Sermons I've Preached: Genesis 3
This is a raw manuscript of my sermon preached at Pataskala Grace Church on Sunday, March 8, 2026 titled Problem as part of PGC’s Paradise to Promise series.
Good morning, church.
If we haven’t had a chance to meet before, my name is Josh. I’m one of the pastors here, and I’m really glad you decided to spend part of your morning with us.
Something you may not know about me is that before I became a pastor, I had a very different job
I was a journalist. I worked for a newspaper.
And right beside my desk sat a police scanner.
When I first started working there, the scanner was kind of… entertaining.
You’d hear all kinds of strange things come across that radio.
Someone reporting their son got their hand stuck in a vending machine.
Somebody calling the police because their neighbor’s goat had escaped again.
And we’d laugh.
But every now and then…something serious would come across that scanner.
A car accident.
A fire.
A shooting.
One day I asked one of our photographers a question.
“How do you go out and take photos of something tragic like that… and then come back here and just keep working like nothing happened?”
And his answer stuck with me.
He said,
“After a while you just get used to it.”
I didn’t want to believe him.
But after three or four years working in that newsroom…
I realized something.
He was right.
I had gotten used to it.
The things that once shocked me didn’t shock me anymore.
The tragedies that once stopped me in my tracks…
became just another call on the scanner.
I had grown numb.
And I think the same thing happens to a lot of us when we look at the world around us.
The violence.
The suffering.
The injustice.
At first it shocks us.
But over time… we start to treat it like the scanner beside my desk.
Another story.
Another tragedy.
Another headline.
And we just move on.
But here’s what I think we can all agree on.
Something is wrong with the world.
You don’t have to be a Christian to believe that.
You don’t have to read the Bible to know that.
You don’t even have to walk into a church to feel it.
People from all kinds of backgrounds can look around and agree on at least this much:
Something is off.
Something is broken.
Something is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Because underneath everything we see in the world is this deeper ache — this grief — this brutal honesty that says something isn’t right.
The world is dangerous.
People are wounded.
And simply survival doesn’t fix the deeper problem.
Deep down, everyone senses the same thing:
Something is wrong with the world.
You see it in everyday life.
Cancer.
Funerals.
Divorce papers.
Kids who can’t sleep at night wondering if their life even matters.
Parents who don’t know how to hold their family together.
Something is wrong with the world.
You’ve felt it when you watch the news.
You’ve felt it when you get a phone call that changes everything.
You’ve felt it standing in a hospital room.
You’ve felt it at a graveside.
We all know something isn’t right.
And humanity has spent a long time trying to explain it.
Some people say the problem is education.
Others say politics.
Some say bad systems.
Bad parenting.
Trauma.
Oppression.
Some believe if we could just get the right laws, the right leaders, the right technology, the right therapy, the right movement, the right revolution — maybe then we could finally fix what’s broken.
And listen — some of those things matter.
They really do.
But none of them can get all the way down to the root.
Because the problem is deeper than systems.
Deeper than structures.
Deeper than headlines.
Deeper than politics.
Deeper than culture.
And that’s where Genesis 3 begins pressing on us.
Because I believe it tells us something else.
Something is wrong with us, too.
It’s easy to talk about what’s wrong with the world. Easy to point at broken systems, broken politics, broken culture. But the Bible doesn’t let us stay out there very long. Genesis 3 starts pulling the camera closer. Closer than the headlines. Closer than the chaos. Closer than the culture.
All the way to the human heart. I see it in myself.
I see it in the way I look for identity. If I’m being really honest, my sense of value is more fragile than I want to admit. It starts depending on whether people like me, whether they respect me, whether they think I did a good job. If people are happy with me, I feel good. If they’re not, my whole mood shifts. That’s a shaky place to build a life.
I see it in my cynicism. How quickly I assume the worst about people. How easily I critique instead of showing compassion. How tempting it is to comment on everyone else’s brokenness while ignoring my own.
And I see it in the deeper places. Pride. Selfishness. The quiet belief that my way would probably work better than God’s — if I were just left alone to run things.
The fracture running through the world runs through me too.
You know what it’s like to say something and immediately wish you could take it back. To promise yourself you’re going to change, only to find yourself back in the same pattern again.
Maybe it shows up as anxiety that never quite lets you rest. Maybe as jealousy when someone else gets the recognition you feel like you deserved. Maybe as the quiet, exhausting pressure to prove that your life matters.
The Bible’s diagnosis is uncomfortable. But it is unflinchingly honest.
The problem with the world isn’t just around us.
It’s inside us.
And this is exactly where Genesis 3 takes us.
