1170. What Happened in the Garden

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're concluding a series called Walking with God, and today's message will be preached by BJU Chancellor, Dr. Bob Jones III. I was walking out of chapel yesterday. By the way, we've had two wonderful, wonderful messages this week on walking with God.

And a young man saw me at the door. He said, Are you preaching to us tomorrow? I said, If the Lord will help me, I will. And if you will pray for me, I will.

Will you pray for me? And he said, I will. And I got to thinking about that. We do everything so routinely here day after day. We're rigidly structured as it should be in our daily activities. And we come to one thing and leave it and go to another and scarcely remember what we've just been to. And that's a shame, particularly when it comes to sitting under the Word of God, because what we have here is the Word of life. It should be of concern to all of us that we should know the God who gives us life. In Him is life, the Bible says. He that hath the Son hath life. What did we get when we got saved? We got life.

We were dead in our trespasses and sin. And when He entered our life, we got life. And this life is in Him, the Bible says. We're saved to walk in newness of life.

And all things, the Bible says, become new. There should be a sense of excitement among you who are redeemed, that you're coming to hear the Word of life, to tell us of Him who is life, and to help us in our walk, that we might live with blessing and benefit and success in Him. I hope you'll pray for each chapel speaker every day when you come in here.

They too have their challenges in daily life. We don't know when a man stands here to open the Word of God what conflicts and challenges he's had the day or night before and entered this present day with. We don't know what his troubles and fears and longings and sadnesses, we just don't know. And yet he comes as an instrument of God to speak to us the words of God which have meaning and necessity for him as they do for us. So I beg you not to come here complacently with indolence and with thoughts of what's going to follow, but come to be spoken to by the words of God. As Tim prayed for us this morning, that thought was also in my mind. He prayed for specific things for us, doubts, fears, challenges, specific things that all of us have and we need his help for. I was going to give you this little poem later in the message, but I'll give it right now because I'm sure I won't get halfway through this message. These are the words of Martin Luther. These were words he prayed.

The title of his poem is, I am a Sinner Still. So why am I focusing on this right now? Many of you desire to walk with God and that's what we're here to talk about today. But there are so many obstacles, our flesh, the culture, the world, satanic influences. Everything in this world mitigates against the knowledge of God. And man by his own desire does not seek God.

We seek to hide from him, run from him. And so Martin Luther encapsulates very well for us the reality that our best efforts find us to be sinners still. Our best desire to walk with God is confronted with the fact that we are sinners still.

Luther prayed, I do not come because my soul is free from sin and pure and whole and worthy of thy grace. I do not speak to thee because I've ever justly kept thy laws and dare to meet thy face. I know that sin and guilt combine to reign o'er every thought of mine and turn from good to ill. I know that when I try to be upright and just and true to thee, I am a sinner still. I know that often when I strive to keep a spark of love alive for thee, the powers within leap up in submissive might and oft be numb my senses of right and pull me back to sin.

I know that though in doing good I spend my life, I never could atone for all I've done. But though my sins are black as night, I dare to come before thy sight because I trust in thy Son. In him alone is my place. I come boldly to thy throne of grace and there commune with thee. Salvation sure, O Lord, is mine and all unworthy I am thine for Jesus died for me. Let's pray, our Father, let the light of thy word bring light to our souls in Jesus' name.

Amen. Please open your Bibles as a framework for understanding. To Genesis chapter 3, would you please turn to Genesis chapter 3. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice 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 God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

So what is the problem? God had an original plan for man that included daily walk with him, and something intruded that robbed man of that privilege. God created the garden, put man there and woman, assigned them work to do. It was the garden of God.

It was not their garden, but he allowed man to enjoy it with him. Man was privileged to walk with God there. He breathed into Adam the breath of life.

Man became a living soul. He was able therefore to communicate with God. He became a rational being, a moral being, whose life in the garden was limited only by one command. Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Adam's fellowship with God and the felicities of the garden depended on him keeping God's command, God's word. His privileges there and his fellowship with God were conditioned upon obedience to God's law. So if you and I would walk with God, obedience to his word is the absolute requirement. Failure to do that breaks the fellowship as it did with Adam and Eve. Daily delight with deity was their privilege, but when God came calling on this day, he found man avoiding him, hiding if possible, because he was guilty.

