2026 02 22 - The Devil Made Me Do It - Popp

Grace, peace, and mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I already kind of shared a little bit about this crazy idea I had for a playbill for today's sermon text. I put into AI to Google AI that what would a playbill write up look like for these four characters? That's what's on the back of your outline there. The four roles and what it said about each one and production notes. It was interesting to me.

It's the original nonfiction story from the beginning of the world. Well, more than a one act character, right? We could do creation, but here we have this story of what we know right after each was created.

It's these last two phrases. If you have it in front of you, you could probably read it. Maybe not up here. So let me make it a little bigger for you. The fall introduces sin.

God introduces a Savior. I read that and I thought, oh, that's good. That'll preach, right? We're in Lent. It's this idea.

Why did this happen and what do we do? In fact, as I'm listening again to Pastor Rick, do the readings, it was that epistle. I Circle verse 12. I'm like, oh, that's it. That's the whole point.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, death through sin, so death spread to all men who sinned, Right? But then verse 17 shares both. Wait, verse 18 shares. Wait, verse 19.

There it is. And we'll get to the gospel later. A lot going on. I also, as I'm listening to Pastor Rick, read back the Genesis 3 to me. I've been studying it for weeks, and yet I'm listening to him read it.

And I wish I changed the title to the Blame Game. Right? That's not where our focus is going to be today. Anyway, we're going to look at this story a little bit differently this first Sunday in Lent. We're diving right into this fall of mankind.

The introduction to sin, the beginning of the end. Everybody knows the rules, right? Just one bite. That's all it took. No more perfect world together.

Is this a story of deception and betrayal? Can our simple sinful minds even grasp what life was like prior to that bite? So let's look at the factors and the fallout. Okay. I want to start right away with how can we judge when we know so little?

I'm going to throw up some questions I don't know if you've ever thought about, but this is what has been going through my mind for the last couple weeks. Number one, what was life like in Eden before The Fall. We know so little from what Scripture tells us, we have no idea how long, right? Did they get tired? Or is our body tiring, the result of sin?

Maybe they never needed to sleep or nap. I don't know. I asked my dad this question. He goes, I wouldn't know if I'd bring that up, but did they have to go to the bathroom? Is waste a sinful act?

Right? Do they have to change our digestive systems? And that after sin? Maybe they didn't have to. I don't know.

What did they do all day? And how long did they have together in the garden with God until that fateful day? And when it comes to the Fall, since God instructed Adam not to eat the tree before Eve was even created, did Adam tell Eve? Did God tell Eve? Did she just naturally know because she is without sin or the consequences?

Certainly when the serpent asked Eve, she knew.

How did she know?

I often wonder about how they could even understand that. Right, we'll come back to that one later. How long after Eve was created did it take place again? It's this idea of, did they have a regular routine? Did God come and walk with them all the time?

At certain times, did they call for them or send them away?

In a world without sin, could they even comprehend the idea of dying? Or this command, you shall not. If it was perfect and there was no sin and they hear you should not do something, how did that come across again in our simple minds? It makes perfect sense, right? But for then, what were the rules?

Did they have rules? Was there law before the Fall?

Did Adam and Eve talk with all the animals? It seemed very natural in this reading that they started talking to this snake, right? Wasn't a big deal. Did all of the animals speak Hebrew?

I did put into Google. I assume Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew, right? That's the language of the first original Old Testament. There's a whole other argument.

Why was the serpent allowed to be there? Dave TIMMERMAN and I, Mr. Timmerman, we've been working through our confirmation class lately, talking more about apologetics, preparing them to answer those tough questions as they move on to high school and college. And the questions, some of the questions the kids already know and have heard are just incredible. But again, why did God allow this? Why did he allow Satan, who obviously he threw him and his followers the demons, out of heaven, but here he was in the Garden of Eden.

And why was there a tree of knowledge of good and evil? That's one I've heard many, many times over the years. I've answered a lot. It actually would make sense. I'll answer that one real quick because I think that's one we all need to understand a little bit of.

If the tree of knowledge of good and evil wasn't there, they had nothing to do other than to follow. Then there was no relationship. It was more like a robot there obeying God's command not to eat of this tree was them showing their worship to God. There had to be that. And yet our life changed.

