The Tragic Entrance of Sin
Introduction
Odysseus and his men were on their way home, getting ready to once again to set out to sea, but before they did, they were once again visited by the witch-goddess Circe. Though treacherous, she has come to help Odysseus and his men. She warns him of challenges they are to face. The first of which is the Sirens. They sing songs to enchant men, who cannot leave if they listen. There are piles of the bones of men who have died after being ensnared by their song.
Circe tells brave Odysseus to stuff his men’s ears with wax and tie himself to the ship’s mast if he wants to hear the song. When they pass by, the sirens sing a song, but listen to what they sing,
“Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians, and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing; for no one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship until he has listened to the honey-sweet voice that issues from our lips; then goes on, well pleased, knowing more than ever he did; for we know everything that the Argives and Trojans did and suffered in wide Troy through the gods’ despite. Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens.”
The sirens used a marketing strategy that we would be very familiar with. FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. Sin promises goodness. Experience. Life. Wisdom. Satisfaction. Peace. If you do not stop, and listen to us, you are missing out. Everyone else stops and is pleased because we KNOW what it’s all really about.
Look over there. Otherwise, you’re missing out. Think about this. Give in to that cycle of rage. Tear that person’s character down. Send that destructive text message. Eat that next helping of food that you know will damage the body God has given you. Don’t listen to what God says, why would you miss out? It won’t hurt anything.
Yet, in an even better story, we see what happens when we yield to temptation. On the shores of Eden, we might say there are mountains of bones. The bones of all mankind who drowned in sin because sin actually does hurt us. It destroys us.
Today, I want to look into this text, in a sense, go past the yellow tape. I want to understand together how this tragedy of sin occurred, and what we can learn from it. I have found four lessons for us to learn.
Though God does not tempt anyone to sin, He created the Tempter for His own glory.
Often, we mess ourselves up when reading the Bible because we start with a very modern misconception. We believe that we are the main character. And therefore, we believe that the story should be interpreted from our perspective. And then the story becomes about us. Our achievement. Our experience. Our success. Our glory. But this story is about God.
Who does Genesis start with? “In the beginning, God...”
Many people who are skeptical of Christianity try to use this passage as a punching bag. How can God allow this serpent into the garden? Did He not make the garden and the serpent? Does He not know what will happen? How can He allow this horrible tragedy to happen?
The Bible’s answer is the same as it was to job. It is for His glory. But isn’t this selfish? Isn’t this sadistic on God’s part? How can he allow us to suffer for His pleasure? What kind of God is that? Well, when we rationalize that way, we are making the same old mistake again. You are not the main character. You have a supporting role. And you were made to bring Him glory. You were not made for a life of maximum pleasure in easy things. In amusement. In leisure. In indulgence. You were made for pleasure in God, and we are most pleased in God when we allow Him, by any means necessary, to glorify Him.
How could God allow Satan into the garden? We should ask instead, if God is good and if God is all-wise, then how could He do anything but? This is what God has done. And for those, that like Job, have lost much, I would say, this church is here for you. We are here to help you refuse to curse God. Rest in Christ, who can sympathize with you in all your difficulty. Trust God for the strength to say, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Our submersion in a culture of self-centeredness produces a great challenge for us. We have such a hard time seeing that God is good because sometimes God’s goodness doesn’t align with our conception of good. And I think Adam and Eve battled against this too.
You see, the serpent assigned a motive to God’s prohibition.
God must be jealously holding things back from His creation. Forget the abundant goodness of the garden. This one tree is off-limits so there must be something wrong with His rules. This one expression of sexuality is off-limits so He must be holding something back from us. How arbitrary! How tyrannical.
Our guts tell us that the ability to do whatever we want is the highest value. But our guts our wrong. Once again, self-expression (or self-glorification) is not the goal. The goal is the unfurling of the goodness of God in the life of His creation.
“The subtle assumption behind every temptation is that God is not good. God’s holding something back. You can’t really trust him.” Brian Hedges, Pastor
God’s desire is to glorify Himself through His expansive goodness.
So often, we get hung up on the things we don’t have. The things that God is holding back from us. But think about God’s abundant goodness to us. Think of the glory of creation that we can experience.
