Week 1, Day 2: Breaking and Betraying

In this episode of the In the Light podcast (week one, day two), we continue a Lenten journey by pausing to pray and then reflecting on sin as the great problem we’re saved from so we can better see God’s grace. We revisit the four dimensions of sin (breaking God’s commands, betraying relationship with God, siding with God’s enemy, and forfeiting the life God designed), then focus especially on the first two by returning to Genesis 1–2. I explore how God repeatedly calls creation “very good” to define what the good is—God, his creation, and his ways—and how the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not about a “magic tree,” but an opportunity to show trust and allegiance to God rather than shortcut wisdom by rejecting his parenthood. We connect sin to condemnation because God is judge, and we read Romans 5:13–14 to highlight that even before the Law of Moses, God’s command existed and Adam’s disobedience paved the way for sin and death to enter the world. Daniel emphasizes that God’s commands are not arbitrary but flow from his good nature (using examples like lying and adultery), and we discuss how breaking a command is also a betrayal of relationship—rebellion replacing trust. For application, we are invited to give gratitude for where we have experienced God’s good, to confess where we have contributed to what is less than good, and to recognize how sin alienates us from God and opens space for evil to enter. We close by yielding our lives to God again through praying the Lord’s Prayer, asking for God’s will, daily provision, forgiveness, and deliverance from temptation and the evil one.

00:00 Welcome + Setting the Lenten Focus on Sin & Grace

00:33 Pause and Invite the Spirit (Opening Prayer)

01:07 Recap: The Four Dimensions of Sin

01:25 Genesis 1: God Defines ‘The Good’ in Creation

02:19 The Tree Command: Sin as Breaking God’s Law

03:47 Romans 5: Sin, Law, and Death from Adam Onward

04:53 God’s Commands Aren’t Arbitrary—They Flow from His Good Nature

05:50 Sin as Betrayal: Breaking Rules vs Breaking Relationship

07:51 Application: Gratitude for Goodness + Confession of Where We Fall Short

10:34 Yielding Our Lives to God: Praying the Lord’s Prayer

11:15 Closing: The Lord’s Prayer and Amen

Welcome everybody to week one, day

two of the In the Light podcast.

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I'm Nathan.

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And I'm Daniel.

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And we are continuing on with our journey

through this Lenten season talking

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about sin and how it has fractured.

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All of existence.

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Really.

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Yeah.

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And reminder, we're not just talking

about sin for these next seven weeks,

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but we're beginning there because

we need to know we need to know the

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great problem that we're saved from.

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Yeah.

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And as we do, we see more of,

God's wonderful grace toward us.

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Yeah, we do.

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That's for sure.

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So let's begin as we did yesterday

with just a moment of pausing.

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Praying and inviting the spirit to meet

us here, wherever we're at in our day.

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And after that, we'll move into

our time of reflection and then

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application, and then we will

yield our lives to God once again.

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Let's pause together.

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Now

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Alright.

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So yesterday we talked about our great sin

problem and it really has four dimensions.

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It is breaking the commands of God, it

is betraying our relationship with God.

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It is siding with God's enemy

and it's forfeiting the life

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that God designed for us to have.

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sin is not one thing.

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It's many things, maybe the best place

to begin here is actually Genesis one.

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Let's begin at the beginning.

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So God creates everything and then after

he creates six times, he repeats this

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phrase, And God saw that it was very good.

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Now what is he doing here?

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Is he patting himself in the back?

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No.

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Uh, God does not need to validate himself.

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He doesn't need our approval, I

believe the intended purpose of

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this is to tell us, remind us

that this is what the good is.

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God and his creation and his ways

within the creation are the good thing

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for the man and the woman for mankind.

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So God is defining the good

He has given it to them.

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This created world,

their place within that.

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So the good.

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All these things, and for the man

and the woman, then it is embracing

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that role within God's created order.

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That is the good, that gives background

then to this command of God where he

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says, donate from the one tree, the

tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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Now, this is a digression, but I think

the point here was not so much that

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they should not learn good and evil.

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In fact, you see that phrase

used in the Old Testament.

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It's always used of a child learning

right from wrong learning, good from bad

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learning, wisdom from foolishness as they

grow older in maturity, in relationship,

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and learning from their parents.

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But this was a tree that

would shortcut that.

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By rejecting God's ways, God's

parenthood, and his upbringing as it were.

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So God gives him this one command.

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You may eat anything in the

garden except for this one tree.

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Now again, this wasn't a magic tree.

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This was an opportunity for

them to show their trust or lack

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of trust in God to show their

allegiance or the rebellion to God.

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It wasn't a magic tree.

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Didn't have magic fruit.

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It was a tree that gave

them an opportunity.

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So this is the first thing that sin is.

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It is breaking the command of God.

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It is breaking the law, in which he

set the universe, And because God is

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also the rightful judge of all the

earth, breaking his command is not

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simply a little rule that we disregard.

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It's actually something

that brings condemnation.

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Uh, I think you have a passage in Romans,

Nathan, that talks about this, right?

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Yeah.

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Romans five kind of clarifies this

relationship between sin and the

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law and the command of God and.

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It builds off of what we read

yesterday in verse 12, verse 13.

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Paul continues to explain.

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He says to be sure sin was in the

world before the law was given, and

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of course, he's referring to the

law of Moses and then he continues.

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But sin is not charged against

anyone's account where there is no law.

