Keith Battle - Adam's Family - Part 6

I’m in a series called The Addams Family; this is part six. So, if you’re all ready, we assign music—hit them with their theme music—so I can remember what I was supposed to be talking about. If you have a Bible, turn to Genesis chapter 3. If you have your own copy or a digital copy of the Bible, Genesis chapter 3 is where we’re going to pick back up here in part six today. I am going to read the first seven verses of that chapter, and I know I’m not going to tell you, but I know if you aren’t at home, you aren’t going to stand up. However, if you’re at one of our campuses right now and you can physically stand up without harm to yourself, join me in standing for the reading of this Word for our homie today. How about that word «homie»? You see how I did that? H-o-m-i-e, amen!

Hey, before I read this, please tell somebody. Let’s do it like this: you can tell someone—make sure you make eye contact—tell somebody near you, «I’m glad you made it to church today.» I’m glad you made it; it’s good to see you! Genesis 3:1, I’m starting to read verse one from the Easy English Bible. It says, «The Lord God made many wild animals, but the snake was the most clever of them all. The snake asked the woman, 'Did God say…' " Let me stop right there. Snakes can’t talk; this is a spirit talking through the snake. We learn later in Scripture that this spiritual influence was demonic; it was Satan. We learn this through Scripture. If you study Scripture globally, you’ll find out that one of Satan’s titles is «the serpent,» but we know his influence was speaking through this snake. All right, so I just didn’t want to make that assumption. I don’t think I’ve said that in this series. So the snake asked the woman, «Did God say you must not eat the fruit from any tree in the garden? Is that really true?»

Verse two, the woman replied, «We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden.» Verse three, «But God said you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden.» Where is it? It’s in the middle of the garden! You must not even touch it; if you do, you will die. You out of here! We don’t even play with that. No, don’t mess with that tree! It ran so many thoughts in my head on that.

Verse four, then the snake said to the woman, «Come on now! It ain’t even all that serious; you ain’t going to die. God knows,» verse five, «that when you eat the fruit from this tree, you will understand things. You will become like God Himself; you will know about good things and evil things.»

Here we go! The woman looked at the fruit on the tree, saw that it would be good to eat. She was like, «I am J-hungry.» For those of you in Los Angeles, «J-hungry» means sort of hungry or kind of hungry; it’s a DMV thing. J-hungry! I think it’s J-hungry. Anyway, not V, just J! J-hungry! You got to know when to just let it go, man. I don’t know what the stuff is.

Okay, so the woman said, «You know it would be good to eat, and it’s beautiful to look at. That looks good!» She wanted to eat it because it would make her become wise, so she took some of the fruit. Put your phone on silent; I know it’s my family. I already know it’s my family. She took some fruit and ate it. Then she gave some of the fruit to her husband, who was with her, and he also ate it. This changed the game! Y’all go back; it says she took some fruit. Wait a minute, y’all remember she said, «If I touch it, I’mma die,» right? You can’t take it without touching it! Well, I’m going to come back to that later; that’s too good—let me come back to that. She gave some of the fruit to her husband; he took it. Let me tell you, when he ate it, this changed the course of history.

Then they understood, verse seven, what they had done. They realized that they were not wearing any clothes, so they took some leaves from fig trees and tied them together to cover their bodies. You may be seated. I’m going to use the subject today, «Fighting Temptation.» In part five, I used the subject «Temptation» to explain Satan’s strategies around temptation. Satan is very strategic in his workarounds, but those were more principle-based. I went through so much content and so much information that I promised in one of these services I’m going to go back through this material and make it more applicable to our lives.

If you have a seat near you and people are trying to get in, please raise your hand so that people can find a seat. Now, this is so important! What I want to give you today is not just principles; I want to give you practice. I want to give you tools so that we can fight temptation because here’s the truth: everybody’s going to have to deal with temptation, right? Everybody is temptable, and we have to have the tools to fight. So let me go back to part five and talk about the first two strategies. I want to combine them because in verses one and four, we find two strategies that Satan used that we talked about in…