When we are tempted to sin, we are being told that this story is about us, and our fulfillment. And God is standing in our way for no good reason. But just the opposite is true. God has all the good in the universe to give to us. He withholds no good thing from the righteous ones.
Temptation to sin presents a choice between two wisdoms, God's and our own.
Have you ever considered why those words are there? “a tree desirable to make one wise.” Have you ever thought about your temptations that way? If I just use my anger to cut that person down, I will get wisdom. If I just waste this time scrolling on my phone, I will get wisdom. If I lie to my employer about this one thing, I will get wisdom. No, we don’t think that way.
Yet, wisdom is what we are all seeking. We all desire to live the best life we can. We want to understand how the universe really works. We want to make the best decisions possible. We want to be wise. And it is not a question of if you will pursue a wise life, it is a question of which wisdom you will choose to pursue.
We use wisdom when we make career decisions, choose living arrangements, select a spouse, order at a restaurant, pick a route to drive home, etc. We are always using our judgement to make the best decision possible.
Even when actually being foolish, in a very general sense, we are employing some kind of “wisdom.” Those who become addicted to harmful substances like tobacco or other destructive drugs are aware that their decision may have terrible consequences, but they choose to follow the “wisdom” of immediate gratification.
Satan is introduced as excellently subtle, or crafty. His clever question does something that is so imperceptible, yet something we could easily identify with.
A theologian named Derek Kidner brought out this truth well in his commentary on Genesis.
“The tempter begins with suggestion rather than argument. The incredulous tone—‘So God has actually said …?’—is both disturbing and flattering: it smuggles in the assumption that God’s word is subject to our judgment.”
Temptation is a chance to either set ourselves as our own God, just like Adam and Eve, or to trust in the immortal, invisible God who alone is Wise.
One of the most alluring aspects of sin is that we think that somehow by doing what is wrong we will be wiser. We inherently believe that purity is naïve. Have you ever wondered why the forbidden fruit in the garden comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Both ways of life, slavery to sin or slavery to righteousness, offer knowledge and understanding. There was a real offer of gaining a perspective of how the world works.
We have two choices before us, the wisdom that God offers by fearing Him, or trusting Him, and the wisdom we can conjure in our feeble beings. By choosing this fruit, the first man and woman chose to be wise in her own eyes.
The question is the same for us. Which will we choose? Satan is still using the same tactics today...
Distorting God’s Message
Not only did Satan question God’s Word to Adam and Eve, he outright denied it: “You shall not surely die.” And our temptations do the same. We are tempted to think that sin really won’t destroy us, but it will!
Will we choose the wisdom of God’s Word, or Satan’s?
Disrupting God’s Order
Satan tempted Eve, who was under Adam’s leadership and protection with Adam standing right there. Adam weakly allowed his wife to be deceived by the serpent rather than taking responsibility as he should. Adam’s failure caused a breakdown in the structure of His family. Satan is still trying to break down God’s order in families through passive husbands and un-submissive wives. Also, in churches and governments.
Husbands, wives, church members, citizens, will we choose Satan’s chaotic order, or will we choose God’s?
Destroying God’s People
And what is the point? He still seeks to destroy people. Whether he is actively conscious of it or not, Satan knows that God has said that Satan will be judged. The demons definitely know about the coming judgement. He walks about as a roaring lion, seeking to devour people, and take them with him to his eternal doom.
God’s plan for His people is that they would live with Him in a covenantal relationship of godly fear, and by fearing Him, that they would get His wisdom. His desire is to
Sin offers a dark perversion of God's goodness.
Eve saw that the tree was good… The Bible said that it was good.
It is important to understand something. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not in and of itself evil. The fruit on the tree was not evil. Is it evil to desire wisdom to acquire knowledge? God says that we should get wisdom! That it is the “principal” thing.
It was evil for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit because this was choosing something other than God. God had given them a choice, continue enjoying me and all that I give to you, or seek goodness in some other way.
"And when we sin, we are seeking some good that we were created to desire. But sin is a twisted way, outside of God’s goodness, to fulfill those desires. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good?" Augustine
God offers the goodness of His garden, the beauty of His creation, and the pleasure of exalting Him, not self. Yet, sin offers distorted versions of these experiences. Which
When tempted, Christ chose God's Word over sin.
