And I hope you still have your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 3, please. Genesis chapter 3. I want to depart from our study in the Gospel of John just for today. We're approaching a new year and I want to give each and every one of us a new year challenge today. That'll become clear what that challenge is as we move forward. But I want to start in Genesis chapter 3. When you think about Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve had it pretty good. Just think about it. They had it pretty good. The three biggest causes of divorce today are money, sex, and in-laws. Now think about Adam and Eve in their life. They didn't need any money. They didn't have in-laws. Adam couldn't look at Eve and say, you're just like your mother. He couldn't do that. Adam was given the greatest opportunity in the world. He had food to eat and he blew it, folks. He just blew it. Now there were different trees in that garden. We had the tree of life. There is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, today I want to start a new series. Now, it's not going to be every week, but just from time to time. I've got to be careful what words I use because certain church members will pick up on them and title my messages for me, or ever so often, some kind of Christmas program, that kind of thing. So, I'm not saying how often we'll come back to this, but we will come back to it from time to time. I was thinking about times when I'm counseling people. Different people, different situations over the years, and whatever the situation was, I found that I was saying one thing over and over again to whoever was in front of me. That was this. At some point in the counseling session, I would look at him or her and say, clean up your mess. you made a mess, clean up your mess. And I thought, let's go through the Bible and let's find people that made a mess. Here's the three things I want you to look for. Let's identify the mess, then let's ask who made the mess, and number three, who cleaned up the mess? Find the mess, who made the mess, Who cleaned up the mess? Adam. Let's start at the beginning. What better place to start than right at the beginning. And people have gotten into this as I've been talking to elders and folks about this. People have been coming back to me with different names of people that we can study and look at. They've identified the mess as they gave it to me. So people are getting into this. So I thought, okay, that's good. That's a great way to start. But Adam messed up big time, folks. Now as we go through this, I want you to look for the mess. Can you see it? We're going to find, not only in the Bible, but today, people that have messes in their life are the norm, not the exception. Now we talk about the great men and women of the Bible, the great men and women of faith, But all of them were damaged people with serious sin issues and serious family issues. If you think that your family is the only one that has drama, you are naive. Every family has issues. In my own fallen sinful nature, I find that to be very comforting. So today, we're going to look at Adam, the first man. Now we find Adam, we find out that Adam is a blame shifter who couldn't resist peer pressure. Eve, the first woman, is a woman who couldn't control her appetite. Now there's a pattern to the sin that we find in Adam. Number one, Adam chose to sin. Sin is a choice. On your part and my part, sin is a choice. It's our decision, Adam made a choice, and today we have a choice. So here's your new year challenge. As we move into the new year, I want you to identify your mess. Identify the mess in your life and then commit to clean it up. Let's look at chapter 3, verse 1, please. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made. The word crafty, what does that mean? I looked it up. It means clever. Clever at achieving one's aims by indirect or deceitful methods. The Bible says that Satan is an angel of light, looks good. Look at verse 2. The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it or you will die. I want to focus on this part where she says, do not touch it. Now Eve at this point is adding to God's word. We call that legalism. You can't add to God's Word. The moment you add to God's Word, it opens the door to Satan, and Satan will use that against you. Now that Eve has opened that door, Satan closes in for the kill. Look at verse 4. The serpent said to the woman, surely you will not die, for God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So Satan said, okay Eve, if you want to add to God's word, let me help you. You won't die. You won't even get sick. It'll be okay. It won't hurt. God just doesn't want you to have any fun. Now, in verse 6 we find the mess. Look at verse 6. 