Genesis 3:1-3
"As a rule
Man is a fool.
When it's hot,
He wants it cool.
When it's cool,
He wants it hot.
Always wanting what is not."
-- author unknown
"(The serpent) said to the woman, 'Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden'?
The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say,
'You must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
We have issues to complain about that we didn't even know about a few decades ago.
We have discovered burnout, midlife crisis, and PMS.
We are suffering from stress, poor self-image, and feeble relationship skills.
Many of us are battling obesity or anorexia and others are fretting about getting old.
Why all these grunts and groans of discontent?
Why do we sound so dissatisfied?
Wait a minute!
Who is that sneaking around whispering sour nothings in our ears?
Could it be that we have been fooled again?
Are we letting the devil, that old serpent, rob us of our joy?
Have we fallen for the same pitch Satan gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?
We have the first labor grievance registered in the garden.
In the beginning management labor relations were great.
Adam and Eve had no complaints about their working conditions.
Working conditions were good.
They were fond of their boss.
The work wasn't too hard, and their pay and fringe benefits more than cared for their needs.
Sometimes labor has a legitimate grievance against management, but this was not one of those times.
Satan came along posing as the great advocate of the underdog.
"What's this I hear?" He inquired, simply reeking of compassion.
"Is it true that your boss has you grubbing around in this garden for nothing?"
Now stop and think!
If someone comes up to you and asks, "Why do you work for a boss who won't pay you what you are worth?"
What is your first reaction?
It doesn't matter if you're a corporate officer earning $100,000 a year with tremendous perks --
if you are a normal human being -- you will feel a momentary surge of resentment.
Later, you may say, wait a minute, I'm making a fortune and I like my job,
but no one can help feeling that first resentment, and sometimes the feeling of resentment does not go away.
Eve, like a loyal employee, stood up for her Lord.
"God does pay us," she responded.
"We have more than enough trees to eat from.
It is only the tree of knowledge of good and evil we cannot eat from."
But then she added just a hint of resentment, "And we can't even touch that one or we will die."
Satan trapped Eve into saying, "God didn't hold back all the trees, just one."
This translates to, "God isn't as unfair as you said, just a little unfair."
By pointing out the one "little unfair" -- in the Garden of Eden, Satan created a false need.
Adam and Eve didn't really need the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but from then on,
they felt like they did.
Satan does the same thing to us!
Satan: "Why does God leave you in such wretched health?
Why hasn't God recognized your contribution to the church?
Why..."
Like any rabble rouser,
Satan gets formerly contended followers grumbling against the authorities -- children against parents
-- husbands against wives -- citizens against the government -- labor against management
-- Christians against God.
By pointing out the one small bruise on an otherwise sound apple, Satan gets us to despise the whole fruit.
In this passage we also have what someone has called the Scarlett O'Hara Syndrome.
Thanks to Satan's efforts, Christians today are definitely suffering from the Scarlet O'Hara syndrome.
You remember Scarlett.
She is the main character of Margaret Mitchell's, Gone with the Wind, a book that was made
into one of the most popular movies of all time.
Though Scarlett had everything a southern belle could want and knew how to get just about anything
she didn't have, she constantly craved more.
Scarlett had beauty, youth, health, money, sex, power, children, servants, and Clark Gable
(playing the role of Rhett Butler, Scarlett's husband), but she desired Ashely Wilkes, Melanie's husband,
and could never be content.
Because Scarlett could never be satisfied, she drove her husband to drink and finally lost his love.
Too late she realized that her own husband, Rhett, was the man she really wanted.
By chasing after fantasies she had lost what she had.
Doesn't this remind you of Adam and Eve losing paradise for the sake of a bite of fruit?
I read were a man named Bill Pride who paraphrased Acts 2 as "These Men Are Full Of New Whines."
"When the day of the congregational meeting had come, they were all in great discord in one place.
Suddenly there was a sound like the rumble of an earthquake as all were filled with a complaining spirit
and began shouting at once.
The youth and their parents clamored for a youth pastor to organize their fall retreat.
The mothers lobbied for a night out to get away from their families.
The singles also....
The senior adults wanted...
The altercation soon spilled out onto the street and into an adjoining park which was sponsoring a concert.
At the concert were worldlings from all walks of life who each one marveled to hear the church folk
speaking their language.
"Here we are -- married and divorced, young and old, male and female, yuppies and hippies --
yet we hear these church people speaking in our own complaints the dissatisfaction of our hearts.'
They were all amazed and were in doubt saying to one another, ' What's happening?'
Others thoroughly disgusted with these church people said,
'These men are full of new whines.' "
What's happening here?
It's a bunch of squeaky wheels howling for some grease.
The painful thing is they are all likely to get it.
A full measure of attention, heaped up, shaken together, and running over, will the modern church
provide to those who whine for it.
God has a different way of giving out His gifts and attentions.
In God's economy, to those who have more, more is given, and those who have not, lose even
what they think they had. (Matthew 13:12)
Another way of putting this is that those who don't make the most of the little they already have
are not eligible to be given more.
"He who is faithful in little is faithful with much" -- is the way the Bible looking at things.
Satan would have us to steal the resources of the spiritually productive to give to the spiritually unproductive.
He wants us to indulge the whiners rather than to encourage them to make the most of what they do have.
We must remember -- God does not like whining.
God will not tolerate whining.
That is a fact!
God considers ungratefulness and harping on what He supposedly hasn't provided to be a great insult to Him.
Romans 1: 21, describing how men become reprobates, states, "For although they knew God,
they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him..."
The generation of Israelites that gripped at God for 40 years in the wilderness died in the wilderness.
In contrast, Scripture tells us that "godliness with contentment is great gain.
And that food and clothing are our only really basic needs." (1 Tim. 6: 6-8)
Adam and Eve made a major mistake in letting Satan badmouth God without interrupting him.
God is not a God who wants to frustrate our needs.
He just happens to know that we have different needs than those that Satan wants to tell us about.
Man does not live by bread alone, and Adam and Eve should have known that they did not live by fruit alone.
But once they began to feel that God was unfair to hold back the forbidden fruit, they were prime targets
for Satan's attack.
Once we start letting Satan tell us what our needs are, we are headed for trouble.
Are you grateful or are you a whiner?
Sermon by Dr. Harold L. White