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We’re on Week 3 of our way through the Heidelberg Catechism. If you recall, the catechism is divided up into three sections: The first part speaking of the problem of sin that has separated us from God, the second how Jesus delivered us from that sin, and the third how our lives change as a result of this deliverance. In short, the three sections are Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude.

One of the main reasons we started this series is to answer some of the biggest questions that humanity has. For example, everyone, everywhere, asks the question: “Why is everything such a mess?” Every country, every city, every family, every individual looks at the world and wonders why things never ever seem to work out, why things are so hard, and why, even if things do go ok for a while, do they always end up falling apart? We look outward and wonder why the world is such a mess, but then it gets personal when we inevitably we look inward and ask: “Why am I such a mess?”

The need for an answer to these questions is actually a subtle way of playing the blame game, isn’t it? Whose fault is this mess of a world? Whose fault is all this mess inside me? And our blame list is long. For the world’s problems, from famine to war to floods, we blame politicians, greedy corporations, drug dealers, lazy people, and more. For our personal problems, we blame our environment, parents, education, genetics, and more. Sometimes we blame ourselves – for things within our control and even things outside our control. And of course, if you’re a religious person, you can always blame some version of God or the Devil.

Religion Seeks an Answer

The religions of the world, at their most fundamental, are a way to answer these big questions. I was watching a documentary clip the other day that was answering the question: “Why are there religions?” and the answer they gave was a typical trope a lot of internet videos give, saying that before we had the miracle of modern science to explain everything, people needed silly myths and made up nonsense to explain stuff and give the universe meaning – and religious people just can’t get over it. But eventually, they always say, everyone on earth will finally give up on religion finally only believe in pure science.

Now, though there is some truth to the claim that religion is all about explaining things, it’s not fully accurate. Religion is about worldview. Most religions don’t just explain where lightning comes from or why we have horses. Sure, some have elaborate stories about those things, but the main reason humans have religion isn’t to explain every little detail of the world, but to explain four really big questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing? What’s broken with the world? Can it be fixed? And where is the future headed?”[1]

The answer to those questions is what sets Christianity apart from other religions. There are as many creation stories as there are religions[2], and each one has their own explanation of how the universe came into being, but it’s the next part that we’re concerned about today: “What is broken with the world?” What went wrong? And whether you’re on the side of Big Bang Evolutionists, Intelligent Design, or as one aboriginal tribe in Australia believes, that a giant rainbow snake tickled frogs until they barfed the world into being[3], your belief has to answer this question: What went wrong?

The Blame Game

Christians have a good answer to that question, and they come from the first three chapters of the Bible – and it’s what Day 3 of the Heidelberg Catechism is all about. Turn with me to Genesis 3.

Remember what we’ve covered already. Question 1 spoke of how our greatest hope and comfort in life is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Question 2 asked the question, “What do you need to know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?”. The answer was threefold: We need to know how great our sins and misery is, how we’re delivered from that misery, and how to be thankful for that deliverance. Guilt, Grace, Gratitude.

Last week we looked at the next, logical question, question 3, that basically says: “Ok, if I need to know my sins, then how do I find those out?” The answer was, essentially, “Read the Bible. The LAW of God in the Old Testament, the Words of Jesus in the New will tell you about how deep and your sin problem is.”

Which leads naturally to our questions today; question 6 which says,

“Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?”

In other words, “Ok, so after reading the Bible, I admit that sin is a huge problem for me and the world… so who’s fault is that? God’s?” As I said, immediately when we are faced with the question “What went wrong?” or “Why are things such a mess?” we play the blame game, right?

I encourage you to read the whole of the first three chapters of Genesis later because we’re going to jump around a bit, but for now, look at Genesis 3:6-13. Eve has just been tempted by the devil and decides eating the forbidden fruit is a good idea. It says,

“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, 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.”