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 desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave it also to her husband with her, and he ate. You've heard the old saying, we are what we eat. Here we are what they ate. Now Adam is the leader of his family. He's the spiritual leader of his home. He abandoned his post and he left his wife to battle Satan alone. And because of that, he has messed up now every relationship in his life. He's messed up his relationship with his wife, with his God, with his job, with his garden. If you're married, you know when you damage your relationship with your wife or your husband, it affects everything else. And nothing is right until you fix it. He damaged his relationship with God. He damaged his relationship with Eve. Adam failed at being the spiritual leader of his home. It was his responsibility to protect his wife and he failed. Look at the last part of verse 6. A very interesting statement which I cannot fully explain and it's not my job today to do it. Look at verse 6. She all she gave to her husband with her and he ate. What does that mean? With her. We'll look at that as we move forward. But here are some lessons that we can learn from Adam. Number one, he was passive. He ignored his wife. Now how many Christian men today are ignoring their wives? Did he even communicate with her? Satan is tempting her and he's just standing there being quiet. He heard the conversation between Satan and his wife. He heard Eve say, we cannot touch it. God didn't say that. So where are you Adam? Where are you as a husband today? He did not try and stop his wife from eating. Now it was Adam's job to take care of his wife. So men, it's our responsibility to keep the sinful influences of this world and our culture out of our homes. It's your job, men, to filter what comes into your home and what comes into the life of your family and your family members. Here, the leader followed and the follower led. So Adam, were you hungry? He could have eaten from any of the fruit in the garden. So the first thing we need to do is if you want to fix your mess, you have to own it. You have to be willing to own your mess. Now one man called this the most expensive meal in the history of the world. What's an expensive restaurant that you like to go to on a rare occasion? He called this the most expensive meal in the history of the world. Adam and Eve ate and it cost them everything. Now you know about all the other trees in the garden. They just had to have this one. Stories told of a bone-weary father dragged into his home, dog-tired, late one evening. It had been one of those unbelievable days of pressure, deadlines, and demands. He looked forward to a time of quietness. Exhausted, he picked up a book and hid it for his favorite chair by the fireplace. About the same time he got his shoes untied, plop, into his lap dropped his five-year-old son with an excited grin on his face. Hi, Daddy. Let's play. He loved the boy dearly, but his need for a little time alone to repair and think was, for the moment, a greater need than time with Junior. How could he manage it? There had been a recent moon probe and the newspaper carried a huge picture of Earth. With a flash of much-needed insight, the dad asked his boy to bring a pair of scissors and some tape. Quickly, he cut the picture of Earth into various shapes and sizes, then handed the pile of homemade jigsaw pieces to him. You tape it all back together, then come on back and we'll play, okay? Off went the child to his room as Daddy breathed a sigh of relief. But in less than 10 minutes, the boy bounced back with everything taped perfectly in place, stunned. The father asked, how'd you do it so fast? Aw, it was easy, Daddy. You see, there is this picture of a man on the back of the sheet, and when you put the man together, the world comes together. Now what's the lesson there? That's true, folks. When dad is functioning as dad in the home, as the husband, as the father, it's much easier to put the family back together. Even surveys have shown that. When the dad has his act together and he's leading the home, the home is in much better shape. Now Adam isn't doing that right now. Next thing we learn is when there is a mess, there's always a cover-up, verse 7. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves covering. There's always a cover-up. When we make a mess, do we have to admit it? Do we have to clean it up? How do you try and cover up your mess? How do I try and cover up my mess? Here's some ways that we can do it, some tricky ways. by staying busy. I don't have time to think about it. I don't have time to fix it. I don't have time to make that call or go see that brother or talk to that sister. Here's a good one. How do we cover it up? By doing more good works. I'll volunteer more. Or number three, by being more religious. Or number four, how about this one? I'll give more money to the church. I'll buy my way out of this. I won't address it. I'll buy my way out of it. Billy Sunday said this Sinners cannot find God for the same reason criminals cannot find the police. They aren't looking You want to fix your mess you're gonna start by looking and talking to God Here's another one A mother was talking about her seven-year-old daughter named Jessica. She said they were re-reading the story of Adam and Eve and how sin came into the world and that led them to discuss why bad things sometimes happen. Later in the week, Jessica became ill and had to stay home from school. She was feeling miserable and she said to her mother, if only Adam and Eve hadn't eaten the fruit, I wouldn't be sick. Before her mother could answer her, Jessica quickly added, but of course, if they didn't need it, we'd be sitting here naked. All right, number three. When there's a