Last Sunday we started a brand new series called The Gospel. And so if you weren't here last week, the good news is you're uh you're coming in pretty early. Which is actually a pretty rare experience for us to have in life. It's pretty normal for us to enter situations often where we don't really know the backstory. We we often find ourselves playing catch-up, trying to fill in the blanks, trying to take whatever clues that we can gather from the world around us and piece together what's happened so we can make sense of what's going on. That's a pretty normal experience. Sometimes we live life like someone who's jumped into a show at the midway point and has no idea what happened and just trying to figure it out as they go. We do that a lot with our faith. Because, let's be honest, we're we're not coming in at the early point in the game. A lot has already happened. Here we are, 2,000 years after Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, and so much has happened that at this point in time we often find ourselves giving our faith to Jesus or believing in God, depending on where we're at, or maybe even just being curious about that, but we're not really confident in what's happened before. We don't really know the story that we're part of. And so we're like a lot of people. We're just trying to figure it out as we go, fill in the blanks and solve the clues. It's hard to grow like that. It's hard to grow and mature in our faith if we're constantly confused. If every time we open up the Bible and we're like, what is this about? Why did this happen? What is God up to? I don't get it. It makes it really difficult for us to just grow. And we want to grow. We always want to grow. There's always more of God for us to have. And something about us as a church that's in our DNA is we just cannot settle for anything less than all of God. There is no reason for any of us here to have anything short of all that God has for you. We want that. And the only way to have that is to grow and to grow consistently. But sometimes our confusion, our lack of understanding keeps us from growing. We want to eliminate confusion. And so we're we're in this series called the Gospel for that very reason. We want to know the story that we're part of. We don't want to have to try to play catch up and just and just grab the little pieces that we can make sense of and try to fill in the blanks for ourselves. We want to know the story. We want to understand what God is doing. Because here's the beauty of it: God has called all of us to be part of his story. He's invited every single one of us to play a role in the story that he's creating. And if we don't understand the story we're in, we can't play the role that we're meant to play. Confusion is not our friend. And so, practically speaking, here's what we're doing in this series. We're gonna go over the entire story of the Bible in less than two months. It's a big story. And so obviously, we can't delve into all the little details, but we're basically segmenting the entire story of the Bible, the gospel, the story of Jesus, into these segments that make sense. And each week we're gonna go through them. And here's how it kind of works. We began last week with creation. Okay, from creation we get to today, which is the crash. We'll talk about that. From crash, we go to covenant. That was the agreement between people and God after the crash. From covenant, we go to Christ. From Christ, we go to the cross. And here's what's really cool uh this isn't gonna be on the screens because Easter is right after that, which is awesome. And you know, Easter's kind of its own thing, but it actually fits perfectly right after the cross, because a big thing happened after the cross. He got back up. Easter. And I got really frustrated because Easter doesn't fit the theme of all the words that begin with C. And I tried to think of one and I couldn't, and I talked about that in the first service, and then this little fourth grade girl named Kaylin, awesome, fourth or fifth grade, came up to me after church and was like, Conquer, hello. I'm like, ah, see? I'm always bragging on our kids here, and now you know why, because they're giving me all my ideas. I'm just getting it from them. Um so cross, conquer, you're just not gonna see that. From that, we go to a new creation. And then from that to a new covenant. And that really, that is the story of the Bible. That is that is the story that we're part of in a very broad sense. And we want to go over that. We want to know the story we're part of so we can play the role we've been we've been given. We want to grow. We want to grow aggressively, and it's hard to be aggressive if you're confused. And so each week we're gonna cover one of those segments. And my goal for us as a family, as a church, is to walk out of here ready to pursue God and to have more of Him because confusion has been eliminated. Now, last week we began with creation. It makes sense to begin with the beginning, and what we really looked at last week was why God created us. Why did He make us? If we don't know the intent of our maker, it's really hard for us to live a fulfilled life. If you don't know what you're fulfilling, it's hard to be fulfilled. And we looked at at this Ephesians chapter 1, verses 4 and 5. This is God telling us that long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind. He had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago, he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. What pleasure he took in planning this. This tells us that in terms of our relationship with God, we were created to be loved by God. In terms of our relationship with God, he created us to be in a relationship with him. This does not say that God created human beings to worship him or that God created human beings to love him. It is good for us to love him, it is good for us to worship him, but our worship of him and our love for him comes in response to his love for us. He created us so that he could love us. He created us so that we could be the focus of his love. He made us because he wanted to love us unlike anything else in all creation. You were made by God to experience his love. And it's only when you experience his love that everything else is seen in the right perspective, is seen in the right light. So he made us to be loved by him, we experience that love, and then we can then love him back, worship him in response. The Bible actually says that elsewhere. It says that his kindness leads us to repentance. It's his love for us that ignites everything else in our response to him. But God did not just make us so that he can have a relationship with us. He actually made us for a great purpose in the world that we're part of. And we see a little bit of that in Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. This is God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus talking amongst themselves. Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, the livestock, and all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. So we were made by God to be in his image, to look like God. That means all of us are supposed to resemble God, which seems impossible. How in the world can we look like God? But as we talked about last week, it's when we love like God that we look like God. It's when we love this world the way God does that we resemble him, and that's when people see God in us. And so he made us to be loved by him, and then he created us to love the world that we're part of, to demonstrate his love to the world around us. And then if you notice, after it talks about this whole being made in his image thing, it says that we're supposed to reign. Some of us don't realize we're rulers today. You carry yourself a little bit differently if you walked in here as a ruler, you know. Do you know who I am? It says we're supposed to reign over life and everything in it. And so, in other words, God's ordained order in the world is supposed to be God, us, life. It doesn't feel like that very often, does it? It doesn't often feel like I'm reigning in my life, like I'm just conquering everything in my path. Like life is crumbling before my feet, going, What do you want me to do? That's not how it feels. I think oftentimes it feels like it's God, life, and then us, where we're just sort of surviving life. We're handling life. Life is throwing punches and we're trying to bob and weave or counter the best that we can. We're trying to make the best out of whatever life throws at us. Sometimes it actually feels like it's life, God, and then us. We may not say that, but there are problems that we face and situations that we deal with, maybe, maybe problems we see in the world, and it makes us wonder if God can handle it. It makes us wonder if it may just be a little too big for God to even solve. And so even though we may not say it, I think, at least I, maybe I'm the only one, think, oh man, is God big enough to handle this? Like life is over God. But whether you feel like it goes God us life, which is what it's supposed to, or or God life us, or life, God us, I think we can all agree that the world's very confused. And it doesn't, it doesn't seem to be as simple as the way the Bible makes it. It doesn't seem to be as simple as that God made us and then he made the world and then we just reign over it. It kind of kind of seems like when you look at the world, something went wrong. That's because something went wrong.

Right?

The world we live in, it seems out of whack. The world around us seems confused. Like God's plan is not exactly what's happening, and that's because God's plan hit a detour. It wasn't something he didn't see coming, God sees everything coming. That's why we we look at Ephesians chapter 1 that we looked at earlier. Even though he knew things were gonna go the way they did, he already had a plan in mind to bring us to himself through Jesus. When God created the world, he knew that he would have to send Jesus, Jesus would have to clean up the mess and bring us back into a restored relationship with him. But the mess still happened. There was a crash, and everything got all out of whack. And all the symptoms we see in the world, all the brokenness, all the confusion, all the struggle, all the tragedy, that's all symptomatic of the crash. And so today we're gonna look at the crash. We're gonna explore it. And it's very important that we do, not just so that we know the story that we're part of, so that we can wise up and be be prepared for the crashes that we're susceptible to in our lives. Because let's face it, the first crash is not the only crash we have to worry about. I am susceptible on a daily basis to personal crashes. There are decisions that I can make that, depending on the way they go, things can be really good, things can be really, really bad. We are all susceptible to our own personal crashes. And I don't know about you, but I don't want my life to just be a series of crashes. I don't want my life to be a collection of huge mistakes. Because I believe that God has freed me. I believe that God has given me all that I need to live life the way He's asked me to live it. It says that in 2 Peter, God has given us everything we need for life and for godliness. In other words, he's given us everything we need to live a godly life. So our life does not have to be about crash after crash. There's a way for us to live where our lives can be somewhat crash-proof. That doesn't mean problem-proof. Problems and crashes are not the same thing. Crashes are when your problems and your circumstances get the best of you. We can live a life that sidesteps the crashes that lay in wait for us. And I think if we can understand the first crash, if we can really see it and explore what happened that first time, we can learn how to choose differently in our lives today. So this is very practical. This is very personal. In fact, some messages are kind of these like rah-rah messages. I want us to leave here going like, yeah. Some messages are a little bit more practical in the