Not just the story of a world going wrong. The story of a human heart choosing something over God. The moment humanity decided life might work better if we ran things ourselves.
The ripple effects of that moment are still shaping everything.
The brokenness we see around us.
The brokenness we feel inside us.
Genesis 3 shows us where it all began.
If you have your Bible, turn with me to Genesis chapter 3 and let’s look at this together.
At this point, we read the passage together and prayed.
There’s a reality I believe this passage is calling us to wrestle with.
And before I say it, let me acknowledge something. I know this is not necessarily what most of us hope to hear when we walk into church on a Sunday morning. Many of us come in looking for something encouraging—something that brings hope, something that brings joy, something that lifts our spirits before we head back out into a world that already feels heavy.
But before we rush there, I think we need to sit with something for a moment.
And it’s this:
Sin costs everything.
Genesis 3 is the moment the whole story of the Bible turns. Just one chapter earlier everything is good. Not barely working. Not mostly fine. Good. Humanity is walking with God. Adam and Eve trust His word. They delight in His world. There is no shame between them. No fear in their hearts. No hiding from God. The world is whole because humanity is living in the presence of the One who made it.
Imagine that world here.
Imagine no fear. No anxiety about the future. No addiction gripping families. No depression stealing joy away. No funerals. No hospital rooms where the doctor walks in with bad news.
Imagine waking up every morning with a heart completely at peace. No shame following you around. No regret whispering in your mind. No fear that if people really knew you, they would walk away. Imagine relationships without suspicion, work without frustration, life without the slow ache of exhaustion that never seems to leave.
That is the world God made.
And then sin happened.
And everything broke.
Shame entered the human heart. Fear entered the human heart. Blame entered human relationships. Death entered the human story.
All of it traces back to this moment.
Sin costs everything.
Now before we go any further, I want to say something out loud because I know how sermons like this can work in our minds.
It’s very easy to hear a message about sin and immediately start thinking about those people out there. The culture out there. The people on the news out there. The people whose lives look more obviously messy than ours.
Please hear me say this, gently, and clearly.
I’m not preaching to those people out there this morning.
I’m preaching to these people in here.
but before that, I’ve had to preach it to myself all week.
And let me say something else that I think we in the church need to wrestle with for a moment.
Sometimes when you’ve been around church long enough… when you’ve been a Christian for years it can become easy to forget just how serious sin actually is.
We start to think of sin as something that belongs mostly to the world out there.
Those people are the sinners.
Those people are the broken ones.
Those people are the problem.
And slowly, without even realizing it, we begin to drift into something dangerous.
We begin to act like we deserve to be here.
Like we deserve God’s grace.
Like we deserve Jesus.
Like somehow we were the kind of people God should save.
But Genesis 3 will not let us believe that lie.
It reminds us that the fracture in the world runs straight through the human heart.
Our hearts.
My heart.
Your heart.
Before Jesus rescued us, we were not the good people.
We were the rebels.
We were the ones who doubted God’s word.
We were the ones who chose our way instead of His.
We were the ones who traded the glory of God for lesser things.
Sin costs everything.
And Genesis 3 shows us exactly how that happens.
I think this passage plays it out in three ways.
The first is this:
Sin doubts God’s word.
Genesis 3 begins with four really important words. “Did God really say?….”
That question is where the fracture begins.
The serpent doesn’t begin with open rebellion. He begins with doubt. He plants a question in Eve’s mind.
“Did God really say…?”
And notice what he does. He subtly twists God’s words. God had given Adam and Eve an entire garden full of abundance. Every tree, every fruit, every good gift they needed to flourish. There was only one boundary.
But Satan reframes it as if God were holding everything back.
“Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree in the garden?”
Do you see the strategy? God’s generosity gets reframed as restriction. God’s protection gets reframed as control. God’s word gets bent just enough to make it look suspicious.
And then the lie grows in verse 4.
“No! You will not die.”
Now the doubt becomes denial.
And underneath that denial is a deeper accusation. Maybe God isn’t telling the truth. Maybe God isn’t good. Maybe life would actually be better if you stopped trusting His word and started trusting your instincts.
That’s how sin begins.
Not first with behavior.
First with doubt.
And church, if we’re honest, that voice still whispers to us today.
Because it’s easy to sit here and nod our heads at Adam and Eve. It’s easy to say, “How could they fall for that?”
But the same question echoes into our lives every single day.
Did God really say we should love our enemies?
That’s Matthew 5:44.
Did God really say we should forgive people who have hurt us?
That’s Colossians 3:13.
Did God really say our lives shouldn’t revolve around money and possessions?
