The Gateway Sin: Exodus 20:17 - 15th Sunday after Pentecost
Any guess as to the first Adam and Eve committed? It wasn’t stealing; it wasn’t dishonoring God. It was coveting. Shopping in faux style by PeterThoeny on Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 [They] “saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6). Indeed, it was; God made it that way. It isn’t a sin to appreciate beauty. This was the Garden of Eden, after all. But the Tree wasn’t theirs to possess. Even though it was useful, beautiful, and desirable, they had no right to it. The right thing to do was to leave it be and be content with their closeness to God and their enjoyment of Eden. Unfortunately, that’s not what they did. They coveted the fruit of the tree, and then ate it. You could argue that the first sin was the rejection of God’s authority. “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.” They rejected God’s sovereignty by coveting a fruit which they thought would make them like God. They...
