There's a particular radio program that I listen to on a regular basis. It's the White Horse Inn. Many of you may be familiar with it. And one of the interesting things that they often do on the White Horse Inn is the producer, a man named Shane Rosenthal, will go from place to place doing man-on-the-street interviews. Sometimes it'll be at a college campus, sometimes it'll be at a Christian bookseller's convention, different places, sometimes just men on the street, so to speak. And when you hear these kind of interviews, and people are asked the question about the nature of man, they inevitably answer in the affirmative, that if they're asked Is man basically good or bad? What's the answer? Well, of course, man is basically good. And that is arguably one of the most persistent myths, not just in the Christian world, but in the whole world, period. That man is in a state of denial about his own condition, thinking himself to be good. And of course, if you lower the bar far enough, you can make yourself good, of course. But this is also a myth that has plagued the church over the years. It shows up at various times in various different forms. You may have heard of something called Pelagianism. That was an early controversy during the first millennium of the church. And Pelagius was attempting to argue that man's condition is the same now as it was before the fall, that there is no bias, as it were, towards sin. And his teaching was condemned as a heresy, as it well should be. Scripture is quite clear that man's condition is not just damaged but ruined. And of course later on you have the controversy with the Armenians who are trying to argue something similar, perhaps to a lesser degree. Yes, man has been affected by the fall but not so completely damaged by the fall that he doesn't have some good motion left in his will. The question is whether that lines up at all with what Scripture says, and the answer is, well, as a matter of fact, no, it doesn't. In fact, we don't have to look any further than a couple of short verses in Genesis 6, where God gives, as it were, the judgment against the earth at that time. If you want, we'll go ahead and look at that. Now that I've referred to it, we have to look at it, don't we? where in verse 5 he says, "...the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." And in verse 11, "...now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth." And if you follow the general flow of Genesis, from chapter 3 down to chapter 6, what you seem to be seeing is this downward progression that we were talking about earlier. This is the down escalator. The fall was bad. The fall brought sin. It brought the curse. But things weren't as bad as they were going to get over the succeeding generations. And so as we go from chapter 3 where the fall of Adam and Eve occurs to chapter 4, we find that the first man who was conceived in sin and born into this fallen world grows up to become the world's first murderer. And then it only gets worse from there. At least, it seems that Cain had some pains of conscience. He was concerned that someone might try to avenge his death, I mean his murder. But a few generations later, In Cain's line, his offspring, there's a man named Lamech. We're told in verse 19, Lamech took two wives. One was Adah and the name of the other was Zillah. We see the perversion of marriage into polygamy by this time. Then we're told about his sons and what they did. But let's jump down to verse 23. Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zilla, hear my voice, you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold." Now what that's referring to is when Cain is banished, what's one of his complaints against God? Well, somebody's going to find me and kill me. And God says, no, I'm going to put a mark on you. I'm not going to permit your murder to be avenged. And if anyone takes your life, I'm going to avenge him seven times. Lamech says, I can do better than that. You see the hardness of the heart of this man who seems to have no pains of conscience at all about murder by this time. We see, as it were, in kind of a shadowy form the descent of man into greater and greater violence and corruption until we get to this judgment that God pronounces at the beginning of Genesis 6 that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence. We might notice that the normal kind of civil restraints against violence were not present in this pre-flood time. It wasn't until Genesis chapter 9 after the flood when the death penalty for murder is first instituted. What happens in a world where there are few consequences for crime or for sin? And the answer is, it simply multiplies, doesn't it? We don't have to look very hard at what's been happening in our own culture over these last couple of years to see that when we start denigrating our police, or we start getting rid of them, we start making it impossible for them to do their jobs, we start making approval of violence and theft, that guess what? We're going to get more crime and more violence. This is the nature of man and this is why God imposes an assortment of restraints on man. We talked about one of those just a little while ago. What was going to happen if Nimrod was left in the plain of Shinar to build his city and to build his tower where all mankind was gathered together at one place and one time? It was going to be the multiplication of sin once again. So by scattering people, God helps diffuse the effects of sin. So there are an assortment of ways that we see through Scripture how God deals with sin and helps to mitigate the effects so that it's not as bad as it could be. But it's inevitable that when