That’s Luke 12:15.
Did God really say we should be generous with what we’ve been given?
That’s 2 Corinthians 9:7.
Did God really say to go and make disciples of all nations?
That’s Matthew 28:19.
And church, here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
Sometimes we don’t outright reject those verses.
We just quietly negotiate with them.
We read them and think, “Surely that doesn’t apply to me in this situation.”
We hear them and think, “Maybe scripture didn’t really mean that literally.”
We see them and think, “I’ll obey that later, when life settles down.”
And every time we do that, we are replaying the same moment that happened in the garden.
“Did God really say…?”
But here’s the tragic irony.
The serpent made it sound like God’s Word was holding Adam and Eve back.
In reality, God’s Word was protecting their joy.
And that’s still true today.
Because the same Bible that confronts our sin is also the Bible that reveals God’s mercy.
God’s Word says our sins can be forgiven.
That’s 1 John 1:9.
God’s Word says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That’s Romans 8:1.
God’s Word says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
That’s Romans 8:38–39.
God’s Word says that through Christ we can be adopted as sons and daughters of God.
That’s Romans 8:15.
Satan wanted them to believe God’s Word was a cage. But God’s Word was always a gift. The voice they doubted was the voice that loved them most.
And once doubt enters the heart…
defiance is never far behind.
Which leads to the second thing sin does in this passage:
Sin defies God’s authority.
Look again at verse 6.
Hear me when I say this.
This story is not about an apple.
Culture loves to reduce Genesis 3 to that. The fall of humanity becomes this strange little story about someone eating the wrong fruit.
But this was never about fruit.
This was about authority.
God had spoken clearly.
God had given Adam and Eve everything they needed to flourish. An entire garden full of abundance. Beauty. Provision. Joy. Life in His presence.
And one command.
One boundary.
One place where they had to decide whether they would trust Him.
And in this moment, they chose something else.
They chose themselves.
Look carefully at the text.
Earlier in the chapter the serpent is talking. He’s whispering doubt. He’s twisting God’s words.
But by the time we reach verse 6, he’s silent.
He doesn’t need to say anything anymore.
The doubt has already taken root.
Now the decision belongs to them.
Eve sees the fruit.
She decides it looks good.
She decides it will give her something she wants.
And she takes it.
And Adam—who the text tells us was with her the whole time—takes it too.
No more questions.
No more temptation.
Just defiance.
And church, if we’re honest, we do the exact same thing.
God speaks with authority in His Word. Not suggestions. Not advice. Authority.
And we defy that authority anyway.
God says our words should build people up.
That’s Ephesians 4:29.
But we will tear down someone in a heartbeat.
God calls us to sexual purity.
That’s 1 Thessalonians 4:3–5.
But we still open tgat website. We linger on the image.
God tells us to be slow to anger.
That’s James 1:19.
But we marinate in outrage—binging on political commentary, feeding our frustration, and letting partisan voices shape our hearts more than the Spirit of God.
God calls His people not to neglect gathering together.
That’s Hebrews 10:25.
But we slowly rearrange our lives in ways that pull us away from the very community God designed to shape our faith.
God calls husbands to love their wives the way Christ loved the church.
That’s Ephesians 5:25.
But instead of sacrificial love, we retreat into work, hobbies, scrolling our phones, or emotional distance while the marriage slowly grows cold.
God calls us to walk by His Spirit.
That’s Galatians 5:16.
But we ignore the quiet prompting of the Spirit when we know we should apologize, make something right, or reach out to someone we’ve wronged.
God says you shouldn’t worship anything but Him.
That’s Exodus 20:3.
But we quietly build our lives around other gods—our politics, our careers, our comfort, our reputation, even our kids’ success—and we give them our attention, our loyalty, and our energy as if they deserve the place that belongs to God alone.
And every time we make those choices, we are replaying the same moment that happened in the garden.
God speaks.
And we decide.
God commands.
And we negotiate.
God warns.
And we take the fruit anyway.
Because the deepest problem in the human heart is not just that we break God’s rules.
It’s that we want God’s place.
Genesis 3 is the moment humanity decided it would rather rule itself than trust the God who made it.
And if we’re really honest, the question underneath all of our sin is the same question underneath theirs:
Who is actually in charge of my life?
Is it God?
Or is it me?
Because if Jesus is Lord, then God’s word gets the final say.
His authority outranks my feelings.
His commands outrank my preferences.
His voice outranks every other voice in my life.
But when we knowingly choose our way over His…
we are repeating the same rebellion that began in Genesis 3.
And that’s why what happens next in this chapter is so devastating.