So what happened in the garden? The same thing that will happen to us if we allow it to that breaks our fellowship with God. Some of you here today desire fervently to have a walk with God. And there have been times when you had great closeness with the Lord in your daily walk. You got great blessings from your time of fellowship and prayer and the word that nourished your souls.

But maybe today things have changed. The same things have entered your lives which have entered our lives, all of us at one time or another, and entered the life of Adam and Eve in the garden. So what happened there? Lust. The desire for something to which they were not entitled. Lust.

Something more satisfying, they thought, than fellowship with God. The desire for something forbidden. Eve was overcome by lust.

We read it here just a while ago in verse 6. She saw that the tree was good for food. She looked upon something forbidden. She desired it. She lusted for it. It was good for food. It was going to be satisfying to her appetite.

Some of you have lost your fellowship with God that you once had because you too lusted for some forbidden appetite. It was pleasant to the eyes, the lust of the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make her wise. She lusted for intellectual attainment. God had all the wisdom in the world and in all of the universe. And he daily shared it with her.

She was not lacking in knowledge, but this was another sort of knowledge that she wanted and lusted for it. The scripture says in Deuteronomy 5.33, as Moses spoke toward the end of his life to the people of Israel, walk in all the ways which the Lord thy God commanded you that you may live and it may be well with you. Deuteronomy 10.12, he said again what does the Lord God require of you but to fear the Lord, to walk in all his ways, and to love and serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy soul.

What is he saying? Serving with single-mindedness. That is to do his good pleasure as he has revealed it in his commands to us. Joshua 22.5, pay diligent heed to do the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments and to cleave unto him and to serve him with all your heart, with all your soul.

Solomon in pronouncing the benediction after the great worship ceremony connected with the opening of the temple. First Kings chapter 8, let your heart, he said to the people, be perfect, that is friendly and complete toward the Lord, and to walk in his statutes and his commandments. Our agreement to do that and our pursuit of doing that has everything to do with the goodness of God toward us and his willingness to fellowship with us, commune with us, and abide with us in his company. You see, God defines the terms of our walk with him. When we walk with Jesus, we are following in his footsteps where he leads us. The Lord Jesus described it this way in Luke 9, he said to them all, if any man will come after me, that is walk with me as a follower, let him deny himself his self-will and take up his cross daily and follow me.

So if God is going to walk with us and we are going to walk with him, we walk on his terms, obedience to his commandments. But something beside lust entered the garden. Idolatry and immorality entered the garden.

Satan said, your eyes will be open if you break God's command and you will be God's. They violated God's commandment. They wanted mastery of their lives, that is idolatry. They wanted to be God's. I don't think they meant to try to kick God out of the garden, I think they were not so stupid as that. But I think that Satan persuaded them they could rule their lives alongside of God's dominion in their lives. We can kind of be co-regents of God, you and I. Maybe I can drive the car and you can be my co-pilot.

We will still be together but we want some say about our lives. We want some mastery, we don't want to be under yours. So idolatry entered the garden and with it the breaking of God's command which was an immoral act. We think of immorality, I'm going to touch on it here in just a second if time permits, but immorality is stepping aside from whatever the required protocol is, the required commandments. The conduct that has been established for us, we step out of that, we go our way and that is even by dictionary terms an immoral act.

Morality is the established principle and in this case it was the principle that God set forth, you shall not eat of the fruit of this tree. So immorality entered the garden, idolatry entered the garden and Edenic lust came into the garden and death came thereby. You know my friends an idol is whatever we give up God in order to have. Something that we desire more than God, something is more important to us than God, something that we attain for ourselves knowing God has forbidden it, but it's so desirable that we overthrow God's dominion of our lives and all the blessings that come thereby and we become sinners.

For instance, it can be the God of gold that happened to the rich young ruler. He had an inkling that he wanted the Lord Jesus, but when he found out that he had to go and sell what he had and come and follow Jesus he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions the Bible says, more important to him than Jesus and following him, walking with him. Paul said, Demas has forsaken me having loved the present culture. Some walk away from fellowship with God to be more akin to, to be more in step with the culture which is sinful, unregenerate culture. Our culture is not driven by those who love God, but by the natural man which we used to be a natural man before we left the kingdom of darkness and were transformed into the kingdom of his dear son according to Colossians. And some are slaves to the God of sexual immorality.