mess, there's always conviction. Look at verse eight. They heard the sound of 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." There's always conviction. What did Adam do? He hides. He hides. He blames shifts and he hides. We see fear. We see guilt. We see conviction. Adam knew what God had said. He knew that God didn't want them to eat from that tree. No. But what did he do? He joined his wife. First he ignored her. Then he ignored God's Word, he ignored Satan, he ignored what Satan said, he should have said, stop Eve, don't do it. So what do we have here? Well first of all we have a passive man. Now I'm going to look at this word hide for a minute. The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord." Now think about that. Now just stop long enough to think about it. They hid themselves from the Lord. Just picture the conversation. Wait a minute. That's God. Let's hide. Let's hide in the trees. He'll never know. They sewed fig leaves together to then go and meet God. Now can you just imagine how silly that looked? When they walk out finally in front of God, oh no, everything's fine. Can you just imagine how silly that looked? Now folks, it didn't work for Adam and it didn't work for Eve and it won't work for you and it won't work for me. We can't hide from God. Ask Jonah about that. Now how often do we try and hide the fact that we have made a mess? After Adam sinned, he ran away from his mess. So again, in verse 6, he's passive. Now in verse 7, he steps up and he starts to lead. And how does he lead? Quick, let's hide from God. But first, let's get dressed. I mean, it's just ridiculous. How did they get dressed up to meet God? They put on their best fig leaves. I mean, really? I mean, it's amazing. Now, how do we hide from God today? We hide through alcohol. We hide through sex. We hide by staying busy, I don't have time to stop, I don't have time to think about it, I don't have time to dress and I'm just gonna stay busy. Now verse 9, God has a question, look at it. Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? Now this is the first of three questions that God has for Adam. Notice that God isn't talking to Eve. He didn't say, where are you Eve? These are four of the saddest words in the entire Bible, where are you Adam? Now why is God asking this question? God created the world, He made Adam. Doesn't God know where Adam is? Of course He does. God wants Adam to know where Adam is. So this question involves four sad words. Where are you, Adam? Now thousands of years have gone by and God is still asking the same questions today. Fill in your name. Where are you? Fill in your name. Why is God looking for Adam? Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 God gave Adam a job. He was to work the garden It means to tend to keep to cultivate to serve to care to watch over to guard in verse 10 look at verse 10 He said I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself There's our word again hid hide. I What does the Bible have to say about that? How's that going to work out for Adam or for you or for me? I'll give you one verse, reading from Proverbs 15, verse 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place watching the evil and the good everywhere. Now in verse 11 of our text we have the third question, verse 11b, Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" Adam ate the forbidden fruit. Now today, before we point fingers too strongly at Adam, what is your forbidden fruit today? What do you want today that you can't have? Most likely it's because it belongs to someone else. Maybe you want another person's spouse, or their job, or their home, or their car, or their title, their position, their money, their income, whatever it may be. What is your forbidden fruit today? Well, God has three questions for Adam. Number one, where are you? Number two, who told you that you are naked? Number three, have you eaten from the tree? Now an encouraging thing that I see here is that the Father went looking for Adam and Eve. Now that's a theological point that continues throughout the entire Bible. Listen to Luke 19 verse 10, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. God the Father went looking for Adam and Eve and Jesus came looking for you and looking for me and that's why you're here today because God is giving you a new heart and a new life and a new record. He was looking for you. So God is looking for Adam and Adam is running and he's hiding. Now God isn't asking the questions, looking for answers. He's trying to give Adam the opportunity to face the facts, to face the mess that he's made, be honest, confess his sin, and deal with his mess. Adam made a bad choice. In this case, the bad choice was following his wife. Now many times your wife or your husband will give you great advice, but you need to realize they're sinners, and at times they're going to give you bad advice. You need to know your Bible well enough to recognize the difference. Adam followed his wife and he should not have done that. Next thing we learn is when you make a mess there's always responsibility. Our world and our lives are a mess. They're a mess, folks, because we have made them a mess. Look at verse 12. The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate." Now Adam starts