those restraints start to fall away, whether it's individual restraints, restraints within the family, restraints within civil society, that the result is more and more corruption, more violence. This is the condition of man and the irony is that man somehow continues to insist that he's basically good. Talk about denial. Schaefer puts it this way, he says, man is great, but he is cruel. Now there's quite a dichotomy. How do we understand the greatness of man as we see it in man made in God's image in this last session, and the cruelty and the violence of man that we see after the fall? Has man lost everything that made him great? And the answer is no, he hasn't. but it's been wrecked, and he's wrecked it by his own disobedience. As we've already mentioned, and Bill made this point as well, that Adam and Eve were not affected by sin in the way that we are when it came time for them to evaluate Satan's proposition and decide whether to believe God or to believe the serpent. How much harder is it for us as fallen creatures? And I wouldn't disagree with your assessment about pridefulness. I think it was pridefulness that brought the first fall in heaven. that Satan was not content to keep his proper place, rebelled against God, was cast out of heaven with the fallen angels, landed in the garden, and then that cycle of pridefulness started all over again and continues to plague mankind. I sometimes think I used to see in this part of the country more so than where I live now stickers that say the power of pride And I thought, yep, you have no idea because it was pride that brought the first rebellion and just about every rebellion since. Now let's think about what this fall was. I'm going to go back and reread the text one more time just so we can have it in the front of our minds as we consider this question. starting at the beginning of chapter 3. 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. But the serpent said to the woman, 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. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was 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. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Now someone might raise the objection that this was a relatively small transgression. What's the big deal about a bite of fruit? And the answer is it's not a big deal. The big deal is that that fruit is what God said you can't have. So it wasn't a question of how much they picked or how much they ate. It was a question of them taking it and eating it at all. Because that fruit represented, as we said in the last session, a boundary that God had placed around man's authority. God places Adam in the midst of the garden and says, all of these trees you can freely eat, but there's one that you can't eat. It's as if God were saying, that tree belongs to me, you leave that one alone. And I don't think that's a far-fetched way to put it, because we can think, for example, when the first city in Canaan was conquered by the Israelites, what are we told about the things in that city, Jericho? That that entire city was devoted to destruction. That it was, as it were, an offering to the Lord, and none of what was found in the city was to be taken, and yet someone took one of the forbidden things. And it not only brought judgment against him and his household, but it indeed brought judgment against the entire nation that he had done that. So taking those things that God has said, those belong to me, is not a small matter. And so it's not really a question of the fruit per se, or what kind of fruit it was. It seems to be part of mythology that it was an apple, but the scripture doesn't tell us what kind of fruit it was. So it could have been any kind of fruit, and that didn't matter. What mattered was that God had set it apart for himself. And it also mattered what that fruit represented, not only the boundaries of authority of man, but also the boundaries of his knowledge, as we said last time. God does not intend for man to have knowledge of those things that God has hidden for himself. And so the severity of the transgression is that man was grasping for something that belonged exclusively to God. A portion of the creation that God has set aside outside of man's authority and the knowledge that it also represented. Let me point your attention to the small book of Jude near the back of the Bible, right before the book of Revelation. There's an interesting allusion in the book of Jude about what happened in heaven. I'm going to start reading in verse six. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." So what was the transgression of the angels? They were created perfect and glorious beings and set in heaven and given authority. but their transgression was an unwillingness to remain within the bounds of authority that God has gave them. And when they left those proper bounds, they made themselves enemies of the One who set the boundaries. And the result that we read in the rest of that verse is sobering to say the least. What happens when you transgress the boundaries that God sets? You place yourself under the judgment of God. So it is no small matter. And that's quite like what's happened here in the garden now. Adam and Eve have left the bounds of their authority. They've grasped for what was not theirs to grasp. They have said to themselves, we're not content with what God has provided for us. We're not content with the dominion that he's given us. We want something more. and so that brings about a catastrophic fall. So the point of emphasis there is that while we might trivialize this as a storybook kind of event, Adam and Eve taking an apple from the forbidden tree