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Nevertheless, death reigned from the

time of Adam to the time of Moses.

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Even over those who did not sin by

breaking a command as Adam did, who

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is the pattern of the one to come?

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So he's going to continue to

explain this idea of death through

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Adam and life through Christ.

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But we see that even before there

was a law, there was this command of

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God and Adam and Eve are the first

ones to break that command of thus.

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Paving the way for this sin

to enter into the world and

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pretty much mess everything up.

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Right?

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And it's also good to highlight here,

the God's commands are not arbitrary.

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They're an expression of his eternal good

nature, and the way that people are to

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respond to that within the constructs

of their individual light situation.

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For Adam and Eve, it was only one.

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Trust me on this.

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Don't eat from that tree.

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Learn from me instead.

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For the people in ancient

Israel, it was the mosaic flaw.

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That was how they were to

show their trust in God.

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And so in each case,

these weren't arbitrary.

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God was giving these things

because he is a good God.

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So all the commands are like that.

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Why is it wrong to lie?

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Because God speaks truth.

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God speaks truth because God is

a God of love who gives us the

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freedom to make right decisions

based upon right information.

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Why is it wrong to commit adultery?

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It's wrong because it hurts someone else

and God in his love is opposed to that.

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God wants that other person's wholeness.

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that illustration there leads

us then to the second part of

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this sin is breaking of the law.

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It's also a betray of the relationship

because these commands are not

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arbitrary rules, but expressions

of God himself and his will for us

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within this world, then we can't

separate the command from the person.

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eve could not have taken the

apple in her hand unless she had

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already rejected God in her heart.

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She looked at God, what God had said and

said, no, I'm choosing not what you said,

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but my own will and opposition to yours.

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So it's betrayal and we can think of that.

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Even in the illustration I mentioned

the command, do not commit adultery.

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All right.

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I would assume, for example,

I'm gonna use you and Abby.

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Hope that's okay.

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All right.

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I'm gonna assume that you would

both view it as, a violation of the

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covenant of your marriage, the rules

of your marriage, as it were, if one

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of you were to commit adultery, but

it would be more than that, right?

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Yeah.

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It would be betraying the relationship.

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Yes, it's a rule, and I have

that in my marriage too.

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Obviously we, so we would stay faithful

to each other as long as we both shall

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live, but the deeper hearted that it's a

rule that protects the relationship, that

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allows that relationship to flourish.

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And in the same way.

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God's commands aren't arbitrary.

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Their expression of who he is

and his nature and how we are

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to rightly respond to that.

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So when Adam and Eve sinned, they didn't

just break a rule, they disregarded their

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relationship with God and put rebellion

in place of trust as the fundamental

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dynamic of the relationship with him.

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And as we explore what sin is and what

it's doing, I think it's important to.

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Camp out there for a minute.

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Yeah.

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That if sin is fundamentally this

disregard for the command of God

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and making the fundamental reality

a broken relationship, it makes

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sense that the state of the world

in our lives are often not good.

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Right.

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Even though God initially said it was

good, and so as we move into a time

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of application, it makes sense to.

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Sit in this and to ask, okay, what

is, what is good and where have I

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experienced that good in my life?

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To give gratitude for that But

then to also ask the question, where

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have I experienced things that don't

measure up to that standard of good?

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Yeah.

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And to bring those before God

and confess them, recognizing

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just as Adam and Eve sinned.

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They're the pattern for us that we

oftentimes choose intentionally and

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unintentionally life apart from God.

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yeah, the New Testament talks in

several places that we have been

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alienated from God because of our sin.

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So that's a relational word.

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It means people who were previously

together in a right relationship

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are now opposed to each other,

and it's because of our sin.

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Sin is not just a rule that we break.

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It's we rejecting God's

ways, not trusting him.

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Be train our, what should be our

relationship of trust with him and doesn't

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it make sense that God, the one from whom

all blessings flow, all goodness comes.

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We see that right there in Untainted

Garden of Genesis one and two.

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When that relationship is

severed, it makes space for

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all of the, bad to enter in.

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Yeah, exactly.

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He sustains us and so we want to.

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Turn from that in repentance, confess,

the ways in which we still see that sin

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present in us and continue to confess.

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We want to follow the commands of God,

not just to follow them, but recognizing

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that they are the way that God has

structured his goodness in the world.

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And so we want life with God.

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And that ultimately comes

from being rid of the sin.

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Yes.

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So let's take a minute to sit in

that and reflect on it in the next

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minute or so, think about how this

truth here applies to your own life.

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And ask yourself, where have

I experienced that goodness?

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And give gratitude to God for that.

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And then ask, how have I contributed to

things that are less than good or sin?

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And bring those before

God and can best die now.

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In this final movement, we

want to yield our lives to God.

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This is likely something that you've.

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Done once when you first decided to

follow Jesus and yield your life to him.

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But it is important to have this be a

regular rhythm that each day we would

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yield our lives in their entirety to God.

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So what we want to do now is do that by

once again, praying the Lord's Prayer.

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which puts him on the throne of our

lives, which asks for his will to be

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done and puts us in a position to receive

both our physical needs as we receive

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daily bread and our spiritual needs as

we ask God to forgive us of our deaths.

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When asked how to pray, Jesus said this.

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This then is how you should pray.

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Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come.

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Your will be done.

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On Earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us today our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts as we

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also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not in into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

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Amen.

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Amen.