sense I just want us to leave here with a strategy. I want us to leave here with a plan of attack so that we can go live the life we're called to live, live the life God has invited us to live better. That's today. I want us to leave here equipped. So here's what we're gonna do. Really, really simple. First, we're gonna explore a couple of dynamics that were at play that allowed this crash to happen in the first place. Then we're gonna actually look at that moment and explore it and see what happened, what was going on. And then we're gonna talk about a few strategies all of us can use in our own lives to avoid the same struggle that that led to that first crash in the first place. Okay, so so let's start by looking at a few dynamics. We've got to understand that these things are reality. These are things that all of us deal with, these are things that are in place, this is just the way the world is, and because these things exist, we are all susceptible to a crash. Number one, choice. God created us, and one of the first things He gives us is a choice. Sometimes I feel like I would be better at being God than God. Someone just amen that. And uh we we all at least be honest. Like, all of us have at least had one moment where maybe we're reading the Bible or we just see something happen and we're like, hey God, if I had your job, I'd do it a little bit differently. And sometimes if we really like let ourselves go down that way, we might even begin to believe that we are more compassionate than God, that maybe we're more patient than God, we're more understanding than God, that you know we we're maybe more fair than God. I've had plenty of those moments. And so it's funny, I I look at God, he creates the world, and then the first thing he does is give people a choice. And if I were God, I don't know if I would give people choice. Like, not real choice. Because there is a such thing as false choice. If you're if you're a parent, you give your kids false choices all the time, right? I do that a lot. Like I give them two choices, but clearly there's one choice. Or if you're a wife, you give your husband false choices all the time. Like, that's my where do you want to eat? Oh, I don't really care. Yes, you do. You absolutely care. I know you care. That's a lie. It's a lie from the devil because if I say let's go to Arby's, you'll be like, no, not Arby's, and then it's clear that you do care. So why'd you say, I don't have a choice. Just tell me where we're eating. That's what I want to know. That's how it goes. That's gonna happen in 45 minutes. It is true. So there's a such thing as false choice, and if I were God and I made people, knowing how people are, looking at the world around me, I don't think I would have given people as much choice as God gave us. Because God creates us and he gives us the ability to choose him or to choose anything but him. He creates us to live in relationship with him, but then he gives us the freedom to break up with him. He gives us the freedom to completely and totally reject him. There is no one that has ever experienced the amount of rejection that God has experienced. And it's kind of interesting. Because we can look at the world that we're in and we can see all this injustice. And sometimes we can look at God and be like, Why are you letting this happen? And God would look at us and say, I it's happening exactly like I told you it would happen. This is a pattern in the Bible, by the way. God tells people what they should do. He gives them all the instruction they need, all the information they need to make the right choice, and then he even warns them what will happen if they make the wrong choice. And oftentimes he warns them many, many times, then they make the wrong choice, and they're like, God, why did you let this happen? And he's like, I gave you a choice, and I spelled it out for you. But you've got to choose. I will not make your choices for you. Sometimes it's easy for us to lose sight of how much God actually honors our choices. And how big our choices actually are. In fact, I heard a pastor say it this way once, and I'll never forget it, because he was talking about hell. And that's that's a subject that uh uh either doesn't get talked about in church at all, or it gets talked about by people who seem like they enjoy talking about hell, which is a really scary thing. But this pastor said that the reason hell is an actual possibility for mankind is that God respects us too much to override all of our choices in life. In other words, if we spend our lives consistently choosing to walk away from God, consistently saying to God, I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you, when we die, he's not gonna make us live in relationship with him in heaven. Because that's what heaven is. It's it's eternal relationship with God. He's not gonna say, Hey, you you said over and over again, you don't want me. I'm not talking about making little mistakes. I'm talking about saying, I reject you, God, I don't want you, I don't want your way, I don't want to live my life the way you want me to live it, I don't want you. It's not like we're gonna die and God's gonna override all of our choices. He respects us too much. He's given us choice. And it sort of had to. Because you can't have a real relationship with someone who can't break up with you. That's why I don't have a real relationship with the water company. Because there's one source of water where I live. I actually had a beef with the water company about a year ago. There was something that was wrong with the bill. And if you work for the water company, I apologize. I'm not saying you're bad, it's just it was the whole organization. And so I I basically said, hey, this isn't this isn't how it should be. And the response I got was, well, essentially, we're the water company. So if you want water, this is how it's gonna be. And I realized, oh, customer service isn't a thing if if people only have one choice, right? Because if you only have one choice, you don't actually have