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Garden
of Eden Valentine
A sermon preached by Dr. Peter James
Flamming, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
February 13, 2000
Text: Genesis 2:15; 3:1; Romans
5:5-8.
Turn to Genesis 2:15: "The Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden
of Eden to work it, take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You
are free. You are free to eat from any tree in the garden but you must not eat
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will
surely die.’" Verse one of the third chapter: "Now the serpent was
more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made and he said to
the woman, ‘Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’
The woman said to the serpent, ‘Hmm, we may eat fruit from the trees
throughout all the garden but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree
that is in the middle of the garden. You must touch it, must not touch it or you
will die.’ The serpent said, ‘You will not surely die for God knows that
when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing
good and evil.’ And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for
food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable she took some and ate it, gave
it to her husband who enjoyed it just as much." Rough translation.
I looked in Webster’s 9th Collegiate Dictionary, since it was
February, to find out what it had to say about St. Valentine’s Day. It read:
"A gift or a greeting card given especially to a sweetheart on Valentine’s
Day." Obviously that’s a collegiate dictionary, not an elementary school
dictionary. If it were an elementary school dictionary the
"sweetheart" wouldn’t be in there, I guarantee you. My earliest
memories of Valentine’s Day were in elementary school. I wonder if teachers
still hand out little bags for you to put the Valentines in. Back then, after
the school day was over, we’d all huddle around to see who got the most cards.
If anyone had signed a valentine "Sweetheart," we’d be in deep
trouble. We would have been humiliated. The truth was, we gave Valentines to
some people we didn’t even like. See, if the number of Valentines you get is
what it’s all about, you don’t want to suffer a backlash next year.
If, by some magic, I could put my hands on your shoulders and thrust you back
in time to an "elementary period" of human history, it would be to the
Garden of Eden. If you were back there, who would you send a Valentine to? Adam?
Eve? The serpent? You say, the serpent? Devilishly successful. What about God?
Would you send a Valentine to God? Sure, you say, casually. Would you now? You
may never have thought of the risky implications God did for all of us and to
all of us in that garden. God gave us the power of choice and with that the
responsibility of living with those choices. God also put some boundaries, to
serve as guidelines. He said, "Don’t." The choice was clear. Did God
want a meticulously ordered world where everything was in its place kept by
programmed robots or did God want sons and daughters who, even though they would
often make the wrong choices, have the freedom to choose and to love and to
serve and to be? God took the choice route but he also, even back then, knew
that because we take some wrong turns along the way he would also have to take
the redemption route. The cross over Eden.
Now there are some ho-hum choices and there are life-changing choices. One
year a friend of mine who had his own airplane invited me to fly up to see a
college football game in which his alma mater was playing. He had played
football there. They were undefeated --13 straight wins. Rated number one in the
nation. He said, "Your dad doesn’t live too far there, give him a call
and let’s meet." So we did. We flew up, and Dad met us there.
Unfortunately my friend’s team lost that day. I never got invited again. After
it was over he said, "Let’s go drown our sorrows in a steak." Now
Dad was not supposed to eat red meat. He had problems with his heart,
circulation, weight, and diabetes. When Dad heard that he looked at me and put
his finger over his lips, to tell me "shhhh!" I decided to go along
with him. At the end of the meal, my friend said that we were going to top it
off with apple pie a la mode. Immediately my Dad looked at me and hushed me in
the same way. It was at that point in time Dad and I swapped roles. It was time
for me to be a parent. It was time for him to be the child. That happens, you
know, in life. By the way, he never forgave me.
Would you give a Valentine to a Heavenly Father who is willing to play two
roles: one--the creator of freedom and two--the creator of boundaries so that we
can live and survive? I think that kind of a God needs a Valentine, don’t you?
Let’s look at Adam and Eve. What should we do with Adam and Eve, send them a
Valentine? God puts a tree in the garden and he says, hey Adam, hey Eve, come on
over here I want to tell you something. Have the run of the place. Enjoy
yourselves, be free, dance, have fun, achieve, play, flourish. Be successful. Be
satisfied. Make this your world. Only one thing, right in the middle of the
garden there is a tree and that tree is the knowledge of good and evil - don’t
touch it. It will unleash powers that you cannot handle. You can have the run of
the whole garden but don’t eat that fruit
Now, Adam and Eve were too much like us. Or, let’s put it like Augustine,
like Paul did: We’re too much like them. I can illustrate this from a scene
from the TV program of some years ago: "Candid Camera."
Reruns are on television occasionally. In this episode, they located a high
wooden fence around a construction site. It was for the protection of passersby,
right? You’ve seen them. And then they drilled a hole about waist high, big
enough for people to look through. No big deal. The first day they had the
cameras running, nobody paid any attention to it. Waist high, below their sight
line. The next day, they painted a sign right above that hole, shoulder high and
it said: "Don’t look through this hole" and had an arrow pointing
down. And to make it even more inviting, they put a sign at the end of the fence
that said: "Be sure you don’t look at the hole you just passed" with
an arrow pointing back. Well, you already know what happened. First person went
by, saw the sign, "Don’t look through that hole." Guess what they
did, looked through the hole. Now keep in mind it’s waist high. You have to
scrunch down. You risk putting a disc out of place. You get down on your knees.
