would because nobody, Eve, knows you best like you know you. Only you, Eve, can decide what is best for you. Only you know your heart. Only you can trust you.

You can only trust you to make you happy. You see, up until that moment, God had been the one who declared what was good. That's how the creation story went and God saw it and it was good. Now here in Genesis 3, they take upon themselves the responsibility to decide what is good for them. I know what's best for me, not God.

That was a terrible trade. Next, the serpent tells her, you will not surely die. In other words, there will be no judgment. You don't have to worry about that.

That's not really going to happen. That's not a factor. Every single time you are tempted, these are the core components of the lie. God doesn't love you.

He's not really trustworthy. You know better than God does and don't worry about judgment. Surely there is not an afterlife where people actually are punished forever for their sins. Or maybe you don't even disbelieve that.

Maybe you just never think about it. That's where most people are. Blaise Pascal, a philosopher I quote up here a lot, said that for most people life, he lived about 300 years ago, life is like you're in a stagecoach barreling toward a cliff. The cliff is a several hundred foot drop and you know it's there and you know it's coming.

So what do you do? He says you just distract yourself with the pretty scenery around you and all the amusements there and refuse to think about that cliff that is coming. He says it's just insanity to not spend most of our time making sure that we understand that there is a judgment coming and that we are prepared for it. Unbelief really leads right into letter B, idolatry. Idolatry.

I'm not going to spend long on this one because I've dedicated whole messages to it. But the Apostle Paul in Romans 1 says about this scene that it was the first worship of an idol. All right, what he says in Romans 1 is that Adam and Eve gave to one of God's creations the glory that belongs to God.

Glory in Hebrew literally means weight. So when you give something glory or you worship it, you're giving it a weight that you should give to God only. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing in itself. In fact, usually an idol in your life is not a bad thing. Usually it's a good thing, a good thing that you turn into a God thing. And it becomes something that has so much weight in your life. You live for it. You're obsessed by it. You can't see how you'd be happy in life if you don't have this thing.

Idols would be things like romance. Can't be happy unless I have good romance. Can't be happy unless I have family. Can't be happy unless I have the approval of my friends. It can't be happy if I don't have money.

Can't be happy if I don't have these pleasures that are a part of my life. Whatever it is you think you could not live without, that is what has become an idol in your life. In this story, the idol that she goes for, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has three components to it. The Apostle John says three components are the components of every sin. The lust of the flesh, she saw that it was good for food.

The lust of the eyes, lust of the eyes means I know that God's holding out on me and there's something else out there that I need besides what he's given to me so that I can be happy. The pride of life means I can be like God. I would be best in making the rules. I'd be better than him sitting on the throne.

I should be making the decision. This all culminates in letter C, rebellion. In the words of Frank Sinatra who sings the anthem of hell, I'll do it my way. Every sin, every disobedience, every time follows this pattern. Unbelief, idolatry, rebellion. These lies, they bubble up from your heart. These lies surround you in your culture. They are so saturated in our culture that they're accepted as dogma. I was explaining this to my kids the other night in our family devotions.

I have three, my three oldest children are girls and the oldest is 12, the youngest is eight. And so like every adolescent girl in America, they love the little mermaid. Now you've seen the Disney's Little Mermaid, right? You got a story about an underwater princess who doesn't want to be under the sea. She wants to be part of that world. And so she falls in love with the prince and goes to her dad.

Dad won't let her go because dad's afraid and dad doesn't know what he's doing. And so she goes to the witch, Ursula, who gives her legs and she goes up and falls in love with the prince and seduces them and they live happily ever after. That's Disney's Little Mermaid. So I told my kids, I was like, now you kids probably don't know this, but Disney didn't write the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid actually comes from a story written by Hans Christian Anderson. Just out of curiosity, how many of you have read the real Little Mermaid?

Raise your hand. Okay, so for the rest of you, which is 98% of you, Hans Christian Anderson, his Little Mermaid goes a little different. It's where Disney got the story, but same deal. She wants to be, you know, part of that world. And so she falls in love with the prince, goes to her dad.

Dad says no. She goes to the witch, which gives her legs. She goes up, except in the real story, the prince doesn't fall back in love with her. In fact, the prince falls in love with somebody else and marries the other girl. So Ursula, the witch, shows back up and gives the despairing Ariel, the Little Mermaid, I don't think that's what he calls her, but he gives the Little Mermaid the knife and says, now you got to go kill him. And she doesn't know what to do.

So the last scene in the book is she jumps out of a window and kills herself. That's the real Little Mermaid. Now, Disney has taken that story and turned it into a parable that if you just follow your dreams long enough, ultimately you'll be happy and everybody else will come around to see it your way. The real Little Mermaid was a parable that basically the message of it was, listen to your dad. Listen to your dad. This is what we do at Family Devotions at the Greer House.