a choice. If God had created us and we had no ability to reject him and walk away from him, we could not have a real relationship with him. We were created by God to live in real relationship, which means we had to have choice. We had to have freedom to choose. And because we have freedom to choose, that means there are consequences. Sometimes we want choice with no consequence. It doesn't work that way. Cause and effect, they go hand in hand. So we've got to understand before we examine the crash that if not for choice, it wouldn't be possible. But God loves us so much, wants to live in a real relationship with us that from the beginning he gave us a choice. The other thing we have to understand is this thing called temptation. That's another dynamic at play. Our choices are not made in a vacuum. It's not just us independent of any outside influences making decisions the best we can. There's this outside influence called temptation, and it's a constant in our lives. Has anyone been tempted this week? With anything? Liars. Sometimes we just don't. Also, I experienced temptation in a really interesting way about two weeks ago. I was at Dwarfhouse, the Chick-fil-A Dwarfhouse. I love, love the Dwarf House. The Dwarf House has my favorite thing to eat for breakfast, which is biscuits and gravy. Okay? Now, about a year ago I decided to get serious about some fitness stuff, and I've lost some weight. I know you can tell and everything, but um, you know. But uh, but I've actually I've hit a plateau. That was sarcastic. I've hit a plateau, which you probably can tell. And that is that I'm at a point now where I'm realizing until I actually start eating right, it doesn't matter how much time I spend in a gym, because when you're in your mid-30s and you eat biscuits and gravy, there's only so much you can do on a treadmill, right? You just be better off not eating the biscuits and gravy. And honestly, when you're looking at health foods, there's nothing less healthy than biscuits and gravy. Like, I eat some foods, I'll have fried chicken, and I'll tell myself, well, it's very high in protein. And that's how I justify that's the silver lining around fried chicken. There is no silver lining around biscuits and gravy. The only thing you say is, well, at least it's high in carbs and fat. That's it. But it's so good. And I'll just say this: most Chick-fil-As don't have like great biscuits and gravy. Not knocking Chick-fil-A, it's just not what they're known for, but the dwarf house is different because they have a buffet a few days a week, it's amazing, and the biscuits and gravy they're rock, and so because that exists, I think they just always have the right gravy. It's so good. So I go to that dwarf house a lot for breakfast, and I justify it by saying I'm gonna read my Bible while I'm there. That's how I do it. I need to go spend time with God, so might as well eat, might as well kill two birds with one stone. And so I'll go there and I'll stand in the line and I'll tell myself every time I am not going to order biscuits and gravy. I'm not going to order biscuits and gravy. And then when I have that choice, I look at that, I look at that little that little sign, the menu, and it says gravy biscuit. And it says $1.39. So it's practically free. Right? Anything less than $2 is free. And so I just caught eyes with Brian Skolin, who does a lot of financial counseling, and he's like, that's not true. But whatever. So so I I succumb time and time again. Well, two weeks ago I go into Dwarf House, it's my normal routine. I'm saying I'm not gonna order the gravy biscuit, I'm not gonna do this. Then I get up there and I actually did it. I ordered, I ordered eggs, and I ordered a little chicken fillet with with no biscuit on it at all. I mean, it was really good for me, and then I said no to the biscuit and gravy. I walked away from that counter like a champion. I mean, there was like a strut in my step. I was like, I did it, I did it. And I sat down and I'm eating my food and I'm reading my Bible, and I'm feeling like such a conqueror, like I'm actually reigning over life for the first time in a long time at breakfast. And then, about two minutes later, as I'm as I'm reading my Bible, I just I feel someone's presence. I feel someone close. And I look up, and there's this young girl, probably 18 or 19, wearing a dwarf house uniform, and she says, Excuse me, sir. I'm like, Yes? I mean, I'm reading my Bible, right? Come on. And uh to be on it, I read my Bible on my phone, uh, so it probably didn't look like I was reading the Bible, but I was. So anyway, I say yes, and she says, I don't mean to bother you, but someone ordered an extra biscuit and gravy and does not want it. We rang, we rang in two, they only ordered one, I don't know how it happened, but would you like this? And I'm like, I used up all my willpower to say no the first time. There was no willpower left. So I said yes, and I ate it, and it was wonderful. But as I'm eating it, like as I'm eating it, it hit me. I was like, oh no, the devil works at Dwarf House, and there's no Such thing as a sacred place anymore. Because this little she devil offered me biscuits and gravy. It's pretty insidious when you think about it. Like, like if you're at Chick-fil-A and you say thank you, what do they have to say in return? My pleasure. So, like, I thought about it afterwards, and I'm I thought there was this sort of sinister tone to her my pleasure. Because I said thank you, and she was like, My pleasure. Walked away. She got me. And I often feel like very humorous things happen in my life, just so I can talk about it up here. And I'm grateful to God for giving me lots of material. Um, that's great. But that is really odd, right? I mean that's that's odd, because here I am, it's the one time I don't order it, and and I'm feeling so good about myself, and in this one moment, in this 10-minute span of time that I'm actually sitting down, someone else orders biscuits and gravy at Chick-fil-A, which honestly, I don't know anyone else that