Because once sin defies God’s authority…
Sin forfeits God’s presence.
Church, we need to sit here for a moment. We need to feel the weight of this.
Our sin is not a small mistake.
Our Sin is not a personality flaw.
Our Sin is not just a bad habit.
Our Sin is rebellion against the God who made us.
Sin is cosmic treason.
Sin is humanity looking at the Creator of the universe and saying, “I would rather rule my life than trust You.”
And the Bible does not soften that reality.
Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Isaiah 59:2 says, “Your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God.”
James 4:4 says that friendship with the world makes us enemies of God.
Enemies.
Not neutral.
Not distant.
Enemies.
Do you know that? Do you believe that?
That is the seriousness of sin.
And Genesis 3 shows us what sin does.
Sin brings shame.
Sin brings fear.
Sin fractures relationships.
Sin corrupts our hearts.
Sin distorts everything God made good.
The moment Adam and Eve eat the fruit, their eyes are opened and shame floods their hearts. The innocence that once defined their relationship with God is gone.
So they sew fig leaves together to cover themselves.
And then they hear something.
They hear the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.
And instead of running toward Him…
they hide.
The presence of God, which once meant joy and life and peace, now terrifies them.
Because that’s what sin does.
Sin makes us run from the God we were created to know.
And then comes one of the most haunting questions in all of Scripture.
Genesis 3:9 says,
“So the LORD God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”
Now church, understand something.
God is not asking for directions.
This question is not about geography.
It is about reality.
“Where are you?”
Where are you now that you have doubted My Word?
Where are you now that you have defied My authority?
Where are you now that sin has entered your heart?
Where are you now that you are hiding from the very God who gave you life?
It is the cry of a holy God confronting a fallen humanity.
And the answer is devastating.
Humanity is no longer walking with God.
Humanity is hiding.
And church, sin always leads there.
Sin always leads away from the presence of God.
Adam and Eve are eventually driven out of the garden.
And from that moment forward, the entire human story unfolds east of Eden.
A world marked by pain.
A world marked by broken families.
A world marked by violence.
A world marked by death.
Because sin spreads like poison through everything God made good.
Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.”
Death in our bodies.
Death in our relationships.
Death in our souls.
And if that separation from God continues into eternity, the Bible says the result is hell — eternal separation from the presence of God.
Sin begins by doubting God’s Word.
It grows by defying God’s authority.
And it ends by forfeiting God’s presence.
That is the cost.
Sin costs everything.
And that is the weight we were meant to feel in this room today.
Because the gospel does not make sense until the problem is devastating enough to need it.
No amount of effort gets us back through that gate. No amount of progress. No amount of religion. No amount of trying harder or being better or cleaning ourselves up.
The exile is still real.
Sin separates us from the presence of the God who made us.
Which means if we are ever going to come home —
God is going to have to come get us.
And church —
that is exactly what He did.
Right in the rubble of everything falling apart — God speaks again.
Not to condemn.
Not to abandon.
To promise.
Verse 15. God turns to the serpent and says:
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
God is announcing, right here in the wreckage, that this is not the end of the story. That the serpent will not win. That one day, a descendant of the woman will come — and He will deal with the enemy that brought this destruction into the world.
He will crush him.
But the promise has a shadow in it.
The One who comes to crush the serpent will not escape unharmed. He will be wounded in the process. There is a cost embedded in the very first promise of redemption.
The rest of the Bible is the unfolding of that promise. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Only two of them describe the world before sin entered it. The other 1,187 chapters tell the story of God restoring what was broken.
From Abraham to Moses. From the Passover lamb to the Temple sacrifices. From Isaiah crying out “He was pierced for our transgressions” — to the stable in Bethlehem — to the banks of the Jordan — to a garden in Gethsemane — to a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.
And every step of the way, the story is building toward the same moment.
The moment the promise is kept.
Sin costs everything.
Jesus paid everything.
Where Adam failed, Jesus obeyed.
Adam stood in a garden of Eden surrounded by abundance, in the presence of God — and chose himself.
Jesus stood in a garden of Gethsemane — surrounded by darkness, feeling the full weight of what was coming — and chose the Father.
“Not my will, but Yours.”
Where we doubted God’s Word, Jesus trusted it completely.
Where we defied God’s authority, Jesus submitted to it — even to death.
Where our sin drove humanity into exile and shame, Jesus stepped into the exile voluntarily.
He became what we became.
He entered the brokenness we caused.
He took on the flesh that carries the curse.
And He walked it all the way to a cross.
Church, I need you to see the cross in Genesis 3.
Adam and Eve reach for the fruit — trying to become like God, trying to seize what wasn’t theirs, trying to take power that didn’t belong to them.