In Adam we all failed. We all believed the lie that our Father is not truly good, became wise in our own eyes, and chose the evil twisted version of God’s goodness. Yet, in Christ, we choose the good Father, His wisdom, and His blessing.
When faced with the same temptations that Adam and Eve faced, Jesus was without sin.
And how did Christ respond? With the Word of God. He chose to believe God’s Word when Eve doubted it.
The Bible is the flashpoint. This is the battleground.
When I was in college, I traveled with a summer ministry program called neighborhood Bible Time. We got to travel around the United States, helping each church put on a VBS-type kids program for a week. It was a lot of fun, but they had some strict rules because they needed to keep 50 college age guys in line for 10 weeks.
One of those rules was that you needed explicit permission to go swimming. Now one week, me and the other guy assigned to this church were in North Carolina near Asheville, staying at a $1+ million home on the French Broad River. My friend who was with me was actually from Okinawa Japan and did a lot of spear fishing. He’d swim miles out in reefs over there to get to good places for spear fishing so he was a very strong swimmer. It was hot. Also, we were young, college-age guys. Forgiveness rather than permission was our middle name.
So we decided to spend the afternoon in the river. We didn’t do much. The river was relatively high, and the current was pretty strong. We spent a while just floating down a ways, and then swimming back up closer to the bank. Then, we decided to go to this island in the middle of the river. Now, it is not huge but there is a certain simplicity to nomenclature (naming things) in the southeast. It is called the French BROAD River, so it takes a little bit to get to this island, especially when the water is high and the river is pulling you downstream pretty well.
Well, my friend is ahead of me and pulling further and further ahead. I am doing my best but getting tired. All of a sudden, I feel my arms and legs get tighter and tighter. I started to realize, I might not have the strength to get to the island against the pull of the river. So I turned around, but by the time I did, I didn’t have much left to go anywhere. I just started floating down the river.
Up ahead, were some rocks that did not look too friendly. I was getting more tired and more tired. It was hard to keep my head above the water. I am one of those people that can’t figure out how to just float. I have to work hard to tread water. The water ahead by the rocks looks more rapid, and I am not sure what might happen if I float down there with not much strength left. There is one rock just before the water changes. A last chance to stop before I get to the dangerous part of the river.
I passed right by this rock and as I did, I clung to it for dear life, literally. With all the strength that I had left, I held on to the rock, probably for close to a minute. After several moments, I tried to pull myself on top of the rock. It seemed like the slimiest, most slippery rock I had ever touched, and like my arms and legs were as tired as they had ever been, but I thought that this rock was my life. If I let go, I was not sure I would make it. Finally, I got my body out of the water and onto the rock. I sat there for 45 minutes, clinging to that rock. Eventually, a guy in a kayak came and got me.
Temptation is a matter of life and death. We cannot hold ourselves up above the waters of sin. We will be pulled under and drown. Do you see that? Do you believe that?
We must cling to God’s Word. This is our lifeline. It is only in Christ, who was tempted yet without sin, that we can overcome temptation. It is through faith in God’s revealed Word to us. Faith in the embodied Word, Jesus Christ, because of the Written Word in the Bible.
Kidner says this: “She took … and ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will taste poverty and death before ‘take and eat’ become verbs of salvation.”
Jesus is the answer. He was victorious over Satan’s temptation, and because of His death, His resurrection, and His triumphant ascension, we too can defeat temptation. On our own, like Adam and Eve, we have no hope. It is in Jesus that we have hope in temptation.
Friend, turn away from your own wisdom, and turn to Jesus!
Discussion Questions
Odysseus and his men were on their way home, getting ready to once again to set out to sea, but before they did, they were once again visited by the witch-goddess Circe. Though treacherous, she has come to help Odysseus and his men. She warns him of challenges they are to face. The first of which is the Sirens. They sing songs to enchant men, who cannot leave if they listen. There are piles of the bones of men who have died after being ensnared by their song.
Circe tells brave Odysseus to stuff his men’s ears with wax and tie himself to the ship’s mast if he wants to hear the song. When they pass by, the sirens sing a song, but listen to what they sing,
“Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians, and stay your ship, so that you can listen here to our singing; for no one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship until he has listened to the honey-sweet voice that issues from our lips; then goes on, well pleased, knowing more than ever he did; for we know everything that the Argives and Trojans did and suffered in wide Troy through the gods’ despite. Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens.”