does that. I think I'm the only one. And so someone else orders that. They accidentally ring up two, and then I just so happen to be the person that they walk up to. That's nuts. That's Satan himself. That's the only explanation for that. And I'm weak. I'm weak. So temptation, it's just everywhere. You can't avoid it. You can't go to Chick-fil-A without being tempted anymore. It's the world we live in. Temptation's all around us. We have to remember we have an enemy. And so, no matter how hard we're trying to make the right choice, there's something working against us. There's a force at work against us trying to sabotage every choice that we make. And these two dynamics, choice and temptation, they collide and they create the possibility for a crash at any given moment. It's those two things that collided when the very first crash happened. And we we read about that in Genesis chapter 3. Here's what it says this is the Garden of Eden. And just to give you a little bit of backstory, God's created the world, He's created this beautiful paradise called Eden, He's put people in it, they are free. They are free of sin, they're free of worry, they're free of stress, they're f they're free. They're naked and they don't even feel ashamed or weirded out by it. They are free. They're like toddlers, okay? And so they're that's how toddlers are. And so they're like, you guys have kids, right? You ever have kids that are three years old and they just walk down your stairs in the morning naked? Like it's no big deal, and you're like, what are you doing? I don't know, just gonna watch TV. Like, you think you should probably get some clothes on first? And they sort of just go, oh yeah. It's a big part of your job as a parent to teach them. Wear clothes. Wear clothes. Always, always clothes. Alright. So Adam and Eve, they're just they're free. And there's no shame and there's no guilt, and there's nothing, and they live in this beautiful paradise, and God has told them, hey, eat freely. You can eat whatever you want. Whatever you see in this garden, it's yours. Eat freely. There's just this one tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it's in the middle of the garden, and don't eat its fruit. If you eat it, you'll die. This is not God threatening them. He doesn't say, If you if you eat it, I'll kill you. He says, if you eat it, you'll die. He tells them the truth. He gives them those guardrails, tells them what information they need, tells them what'll happen if they if they go the other way, and then he lets them choose. And so it's in this setting that Satan shows up. The serpent is what he's called. The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. And one day he asks the woman, Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from the from any of the trees in the garden? I want to pause here. Because as we read this, I want us to explore some of the strategies that Satan uses, because he uses the same strategies with us. I think it's really interesting that he begins here to engage in a dialogue with this woman by twisting the truth of God. Because obviously that's not what God said, and she knows that. She says, of course, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we're not allowed to eat. God said, You must not eat it or even touch it. If you do, you'll die. She's already in trouble because she's now rationalizing with Satan. Once you've begun the dialogue, that's tough. You just gotta like shut it off. But he begins by trying to subtly sway her from the truth. To get her to settle for something that's just less than true. We oftentimes see truth and lies as polar opposites. Right? Like here's the truth, and then there's a lie that's completely and totally obvious. But that's not typically the way Satan approaches things. Satan really, really spends his time trying to get us to buy into half-truths. Just a little bit off from the truth. The problem is a half-truth is a whole lie. It really is. But we live in this world that doesn't see things that way. We live in a world that does see truth as relative, and we live in a world that highly prioritizes my own personal truth over the truth. That is the culture that we live in. If someone has a personal truth, they feel really strongly about something, and they're willing to shout really loudly about how they feel about it, the truth is just supposed to bend or be ignored in favor of their truth. People call that personal truth, my truth, but my truth is kind of a charade, it's a little bit of a facade. For example, if you get pulled over today because you're driving fast, and you tell the officer, um, I know I broke the speed limit, but I didn't break my speed limit. Like my truth is 85 miles an hour. That will not work. Because the officers will say, Well, your truth is giving you a ticket. The truth is what it says on the sign, right? Sometimes there is the truth. In fact, like all the time, there is the truth. And if Satan can just get us to sway a little bit, just a little bit off the truth, he's got us where he wants us. Okay, so so that's what's happening here. He's he's starting to get Eve away from the truth. And he begins by saying something that's a subtle lie. Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? That's not what God said. It's sort of what God said, but just ever so slightly off from the truth. And so she says, if we eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, God said we'll die. And then Satan replies, You won't die. That's just a flat out, bold-faced lie. But what's even more interesting is he makes a liar out of God. Not only is Satan lying, he's telling the woman that God has lied to her. Which means that God does not have what's best for her in mind. It means that God is holding her back from all that she could have and all that she could experience. It means that if she obeys God, she will miss out. So, right from the beginning, he fills her with the fear of missing out. That God does not have her best intentions at heart. He makes God out to be a liar. You won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil. The woman was convinced. And by the way, I'm just gonna say this. Sometimes guys like to rag on Eve in this story. Men like to be like women. You know, if not for you guys eating that apple or whatever fruit it was, this whole place would be different. But please notice in the story that Adam is going to eat it too. He doesn't even put up a fight. Satan himself has to convince Eve to take a bite. Adam's just like, why not? That's basically how it goes. So, ladies. Just saying. The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious. It looked delicious. We don't know if it was, it just looked delicious. It probably wasn't that good. And she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some fruit and she ate it, and then she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too. And at that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness, so they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. They eat the fruit, it's not as delicious as they thought, they instantly feel shame. Self-consciousness, fear, worry. And all of a sudden, all the brokenness that we see in the world just floods into the picture. Everything has come crashing down because of a choice. The crash is a consequence of a choice. You know, Satan enters the picture here and he he tempts her and he twists the truth of God ever so slightly. And then he makes God out to be a liar and fills people with the fear that if they do what God has asked them to do, they will miss out on the best that life has. And then he he gets her to go by appearances alone, to make a decision based on what looks right to her, what looks good in her own eyes, to exchange the truth for her truth, and the result is this horrible crash. And instantly there's a brokenness, there's a disconnect. Not between us and God. God still shows up. In fact, sometimes there's this theory that when you have sin, God can't be around sin, and so if you have sin in your life, God has to leave. That's that's not biblical. Because as soon as this moment is done, God comes into the garden. It's the people that run away from him. It's the people that hide. God doesn't hide. But there's this disconnect that exists between us and God's intentions for us. There's this disconnect that exists between us and who we actually are. We lose sight of that. Notice, by the way, the promise that Satan made to her was what? If you eat this fruit, you'll be like God. Genesis 1.26, that we looked at earlier, God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. Satan tried to tempt Eve by telling her if she would do something, she would be what she already is. When we get tempted, we lose sight of who we are very often. And if we could just keep our eyes focused on the fact that we are the children of God, we are the beloved of God. We're not going to miss out on anything so long as we live in relationship with Him. Satan does all these strategic things to get mankind to buy into the lie. And they do, and there's this crash. And the rest of the story, the rest of the Bible is God doing everything in his power to restore what's been broken. It's a beautiful thing that we need to remember. God does not go, man, you guys really messed this up. It's on you. Figure it out. I do that sometimes with my children. Like if I come downstairs and the room's just a mess, our playroom, I'm like, well, I didn't do this. So you guys need to pick this stuff up. I'm so glad that God is a better parent than me. Because He doesn't do that. He doesn't say, man, how could you guys do this? I told you what you needed to know. I warned you and you messed it up. I'm done with you. No, no, no. His heart breaks. And he immediately puts into place and puts into progress, into action, a plan to restore everything. And we need to remember that that's how God is with us. That when we have our own little personal crashes, when we buy the lies that we're being sold, when we mess up, God does not abandon us, he does not drop us. He rolls up his sleeves and he jumps in and he helps us put back together whatever we've broken. Because he loves us. Satan comes at us with lies and fear. And lies and fear are only powerful if you listen to them. But God has something more for us. And what I want us to leave with today is with the knowledge and the faith and the confidence that we don't have to buy into the lies. Yes, just like Adam and Eve, we have a choice. And yes, just like Adam and Eve at that first crash, we face temptation. Sometimes temptation is smothered in gravy. Sometimes it looks really good. We face temptation all the time, but we are not bound to it. We're not slaves to it. The Bible says so clearly that when we give our lives to Jesus, when we put our faith in him, we are now free from our sin nature. We now have the power to choose what is right, what is good, what is healthy versus anything less. So we don't have to read a story about the crash and go, oh man, Satan's after us, Satan's lying. What hope do we have? If two perfect people living in perfect relationship with God in a perfect place could not make the right decision, how in the world can I? Well, we can, because unlike Adam and Eve, we're living on the other side of Jesus. And that that serpent that showed up in the garden, he's been defeated. So we we can live differently. And I want us to leave today with a little bit of a strategy for how to do that. Because as we can see, Satan is strategic. So let's have a strategy to go against him. Okay? And this is gonna be really, really quick, but I want to talk about three strategies that all of us can use every single day in our lives to avoid the crashes that we're all susceptible to. Because I don't want my life to be a bunch of crashes. I want I want those to be in the past, all right? Number one. Number one is really, really simple. Be aware and alert. One of the things that Satan has going for him often is that we forget that he's there. And we can kind of live our lives in this la land and think that we're not going to get tempted. Sometimes we get surprised when temptation comes. We get surprised when all of a sudden we we feel tempted to do something and we forget that temptation is a constant. The Bible tells us so clearly to be aware. 