So, Adam and Eve sin and immediately realize that something is wrong. We usually think that having “open eyes” is a good thing, but not here. They suddenly experience something they’ve never felt before – guilt and shame – and they do what anyone does when they feel guilt and shame, they try to cover themselves. We talked about guilt last week. Read verse 8:

“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”

Adam and Eve’s relationship with God was like that of children and their Father. For their whole lives, the voice of their Father brought joy to them and they would come running towards it – but now they ran from it. When Eve was talking with Satan you can see that she has a good and proper fear of God. Look at verse 3, Eve says, “…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.’” That’s what’s called a healthy fear of God, a healthy fear of the Father. God set boundaries and said that if they went past them, they’d be trouble. Even at the very youngest of ages, this is something that children experience with their parents. “I’d better not do this wrong thing or I’ll get in trouble with mom and dad.” It’s a healthy fear. It’s a way that parents keep their children safe even when they’re not around.

But now that Adam and Eve have sinned, their healthy fear of God turns into an unhealthy dread of God. They start doing things they’d never considered. They do what little kids do when they know they’ve done something wrong. Have you ever known a little kid who tried to hide something they did wrong? They write on the table so they cover it with a placemat? They break something and then shove the pieces in the toy box. This is what Adam and Eve were doing. They covered themselves in an attempt to cover up the problem. Then, what do kids do? They go hide under their bed or in their closet. A teenager with a bad grade or who did something stupid will wander around town, stay at a friend’s, refuse to come home because they know when they get home, they’re going to have to face their parents. This is what Adam and Eve do. Their guilt doesn’t drive them to their Father, but away from Him.

Look at verse 9-10. Adam and Eve are hiding from God in the bushes and it says,

“But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’”

God, the righteous Judge of the universe, holds a mini-trial. He could have condemned them outright because He knew what happened, but He gives them the chance to defend themselves, to repent, to ask forgiveness. But what do they do instead?

Look at verse 12:

“The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”

Adam blames Eve and then blames God for making her in the first place. The woman blames Satan, maybe even implying that was God’s fault too? Everyone is blaming everyone, including God.

Blaming God for our sins and problems is literally the oldest argument there is. That’s why the first question of the catechism that comes after showing us our sin is, “Did God, then, create man so wicked and perverse?” The Bible reader feels guilty and immediately wants to blame shift. So, is sin God’s fault?

The answer comes:

“No, on the contrary, God created man good and in his image, that is, in true righteousness and holiness, so that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love him, and live with him in eternal blessedness to praise and glorify him.”

This is a common argument: “If God is all-powerful and all-knowing then everything is His fault, right? If God knows everything in advance, then He knew that Adam and Eve wouldn’t obey, so it’s His fault for creating them right? If He knew that Adam and Eve would eat of the tree, then it’s his fault for putting it there, right? If God wouldn’t have left them alone, then they wouldn’t have eaten it, so it’s His fault, right?”

The answer is “No, sin is not God’s fault.” But why? The first answer here gives the first reason why: Because God created us perfectly.

In Genesis 1:26 it says that God made us in His image, after His likeness. What does that mean? It means we were created immortal, intelligent, spiritual, good, and pure. One thing that makes us different from God is that we were also created with is the capacity to develop as beings. God is perfect and therefore needs no development, but humanity, though created very good, also has the ability and capacity for self-development. God doesn’t learn, but we do. God doesn’t have new experiences, but we do. God doesn’t do experiments to discover new things, but we do. God made us good, but also able to develop as beings. Why? So we could glorify God, honour Him, enjoy His creation, and learn to love Him more and more. It was a gift.

Then, Where Did Sin Come From?

So if God created us perfectly, in a perfect environment, how did sin come about? That’s question 7:

“From where, then, did man’s depraved nature come?”

The answer to which is:

“From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise, for there our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin.”

Why is everything around the world and inside us a mess? What went wrong? Sin went wrong. So where did sin come from? It came from Adam and Eve.

Our corrupt nature doesn’t come from God; it comes as a consequence of Adam’s decision to go against God’s will. God created people to be good, to live in a state of innocence, and to be capable of development. We were given the gift of choice. Animals don’t have that gift. They have a set of programs. Some of these programs are very complex, and we can use them to our advantage – like working with their natural inclinations and using reward or punishment to train them to do a task – but they are not capable of moral decision making. They don’t choose between right and wrong. We can name them and call them babies and personalize them and anthropomorphize all we want, but animals are incapable of moral choice. Only humans can do that.

Why? Because without choice there is no love. We couldn’t actually love God if there wasn’t another choice. God created us to be with Him as His children, to honour, glorify, enjoy and love Him – but if there was no other choice, then that love would be meaningless.