I can't deal with this in the length I would like to. It's a subject for another day, but I believe knowing what some of you are struggling with, knowing what I struggle with, sexual immorality is probably the prevailing God of many lives here. It's the God you bow down to. You carry that God around in your pocket on your phone.

It's on your computer screens wherever you can stash it without getting caught. You know better, but it has such a dominion over you. Sin when it is finished leads to death.

It's not taking you the right direction. And you know that you can't walk with God when you're breaking his commandments as they pertain to sexual conduct. But it's your God, and you're forfeiting his fellowship. It's the God of adultery we're talking about, the God of formification, the God of homosexuality, the God of pornography, any sexual sin, anything forbidden in the Bible sexually outside of the sacredness of marriage between man and woman. That's the only coupling God knows anything about and accepts.

One man, one woman, for life. But it's so attractive to you and it's so dominating of you that you give up having God walking with you and fellowshipping with you. And sin is ruling you. The Bible says, the entrance of thy word giveth light.

Psalm 119, 130. The Bible says in 1 John 1.5, God is light and in him is no darkness at all. But other gods are dominating many of you and you do not have the light of the Lord with you because he will not walk with you while you worship other gods and allow them to dominate you. I am so thankful that the Bible says in 2 Peter 2.9, the Lord knows how to deliver the godly when tempted and to reserve the unjust unto the day to be punished. There is hope for those who desire to walk with God because the Bible says the Lord knows those who are his. If you are not saved, you have no desire to walk with God. A message like this is totally irrelevant to you and immaterial. That's understandable. You walk in darkness. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. So why would you be interested in any of this? You're not.

So it's normal to them to get on your phones or study your lessons or daydream or whatever it is you do because you just have no interest in this. But for those who do and have a life dominating sin of some kind that is robbing you of every thing God designed for you to have, his presence, to walk with you as you walk on his terms together with him through this world, you know the story of Peter. You know his dismal failure at the fire of the enemy when Christ was on trial. And right before it, the Lord said, Peter, before the cock crows, you're going to deny me thrice. And he said, Lord, I know everybody should deny you.

Walk away. I will not leave you. And the Lord said, Peter, I've prayed for you that your faith fail not.

But when you're converted, that is when you come back to me, then you will serve me. His faith didn't fail because the Lord's prayers have never not been answered. The Lord prayed that his faith would not fail.

His faith in who Jesus was, in his faith in the Messiah, his faith in the deity of Christ, everything the Lord said he was, his faith in his Lord as his Lord did not fail but his weakness of the flesh. In a moment of severe fear and testing, said, I don't know him. He didn't say I don't believe in him.

There's a big difference. Many of you who I believe really know the Lord. It's not that you're giving up on the Lord. It's not that you don't believe he is who he said he is and have put your faith in the one who revealed himself to you. It's your fleshly weakness, which you and I both have, that has caused an interruption in your walk with God. How desirous he is as he was with Adam and Eve when they ran and hid from him, knowing how wrong they had been.

He came and sought them and made provision for their pardon. I like it the way it was put in the words of Matthew Henry, the commentator, based upon the scripture which says if we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. Matthew Henry said our happiness will be in proportion to our being made holy. All who walk near to God in holiness and righteousness are sensible, that is aware, that their best days and duties are mixed with sin.

Let us plead guilty before God, be humble, willing to know the worse of our case, and let us honestly confess all our sin. There is hope, my friends, for those who desire that kind of walk with God. The Bible says in Psalm 56, David's prayer, thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living.

That's in this present life. Deliver my feet from falling. That needs to be the prayer of some here today. God delights to hear that prayer. You pray it because, as David did, you desire to walk with him in the light of the living. And this is a walk that God designs to continue for the redeemed throughout all eternity.

John describes it in these closing few words. Revelation 20, as he looked toward the future day, he carried me away, that is the angel who showed him these things, he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, that holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, the glory of God and the Lamb of God was the light. People of all nations shall walk in the light of it. When he saved us, he saved us to walk in everlasting life and the everlasting light of our God. If there has been an interruption in that, or sin intruded, I plead with you to love God enough to get the lust, the idols out of your life so you can yield to the word of God again and walk in his commands because he delights to fellowship with those and bless those who do. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Bob Jones III, Chancellor of Bob Jones University. Thanks for listening and join us next time for another sermon preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.