1 Peter 5:8, stay alert, watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, be strong in your faith. Be alert. Be aware that you're going to get tempted. Don't be surprised when temptation comes. Don't be surprised when you feel a pull to do something that you know isn't right. Because temptation is constant, it is always present. So be alert, be aware. Ephesians 6 10 says a final word be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. He does have strategies. But we're not powerless. We have armor. For we're not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so that you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, you will still be standing firm. So it means every day we can wake up aware of the fact that temptation will come. Every day we can wake up and say, God, give me what I need. Fill me with faith. Remind me of the truth. Remind me who I am. Remind me who I belong to. And when Satan comes at me today, Lord, I'm gonna be ready, I'm gonna be alert, I'm gonna be aware, I'm not gonna forget that I have an enemy and that he's after me. Be aware and alert. Number two, when it comes to temptation, when it comes to sin, see it for what it is. See it for what it is. You know, Eve saw it as delicious, but I don't think if you would ask Eve to describe that fruit to you a little while after the fact, she would say, It's the best thing I ever ate. Sometimes things are not what they appear to be. And when we begin to live our lives based on what looks good to us, we very often see things as they aren't. One of the things that made Jesus so successful in his life is that he saw sin for what it was. He saw temptation as it was. Jesus got tempted, just like we do. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Jesus being tempted. In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus gets tempted. And the context for this temptation is he's he's out in the wilderness, the desert. And he hasn't eaten in days and days and days, and he's starving. And Satan shows up, and Satan's first temptation is for Jesus to eat. And we see this happen in Matthew chapter 4. I think my thing, it died. Here we go. That's why I got a backup, giant backup. During that time, the devil came and said to him, If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread. If you're the son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread. Really interestingly, not very long after this, in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says, You parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Now, if you go back to his temptation, you think, what did Satan tempt Jesus with? It wasn't bread, it was a rock. Satan did not offer Jesus bread. He offered him a stone. But Jesus had the wisdom to see it for what it was. And he recognized how audacious it is to walk up to someone who's starving and say, here, have a rock. Eat this. Jesus said, Hey, parents, if your child asked for a loaf of bread, would you give them a stone instead? See, when it comes to temptation, sometimes we see bread when we we should actually see stones. Sometimes we get tempted to believe that the grass is greener on the other side, and then if we just did something that we know technically isn't right, it's for a good cause. Look, there's never a good reason to make a bad decision. Ever. And oftentimes Satan comes to us and he comes to us with rocks disguised as bread. You take situations that are pretty easy examples of this, like marriage. Marriage is hard. I said that in the first service, and someone yelled amen really loudly. It was awesome. Marriage is tough. Those of us who are married or who have been married, we can say, yep, it's hard. Those of us who haven't been married yet, we're not saying don't do it. We're just saying. It's tough. It's tough. And uh that was awesome. You know, it's amazing how often I'll have I'll have meetings with people who are struggling in their marriage. That's just something that comes up, and it'll usually be me and a guy, and we'll be, we'll be grabbing a bite, and just he'll talk to me about what's going on. He'll say, hey, I'm I'm really struggling. And he'll be talking to me about the issues in the marriage, and they're usually pretty similar. You know, we just we're not clicking, we just haven't, the romance hasn't been there, you know. It's been like a year, and you know, we're just not, I don't know, we're not on the same page, and and and all this stuff's kind of falling apart. And it's just like, I don't know, it just seems like we're we're drifting apart, we're drifting away. And one of the questions I've learned to ask, because it just happens so often, it's it's it's almost like it's not a coincidence. I'll say, well, hey, is is is there someone else? And almost always the answer is, well, no, there's there's not. I'm not having an affair. There is this woman that I work with. And, you know, we just we talk at lunch, and and she really just kind of understands me, and and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's I'm not saying she's the devil. I'm just saying she's from the devil. And it goes the other way as well. Because, see, that that's that's a rock, that's not bread. That's a strategy from Satan designed to crush you, not something designed to give you sustenance. And so if you find yourself in a really stressful time and you're struggling in your marriage for say, let's just say that as an example, and all of a sudden someone that you work with comes along and you start to think like, oh man, I wish my spouse was more like them. I wish they just seem to really understand me. And yeah, it's just uh like run away. Run away, because that is not bread. That is a rock. If you're stressed about your finances and some opportunity arrives to sort