That was our teachable moment right there. But it's a lie that just says, hey, you know what's best for you. And it's only when you choose your own way, ultimately that's the way that you're going to be happy. Here's my question for you. Where are you believing those lies?

Where are you believing those lies? I'll give you the answer. It's in whatever part of your life you are not 100% sold out and surrendered to God.

I'll give you a few examples. We have unmarried couples in our church who come to our church who are living together. Now, clearly the fact that you come to our church shows that you want God to be a part of your life. But in this area of your life, you think my way is better. This is an area where I feel like I can't trust God.

I know better, so I'm going to do it my way. I meet a lot of people here at the church who say, yeah, I plan to get into church one day. Man, I love your church. I love the preaching.

I love being here. But man, right now I'm at a place in my career where I just got to work on the weekends and I don't have any time to be at church. Or I meet families who are like, yeah, my kids are at a stage where we just got to have them involved in all these, you know, baseball, softball, soccer, dance. And we just don't have time at this stage because I want them to have a bright future and get into the right college. Basically what you're saying is, God, in these areas, my career and my kids, I don't really trust you. I got to take care of me first.

I got to do it my way. It's wherever the teenager says, I don't really want to be that serious about Jesus because I know that becoming really serious about Jesus will lead me to an unhappy life. Those are the places that you are believing the lie. If you are not 100% sold out to God, no exceptions, no compromises, then you are believing and embodying these same lies that were given to this woman in Genesis 3 and Adam 2. That is our nature of our sin. Number two, our instinctive response to our sin. This is going to be a mirror into your own heart.

Watch it. And 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. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? What did we feel? What did Adam and Eve feel when they had sinned against God?

Now, I don't want to belabor this either because I explain this often because it's so core to the Christian message. But the first emotion they felt after having sinned against God was nakedness. Now, if you read the story, they were naked before they sinned, but their nakedness never bothered them because, get this, they felt clothed in the love and the acceptance of God. But having been stripped now of the love and the acceptance of God, they felt naked and ashamed and afraid.

Right? So what do you do when you feel naked? I've asked you this. What do you do, if you're a normal person, what do you do when you feel naked? That's right. If you have a problem sleepwalking and you suddenly awake at 3 30 a.m. at Super Walmart and you're buck naked, you don't like, hey, I'll pick up some stuff for the house that I need while I'm here.

That's not what you do. You go to the clothing section and you try to cover yourself. So what did Adam and Eve do? What did Adam and Eve do?

They wanted to hide. And this is a metaphor for the human condition. Even people that don't believe in God still understand that this feeling exists. There's something inside of us that tells us that it's not right. And we feel naked and vulnerable and afraid. Sometimes it manifests itself in a nagging sense of guilt that you just can't show. Jean-Paul Sartre, one of my favorite atheists, said that inside every human heart, whether they believe in God or not, is a voice that whispers, not acceptable.

You are condemned. He said that voice hinders every relationship we enter because we have this feeling that if people knew me, if they could see the real me, if they could see all the way down deep and they could see just this ugliness and this insecurity that I have inside of me, they wouldn't like me and they would reject me. And so it means that even for the closest relationship, they would reject me. Even for the closest relationship, we always keep people a little bit at arm's length because we don't want them to see the real us. So what did we do with that feeling of nakedness? We hid.

We hid in several ways. I mean, first, Adam hides behind the trees, which has to be one of the dumbest scenes in the Bible. He'll never find us in the trees.

I know we created all this with a word, but to the trees. He'll never see us there. It's just dumb. It reminds me of when I used to play hide and seek with my kids and I would go to the bedroom and my two year old would have her head under the bed and her whole body sticking out of the bed. I'd be like, Riah, are you in here? And she'd be like, no, you know? And it's like, okay, folks, that is no more ridiculous than thinking that God doesn't see everything. He doesn't see behind every tree. He doesn't see behind every motive. He doesn't, he knows the secret things. He knows what was in your heart when you didn't say it.

He knows what you were contemplating. So how do we try to hide from God? Let me give you four ways. Letter A, by never being honest about our sin. By lying, not just other people, but to ourselves about it, by rationalizing it. By saying things like, yeah, yeah, on the whole, I'm a pretty good person though. At least compared to other people, I'm not that bad. Or maybe you just put your head under the bed and refuse to think about it.

That would be B, refusing to think about judgment. There are many of you who are like that person in the stagecoach that you never think about the fact that one day you were going to die and you were going to face God at judgment. That cliff is coming for you. You might be 12 years old. You might be nine years old. You might be 21 years old.

You might be 71 years old. But what you all have in common is it is appointed to you once to die and you will stand in judgment. Here's another way we do it. Verse 12, the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I eat. So the Lord turned to the woman and said, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, who's left? The serpent. He deceived me and I ate.

