Six Profound Truths About Sin - Genesis - February 15th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

Well, as we've seen in the book of Genesis, a lot of the book is pretty iconic. And this passage that we're going to be looking at this morning is truly iconic.

One of the most famous and important passages in the Bible, it's Genesis 3 verses 1 through 7, where the serpent convinces Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam then eats two and sin and death enter the world for the first time.

One interesting thing about this passage is that Adam and Eve don't seem to understand the consequences of their actions.

When you think about it, when you think about how the story goes, God creates this perfect world and he places Adam and Eve in the garden, and then he gives them one rule. Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's it.

One simple commandment, and they are told that if they disobey, they will die. But if you ever wondered, why didn't God tell them more? He tells them simply, if you disobey, you'll die.

But why didn't he explain exactly what it means to die? Why didn't God tell them that the entire world would suffer unimaginable pain and sorrow for their decision? Well, our passage provides some really interesting insight into these questions.

They did not understand sin, but we have the opportunity that they did not have. They may have been somewhat excused by their ignorance, but we certainly are not.

Our passage gives us really incredible, profound insight into the truth about sin and its consequences. So, that's going to be our focus today, six truths about sin.

And I want to remind you that sin is so much more than committing adultery and murder and doing drugs.

You know, sometimes people get this idea of sin, sins like this really like bad thing that people with tattoos do, or, you know, biker gangs, they commit sin. But us regular folks, we don't sin, but all of us sin.

The Bible makes it very clear that all of us sin all the time. That sin is so much more than just those big, blatant things. It's greed.

It's pride. It's selfishness. We are all commanded by God, according to Jesus, the first and most important commandment is to love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your strength.

Have you done that today? All of your heart, all of your mind, all of your strength. Is that how you love God each and every single day, every hour?

I know I don't love him like that. I don't love him like I should. And therefore, we are all guilty of sin for disobeying that first and most important commandment or the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.

Do you treat everybody exactly how you want to be treated? Do you love everybody as much as you love yourself, as much as you look out for your own needs and wants and interests? Do you treat everybody like that?

I know that I don't. None of us do. And so just looking at those two most foundational and important commandments according to Jesus, we all fall short.

We all sin. We all break the commandments. And there are a thousand other examples.

And so you and I are in sin every single day.

And it's that very sin that hurts our marriages, hurts our kids, hurts our grandkids, that very sin that destroys relationships, that keeps us stuck in patterns that we shouldn't be in, in compulsive behavior that we feel like we can't overcome.

So when we talk about sin, and the truth about sin, and its consequences, this is important stuff for all of us, for all of us.

And so it's helpful, essential for us to get insight into what sin really is, where it really comes from, and how to be free from it. Please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us, Genesis 3 verses 1 through 7.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He 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.

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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated, and please join me as I pray for us.

Father, help us to gain insight into your word. I pray for your spirit to be guiding us into the truth, to be illuminating the meaning, the truth of your word for us.

God, we are so lost without you and without your spirit, and so unable to understand you and your mind and the things that you are trying to communicate to us without your spirit.

So I pray for a true supernatural work of your spirit to guide us today, to help us today.

And as we see these truths about sin, I pray that understanding sin more would would enable us to to by your grace, by your power, to overcome sin in our lives. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

7:05

Scoffing Forgetting

Well, the first truth about sin that I want to show you in this text is that sin is caused by scoffing and forgetting more than arguing. You might think that Eve was persuaded to sin.

You might think that those who oppose God and His goodness bring reasons and arguments to the table.

Like you would think, God gave this commandment to Adam and Eve, and so if Eve's going to be talked into disobeying this commandment, she's got to have some reason for it, right? Isn't that how sin works? We become persuaded to disobey God.

That's not the reality, though. Notice how the serpent begins the conversation with Eve in verse 1. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And it doesn't come across very well when you translate it from Hebrew to English, but the words of the serpent are scorning and scoffing and mocking. It's more like, are you serious? Did God really say that?