of fudge the system, you know, it's it's tax time, yay, and and uh, you know, you're you're sitting there and you're going, man, I just, you know, I mean, technically the government charges way too much for taxes. I mean, what am I really paying for? I gotta pay the water company, you know? I got all these things I've got to do. And there's that temptation of just, you know, something less than 100% honest. And we convince ourselves sometimes that, hey, this is this is bread. This is it's the it's the wrong decision, technically, but it's for a good reason. And I'm gonna use this for good things, and and you know, obviously I'll even use it to be more generous. Whatever. That's a that's a lie. That's a rock. Don't eat rocks. That's the deep thought of the day. Do not eat rocks, they're not good. Satan presents you with rocks, not bread. See it for what it is. If it's not from God, it's it's it's not good. If it is from God, it is good. It's pretty simple. One last thing. Not only do we need to be aware and alert, not only do we we need to see temptation for what it is, let God deliver you from it. It's not all on you. It's not all up to you. I mean, the idea of trying to best Satan on our own is ludicrous. Like we're supposed to dodge all the traps that he's laid out for us. That's insanity. We need help. Thankfully, God wants to help us. And I have learned in this role over the last few years that I often break my back and exhaust myself trying to do for myself what God would do for me if I would let him. Jesus prayed. In Matthew. Here's what he said. Pray like this. Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy, may your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. Jesus prayed, God rescue us. God deliver us. Do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. That is what separates Jesus from every other concept of faith in this world. Every other religion or whatever you want to call it will tell you to work harder and do better, and maybe, just maybe, you'll do it right. Jesus says, Let me do it for you. Put your trust in me daily, every single moment of your life. Just put your trust in me and ask for my help, and I will give it to you. In Psalm 51, David said, Create in me a clean heart. And who's the creator? It's God. He's saying, God, make my heart right, renew my spirit. In the book of Ezekiel, God says, I will put I'll put a new heart in you, I'll put my spirit in you, so that you can do what I've asked you to do. It's God that does it. Let God do it. Do not try to fight temptation one-on-one. Do not try to outsmart the devil. He's pretty smart. Let God do in you and through you what you cannot do on your own. That comes from surrender. That comes from a recognition that we need help. That comes when pride is laid aside and we say, God, I can't, I can't do it. If you're facing temptation today, like pray. God, help me. Get me, get me out. That's what I should have done. Chick-fil-A. This lady should have said, Excuse me, would you like this? Just give me a second. Father God, I need you right now like I've never needed you before. Like that's how it, that's what I should have done. But I didn't. Let God deliver you. Let God help you. He wants to. He loves you. We're gonna pray and wrap up with one more worship song like we do. I love you guys. I love every single Sunday. I just I love this. I love being with you guys. And I love to think about the fact that we're all gonna walk out of this place as a team, united by the love that we have for God, united mainly by the love that He has for us. And as a church, we've got to recognize that life is hard, and all of us are about to walk into a battlefield of sorts. We're all gonna walk into stressful situations at home. We're all gonna walk into stressful situations at work. We live in Atlanta. There will be traffic. We're gonna walk into a lot of difficult things. We're gonna walk into situations in people's lives where we see hurt and we see brokenness and it makes us upset, it makes us angry. We might even pray, God, why is this happening? We we live in a difficult world. We don't have to pretend otherwise. But we need to remember that we have a choice. Our lives don't have to crash. In fact, God says that if we follow Him, that we can soar, we can soar like eagles. That's the opposite of crashing. And if we can if we can recognize that our choices matter, that God has freed us to choose right, if we can be aware and be alert, if we can see temptation for what it is, and if we can let God do what God promises to do, our lives will soar. Maybe you you had a crash recently, maybe you're coming out of one, maybe you feel like one is coming. It doesn't have to be that way. You can live differently. He will give you what you need to do it. Just trust him. Just trust him. And if you've never trusted him before, give him your life. Let him be the one driving. He's a good driver. Please pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much, God, for giving us this family of people to share life with, Lord. We love you so much. We love each other. We love our community. We love every person we come in contact with because we know that you love every person. And Lord, you recognize our temptation. You experienced all of it. You were tempted yourself. God, you know what it feels like to have a choice to make and not know exactly what to do. You understand all the pressure that we deal with, Lord, and we're asking you to help us live our lives as crash-free as possible. We're asking you to give us a crash-proof life. Where the problems and the challenges we face do not overcome us, but we actually do what you created us to do. We reign over those problems. We reign over those challenges, Lord. Fill us with your spirit. Help us live alert. Help us be aware. Help us have eyes that can see sin for what it is. Help us see the rocks. Keep us from seeing bread. Deliver us, Lord. Rescue us. Create in us a heart and a spirit that can follow you rightly. And we ask this in your name of Jesus. Amen.