They're all standing there pointing at somebody else. Let her see by blame shifting. Well, I was in impossible circumstances. They did me wrong first. My problem is I hung out with the wrong crowd and they influenced me to do bad things. You know, it was a difficult time in my life. Think about all the stress that I was under. My wife, she was impossible to work with.

My boss, he did me wrong first. We blame shift. We don't really take responsibility.

It's everybody else's fault but mine. Letter D, through religion. Through religion, they made for themselves fig leaves.

Get this, fig leaves are the first religion in the Bible. It's an attempt to cover up the sin and the ugliness within by something that we think will keep it covered and not expose it. I'll make up for my guilt by going through these religious observances. I'll say these Hail Marys because God likes to hear Hail Marys. I'll just go to church a lot because that's what Baptists teach.

If you go to church all the time, that means you cover up your sin. I'll memorize verses. I'll give a lot to the offering. I'll be good. I'll go to church. I'll go to synagogue. I'll go to mosque.

I'll donate money. Listen, if there were ever anything that cultural Christians in the South needed to hear, it is this right here. Listen, the number one substitute for a true relationship with God is religion, fervency and religion. You see, atheism is never really going to play well with the human race because the human race instinctively believes in God. But that doesn't mean that we're honest before God. It doesn't mean that we expose ourselves to God.

It doesn't mean that we're fully surrendered to Him. What we do is we come up with a revised version of God that we can pay off and control. Human beings are not by nature atheists. They're by nature idolaters, which means we don't want to get rid of God. We want to change God into a form that we can control. Religious zealots are often the furthest people from God on the planet because they are using their zeal and religion to cover up the real problems in their heart. Fervency in religion keeps them from dealing with the pride and the insecurity and the hate that is deep down in there.

And they employ religion not only as a cover but as an extension of the depravity of their hearts. Folks, listen, this is your story. I'm not talking about the Catholics, I'm not talking about the Muslims, I'm not talking about the Baptists, I'm talking about you.

This is what you have done. You and I have rebelled against God. You and I prioritized all kind of things above the will of God. We prioritize the lust of the flesh. We want what our bodies want instead of the will of God. We have the lust of the eyes. We never think that God's given us enough. There's something else there that He hasn't given us that we need.

The pride of life. We're the ones who thought that our wisdom was greater than God's, which is why we chose our will instead of His. We thought that we knew best and where God's will got in the way of our will, we chose our will. We put more stock in our wisdom than His. When others threatened what we wanted, we trampled them, we gossiped about them, we were jealous of them and hated them. We've been willing to bend the rules and cheat the system if we thought we could get away with it and we knew it would make us get ahead a little bit. And then to make up for it, we tried to compare ourselves to others and say, well I'm not really that bad. Everybody else is like me.

I'm pretty good. And then of those times where we felt bad, we thought, well I could do a little religion and that'll make up for it. That's a nice fig leaf. I'll go to church. I'll read my Bible.

I'll give some money and then God will be happy. Is that not your story? Is that not the mirror of your heart? You have the disease. Genesis 3 is about you. You don't need a better version of you.

You don't need reform. You need a new you. You need a resurrection. There's no amount of fig leaves you put on that's going to cover up that heart, that cheats the system, that rages against God, and that prioritizes everything else above Him and His will. We try so hard and in so many ways to hide from God instead of embracing the freedom that He gives when we run to Him.

What went wrong? That's the title of our message today from Pastor J.D. Greer. You're listening to Summit Life and we're in the first few messages of a unique teaching series called The Whole Story. Over the next few months, we'll be walking through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, calling out the big stories along the way.

And as we do, we'll see that the whole Bible is telling just one story and it's the story of Jesus. To catch up on any messages you may have missed or to download the complete transcripts, go to jdgreer.com. These online resources, as well as these daily messages on your radio, are available thanks to listeners like you who give generously to keep Summit Life going. We're committed to bringing you gospel-centered Bible teaching without finances getting in the way, but that's only possible when we all work together to keep this ministry funded. When you give, we'll say thanks by sending you a new book by Pastor J.D.

titled Just Ask. The book unpacks a bunch of common questions about prayer and it'll get you excited to spend time with God. It comes with our thanks when you donate today at the suggested level of $25 or more. Request Just Ask when you call 866-335-5220.

Or it might be easier to give and request the resources online. Our website is jdgreer.com. And if you don't receive our e-newsletter yet, be sure to stop by the website to sign up. You'll get ministry updates, sneak peeks of our new resources, and Pastor J.D.

's latest blog post. Sign up today at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Bidevich, so glad to have you with us. Be sure to join us again tomorrow when Pastor J.D. continues his message, Listen Friday to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.