Like, what a ridiculous thing to say.

The serpent who represents Satan, and it's not quite clear in the text exactly what that means, but the testimony of the scriptures is that the serpent is either possessed by Satan or indwelled by Satan or Satan in the form of a snake, but the

serpent does not bring any arguments and evidence to the table. He just gets right into the scoffing. Doesn't give her any reasons to choose disobedience instead of obedience. And it works.

She just buys into it. It's kind of crazy if you think about it, for her to just disobey the one commandment of God without any good reason to. The most incredible thing is that the same strategy works just as well today.

Think about all the people who reject God in his commandments. They're scoffers. They scoff at Christianity.

They scoff at the Bible. They think that what God says about sex and marriage and hell, they think all of it is silly, antiquated mythology. It's beneath them.

They're too good for that. All those Christians are just, they're just hypocrites. They're so judgy.

And these people scoff at God and his truth and his word and his people, and they don't have any rational justification or evidence or argumentation. And when other people see their scoffing attitude, they buy into it and start scoffing too.

It seems based on this passage, the serpent scoffs and Eve buys into it. I've seen this in my own life. I've seen this with people around me.

They buy into other people's scoffing. Scoffing seems to be an infectious, contagious kind of thing. I was talking with someone the other day about the statistics regarding Christian kids who go off to college.

If you're a Christian and you've had kids and you've tried to raise your kids to know the Lord and follow the Lord, every Christian wants their kids to know Jesus and to follow Jesus, to be saved, to walk in his commandments and to have a good life.

And so every Christian tries to raise their kids that way. And yet, 85% of Christian kids, when they go off to college, end up leaving the faith. 85%.

That's insane. So what happens to those kids? What is going on in colleges that causes kids to abandon the faith that their parents taught them?

I think it's a complicated story, but I'll tell you what's not happening.

They're not going to class, like philosophy class and sociology class, and all these professors are teaching them, all of these sophisticated, powerful truths that are unraveling their faith.

We might be tempted to think that, like these kids go off to college, and it's just these brilliant scientists and these brilliant philosophers and all these amazing professors are just hitting them with this knowledge that they weren't exposed to

before, and this powerful, sophisticated knowledge unravels their faith. I was a professor for six years, and I can tell you that was not happening. You know what it is happening? They're scoffing.

They just scoff at Jesus and the Bible and the Christian faith.

And when you're in a class and your professor is scoffing and belittling and disrespecting and dismissing God and his commandments, and a bunch of other students are doing the same thing, eventually you will too.

If everybody around you thinks it's stupid, eventually you're going to think that it's stupid too. And I remember in my ethics classes addressing the issue of abortion.

And I am very much pro-life because the Bible is pro-life, and I addressed that as a philosopher, and we looked at all of the arguments for and against, and evaluated the logic of those arguments, and looked at the scientific information, and kind of

addressed it from that perspective. And yet all of my students, without fail, semester after semester, anytime I said anything in defense of the pro-life position, they were enraged, absolutely enraged.

And they thought that being pro-life was just absurd and evil and stupid. And they scoffed at it. They scoffed at it.

And everybody else bought into the scoffing. It's a powerful tactic of the enemy that has led many people to deny God and to disobey His commandments. So beware of the scoffers.

The Bible warns us about this repeatedly. Beware of scoffing. Another tactic of the enemy is forgetting.

One of the main reasons Eve fell into sin is that she forgot exactly what God said. She misquotes God. When God originally gave the law to the Israelites, this is, you know, many, many years, maybe centuries after Adam and Eve.

But when God gave the law to the Israelites, He said this in Deuteronomy 6 verses 6 through 9. He said, These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

In other words, the word of God, the commandments of God should be everywhere, everywhere. You should be so immersed in God's word, so focused on his commandments that you are eating and drinking and breathing and sleeping the commandments of God.

Put them everywhere, talk about them all the time. They should be the theme song of your life. And why is that?

