First United Methodist Church of New Port Richey
5901 Indiana Avenue
New Port Richey, Florida 34652
(727) 842-7674

Rebellion                                                Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7, & Romans 5:12, 15, & 18

                                                                1^st Sunday in Lent

                                                                February 10, 2008

A.  Rebellion

1. Have you ever rebelled against something?  I imagine most all of us have.
2. Maybe the rebellion has been in a large way or maybe a small way but I suppose that most all of us have rebelled against something.
3. There are times that rebellion is the right thing to do; for example rebelling against an oppressive or evil government.
4. But there are many times when rebellion may not be the best course of action.
5. One of the rebellions of my life was getting married so early, becoming an adult out on my own.
6. Through that rebellion I got married to Phyllis.
7. Most of the ways that that rebellion worked out brought good.
8. But getting married at a young age also brought tremendous struggle and difficulty.
9. If it hadn’t been for the fact that we started our relationship as best friends and that Phyllis knew how to make ends met when you are poor and for my stubbornness we probably would not have made it and then the consequences of my rebellion would have been magnified and probably would have so changed the course of our lives that we wouldn’t even be the same people today.
1. The rebellion of growing up
1. But I suppose, part of growing up is ultimately separating from your parents and becoming your own person.
2. And usually that leads to some sort of rebellion.
3. It is so common in western culture that it even has a name for it.
4. It seems that in our culture that it is almost a rite of passage to challenge our parental authority and become our own person in doing it.
5. And really the goal of the child in this is to become an adult and certainly adulthood comes, but often when the rebellion has taken place we are left still kids but perhaps with greater responsibility and still not really knowing what to do.
2. The rebellion of God’s children
1. With all of this in mind, listen to the passage of scripture today about the rebellion of God’s children.
2. Did you notice that the serpent tells Eve that the tree of knowledge will make her like God, knowing good and evil?
3. In many ways being like God is like trying to be adults, like our parents when we are young.
4. But what does it mean when it says knowledge of good and evil?
5. I don’t know for sure, but to me it means knowing the consequences of choices.
6. For me, knowing good and evil is to know what will come out of what we do.
7. And that is basically what God tells us about in the scripture; especially in the Law of Moses.
8. There God tells his people what will bring positive consequences and negative consequences, but of course our position in history is different than theirs.
9. For example the scripture tells them not to eat pork.
10. Why?  It doesn’t say.  But we can speculate that pork can kill you or at least make you very sick if you don’t cook it properly.
11. Today I eat pork because we have ways of cooking it properly.
12. The law also said things like, “Don’t boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk.”
13. That doesn’t make much since to us until you understand that there was a religion in their time that worshipped their god by doing this just this.
14. So the idea is, do not worship that god or any other god.
15. So, God reveals many of the things that we should do and should not do in His word to us, to help us have knowledge of good and evil.
16. And so I follow the Law of God today knowing that I need to take care of myself and be as healthy as I can and that I need to put nothing ahead of God in my life.
17. But of course we are still much like Adam and Eve, rebelling to make ourselves like God.
18. And just like my rebellion had the potential to totally change, even destroy my life, so did theirs.
19. The Bible tells us that we have removed ourselves totally from God as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s actions.
20. But the Bible also tells that God has done something to bring us back to Him despite the terrible consequences of human rebellion.
3. God’s good news
1. In chapter five of Romans as we read the beginning sentence of three consecutive paragraphs we read how God is dealing with human rebellion.
2. In verse 12 we see the consequences of our rebellion against God.
3. It says that sin came into the world through this one rebellion but that all of us have participated in this rebellion because every single one of us have sinned and have continued on the path of brokenness that sin leads us to.
4. But in verse 15 we hear about hope for our brokenness and bad choices.
5. The free gift that this passage is talking about is a gift out of God’s grace for us through Jesus.
6. And finally in verse 18 the scripture celebrates how the action of Jesus can lead us to reconciliation and wholeness with God.
7. By putting our faith in Jesus God brings us back to himself, we still have the consequences of our rebellion but not as far as God is concerned in our relationship with him.
8. Our faith opens the door to us being in full relationship with God and one day, like Adam and Eve did, we will be able to walk with God in the cool of the evening and celebrate His presence in ourlives.  Amen.

