Always need to be reminded in church, everyone here makes mistakes, fails, does things wrong and imperfectly, every day. Well that's not something to be worried about is it? We do a lot of good things as well. Anyway let's go into this. I want to show something. What I love about the Bible is it's full of glorious mistakes and failures, absolute major mistakes. Look at this in Genesis 3:7-13. Let's see where the blame game started, and you notice in verses 7-13: the eyes of them both were opened. They knew they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings. That's Adam and Eve. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, so they hid themselves. Isn't it interesting, when you know something's wrong, you want to avoid church, avoid fellowship, avoid meetings, anything to avoid feeling uncomfortable, and being reminded you've got something bad going on in your life?
People think: well the only way I can come to God, is if I get my life right. Well that's ridiculous. You come to God because your life isn't right. He accepts you like you are, and says: I'll help you change. You've got to get a handle on this kind of stuff. So notice here: they went and they hid; so hiding, when people are hiding, it means they've got something to be hiding about. They're guilty, and they've failed. It says: they heard the sound of the Lord God, and they hid themselves; and the Lord called to Adam and said: hey, where are you? I like this. God talks real simple. Notice what He says: Where are you? Who told you? Did you eat the fruit of the tree? He just nailed him with three questions. God asked questions, meaning He knows the answers, He's about to nail you, and so what did God say? He said hey, where are you? He said: well I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, I hid myself. Who told you you were naked? Did you eat the fruit of the tree? Now look at this, this is classic. You've got to get this line here. [Laughter] And this is what the man said - I love this line: The woman! [Laughter] See, passed the blame immediately. Now I love this line, the first is the woman. The woman, who You gave to be with me! None of my idea, it's all Your idea You know. You gave her to me to be with me, now what a nuisance that's turned out to be! [Laughter]
He's conveniently overlooked all the wonderful evenings they had together. [Laughter] Forgotten all about that - no, no, no. You, Your idea. I never thought a woman. I named animals, but I didn't think of women. You thought up women. [Laughter] It's all Your fault. Now the problem is, of course, in doing that, he missed his opportunity to have a massive learning experience and grow, and we've all suffered because he did that. You want to really take a note, that the moment you start blaming, you are disempowered, and you reap consequences, and you don't learn a thing. You're going to have to repeat the same thing again. The moment you start blaming, you then - notice when he blamed, God stopped talking. The moment you blame, you have absolved yourself from responsibilities, there's nothing left, than you bear the pain. You face the consequences, so blame game's not a good thing. But notice that the blame thing emerged whenever there was failure.
They say death and taxes are certain in life aren't they? Yeah, absolutely certain you'll die, and you're also certain there's taxes, but also certain there's failure. Failure is inevitable. Failure comes to us day by day. We have mistakes, things go wrong, things don't work out, things we try didn't work out, and we have some measures of success, and we also have failures. It's just part of being in this world, things don't always work out. Notice what it says in 1 John 1:10; If we say we haven't sinned, if we say we have no failures - then we're lying. So when we cannot admit to ourself, that actually we do make mistakes, we do things wrong, and we do it regularly; if we can't say that, then the one that's being deceived, is ourselves. No one else is being deceived by that, so you notice if we say that, then what we're doing is making God a liar, because He says: everyone has sinned. So we have to realise that everyone fails sometime, but what you do from it can be a learning experience, or you can just keep repeating the same failure.