Because otherwise, you'll forget them. We all have a tendency for God's ways, for God's commandments to just conveniently slip our minds.

Looking again at verse 3, Eve tells the serpent that God commanded them to not even touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that's not true. That's not what he said. They had one commandment, and Eve forgot what the commandment was.

God never said that, so she's misquoting God in a way that casts doubt on his goodness. It makes him seem kind of ridiculous and overly strict.

You see, Eve is now in a situation with some pressure, and she can't even imagine or can't even remember exactly what God said. When you put the pressure on, that's when it gets real. When you start feeling some stress, that's when it gets real.

In those moments, are you going to remember and obey the commandments of God? This is like me at the end of every day when I'm trying to get our kids ready for bed.

I often find myself in this situation where I've been going non-stop all day, 12 or 14 hours or whatever it might be, and I'm exhausted and I'm just minutes away, just minutes away from being able to sit down and relax.

But I have to get two toddlers all ready for bed. Anybody ever been there? You know what I'm talking about?

They don't want to go to bed. They're still full of energy. They want to wiggle and play and do anything, but what I'm asking them to do.

And so I get frustrated and I raise my voice and I forget the commandments of God. I forget, I simply forget that love is patient and kind. I simply forget that gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and I sin.

And it doesn't matter if everybody else struggles with the same thing with their kids. God doesn't grade on a curve. What's wrong is wrong, and I often do the wrong thing because I forget God's commandments.

Forgetfulness is an open door for the enemy, which is why we need to be so immersed in and surrounded by the commandments of God that we don't forget them no matter how stressed or how tired or how overwhelmed we become.

It's so easy to use that as an excuse, isn't it? Like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I've just, I had a really intense day.

I've been really stressed. Being stressed is not an excuse for sin. But being stressed easily makes you forget the things that are meant to keep you from sin, namely the commandments of God.

In many ways, it's a matter of respect for God. Are his words and his ways important to you? Do you really believe what the Bible says about God's commandments in our sin?

The Bible says over and over again in a thousand different ways that God's commandments are the road to life. That if you obey God's commandments, you will flourish and thrive.

They will, generally speaking, lead you to joy and peace and happiness and life. And if you disobey God's commandments, that disobedience will destroy you. It leads to death.

It will destroy your relationships. It will harm you. It will make your life harder and worse than it otherwise would be.

Do you believe that? Obeying God is the key to success in life. Disobeying God is a guaranteed way to failure in life.

Do you believe that? Are his words and his ways important to you?

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Judging God

Here's another truth about sin that we see in our passage. Sin does not respect God. Sin casts judgment on God and diminishes God.

As soon as the serpent asks the question, did God really say that? As soon as he adds the scoffing, scornful tone, he's inviting Eve to put herself in the judgment seat. And she hops right in.

She starts to judge God in his commandments. It's not just a question of, did God really say that? It's the question of, is what God said really good?

That's the question behind the question. Is what God said, does it really make sense? Is that really reasonable or fair?

So the questioning of the serpent invites her to judge the commandments of God, but who are we to judge the judge? He's not on trial, we are. This is such a universal temptation for human beings.

We all do this at times. We look at the commandments of God or the actions of God, and we start judging God. Are those commandments really necessary?

It seems kind of ridiculous that we're supposed to forgive people, even if they don't apologize. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever thought that way?

As a Christian, we should all know that, yes, you're supposed to forgive people, even when they don't apologize, but sometimes that seems a little ridiculous.

Sometimes when it's the third time or the fourth time that person has done that thing and hurt you in that way, you think, am I supposed to, no, there's no way I'm really supposed to forgive this person.

And you start to evaluate and judge the commandments of God to determine on your own if they're really good or not. Or maybe we wonder, why did God create Adam and Eve when he knew that they would sin? Did God make a mistake?

Is his plan really the best plan? Or we might look back on our lives and the things that we've experienced and gone through and the things that other people have done to us, and we might wonder, why did God allow that to happen to me?