If you would like to know more

Weekly devotion

for February 11 through February 15

Monday

            Read Genesis 2:15-17.  Why do you think that God put a limit on Adam?  God gives Adam a wonderful place to live and a job to do that is worthwhile and meaningful and then He gives him that one restriction, not to eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  God could have not limited Adam at all.  God could have left all possibilities open to him.  But there is that one restriction.  And the Bible doesn’t tell us why that one restriction is there.  So all we can do is speculate about the whys of this restriction.  But I think that the reason that God put that one restriction before Adam was because with this one restriction Adam had a way to show God that he loved Him and wanted to be obedient to Him.  In the situation that Adam found himself in there was no other way that Adam could really show his love and obedience to God but to have some line that he was not supposed to cross and then not cross that line.

            To me, this shows me how much God wants a semi-equal relationship with us.  God gives us the power to choose to love Him or not, to be obedient or not; God even gives us the power to reject Him.  That is the only way that God will know if we really choose Him, if we also have the power not to choose Him.  And so there is the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.

Tuesday

            Read Genesis 3:1-7.  In this passage we read that the serpent tells Eve that eating from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will make her like God.  What is wrong with being like God?  Isn’t that what God wants us to be like?  Yes, but to get that way Eve and later Adam had to be disobedient to God; crossing that line that God told them not to cross.  In this way they reject God’s leadership in their lives and really attempt to take God’s place as they rule their own lives.  And what is the result of eating the fruit?  Instead of having the wisdom that they think they are going to get, they get something else.  They simply seem to understand that they are naked.  Although the Bible doesn’t say it, I think that what they got from eating from this tree was knowledge of the consequences of their actions.  From eating from this tree they knew that being naked made them vulnerable.  And so they lost their dependence on God and took over the operation of their own lives which lead to a lot of misery and human suffering.

Wednesday

            Over past two days we’ve talked about the sin of Adam and Eve and how that sin was a rejection of God leading their lives.  But their sin didn’t just affect them.  It also has a direct effect on us.  Read Romans 5: 12-14.  Here we read that when sin entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve it brought death with it.  The Jewish people literally believed that they would not die if they did not sin but we tend to think of the death that sin brings as a spiritual death, which is an eternal consequence of not being able to be with God in heaven.  So our sin, just like the sin of Adam and Eve, is a crossing of a line that demonstrates our unwillingness to follow God and have Him be the ruler of our lives.  We participate in the brokenness of this world by our sin and cause ourselves to be removed from God’s ways and so we are in a hopeless situation unless God acts.  And since the Bible tells us that all of us have sinned we are all in this hopelessness.

Thursday

            Read Romans 5:15-17.  Here we read that God has acted in Jesus Christ.  Just like the sin of Adam of Eve changed the world for the bad, one man came and changed the world for the good.  That one man is Jesus who was a gift from God who brought about the grace of God for us all through our faith in him.

            Praise God for acting in Jesus and making a difference.  No longer do we have to be separated from the love of God.  By our faith in him we can choose to allow God to be the leader of our lives, with forgiveness for all our past sins.  We are reconciled with God and because of that we have life eternal with Him.  Amen.

Friday

            Read Psalm 32.  In this Psalm the writer celebrates that those whose sins are forgiven by God are happy.  Of course those who sin, and that includes all of us, still have the earthy consequences of our sin.  But as we have been forgiven by God things are made right for us with God and that has eternal consequences.

            How does the writer of this Psalm have forgiveness for his sin?  He says that he acknowledges his sin before God and seeks God’s forgiveness.  Jesus adds to this idea that we should also acknowledge our sin before the humans that we have sinned against as well, and try to make things right with those we’ve hurt.  As we do this we claim what Jesus died to give us; a new life with God.  Amen.