Here’s an example I’ve used before. What is your favourite flavour of ice cream? Mine is Rocky Road. If I go to Baskin Robins I always go through the same thing. I walk up and down the aisle, look at every flavour, try one or two, hem and haw over them, and then choose Rocky Road. Why? I really like Rocky Road. It’s my favourite.

Imagine though, that there was some sort of global ice-cream crisis and the next time you walked into Baskin Robins and looked at their cooler all it had was 31 buckets of Rocky Road. You go to Dairy Queen and they only have Rocky Road. You go to the grocery store and it’s just an aisle of Rocky Road. For years and years, the ice-cream crisis looms over humanity. The only ice cream anyone knows or remembers is Rocky Road. Eventually, people forget that there was such a thing as vanilla or strawberry or butterscotch ice cream. It’s only Rocky Road for all time. Now, when you walk up to someone and ask, “What is your favourite flavour of ice-cream?” What’s the answer? “Rocky Road.” But, is it there favourite? Doesn’t matter, right? They could be deathly allergic to chocolate and almonds and they’d still have to say their favourite flavour is Rocky Road. Why? Because there’s no other choice.

That’s why there was a forbidden fruit tree in the Garden of Eden. Because without choice, there is no love. God didn’t want robots programmed to love him. He wanted beings capable of choosing to love Him. It’s one of His greatest gifts to us.

But there’s something else about love. It isn’t real until it’s tested. It’s easy to say I will love my wife and will be committed to her forever if we crash and are stranded alone on a deserted island. It’s easy to say I’ll do my job when the boss is looking over my shoulder. Consider how you drive when there’s a police officer next to you. If you’re like me, you instinctively tap the breaks, you’re suddenly incredibly aware of your speed, mirrors, position in your lane, signalling, and everything else, right? Why? Because someone’s watching.

When does the test come? When other options become present. When no one is watching. My love for my wife and commitment to her alone has more meaning when I’m given the option and temptation of looking at or being with other women. My commitment to my work has more meaning when I’m getting it done when no one is watching me. My ability to drive safely and legally matters most when I’m alone at night and no one is watching.

And so, in the same way, God gave Adam and Eve the opportunity to show that their love for Him was real. He didn’t look over their shoulder every second, but instead, chose to let them be alone for a while. Why? Because love isn’t real until it’s tested.

Sure, God arranged the test, but it’s not that God set them up to fail. God set them up to succeed. He gave them a sinless nature, a perfect environment, told them exactly what to do and what not to do, gave them each other as accountability, and limited the bad choices to only one.

God didn’t leave them alone in a dangerous, confusing situation, rife with temptation, and then laugh as they failed. No, He put them in a perfect situation, surrounded by perfection, and then allowed Satan to present a single choice to them. Why? Because love requires choice and isn’t real until it’s tested. Man had to declare himself, through an act of free will, either for God or for evil.[4] And the only way to do that is to face temptation. Temptation itself is not sin.

But look what happened in Genesis 3:1-4,

“The serpent… 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.’”

In that temptation Adam and Eve were essentially asked by God, “Do you love me? Do you trust me? Do you believe my way is best? Will you let me be your Father God?”

Adam and Eve’s answer was the same one we’ve been making ever since then, “No God, we don’t love you, we love ourselves. We don’t trust you, we trust ourselves. We don’t want you to be our Father anymore because we think we can do a better job.”

The Consequence

This decision brought consequences with it. They were warned. Eve even said so, “God said that if we eat it we’ll die.” And the moment they took that fruit, God, as a righteous judge gave them the consequences He promised them. Spiritual and physical death came into the world. Now they were separated from God because He cannot walk with sinful things. Now, since they rejected God as their King and Father, their allegiance had changed and they came under the authority and slavery of sin and the devil. From that moment death became part of humanities DNA and would be passed on to all of their children. Romans 5:12 says it this way, “…sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…”

Another consequence was that man and woman, who were working together to God’s dominion around the world, would now seek to dominate one another. Creation was affected too and would now work against them. Now their God-given capacity for creativity and free will would now be clouded by sin and they would create evil things. Now, their moral compass would be broken, always pointing toward sin. Even our bodies would work against us.

And the final consequence was that where once we had eternal happiness in paradise and the presence of God, we would now face eternal suffering and death in hell, away from God.