Why did God allow that to happen to me? And why doesn't God give me the things that I've been praying for? Let me be clear.

God is incredibly patient and gracious, and he invites us to come to him with our questions. And so if you want to pray and ask, God, why did you allow me to go through that thing?

That's a perfectly reasonable and good thing to pray, to take those concerns to God. God loves our questions. But, at the same time, God will not tolerate any kind of disrespect.

It's one thing to bring a sincere question to God, but it's something else entirely to demand an answer like he owes us something. It's not about the question. It's about the attitude behind the question.

It's one thing to wonder about your life and the things that God has let you go through, but it's another thing entirely to judge God like he made some kind of mistake or to question God like he's incompetent.

Sin often starts when we put ourselves in the judgment seat. There's a really fascinating passage in the Book of Romans.

In Romans chapter 9, the Apostle Paul is explaining the doctrine of predestination, and he imagines some objections that people might have.

So he's kind of explaining the doctrine and imagining what people might say in response and then responding to those hypothetical responses. But ultimately the answer he gives comes down to this. Who are we to judge God?

As it says in Romans 920, who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Who are you, Eve, to question God's commandments? And where's Adam when you need him?

Apparently, he was standing right there. Look at the end of verse 6. He was apparently close enough to quickly take a bite right after she does.

And we'll talk more about this dynamic next week. But at this point, you just want to yell at the pages of the Bible for Adam to jump in there and say something. Like, where was he to remind Eve that God is God and they are not?

That when God speaks, they obey. End of story. There was this line in a story I read one time where a servant of a great king keeps on saying, repeating this phrase, to hear is to obey.

That's the attitude that God wants from us.

The attitude where it's like a servant of a king who is so ready to serve and ready to obey, eager to serve and eager to obey, so trusting, so committed to a thousand percent obedience at all times that you can say, to hear is to obey.

You say the words, it's done. Period. End of story.

But that's not the attitude that Eve had. To hear was to then have some questions and some thoughts and some ideas, like is this really the best thing? Did God really say that?

Did he really mean that? That seems kind of unreasonable. That's the opposite of to hear is to obey.

Eve doesn't obey God. Instead, she seems to be judging God. I want you to notice something about the way that she misquotes God.

It's really interesting. She doesn't deny the restriction that God placed on eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She doesn't misquote him, saying, Oh, he said it's okay.

In fact, she doesn't deny it. She makes it more restrictive. She says in verse 3, Neither shall you touch it lest you die.

Neither shall you touch it lest you die. God didn't say that they couldn't touch it. He just said that they couldn't eat it.

It reminds me of one of the colleges that I went to. It was a good Christian college. And in some ways, it was a really beneficial experience for me.

I learned a lot, had a ton of great classes, made some really good friends, but the college had some very ridiculous rules, like no dancing, and guys weren't allowed to have hair that went past their collars.

I got in trouble for that one a few times. Lot of stuff like that. It was like this kind of old school, super traditional Christian culture, where they kind of assumed that if you listen to rock and roll, or you had tattoos, you were a big sinner.

It was that kind of mindset. But ultimately, the problem was this. They made God to be more strict than he actually is, just like Eve in our passage.

And here's what happens when you do that. We make it seem like God is forbidding things that are harmless or even good, and we therefore cause people to doubt his goodness.

When you outlaw things that God doesn't outlaw, when you outlaw things that are harmless or maybe even good, you cause people to doubt the goodness of God, and that is catastrophic. Imagine being a kid going to that college.

I didn't have this specific problem, but imagine being a kid going to that college, and you really want to dance because you absolutely love to dance.

You love the movement and the beauty and the music, and some Christian comes along and tells you that dancing is sinful. Well, now it seems like God is holding out.

Seems like there are good things out there, and happy things and pleasurable things out there in the world, but God is a big jerk who doesn't let his people have those things. Isn't that the mindset of Eve in verse 6?

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, this forbidden tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She looked at the fruit, and it looked like good food. It looked filling and satisfying. It looked desirable.