It's far more than that, and we need to see it for what it is. If anyone has ever wondered if it seems reasonable that God should bring such a punishment upon Adam and Eve and upon the whole human race for such a seemingly small transgression, it's because we've not understood that it was not a small transgression at all. Again, to use the words of R.C. Sproul, he calls this cosmic treason. It's rebellion against the Creator. God sets the bounds, He gives every good thing, and then man oversteps the bounds. This is the dilemma that we're all faced with. These are the two options that we have. When confronted with God's Word, we basically have two choices. We can either trust what God's Word says, or we can begin to doubt what God's Word says. And when we begin to doubt, we are placing ourselves in judgment over the Word of God. We are repeating the old question that the serpent posed in the garden, has God said? And we are determining notice on the basis of our own senses, our own reason. we might say that the Enlightenment started in the Garden of Eden, attempting to evaluate truth on the basis of reason that has been divorced from the standard of the Word of God. Now the bad news about man's condition is indeed bad. We saw just a glimpse of it by looking at a couple of verses at the beginning of Genesis 6. We'll look at a number of others just a bit later. But let's start by observing that Man's condition is affected in his mind, in his body, and his spirit. Death came into the world through sin. What does the scientist say about death? It's just a natural part of life. And yet anyone who's confronted with death, anyone who has had death visit his household, friends, family, siblings perhaps, You know that death is not a natural thing. You cannot look at someone whose life has left them and say that this is a natural thing. Morticians may do a good job of dressing up a corpse, but it's a corpse. The life is gone. And you can see that there is something unnatural about that. This was not part of God's original intent. We might forget that when God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the garden, that they would have lived forever if not for sin. Death was the intrusion. And the idea that death is somehow the mechanism for evolution does not fit the narrative at all. So we have the death of the body. There is the aging and the decay process, disease, sometimes injury, so that we can now say that everyone dies. But not only that, there is what we call spiritual death as well. And one way we can think about spiritual death is that it's the loss of the ability to understand spiritual things. When we talked about the effects of idols earlier, when you're placing your trust in idols, when you become senseless, you cannot think, you cannot see, you cannot hear. These are the symptoms of spiritual death. and then mind as well. If you haven't noticed, man has a remarkable ability in his fallen condition to rationalize what he wants to do. In fact, we see this happening even before the fall. Isn't this exactly what Eve is doing? Look at verse 6 again in chapter 3. 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... Classic rationalization. We can always find a justification for the sin that we want to engage in. And that is one of the characteristics, especially of our fallen nature. We have a remarkable ability to justify all kinds of evil. individually and collectively. Let's take a look at Romans 121. I want you to notice two things that it's describing in this verse. Paul says that although they knew God, and we just saw that passage where Paul is saying that there is no one who has an excuse because God reveals himself through the creation. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. And there we see the mind and the moral nature being corrupted by sin. We cannot think properly. And I'd also like to look at 1 Corinthians 2.14, which, referring to the spiritual nature, says that the natural person, the one who is not yet regenerate, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." Spiritual discernment comes through spiritual wisdom. And where the Spirit of God is not, the wisdom is not going to be there either. So we're beginning to get a picture of just how bad the fall is. It's going to get worse, trust me. I'm not done yet. And the next item there in our notes I refer to from Eden to Utopia. And here's where I'm being a little sarcastic. Eden was a real place. Eden was As Scripture says, the paradise of God, when God finished the creation of the heavens and the earth and placed the man and the woman in the garden, it was a place of perfection. There was nothing lacking. As a footnote, I could add that I think part of the disadvantage of living on this side of the Fall is we don't realize how good it was at the beginning. Even on this side of the Flood, I'm one of those who think that the world has drastically changed since the flood. So you had the fall that brought the original corruption, the loss of paradise, and then the flood that came about 1600 years later and completely reshaped the surface of the earth. So that the way things are today is nothing like what they were before. I think about how Noah lived for 350 years after the flood. He was a very important bridge from the antediluvian world to the world as we know it today and what it must have been like for him to have lived for 600 years in that world before the flood and then to see how drastically it had been reshaped and reformed afterward. but an even greater distortion is the one that comes from the fall itself. We lost Eden in the fall, and what have we been trying to do ever since? Because of this folly