The sirens used a marketing strategy that we would be very familiar with. FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. Sin promises goodness. Experience. Life. Wisdom. Satisfaction. Peace. If you do not stop, and listen to us, you are missing out. Everyone else stops and is pleased because we KNOW what it’s all really about.
Look over there. Otherwise, you’re missing out. Think about this. Give in to that cycle of rage. Tear that person’s character down. Send that destructive text message. Eat that next helping of food that you know will damage the body God has given you. Don’t listen to what God says, why would you miss out? It won’t hurt anything.
Yet, in an even better story, we see what happens when we yield to temptation. On the shores of Eden, we might say there are mountains of bones. The bones of all mankind who drowned in sin because sin actually does hurt us. It destroys us.
Today, I want to look into this text, in a sense, go past the yellow tape. I want to understand together how this tragedy of sin occurred, and what we can learn from it. I have found four lessons for us to learn.
Though God does not tempt anyone to sin, He created the Tempter for His own glory.
Often, we mess ourselves up when reading the Bible because we start with a very modern misconception. We believe that we are the main character. And therefore, we believe that the story should be interpreted from our perspective. And then the story becomes about us. Our achievement. Our experience. Our success. Our glory. But this story is about God.
Who does Genesis start with? “In the beginning, God...”
Many people who are skeptical of Christianity try to use this passage as a punching bag. How can God allow this serpent into the garden? Did He not make the garden and the serpent? Does He not know what will happen? How can He allow this horrible tragedy to happen?
The Bible’s answer is the same as it was to job. It is for His glory. But isn’t this selfish? Isn’t this sadistic on God’s part? How can he allow us to suffer for His pleasure? What kind of God is that? Well, when we rationalize that way, we are making the same old mistake again. You are not the main character. You have a supporting role. And you were made to bring Him glory. You were not made for a life of maximum pleasure in easy things. In amusement. In leisure. In indulgence. You were made for pleasure in God, and we are most pleased in God when we allow Him, by any means necessary, to glorify Him.
How could God allow Satan into the garden? We should ask instead, if God is good and if God is all-wise, then how could He do anything but? This is what God has done. And for those, that like Job, have lost much, I would say, this church is here for you. We are here to help you refuse to curse God. Rest in Christ, who can sympathize with you in all your difficulty. Trust God for the strength to say, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Our submersion in a culture of self-centeredness produces a great challenge for us. We have such a hard time seeing that God is good because sometimes God’s goodness doesn’t align with our conception of good. And I think Adam and Eve battled against this too.
You see, the serpent assigned a motive to God’s prohibition.
God must be jealously holding things back from His creation. Forget the abundant goodness of the garden. This one tree is off-limits so there must be something wrong with His rules. This one expression of sexuality is off-limits so He must be holding something back from us. How arbitrary! How tyrannical.
Our guts tell us that the ability to do whatever we want is the highest value. But our guts our wrong. Once again, self-expression (or self-glorification) is not the goal. The goal is the unfurling of the goodness of God in the life of His creation.
“The subtle assumption behind every temptation is that God is not good. God’s holding something back. You can’t really trust him.” Brian Hedges, Pastor
God’s desire is to glorify Himself through His expansive goodness.
So often, we get hung up on the things we don’t have. The things that God is holding back from us. But think about God’s abundant goodness to us. Think of the glory of creation that we can experience.
When we are tempted to sin, we are being told that this story is about us, and our fulfillment. And God is standing in our way for no good reason. But just the opposite is true. God has all the good in the universe to give to us. He withholds no good thing from the righteous ones.
Temptation to sin presents a choice between two wisdoms, God's and our own.
Have you ever considered why those words are there? “a tree desirable to make one wise.” Have you ever thought about your temptations that way? If I just use my anger to cut that person down, I will get wisdom. If I just waste this time scrolling on my phone, I will get wisdom. If I lie to my employer about this one thing, I will get wisdom. No, we don’t think that way.
