Artificial Covering
How many people can say that they have found themselves in places, and you wonder how in the world did I get here? What brought me here? What presented me to be here? Sometimes people take us to places that we have never been to, or sometimes they take us to places that we have no business going to.
What happens is when a person takes us to a place that we do not belong, the garment of praise, which is given to us by God, becomes a spirit of heaviness. See you can only carry what your fit to carry.
The church often wears artificial clothing. We may cloth ourselves on the outside and we appear to look dignified and we look good, but the inside is raw. The inside is shameful, the inside is discouraged, it is hurting the inside is sinful. See often clothing has a tendency of dressing up guilt. Far too may believers function today with an artificial covering.
In Genesis 3:1-7 it says, "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, (God did not say you shall not touch it) lest you die. (God did not say lest you die), “He said you shall surely die. Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. (Notice that it was the devil that said you shall not surely die, because he knows the word too.) For God knows that in the day 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, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. (Adam was supposed to be protecting his wife.) Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings."
I want you to know that the fig leaves they used to cover their nakedness came from the very tree that they had been prohibited to eat from. This being the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not only did they eat of the tree that they were not supposed to eat from, but also they were going to get themselves dressed up with the same tree leaves that God told them not to eat. Fig leaves come from places and often people we often times we don’t need to be with nor visit.
Shame often lets us compromise our worth. Shame is a painful thing, because it is often caused by our own guilt. Believers, when you have this guilt, then you are going to wind up in some places with that painful thing, for instance that shame that begins to work inside of you. Guilt will come any time that we break a law, or any time that we break a commandment. It is best known to the Christians as the Holy Spirit that begins to give us the warning to things that we should do or ought not do.
Have you ever confronted finding yourselves contemplating in the middle of error and temptation. Sometimes you begin to observe...I can do this or I could do that. All I have to do is just try to sign this check like them; who is going to know, it is only three hundred dollars. I have petty cash, I can take twenty or thirty dollars nobody will miss it. I’m the one who does all the tallying. I do all the spending, who will ever know?, or how about So you find yourself in different places where it is so easy for you to commit error.
I want you to watch Eve for a moment. See it was obvious that she was familiar with satan, and I’m going to tell you why I believe that she was familiar with him. It was because she was not afraid to speak to him and to have dialogged with him. So I believe that somewhere along the line she had spoken to him before and that there was some kind of conversation, because it was all right to communicate until he confused her to believe that God was hiding something from her. It was all right until he began to prepare a scheme against her and her husband. At times it’s not good that you know everything. Most often it is best that we do walk by faith and not by sight. Who knows of her dialogged from before that was spoken with him? Who knows how he knew her? He could have known her fears.
There was a time of innocence in Eve and a time of innocence in Adam. Just to show you how wicked the enemy is the enemy is he came after children in the garden. You don’t see it, but I’m going to give you a little bit of a picture. They were innocent people and here comes the serpent creeping to destroy the innocence. She was a woman born and created with every component in its place, but her maturity was that of a child. Satan went after a child. He is after your children. Protect your children.
The enemy has a preparation in his plan; he always has a preparation in his plan. Could satan have noticed Eve staring at the tree in the past? perhaps. See satan will never make the supreme effort unless first he has prepared the way. You don’t fall into sin suddenly. Sin is planned in the heart, but it is no longer I who do it said Paul, "but sin that dwells in me".
Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? God knows that sin is birth first in the heart, and out of the heart then it sees. Sin does not’t have sight. Sin only has sight when it has already penetrated your heart. Now it’s in your heart, now it gives it vision, now it’s able to see. This is why He said that, I the Lord search the heart. Not only does he search the heart, but He also tests the mind.
You can artificially cover yourself behind someone or something, because you have some uncertain strength and you may not know how things are functioning. You may hide yourself behind work and not face certain issues at home. You may have to be covered artificially in your church knowing that there is not an intended purpose for that ministry, knowing that there is something wrong happening at that church, but yet your covering yourself building those relationships that create other issues in your life. There may be false comfort by admitting, oh I have a pastor, I have a boss, I have a husband and I have friends, I have this and I have that and in reality your walking around completely artificial. There are relations that women and men dread. Some despise to come home to their so called covering. Some even thought of being with someone else. The enemy will put scenes in your mind of adultery, simmering inside of you. The sin of adultery does not’t need any action. Thre Word of God does not give all kinds of explanation, but it does say clearly; “but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Often you disguise your covering and all it does is camouflage the wrong; covering the sin by making it seem less visible or even suspicious. Anything that is pretentious only hides the truth.
Adam and Eve lived in a time of innocence. It was called the Dispensation of Innocence. They were absent from sin, the presence of God was the only thing that they knew. They had no conscience; they did not know what was good or bad. God looked at Adam and He looked at satan and He knew why satan was doing it. Eve sinned because she was ignorant, but Adam sinned yet he was aware of what God had said specifically spoken to to Him, Eve was not present. God did not give Eve the report of the message of how to have dominion. God did not speak to Eve, He spoke to Adam.
Adam was on probation and humanity became under condemnation. Nothing can free you from condemnation but the acceptance of Jesus Christ and His blood shed for you. The Bible says, “There is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus,” but it also says in Romans 10:9 “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has risen from the dead, you will be saved.
See the mercy of God was His slight upon them when He removed them from the Garden of Eden. God took two guilty people away because should they have gone and eaten from the tree of life… Hear this! If Adam and Eve would have eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived forever in a sinful state and the redemption plan of God would have been shattered, so God had to take them out of this Garden of Eden and separate them to some other place. If they would have taken and eaten from the first fruit of the tree of life they would have been consumed with righteousness. The total opposite would have happened. In Psalm 62:12 it says, Also to You, O Lord, belongs mercy; for You render to each one according to his work.