that we said at the very beginning, that man thinks that he's basically good. If man is basically good, then certainly by a little bit of clever human effort, he is able to create utopia. And yet the funny thing is, when I did a little word study on utopia, once again suspecting that it might be Greek, I found out, yes, it is. The root is tapas. And I suspect that's the same word that we use for words like topography, referring to places. And the prefix is a negation. So the Dickens translation of utopia is a place that doesn't exist. It's no place. And yet it's that place that we're trying to create, having lost Eden by our disobedience, and now we are completely unable to recreate what was lost. It is beyond our power to recreate Eden as utopia. When we were studying Genesis years ago, one of the patterns that we saw a number of times, and it begins here with the expulsion from the garden, is that the man and the woman are driven out of the garden to the east. And there's this idea that recurs throughout Genesis of going east and going down. And here, because I've watched way too many movies, I'm thinking of Smokey and the Bandit, where Jerry Reed sings the song, Eastbound and Down. And that's the idea that when you see man going eastward, like into the plain of Shinar, or when Lot goes eastward and down into the valley towards Sodom and Gomorrah, we're seeing a decline. And that's a fitting way to see what's happening here, man grasping for something that he can't lay hold of. There is no utopia. Now, because this is a fall that affects the spirit, we shouldn't be surprised that there is, as a result of this fall, spiritual warfare. Where's the beginning of spiritual warfare? Where does that first show up? Well, here again, We say that this is one of those Christian doctrines that comes to us for the first time in the book of Genesis. after the fall. We didn't read this passage, so let's take a look at it now. This is the curse, God pronouncing the curse, starting with the serpent in verse 14. Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 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." Now if you look at surveys like Barna's surveys, they go out and ask people, and especially Christians, about different things, and you ask, are we engaged in spiritual warfare? The majority don't seem to think so. Most people seem not even to know that we are engaged in spiritual warfare, and yet that spiritual warfare started in the garden. It started when Adam and Eve made themselves enemies of God, and it continues until the end of the age. And where else do we see that? That struggle, not just between flesh and blood, but as Paul would say, between powers and principalities. Ephesians 6, verse 12, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. This is the spiritual battle. And we might even say that it requires some spiritual discernment just to realize that we are engaged in a spiritual battle. And it's one of the reasons why we so desperately need scripture to help us discern the skirmishes in this spiritual battle so that we don't fall even further into temptation. Now let me suggest to you a few of the enemy's tactics These show up early on. And once again, it's kind of an accident that I alliterated these. But these all start with D. Distortion. Deception. Distraction. Denial. And it's frankly alarming if you think about the tools that the enemy has at his disposal at the present day for all of those kinds of things. We've already said that we live in a culture that has denied objective truth and reason. So truth is gone. And what truth is there is distorted. And then let's talk about distraction. Do we not live in an age of distraction, where everything is vying for our attention, even those things that you carry in your pocket all the time, always drawing your attention away from something else? And we might say that Genesis 6 is bad enough in its evaluation, but I would hate to leave you there with the wrong impression that maybe it's not as bad as you think because it is and it's important for us and in the reformed world we call this the depravity of man and we make such a big point of it in part because of how it affects our understanding of salvation because very simply If you're not yet convinced that man, as Genesis would say, is all bad all the time, then you might be inclined to think that there is some small thing, some little good thing, that you might contribute to your own salvation. And that's simply not possible given the condition of man's fallenness. I'm going to start in Romans 28, and these are one of several passages that we might call the litanies of sin. Look at verse 28 to the end of chapter 1 in Romans. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them." And you might say, well, thank goodness that that doesn't apply to us. But then there's chapter 3, starting in verse 9. He's speaking to Jews here, but it applies to those who are part of this covenant. What then? Are Jews any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin as it is written." And here he begins to quote from other parts of scripture. Paul does that a lot, by the way. None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood and their paths are ruined in misery. In the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." That is the judgment against all mankind. He goes on to say, Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. And then this is a verse that needs to settle into your heart and mind. For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. It is the law that reveals to us what God requires. And if you say, like the rich young ruler, yeah, yeah, I've done all that, then you should hear the words of Jesus when He says, be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect. That's the standard. Why is it that if Adam and Eve had done everything right but taken one bite of the fruit, that it would have been enough to condemn the whole human race? And the answer is because it only takes one. Perfection is the standard and we're nowhere close to it. A couple of other passages. Let's go forward to the book of Galatians in chapter 5. starting in verse 19. Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you as I warned you before that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. and then turn over to Colossians chapter 3. Here Paul says in verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming, and these you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self of its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. And so we see not only the sin that condemns, but we also see the renewal that comes through faith in Christ and the sanctification by the Word. What is it that we're being renewed into the likeness of? And that is the Lord Himself. I would also point your attention to Psalm 51.5, which It's probably a familiar verse as well where David says, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Sin is that defect that is passed from generation to generation. There is no one who escapes it. There's only one whose conception was perfect and sinless. and that was Christ by the Holy Spirit. Everyone else from Cain onward has been conceived in sin and we don't have to look very hard in the birth and the life of Cain to see how sin, the sin of Adam has been passed on to the next generation and so it goes. The indictment is pretty severe. That's what we call the bad news. The good news is found in the gospel, which says that it's not by your effort that you can be saved. I want you to notice a couple of things that are patterns that jump out at me when I look at Genesis 3 and 4. In Genesis chapter 3, after the fall, we see that Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And these proved to be quite insufficient covering for the guilt and the shame of their sin. God provided them a different covering a short time afterward, didn't he? Verse 21, the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. And there's the first indication that there has to be an innocent substitute. That we cannot stand in our own righteousness because we have none, but if God is to see us as righteous, we have to be clothed in the skins of a substitute. And we'll see this a bit more in the next session. But not only this, we have the contrast, as I would put it, between the vegetables that Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves with, and the animals that God covered them with. And then what do we see in the very next chapter when Cain and Abel bring their offerings to the Lord? One is acceptable and the other one isn't. Cain brings an offering of vegetables and Abel brings an offering from the flock. And so from very early on we begin to see that the proper worship of God is that there must be an offering for sin. There must be a substitute. Well, if we understand just how severe man's condition is, and how truly helpless we are in regard to saving ourselves, the time for being saved by works has long since passed. Adam had that opportunity if he had obeyed the law of God to bring salvation by works, but that's gone and it's lost. Now the question is, in our ruined condition, and this is one of those questions that's a really good question, who then can be saved? Let's take a look at Luke 18. If the severity of the fall is such that man can no longer save himself, then what is it going to take? This will be a familiar story. The rich young ruler comes to the Lord and questions Him. Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Now let me stop there. What is the standard for righteousness? It's divine. Already we have the sense that this rich young ruler might want to be equivocating a little bit on the law, lowering the bar just a little bit so that he'll be able to say that he's met it. Jesus is already challenging that idea. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. And he said, all these things I've kept for my youth. Well, there's already a problem, isn't there? Because he hasn't kept any of those things. But he doesn't have the understanding of what God's law requires yet. But Jesus plays along with this. He said, when Jesus heard this, he said to him, one thing you still lack, a little sarcasm, just one thing, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. But when he heard these things, he became very sad for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he'd become sad, said, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Those who heard it said, then who can be saved? But he said, what is impossible with men is possible with God. And God has made salvation possible not through your works, not through your self-righteousness, but through the person and the work of Christ, who perfectly kept the law, and who died an atoning death to satisfy the wrath of God for all your sin so that you can be heirs of eternal life with him in heaven forever." Spurgeon says this, everything that is evil lurks within the heart of every person. Education may restrain it. Imitation of a good example may have some power in holding the monster down. But the very best of us, apart from the grace of God placed under certain circumstances which would cause the evil within us to be developed rather than restrained, would soon prove to a demonstration that our nature was evil, and only evil, and that continually. Amen.