Total Corruption

This is where question 8 comes in:

“But are we so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil?”

Is it really all that bad? Aren’t people basically good, but just need a little push in the right direction? I don’t feel like a bad person. I feel like a good person that bad things happen to sometimes. I don’t feel totally corrupt; I just make bad choices sometimes. Am I really corrupt?

The Catechism says,

“Yes, unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.”

Remember Romans 3:9-11 from last week? “…both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.’”

We deny this, but in truth, we are like a sick person who refuses to believe their sick. Think of sin like pneumonia. Have you ever had pneumonia? It’s when your lungs become infected and you can’t breathe properly. Everything becomes harder to do. Some people have pneumonia and don’t even realize it. It’s not until other things start to go wrong that they go to the doctor. Their heart is pumping too hard, their organs are shutting down, their brain is starving – and until they get tested, they didn’t even know they had pneumonia.

This is why the Bible often portrays sin as a kind of force. The Bible calls it a burden that makes life hard to maneuver (Isa 1:4), a stain that we can’t get out (Isa 1:18), a slave-owner to whom we owe a debt we can’t repay and makes us to do things (Matt 10:21-35; Heb 2:15), a lion that crouches at our door or prowls around us (Gen 4:7; 1 Pet 5:8), or an incurable disease making us stumble, weak, and contagious. Sin is portrayed this way because it’s so powerful, so much a part of us. But it’s not really a separate force outside us; sin is part of us, something deep inside us.

It’s so much part of us that we don’t even really realize it. Trying to figure out our own sinful motives is like asking a fish to describe what it’s like to be wet. It’s all we know and discerning the boundaries is almost impossible. Sin is like thirst, and that constant thirst makes it so that we can’t tell if our motives are pure or not. The engine that drives our decision making is corrupt and we never really fully know why we do what we do.

Sin is powerful, but it’s not God’s fault – it’s our fault – and it is why we and our world are in such misery. James 1:13–15 says,

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

If we didn’t desire sin, it would have no power over us. But we do.

Conclusion

Today’s big lesson is that God doesn’t make you sin. God offers the way out of sin. You make you sin. Satan doesn’t make you sin. Satan offers the temptation. You make you sin.

The reason the world is a mess, the reason you are a mess is because of sin. Your misery comes either from sins that you have committed, sins that others have committed against you, or the effects of sin that have corrupted the world around you – but they are not God’s fault. Any good you have done or experienced is a result of His common grace, His willingness to hold back the full effects of sin in this world and in your life. But a time is coming when that God’s patience, that common grace, His hand that holds back Hell, will be done and you will feel the full effects of your sin.

But God offers a way out. He offers regeneration, what Jesus calls being “born again”. He offers you a new heart to replace your old one, unstained clothes to replace your stained ones. He offers to buy you from your slave owner and cure you of the disease of sin. This isn’t something you can do on your own by sheer act of will. You can’t simply decide not to be a leper, not to be a slave, not to be a sinner. You need Jesus. But the first thing you must do, before you can be saved, before you can ask forgiveness, before you can be reborn, before you do anything else that can be considered good, is to admit you are a miserable sinner who loves their sin and needs a miracle. It is only then that you are ready to ask forgiveness and receive it.

1 John 1:8-9 give us this promise:

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

If you are not a Christian, will you confess your sins now, admit yourself in need, and ask for forgiveness in the name of Jesus? He promises to forgive you and cleanse you and help you.

If you are a Christian but are harbouring a sin that you love, will you confess it now, admit yourself to be weak and in need of help, and commit to removing it from your life? He promises to forgive you, and cleanse you, and help you.

(Let me give you some TIME TO PRAY)

If you did pray a prayer to God this morning, asking for forgiveness, let me encourage you to tell someone – tell me, one of the elders or deacons, or a friend you know is a Christian. Make it real to yourself by speaking it aloud.

[1] https://albertmohler.com/2016/01/20/the-briefing-01-20-16/

[2] https://www.ranker.com/list/weirdest-creation-myths/laura-allan

[3] http://www.expedition360.com/australia_lessons_literacy/2001/09/dreamtime_stories_the_rainbow.html

[4] “Aid to the Heidelberg Catechism”, Otto Thelemann, Pg 131