At rush hour a line developed to look through the hole they weren’t supposed
to look through. As an aside, that’s why a religion that is only do’s and
don’ts becomes frustration and is powerless. Because, you see, there’s an
attraction to "a don’t." It has a power of it’s own. The sign said
"don’t" so they did. Uhm, if you want a little more discussion on
this, there was a friend of Jesus by the name of Paul. He experienced this tug
and pull more than anybody, I guess, who’s ever lived and wrote about it. You
can find it in Romans 5, chapters 5-8.
Well, would you give Adam and Eve a Valentine? Sure. They’re just like we
are. They need all the help they can get. What about the serpent? I don’t know
about sending a serpent a Valentine, even if he is devilishly successful. So
smooth. Ladies, please note I made a "he" out of him. First he
manipulates Adam and Eve by telling them a lie. Hmm, the secular modern world
thrives on unreality. Where the head says yes and the heart denies. The serpent
says you will surely not die. In other words, it’s all right to think about
it. It’s all right to put it way out there. It’s all right to have this
little bit of knowledge. But as Morrie said in Tuesdays with Morrie,
Americans know they’re going to die, they just don’t believe it. First he
manipulates Adam and Eve with that lie. He knows if he can get them, not to
believe it, not to put it in the heart, that they will live as if they will
never be gone.
I read where the wealth of all the world is centered in 25 men. In fact,
those 25 men have as much wealth as the 2 ½ billion, that’s with a
"B," billion on the poorer end of the economic spectrum. Two and a
half billion, that’s the rough figure, total population of the United States
of America multiplied by five. And 25 men have as much wealth as 2 ½ billion of
the poverty area. Guess what? Those 25 are going to die just like we are. And
because God has such an immense sense of humor, he has arranged it so they can’t
take it with them. Neither can we. But the great question is: how many of us
live as they do, probably, as if they’re never going to die? Never going to
have to give account? Never have to ask, what were you created for in the first
place? Remember this lesson from Scripture: However good the garden looks, it
always has a snake in it. Take the Internet. Unlimited information, knowledge,
wisdom from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world. Incredible. What a
garden. But as we read in the papers this week, the hackers, the smut peddlers,
the gambling syndicates, they’ve already gotten to the Internet before most of
us have even learned how to work it. Wherever the garden is, look for the
serpent.
Well, what is God going to do in this world that he created to be enjoyed,
but is so often abused and misused? A little boy was saying his prayers and
after he had asked God to bless mommy and daddy and his little dog, Scout, and
his goldfish, Mabel, he said, "Oh yeah, and God take care of yourself. We’d
be in an awful mess if anything happened to you." Well, what is God going
to do with this messy world the potential of which he created? Well, God is a
lot like a parent.
Some parents came to see me one time. They had a son with whom their
relationship had really broken down. And one of the things that really concerned
the mother was his room. She said it was awful and she didn’t know whether to
go in and clean it up. She was afraid things were growing in there or whether
they needed to leave it alone. And after they had talked it over, they came to
realize there was something at stake a whole lot more than that messy room,
their son. And anything that got in the way of that son and his ability to
choose to come home and to love parents needed to be ignored. God ignores an
awful lot of messy stuff in this world because he has put his life in Jesus
Christ on a cross for our sakes, in order that maybe someday we who are lost can
find our way home and learn how to love again.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when the Apostle Paul came across a
piece of insight that is just to me incredible. He saw in Jesus Christ the
second Adam who reversed everything the first Adam had done. The first Adam
sinned because he wanted to be God. The second Adam, Jesus our Lord, was God and
became sin for all of us. The first Adam wanted to climb the ladder to get to
the top of everybody else. The second Adam came down the ladder so he could lift
up everybody else. The first Adam put the blame on everybody else. The second
Adam took the blame on himself and said: "You’ve got a new start, go live
your life like God intended it." The first Adam, in his despair said:
"It’s too late. I’ve already made the bad choices." The second
Adam came with the good news, it’s never to late, that the first step from
Heaven is right where you are. The first Adam lived as if he would never die.
The second Adam died that all of us might live. The first Adam thought of the
good life is what you have. The second Adam came and said: "No, it’s who
you have."
Occasionally a high profile figure comes along that illustrates what this is
all about. I’m thinking of Kurt Warner, quarterback for the St. Louis Rams,
NFL’s most valuable player this year, quarterback for the Super Bowl
champions. What a remarkable turnaround of a life. Four years ago he was going
with a young woman named Brenda. She was a dedicated Christian. In a tragic
accident a tornado wiped out her parents’ home and took their lives. Then a
terrible accident happened with her son. She handled both in such a remarkable
way. Kurt said she’s got something I don’t have and I want it. He became
part of a Bible study group. For the first time in his life, he began to ask,
"What am I here for? What is my life about?" And he realized he had
given his whole soul to be a successful football player and he’d never asked
the question, when it’s all over—what? He became a Christian, and received
Christ as Savior and Lord and it absolutely transformed his life. The second
Adam transformed the first Adam. Now when people ask him for his autograph he
gives them his own trading card with his picture on it. It’s not an ego trip,
because on the back side is the story of how he changed his life when he came to
know Jesus Christ, who turned everything around.
Do you know the Lord Christ? Is the Lord Christ your second Adam? Pray with
me, will you? Lord Jesus we have a choice to make, just like Adam and Eve in the
garden so long ago. But the choice is whether we let you begin to work on us, to
transform us, to change us, to turn our life upside down. This day, if there is
someone who struggles with that possibility, I pray that you will give them the
victory through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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