Jesus — who is God — does the opposite.
Philippians 2 says He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. He emptied Himself. He took on the form of a servant. He humbled himself.
Even to death. Even death on a cross.
Adam and Eve hide behind trees, covered in shame, desperately trying to cover what they had done.
Jesus hangs on a tree — exposed, shamed, uncovered — absorbing everything we tried to hide.
Adam and Eve hear the sound of God walking in the garden and run from Him.
Jesus, in the moment of greatest agony, cries out to Him — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — bearing the full weight of separation from the Father so that we would never have to.
The curse that began in Genesis 3 landed — fully, completely, finally — on the Son of God.
The shame that entered the garden — fell on Him.
The exile we deserved — He entered.
The death our rebellion earned — He died.
For us.
He was pierced because of our rebellion. Crushed because of our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him. And by His wounds — we are healed.
Pierced. Crushed. For us.
Church, this is not sentimental love.
This is not a God who looks at your mess from a safe distance and says, “I believe in you.”
This is a God who looks at your mess — your rebellion, your shame, your hiding, your defiance, your exile — and says, “I will go there Myself.”
This is the Son of God taking on your condemnation.
Absorbing your wrath.
Bearing your curse.
Paying the price you could never afford, carrying a weight you were never designed to carry.
Why?
Not because you cleaned yourself up first.
Not because you got your life together.
Not because you were the kind of person God should save.
“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners — Christ died for us.”
While we were hiding in the trees.
While we were rebels and enemies and exiles.
He came for us anyway.
Sin costs everything.
Do not let that truth leave you before the next truth lands.
But Jesus paid everything.
Every ounce of shame sin produced — He absorbed.
Every debt our rebellion created — He canceled.
Every wall our sin erected between us and God — He tore down.
The question “Where are you?” — that haunting, echoing question — now has an answer.
You are in Christ.
And in Christ, there is no condemnation.
You are not in exile.
You are not hiding.
You are not covered in shame.
You are adopted.
Brought back into the presence of the God who made you, by the Son of God who paid for you.
That is the gospel.
In the first garden, humanity was cast out.
Driven from the presence of God, east of Eden, with no way back.
But there is another garden in your Bible in John Chapter 20.
It’s early in the morning. The sun hasn’t fully risen. And a woman named Mary is standing outside a tomb, weeping.
Everything she had believed in was gone. The One she had followed, the One she had trusted, the One she had staked her entire life on — was dead.
Hope wasn’t just wounded.
Hope was buried.
And she’s standing there in a garden, alone, with nothing left.
And then someone speaks to her.
“Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
And church — I need you to hear that question.
Because the first time God asked a question in a garden, it was this:
“Where are you?”
It was a question of judgment. A question that exposed the rebellion, the hiding, the shame, the exile.
But this question is different.
“Who is it you are looking for?”
It’s not accusation. It’s invitation.
And then He says her name.
“Mary.”
One word.
And she knows.
This is the One the first promise was always about.
This is the seed of the woman who crushed the serpent’s head.
This is the One who entered the exile, bore the curse, died the death — and walked out of the grave on the other side.
And He is standing in a garden, saying her name, and calling her home.
Church, that is the gospel.
Two gardens.
In the first garden, humanity hid from God — and God asked, “Where are you?”
In the second garden, God came looking — and asked, “Who are you looking for?”
In the first garden, sin cost everything.
In the second garden, Jesus had already paid everything.
And He is still doing the same thing today.
He is walking into the gardens of our hiding — our shame, our exile, our brokenness — and He is saying our names.
Calling us back.
Not because we cleaned ourselves up.
Not because we found our way home on our own.
But because He came to find us.
So here’s the only response that makes sense.
Turn to Jesus.
Turn from trusting yourself and turn toward the One who is trustworthy.
Turn from running and turn toward the God who is already running toward you.
Turn from hiding in the fig leaves of your own making and let Him clothe you — the way He clothed Adam and Eve in the garden, at a cost, with a covering that only He could provide.
The application of Genesis 3 is not try harder.
It is not do better.
It is not be less like them.
It is this:
Turn to Jesus.
Because there is no other way back to God.
No philosophy, no religion, no amount of self-improvement can undo what happened in Genesis 3.
Only Jesus can bring us home.
He is the answer to the oldest problem in the human story.
He is the fulfillment of the oldest promise in the Bible.
He is standing in your garden, saying your name, and asking — not Where are you? — but Who are you looking for?
And the answer, church — the only answer that fixes what is broken, heals what is fractured, and brings us home — is Jesus.
Let’s pray.