It looked like God was holding out.

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God Does Not Hold Out

But here's the truth. God never, ever, ever holds out on us. He never, ever keeps good things from his children.

The Bible teaches that God is always working all things together for our good. The Bible teaches that God wants us to be as happy as possible. That's his goal.

That's his desire for each and every one of us, for us to be as happy as possible, to enjoy life as much as possible. The question is, do you trust him?

And a lot of times, our sin is rooted in the fact that we don't trust God and we think that he's holding out.

Like when somebody is tempted to sleep with the person who is not their spouse, whether it's before marriage or it's during marriage and they want to sleep with somebody who's not their spouse, they think it will be such a wonderful experience.

God says that it's wrong, that it's sinful, but they become convinced that the pleasure of the experience is too great to pass up. They become convinced that God is keeping them from something that is desirable.

Or when somebody comes into some money and they wonder if they really should give some of that money to the church.

You get some money and you think, oh, it'd be so nice to be able to pay off debt and add a little bit to my retirement savings or finally go on that vacation. And God says that giving is good, that we should give some of our money back to him.

But the possibility of keeping all the money appears even better. Seems like the best thing for us. You see, sin always comes down to this.

We sin when we decide that the thing that we want is better than listening to God, when we decide that God doesn't really have our best interests in mind. God says, don't do it, but we look at it and we think, I think I'll be better off if I do it.

I think God's holding out on me.

30:29

False Promises of Sin

Sin makes false promises. Now, let's talk about the consequences of sin. I'm going to give you three final truths about sin from our passage, and we'll run through them pretty quickly.

One, sin makes false promises. Two, sin has unimaginable consequences. And three, God has unimaginable grace for sin.

Let's start with the false promises, looking again at verses 4 through 5. 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.

This one's pretty simple. The devil lies. The Bible says that the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I remember preaching through Ephesians a few years back, and we got to Ephesians chapter 6, which I'll quote in a minute or mention again in a minute.

But in Ephesians 6, the Apostle Paul talks about the armor of God that protects us from the schemes of the devil that are meant to lead us into sin and temptation and ultimately to death and to hell.

And he goes through all this spiritual armor that God gives us to protect us. And I've heard a bunch of sermons on that.

And basically, anytime I hear a sermon on the devil or the demonic or spiritual warfare, the preacher will give a warning like, you know, this stuff's real, but, you know, don't go thinking that every flat tire is some sort of like demonic attack.

You know, Christians, like we're all in danger, we're going to be trying to cast demons out of our microwave when it breaks or something like that. And that's always, always the warning, like, don't go overboard.

The spiritual warfare is real, the devil and demons are real, but don't go overboard with it.

But the impression you get from the Bible, and having known a whole bunch of Christians and worked in churches and preach shermans for roughly 30 years, the impression you get from the Bible and the Christian culture today is that we're making the

other mistake. We're not going overboard with the devil and demons and spiritual warfare. We're ignoring it. We're pretending like it's not real.

Our mistake is to minimize it instead of maximizing it. We need to realize that the devil and his attacks and his lies, his false promises about sin are real and present in our everyday lives.

Here he is lying to Eve, and it introduces sin and death into the world, and the consequences are absolutely catastrophic. And note that he usually mixes in some truth to make the lie more plausible or attractive. So how do you spot the lies?

If the devil is lying to us, if demons do exist and they lie to us, how do you spot the lies? Because there are millions, if not billions of lies out there. Well, the best way to protect yourself from the lies is to know the truth.

It's like counterfeit money. What's the best way to learn how to identify counterfeit money? Do you study every single counterfeit that's ever been printed to see all the ways, all the lies?

No, you study the real thing until you know every square millimeter like the back of your hand. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 6, writing about the spiritual armor, the first piece of armor that he mentions is the belt of truth.

The belt of truth that holds the rest of the armor together. If only Eve had the belt of truth. Satan said that eating the fruit would not lead to death.