Let's look at this. I think the hard part for us and the hard part for me looking at this was trying to understand why this happened. And yet I feel like it's an adult trying to think like a kid. We can no longer think like a kid because we know more. It's a different adult thing.

Right. So what would a kid think? Well, we are far more different. We've changed. Well, we are sinners.

How can we understand what a sinless world was like, much less what they were thinking like? But I still want to focus on this fallout. Not what could have been. What would things be like? It's weird in our world.

If I said to the kids, imagine if Adam and Eve never sinned, we'd all be sitting here naked. That freaks them out.

Here in church, we're all just, don't worry about what to wear. We're all not going to wear clothes, right? The relationship changed. The relationship between God and his creation was over forever. They walked and talked with God and all of a sudden there was banishment.

In fact, our gospel reading finishes at verse 21. And yet if they had just gone a few more verses, only a couple more verses in that chapter, then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us. And knowing good and evil, lest he reach out his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. It was that separation.

In fact, the next verse I didn't write down was the one about putting the angel with the flaming sword to guard the garden.

My question for you today. How do we walk and talk with God? We certainly lost the opportunity to physically be there with Him. And yet I feel what you all are doing right now. Choosing to overcome the weather and the hockey game to make the decision to come worship.

Walking with God. Now, I know some of you are checking your phones. Don't get me wrong, but this is us walking and talking with God in our relationship with Him. We. We Often use that phrase in Lent.

Walking to the cross of the empty tomb through the Lenten season. This is our daily walk. When you open your devotion, when you open your Bible, when you open your day with prayer.

So important. So our relationship changed. But there's another one. Mortality changed. Our bodies age and break down.

I guess as we're young, we look at older people and we feel bad. We see it, but we don't comprehend it. Until our bodies start to break down, we don't know why are we struggling. Death is the guarantee for all people, right? Well, I said that and I thought, well, Enoch and Elijah stopped living on earth.

Not necessarily death, but we're all going to die. Death is inevitable. We live in a sinful world. We cannot overcome it. I see why these millionaires try to spend money to clone their bodies to have parts, to try to.

Oh, my liver's bad, give me the new one, give me the spare, right? What a novel idea. Science can keep us living longer and yet as somebody who has a grandma who's a hundred boy, the longer you live, the more pain you deal with, the more loss you see.

Yet in Christ we live forever. I thought about this a lot. This idea of why we go through this Lenten journey and what that message of salvation looks and what that Easter celebration is really about. And it's this understanding that when you talk with somebody who doesn't know Christ or doesn't believe and they try to share with you why they feel the way they do or believe the way they do, I've yet to see one with a real solid foundation, with a real purpose for living.

And yet we have that in Christ we live forever.

That 40 day journey to Jesus is really this idea, right? The Old Testament, pointing from the minute of the fall to the coming of the Savior. What a blessing we had. We'll come back to that. The last part.

Our morality changed. Sin entered the world. And guess what? It's been ugly since there was no sin until Satan brought evil into that garden.

Till he just made them question what they heard, what they're supposed to do and why they do it.

We've all seen those, those fun cartoons or those fun shows where it shows the angel on one side and the devil on the other. And they're trying to tell you what to do and what not to do and you know what's right, you know what's wrong. That daily battle started with this story in the Garth I.

Think about this idea that God gave us law that required gospel. I often wonder how we view the law so poorly sometimes and think about these rules so poorly. And yet every single day we need them to live. We rely on God's law. We expect it to be upheld for our own security and safety, right?

Viewing God's law as love for those who live in a world that they struggle sometimes, that they feel, oh, the rules are so harsh and so hard and I wish I could, I wish I could. And yet we see it as parents. Anybody that's been a parent, why do we give rules to our kids? To keep them safe, because we love them, because we don't want them to hurt themselves, because we don't want them to die. Why is it any different from our God?

He loves us so much, tries to provide that framework. And yet we know as sinners, we still struggle. People around us do, but our morality has certainly changed. That's probably another sermon. Let's get to the point here.

What does this mean? Lent in addition, right? We're in Lent. We are now four days in. I don't know how your lent has started or how you're doing since Ash Wednesday, but hopefully as you're getting into scripture and focusing on what Christ did, I'm going to go back to those first two lines.