to shift the blame. It's her fault, Lord. Now why did he do that? He made a decision. He chose to eat. He refused to take responsibility. Who did he blame? Eve. Yes, but dig down deeper. Underneath of that, folks, he's blaming God. He's blaming his wife, but he's also blaming God. In chapter 2, when he first met her, he thought she was hot stuff. The first words out of his mouth when he saw her was, woo man. He thought she was something special. Right now, his attitude has changed. Lord, you gave her to me. He would not take responsibility for his own actions. So here's a principle that we need to learn, and it's kind of scary. Here's a principle. Guys, if you're married, listen to this. God held Adam responsible for what his wife did. That's scary, guys. God held Adam responsible for what his wife did. Now we see Adam making excuses, but no confession. Now why did God do this? Who did God blame? Eve? No. God blamed Adam. Now why does God blame Adam? because Adam was the head of the home he was the head of the family now as I've said this before and I'm going to keep saying it guys because I'm talking to myself as well if there's a problem in your home it may not be your fault but it is your responsibility it's your responsibility to deal with it I was talking to a father years ago who had a teenage son in a home that was just turning the house upside down. He wouldn't go to church. And finally, after years, the father sat down with me and so I looked at him and I said, so are you asking me my opinion? And he said, yes, because that was the first time he'd ever done that. I said, OK, fine. Your son's accountable, but it's your problem. You're the dad, it's your home, it's up to you. You're responsible to deal with this. And if he won't get up and go to church on Sunday morning, you get him up and you make him go. Well he changed the subject just as quick as he could and we never got back to it. Eve was deceived. Adam was not. Where was Adam? Let's go back to that verse six we looked at. It appears from reading the word that he was standing right beside her. Now Adam knew better. He was silent. Why was he silent? Because he chose his wife over God. Now I don't care how much you love your husband, you love your wife, your boyfriend, whoever it may be. You cannot put him or her above God, and that's what Adam did. I can't lose her. She's important to me. I can't live without her. I can't trust God to take care of this. God can't kill both of us. He needs us. If this human race is going to grow, he has to have us. So Adam said, I'm going to do it my way. Laura Schlesinger had this in her book, I think that's where it came from. I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed, to find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband's eye. He laid me on a couch to see what he could find, and here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind. When I was one, my mommy hid my dolly in a trunk so it follows naturally that I am always drunk. When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day, and that's why I suffer now from kleptomania. At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers, and so it follows naturally that I poison all my lovers. But I am happy now that I've learned the lesson this has taught, that everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault. Next, when we make a mess, there will always be consequences for sinful decisions. Look at verse 14. The Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go and the dust you will eat all the days of your life. Sin poisons relationships. relationships. It starts by poisoning our vertical relationship with God the Father, and once that poison sets in, there's a number of things that we do, and you can kind of gauge where you are on this path. Number one, first of all, we stop praying. God doesn't want to hear from me. After all that I've done, God doesn't want to hear from me. We stop praying. Number two, we stop having our devotions or any kind of Bible study. Yes, there are consequences. First, we see the consequences to the serpent. You're going to crawl for the rest of your life. For Eve, yes, you're going to continue to have children, but it's going to be very, very painful, and your husband will rule over you. Number three, Adam. Because you were a passive man. Because you were a passive leader. He didn't stop her. He didn't protect her. The ground is now cursed, Adam. Life will be tough. The easy days are over, Adam. And next we have the death sentence. Spiritual death, separation from God. So sin has its consequences. Pain, fear, loss, separation follow our bad decisions when we make a mess. So sin also poisons our relationships with other people. Adam with Eve, Eve with Adam. Can you imagine the conversation that Adam and Eve had after God left? How dare you blame this on me? Adam, well, you did do it. Well, you were standing right there and you didn't say anything. Can't you just imagine that? I can just picture it in my mind. Here's the good news. When we make a mess, there's always a cure. There's always a way to fix it. What's the cure? God says, Adam, don't hide from me. Come to me. Confess your sins. First John 1.9, faithful and just to forgive us our sins. No matter where you are today, no