Yet, wisdom is what we are all seeking. We all desire to live the best life we can. We want to understand how the universe really works. We want to make the best decisions possible. We want to be wise. And it is not a question of if you will pursue a wise life, it is a question of which wisdom you will choose to pursue.
We use wisdom when we make career decisions, choose living arrangements, select a spouse, order at a restaurant, pick a route to drive home, etc. We are always using our judgement to make the best decision possible.
Even when actually being foolish, in a very general sense, we are employing some kind of “wisdom.” Those who become addicted to harmful substances like tobacco or other destructive drugs are aware that their decision may have terrible consequences, but they choose to follow the “wisdom” of immediate gratification.
Satan is introduced as excellently subtle, or crafty. His clever question does something that is so imperceptible, yet something we could easily identify with.
A theologian named Derek Kidner brought out this truth well in his commentary on Genesis.
“The tempter begins with suggestion rather than argument. The incredulous tone—‘So God has actually said …?’—is both disturbing and flattering: it smuggles in the assumption that God’s word is subject to our judgment.”
Temptation is a chance to either set ourselves as our own God, just like Adam and Eve, or to trust in the immortal, invisible God who alone is Wise.
One of the most alluring aspects of sin is that we think that somehow by doing what is wrong we will be wiser. We inherently believe that purity is naïve. Have you ever wondered why the forbidden fruit in the garden comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Both ways of life, slavery to sin or slavery to righteousness, offer knowledge and understanding. There was a real offer of gaining a perspective of how the world works.
We have two choices before us, the wisdom that God offers by fearing Him, or trusting Him, and the wisdom we can conjure in our feeble beings. By choosing this fruit, the first man and woman chose to be wise in her own eyes.
The question is the same for us. Which will we choose? Satan is still using the same tactics today...
Distorting God’s Message
Not only did Satan question God’s Word to Adam and Eve, he outright denied it: “You shall not surely die.” And our temptations do the same. We are tempted to think that sin really won’t destroy us, but it will!
Will we choose the wisdom of God’s Word, or Satan’s?
Disrupting God’s Order
Satan tempted Eve, who was under Adam’s leadership and protection with Adam standing right there. Adam weakly allowed his wife to be deceived by the serpent rather than taking responsibility as he should. Adam’s failure caused a breakdown in the structure of His family. Satan is still trying to break down God’s order in families through passive husbands and un-submissive wives. Also, in churches and governments.
Husbands, wives, church members, citizens, will we choose Satan’s chaotic order, or will we choose God’s?
Destroying God’s People
And what is the point? He still seeks to destroy people. Whether he is actively conscious of it or not, Satan knows that God has said that Satan will be judged. The demons definitely know about the coming judgement. He walks about as a roaring lion, seeking to devour people, and take them with him to his eternal doom.
God’s plan for His people is that they would live with Him in a covenantal relationship of godly fear, and by fearing Him, that they would get His wisdom. His desire is to
Sin offers a dark perversion of God's goodness.
Eve saw that the tree was good… The Bible said that it was good.
It is important to understand something. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was not in and of itself evil. The fruit on the tree was not evil. Is it evil to desire wisdom to acquire knowledge? God says that we should get wisdom! That it is the “principal” thing.
It was evil for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit because this was choosing something other than God. God had given them a choice, continue enjoying me and all that I give to you, or seek goodness in some other way.
"And when we sin, we are seeking some good that we were created to desire. But sin is a twisted way, outside of God’s goodness, to fulfill those desires. What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good?" Augustine
- Lust of the Flesh - “Good for food”
- Lust of the Eyes - “Pleasant to the Eyes”
- Pride of Life - “Desirable to Make One Wise”
God offers the goodness of His garden, the beauty of His creation, and the pleasure of exalting Him, not self. Yet, sin offers distorted versions of these experiences. Which
When tempted, Christ chose God's Word over sin.
In Adam we all failed. We all believed the lie that our Father is not truly good, became wise in our own eyes, and chose the evil twisted version of God’s goodness. Yet, in Christ, we choose the good Father, His wisdom, and His blessing.
When faced with the same temptations that Adam and Eve faced, Jesus was without sin.
And how did Christ respond? With the Word of God. He chose to believe God’s Word when Eve doubted it.
