The First Sin

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Genesis 2:15, 17
Genesis 3
Romans 3:23
James 4:17
 
What is sin? If someone asks you what sin is, what would you say? Webster’s Dictionary says it means the willful breaking of religious or moral law.  Sin is being disobedient to God’s law or disobedient to God’s instruction.

When we talk about the first sin we know who was here first. There was Adam first, and then there was Eve. God created Adam and He had given him some instructions.

God put Adam in the Garden called Eden. In today’s time Adam would have been considered a groundskeeper because he was put in the garden to dress it and to keep it.  Adam was there to cultivate or take care of it.

So here God is giving Adam some instruction. He’s talking directly to Adam here, telling Adam that any tree of the garden you are free to eat, except one.

My son and I were talking last night and I told him that Adam didn’t have fried chicken and pork chops. They didn’t have big pots of stew. I believe that Adam and Eve were more like vegetarians. God tells them that you may eat but of this one tree you may not eat. God told Adam if you go out and you eat of the fruit of this tree you will die, and we will see here that that is exactly what happened. God was saying that you will not only die physically; you will die spiritually. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God they allowed sin and death to enter this world.

The serpent said to Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Eve says to the serpent: “God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” God did not tell Adam that.  Now, Adam might have told Eve that, but God didn’t say anything about you may not touch it. Now, God was speaking directly to Adam, but Eve is in this conversation with this serpent about what was said. We know that the serpent is a symbol of the devil in the garden.

God has given Adam instruction but God didn’t tell Adam that he couldn’t touch the tree - he told him he couldn’t eat of it.

We see here Eve gets in this conversation with this serpent, and Adam wasn’t somewhere far off; he was right there.  Adam should have said “We ain’t got no business in this conversation with this guy -  God has given us instructions, he has told us not to eat of it.” Instead, the bible says that Eve gave it to him and he did eat.

The devil often attacks us in our weakest point. Now if you go back and read the word of God, when Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil we see him trying to do just that.  He knew Jesus was physically hungry, but Jesus knew the scriptures; Jesus knew what God had said.

Sometimes we allow our fleshly desires to overshadow everything God has told us.  Even when it comes to doing all those things out there in the street  - running around, sleeping around, doing all these other things. A lot of times our desires overshadow everything God has instructed us to do, but we shouldn’t allow that to happen. 

The first sin.  This is where it started. The first man and the first woman sin, here in the Garden of Eden.  But, the bible also lets us know that “We all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”.  We all sin and we all have a sinful nature.  The bible teaches us that even when we know to do good and don’t do it, it is sin.

God doesn’t leave us out here helpless.  He gives us His Word.  Other voices will tell you lies and try to get you off track, but here we see that if we disobey God, we sin, and we suffer the consequences.
We have a sinful nature, but we don’t have to live under the control of that nature.

​How do we live life without sin? We study the word of God, and we obey the voice of God.