The fall of man introduces us to sin and God introduces us to the Savior. Right?

We knelt down and asked God to forgive us of our sins. And because we know what Jesus did, we know we're forgiven. But once again, for those living outside of the knowledge of our Lord and Savior who are choosing to push back and not live in his understanding world, family, when they're struggling, we can introduce them to the Savior.

That conscious we are born with, right? I remember hearing when I was young that oh, we know God in three ways. The word of God, nature and our conscience. And I thought that's an interesting idea. Somebody who is not introduced to God's word early on or to who God is.

And yet that consciousness that we're born with that says this natural right or wrong. Again, my go to is the two year old who asks mom if you're gonna have cooking. She says now for dinner. And as soon as she's out of the room, that chair gets pushed over to the counter and he knows where that cookie jar is, right? He knows the fact he's looking for a lookout.

He know we need to introduce him to a Savior. We have zero percent chance on our own to be saved. The sooner people get this, the quicker they submit and will listen to who our Lord and Savior is and why it is so Important to live in the Lord because Jesus already did the job. In fact, even for us to be reminded when we try to fix we problems and we think we have things under control, we have zero percent chance to do anything on our own. Now praise be to God.

He has blessed us with wonderful gifts. He's blessed us with people around us. He blesses with the family and the church that we turn to all gifts from God. But it goes back to how do we walk and talk with God? Are we with our Master and Savior?

Are we following him? That gospel reading for today. This idea of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness for years, I'm like, wait a second. He gets baptized and immediately goes to the desert and he doesn't eat for 40 days, 40 nights. We're having a baptism at leit and then there's a reception, right?

What do we do? We celebrate things with family gatherings. Growing up, I thought the rhythm of things was we go to our service, we go to Bible class in Sunday school, we go home and change into our Bear jerseys. Then we go have dinner, right? Or Cub jerseys, depending on the season.

That's what you celebrate in church with dinner.

Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And unlike Adam and Eve, he of course does it right.

And I think the other reason this Adam and Eve story bothers me from time to time, when I got here in 2005 and we were starting, you know, middle school here and I was going to teach health, and I Remember I told Mr. Jackson I used a public health book where I was in Iowa because I wanted them to see what other kids were getting and I would bring God into it. He said, no, buy a Christian one. Okay? So I found what I thought was looked like a good one. Susan Bowe the very first lesson in this health book, I used to use it with the kids to kind of have a little laugh because the whole point of the lesson was that when we're having trouble, we should turn to people we trust.

And in this lesson it actually said, if only Eve had turned to Adam when she was struggling. Yeah, we laughed too. He was right there. I was like, how can the lady who wrote this be so sexist? If only she'd have trusted Adam, we wouldn't have the false.

No, Adam was right there. Why did they not look to God?

It's a story where we see failure. And I guarantee we see the same failure in our lives when we kneel on Sunday and all those two terrible things come rushing back. We're going to put at the Lord's feet, let's follow Jesus, listen to him and believe as we start this Lenten journey. Regardless of what your last four days are, I hope the next 36 Sundays next 4142 is our daily walk talking with God, being reminded of we can't do it on our own. We've been blessed with gifts, we trust in him and regardless of whether we pass or fail each and every day, it does not change our salvation.

I've told it before and I'll say it again for anybody new, it's that line and dot issue. I heard that sermon in 2009 and it has changed the way I live.

Pastor said he drew a dot and a line and the dot represent our time here on earth. The line went forever. It's our time in heaven and it put that perspective of what we deal with that dot anytime we have struggles. Again, is it a dot or a line issue? Because 99.5% of all the problems, probably more than that.

I'm probably underestimating that 99.9% of the problems we have in this world are dot issues that do not affect our salvation. We need to live for the line and not the dime. We need to remember it often.

We need to follow Jesus, listen to him and believe. At the start of our Lenten journey, we are reminded God didn't make us robots to worship him, but desired us to have a personal relationship with Him. We can't do it on our own, nor should we try. We rely on him, the Creator who sent His Son to die for us in our salvation. Let us continue to take the time to focus on the cost he paid on that cross.

Thank you God. Amen.