matter what you're struggling with, no matter what you've done, you can start over today if you're a Christian. Right now. Now Adam didn't do that. He tried to hide. Adam, clean up your mess, fix your mess, deal with your sin, confess it to God, confess it to the other people involved. Who should Adam have confessed this to? Number one, God the Father, and number two, Eve. He should have said, I was a passive leader, I didn't leave, I should have spoke up, I should have stopped you. Now would Adam's situation have turned out differently if he didn't hide, if he confessed his sin, if he did try and stop Eve, if he took responsibility for it, maybe, we'll never know. If you want to fix your mess, say, Lord, I chose to sin. I am a sinner, Lord. Now there was a tree that caused this problem, or that Adam misused in the garden that was the source of this problem. There's also a tree that fixes our messes. And that's the tree in Mount Calvary. John the Baptist saw Jesus and he said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. How about putting it this way, the Lamb of God that takes away the mess of the world. Next we see that God shows grace to Adam and Eve. God heard Adam. Adam heard God. Adam responded. Adam did come out of hiding. He shows shame. He was naked. He was fearful. There was a garden in chapter 3. Now God has also created a garden for you and for me. God has given each one of us a garden to work. And God expects you to invest in your garden. What could that be? It could be your family. It could be your job, it could be this church. God is saying, don't just sit there, work it. Work your garden. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10, he tells us about a garden of good things that he has for us. Things that give meaning to your life and my life. But just like Adam and Eve, God has put fences around your garden and around my garden. Good fences make good neighbors. God will never give you more than you can handle, the Bible says that. Adam could have said, no, we will not do that, we're standing together, we will not do that. The word garden is popular in the Bible, it flows throughout the entire Bible, it starts in Genesis, what we lose in Genesis, we gain in Revelation. So let me give you a couple points of application. Number one, what do we learn from this study of this mess? We learn that we cannot sit and be passive while sin is knocking at the door of our family and our loved ones. Number two, as the leader of your home, if you're married, you're a husband, you're the leader. If you're a single mother, you're the leader. Does your family know that you have an open door policy? Does your family know that they can talk to you about anything they want to as long as they do it with a good attitude? Anything they want to say, anything they want to talk about, mom, dad is willing to sit down and hear it and listen if you do it with a good attitude. Number three, do you see the mess in your life? Are you willing to deal with it? For most of us, it's real easy to see a mess in someone else's life. It's much harder to see a mess in our own life. Do you see it? Are you willing to deal with it? Number four, this is good news. Don't judge a life by its mess. Don't judge a life by its mess. How many times can we go through the Bible and identify people that made a mess? David, look at the mess he made, what the Bible says about David, a good man, a righteous man, a man after God's own heart. Don't judge a life by its mess. Jesus Christ cleaned up your ultimate mess. He's offering you and me a fresh start for this new year that we're going into. He cleaned up your mess, but you have to repent. You have to ask Him to apply that to your life today. His message to you is, get right with God, clean up your mess. Now did Adam clean up his mess? We see guilt. Let me ask you, where are you today? Are you hiding from God? Are you today trying to cover up your guilt, ultimate guilt of sin, or maybe a mess you've made with somebody else in your life? The only way to avoid a mess is to hold on tight to God's Word. So did Adam fix his mess? No. Who fixed his mess? God fixed it. God covered him, covered him with animal skins. Now think about that, some animal had to die. Was that the first sacrifice for man's sin? We don't know. But what we do know is that Calvary was the last sacrifice. Will you accept God's sacrifice today to fix your ultimate mess if you're not a Christian. So now as we move into the new year, I challenge you again to examine your life, examine and identify your mess, who made the mess, and now how are you going to fix it? How are you going to deal with it? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this Sunday that you've given us leading into a new year. We thank you for the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ and we thank you for the fact that Jesus cared enough to step into this world and fix the mess that Adam and Eve made. And I pray that if there's anyone here that doesn't know you, that they would grab hold of you today and ask you to forgive their sins and fix their mess. And for the rest of us who are Christians, I pray that you will show us what we need to deal with and fix in the new year to come. We pray and ask this in Jesus' name, amen.