He said that her eyes would be opened and that she would be like God, and that's what she expected to happen. But here's the reality.

She ate the fruit and she did not drop dead the moment she took a bite, but she did experience instant spiritual death, and her physical death became inevitable.

She thought she was going to enjoy some delicious fruit and learn some interesting secrets and become like God, but learning about good and evil did not make her like God. It made her like the devil. That was not a consequence that she expected.

Verse 7 tells us that when they tasted the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. They instantly lost their innocence.

Talk about consequences of sin. What we see here is that they lost their innocence, they experienced shame, and they began to hide themselves from each other. And something even deeper and much bigger happened at the same time.

Their sin brought sinfulness upon all of us. The Bible teaches that Adam is or was the head of the human race. So he represented all of us, and when he sinned, his sinfulness became a part of human nature.

So Adam, the first man, when he sinned, it changed our spiritual DNA, so that we all now are born with a sinful nature. Sin has been passed on from one human to the next ever since. Theologians call this the doctrine of original sin.

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Godʼs Grace for Sin

That was a consequence that they never imagined, but they never could have imagined the grace of God in response to their sin either. The Apostle Paul explains these things for us in Romans 5.

Romans 5-12 says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Now, it's tempting to read this and question the goodness and justice of God.

Many people have rejected original sin because they think it sounds unfair. Like how is it right or just or fair for all humans to be cursed with sin and death because of one decision made by Adam and Eve?

But if you want to talk about unfair, listen to this. Romans 5 verses 18 through 21 says, Therefore, is one trespass led to condemnation for all men? So one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

Before I continue reading, he's talking, of course, about Adam and Jesus. So there is one act by Adam that brought sin and death, and one act by Jesus that brought justification and life. That's the comparison.

Later in the Book of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul will describe Jesus as like a second Adam, a new Adam. And there are all these really interesting parallels. So one of them really briefly is the garden parallel.

Here in the Garden of Eden, Adam was faced with the choice, and he made the wrong choice. He sinned. He chose to sin.

And then 2,000 years later, roughly, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he's faced with the choice in the Garden to obey God or disobey God. Knowing he was about to go to the cross, he is agonizing in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But ultimately, he comes to this conclusion, not my will, God, but your will be done. And he chooses righteousness. And there are all these incredible parallels between Jesus and Adam.

But Paul is kind of describing part of the parallels here in this passage. Let me read verse 18 again, then we'll continue through verse 21.

Therefore, as one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see, when Adam sinned, the consequence was death for him and everybody else.

But when Jesus obeyed, it opened the door for life for him and everyone who had put their faith in him. And here's the difference between Jesus and Adam. We all sin just like Adam did, but we don't all obey just like Jesus did.

In fact, nobody obeys like Jesus did. And yet, God freely gives the gift of eternal life to us even though we didn't earn it. We deserve the consequences of sin because we sinned.

We don't deserve the consequences of obedience, perfect obedience, because we don't obey perfectly. And yet, God gives us the grace, the gift of eternal life in response, not to our obedience, but in response to the obedience of Jesus.

Theologians call this alien righteousness. It's a foreign righteousness. It's not righteousness of our own, but the righteousness of Christ, this external righteousness that God applies to us.

So when you really understand these things, you can see that it isn't fair. It isn't fair. You want to talk about fair.

Fair is all of us go to hell to pay the penalty for our own sins. But grace means that we go to heaven because Jesus paid the penalty for us. That's not fair.

That's grace. That's the incredible unimaginable grace of God in response to our sin. Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would help all of us to take hold of that grace that comes through your Son Jesus. We all need your grace. I pray, God, that you would give us the understanding that we need in order to put our faith in Jesus.

But ultimately, that faith is a gift from you. This is not something that we can conjure up on our own. We can make a decision to turn from our sin and to trust in Christ.

But ultimately, you need to empower us and enable us to make that decision. So I pray for that grace now. Would you help us to trust in Jesus that we might be set free from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and ultimately the presence of sin?

We pray in His name. Amen.