The Bible is the flashpoint. This is the battleground.
When I was in college, I traveled with a summer ministry program called neighborhood Bible Time. We got to travel around the United States, helping each church put on a VBS-type kids program for a week. It was a lot of fun, but they had some strict rules because they needed to keep 50 college age guys in line for 10 weeks.
One of those rules was that you needed explicit permission to go swimming. Now one week, me and the other guy assigned to this church were in North Carolina near Asheville, staying at a $1+ million home on the French Broad River. My friend who was with me was actually from Okinawa Japan and did a lot of spear fishing. He’d swim miles out in reefs over there to get to good places for spear fishing so he was a very strong swimmer. It was hot. Also, we were young, college-age guys. Forgiveness rather than permission was our middle name.
So we decided to spend the afternoon in the river. We didn’t do much. The river was relatively high, and the current was pretty strong. We spent a while just floating down a ways, and then swimming back up closer to the bank. Then, we decided to go to this island in the middle of the river. Now, it is not huge but there is a certain simplicity to nomenclature (naming things) in the southeast. It is called the French BROAD River, so it takes a little bit to get to this island, especially when the water is high and the river is pulling you downstream pretty well.
Well, my friend is ahead of me and pulling further and further ahead. I am doing my best but getting tired. All of a sudden, I feel my arms and legs get tighter and tighter. I started to realize, I might not have the strength to get to the island against the pull of the river. So I turned around, but by the time I did, I didn’t have much left to go anywhere. I just started floating down the river.
Up ahead, were some rocks that did not look too friendly. I was getting more tired and more tired. It was hard to keep my head above the water. I am one of those people that can’t figure out how to just float. I have to work hard to tread water. The water ahead by the rocks looks more rapid, and I am not sure what might happen if I float down there with not much strength left. There is one rock just before the water changes. A last chance to stop before I get to the dangerous part of the river.
I passed right by this rock and as I did, I clung to it for dear life, literally. With all the strength that I had left, I held on to the rock, probably for close to a minute. After several moments, I tried to pull myself on top of the rock. It seemed like the slimiest, most slippery rock I had ever touched, and like my arms and legs were as tired as they had ever been, but I thought that this rock was my life. If I let go, I was not sure I would make it. Finally, I got my body out of the water and onto the rock. I sat there for 45 minutes, clinging to that rock. Eventually, a guy in a kayak came and got me.
Temptation is a matter of life and death. We cannot hold ourselves up above the waters of sin. We will be pulled under and drown. Do you see that? Do you believe that?
We must cling to God’s Word. This is our lifeline. It is only in Christ, who was tempted yet without sin, that we can overcome temptation. It is through faith in God’s revealed Word to us. Faith in the embodied Word, Jesus Christ, because of the Written Word in the Bible.
Kidner says this: “She took … and ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will taste poverty and death before ‘take and eat’ become verbs of salvation.”
Jesus is the answer. He was victorious over Satan’s temptation, and because of His death, His resurrection, and His triumphant ascension, we too can defeat temptation. On our own, like Adam and Eve, we have no hope. It is in Jesus that we have hope in temptation.
Friend, turn away from your own wisdom, and turn to Jesus!
Discussion Questions
- How does FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) work in our minds and hearts? What kinds of "levers" does it use to motivate us?
- Read James 3:10-18. What words in the passage resonate with our inner life when experiencing FOMO?
- What does this teach us about its nature? How should we respond when we feel FOMO?
- How does a self-focused interpretation of the Scriptures and life in general affect our emotional state and mental state?
- How about the inverse, or a God-focused interpretation of our lives and the Bible?
- What are some real-life, practical ways that we, specifically, can form habits of meditating on God's goodness, and not the things we think we should have?
- What is wisdom? What is a wise person like? What does a wise person do?
- Can sin make us wiser?
- Do you notice examples of people taking the place of evaluation over the trustworthiness of God and His message?
- What are some ways that even Christians, who may be godlier in their public life, make this same mistake?
- How does the continual attack by the forces of darkness on God's hierarchal order in the home (husband/father as the head), and the grave results of Adam's failure in the Garden help us to understand the importance of a spiritually healthy home?
- Since sinful temptations are in a very real sense based upon good desires, what makes sin evil?
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