Genesis 3: 1-19
Temptation, sin and ruin almost always follow a set pattern.
When we look over the record of our own mistakes or that of mankind, we will find that almost every time
the whole procedure has followed a well-established pattern.
Satan does not need to change his devices.
They are still effective.
Look at the behavior of Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Eve was alone and was walking through the Garden.
Suddenly, she hears a voice.
It is the voice of Satan.
He is radiantly beautiful in the form of a serpent.
He is swinging gracefully among the branches of an orchid-laden tree and smiles down at Eve.
He raises a question about the honor of God.
Here is the first human sin in history.
Eve Listened!
She lingered to hear what the devil had to say.
Eve was smart enough to know that anybody who questioned the loving intentions of her Heavenly Father
could not possibly have have anything good to offer her.
Alarm bells went off in her conscience.
She knew this conversation was not right.
It she had turned and fled at the first subtle suggestion of Satan, the story would have been vastly different.
But Eve did not flee.
She listened.
When any one lingers to hear what Satan has to say, he will find tears in his eyes and an ache in his heart.
If only Eve had not listened.
It is deadly for people to listen to evil.
But she listened.
She lingered and listened while the devil charmed the trust from her heart
that she had toward the Father.
Now she questioned the Father's intentions.
Now it seemed that the Father had withheld some good things from her and her husband.
Now she thought that God had been afraid that they would become as wise as He -- and even that
they would become like Him.
God had forbidden them to eat of the best fruit in the garden.
She might never have known about this had not Satan been considerate enough to tell her.
Now she had a lot of questions about God, and none of those questions was good.
Satan had crushed her confidence in God Almighty.
She was hurt.
She was hurt far worse than she realized.
Now what was next?
She Looked!
Verse six says that she looked at the tree and its fruit.
She looked at that tree in a way that she had never looked at it before.
She wondered why she had never noticed how delectable that fruit was.
Just think of what she and Adam had been missing.
She looked on the forbidden thing, and came to the next deadly, inevitable step.
She Lusted!
Ordinarily, we think of lust as having to do only with sex.
She experienced lust because any desire that is based on a sinful attitude is lust.
Any appetite for that which we have no right to share it is lust.
Any greed is lust.
Eve had experienced lust for the first time in her life.
She wanted that fruit and she wanted the treasures it contained.
She had listened to Satan.
Then she had looked.
And now she lusts.
She lusts for that fruit enough to defy God if that's what it would take to get that fruit.
Any disobedience is defiance of God.
It is rebellion.
She has listened, she has looked, and she has lusted.
It is as simple as that.
And now she will experience the consequences.
She Lost!
This is the natural order of sin.
Sin always brings loss.
Sin always has a payday.
Eve lost!
What did she lose by defying God?
She lost so much that it would take a world of books to list it all.
But here is just a few of the treasures she lost.
She lost her soul.
She didn't realize it at the time, but her soul was now barred from heaven.
It had died.
It had died the most sorrowful of all deaths.
Her soul had been penetrated by sin, and it was now dirty before God and completely unacceptable before Him.
If Eve had died of a heart attack at that moment, she would have been in hell the very next instant.
Before her soul would ever have life again, it would have to come through God's mercy and grace
and experience a new birth.
Eve lost her soul.
Eve lost her pleasure in God and in her companionship.
Before this fatal moment, she and Adam had enjoyed God.
But now all of their happy peace and confidence in God is gone.
Sin takes away our pleasure in God and our companionship with God.
Eve and Adam lost Eden.
God escorted them to the gate of Eden, and shut that gate behind them forever.
Now they would face chilly nights.
They would battle with the clods of the earth and thorns and stones to grow their food.
Now Eden is only a pathetic memory.
Eve and Adam lost the comforts and the security of Eden.
Eve lost her happiness.
Not long after her sin in Eden, she was sobbing over her murdered son.
She lost Abel.
And because of her sin, millions of mothers down through the years would sob
over their slaughtered sons.
This would never have happened had not Eve listened, looked, and lusted in Eden that day.
You can add to the list of Eve's losses.
We can preach until we are exhausted.
We can write until our hands refuse to move.
We can say all we can't think of to say, and still we will not be able to catalog all of Eve's losses
and the losses of all mankind through all the years.
Eve had opened the door for sin to enter the heartstream of the human race.
That every human being would be poisoned with sin and would be ruined by it.
Satan would now deceive and ruin mankind.
Death had entered the human race.
Millions of tombstones would be found in cemeteries.
Prisons and insane asylums would be packed to capacity.
Every known sin would now be inflicted on all mankind.
But God had a remedy for sin.
God's only Son would come personally to earth and shed His blood to make redemption for all our sins.
Christ defeated Satan, hell and the grave.
Eve listened.
Then she looked.
Then she lost.
It is always the same!
Sermon by Dr. Harold L. White