The Fall
Transcript
Well, all right. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab a Bible. Go to Genesis chapter 3. We're working our way through the book of Genesis.
And we're in Genesis chapter 3. And so far in the book of Genesis, it has been great. Everything is working perfectly. The world is beautiful. The grass is green. The birds chirp.
Everybody's frolicking around naked and happy. And today it's not going to go so well. One of the things that we all collectively agree on, and it doesn't matter kind of your worldview, and it doesn't really matter your approach to faith or your approach to God. It doesn't really matter your understanding of origin. One of the things that we collectively agree on is that this world isn't perfect. That there are things that are broken in it.
There are things that are marred in it. There are things that are wicked. All you have to do is watch the news for a little while. Like if you're at your house and you're like, I'm having a pretty good day. I'd like to be depressed. Just open a news app.
Watch the news for a little while. I know Jimmy Fallon for a little while would do good news. They just had news anchors read made-up good news stories to try to make everybody feel better. So it's like two minutes of them just saying happy things, and it was the weirdest thing to ever see news anchors do. But they'd use their little news anchor voice, and they'd be like, this just in.
Puppies are still cute. And then they would turn to the other camera, and they'd be like, When asked his favorite color, Barack Obama excitedly answered all of them before hugging the questioner. Like it would just do two minutes of like this happy news because that's not what we get. That's not what happens, and it doesn't matter what your belief system is. Everybody can kind of collectively say, no, this isn't how this should work. And then the argument comes not that everything is broken but how to fix it.
That's where we begin politics. That's where we begin these discussions. That's where we have debate is in the answer of how do we fix this. Not that it's broken. Nobody's ever said, we really need to work on this issue. And someone said, I don't even know of those issues at all.
I don't see that. I don't see how hunger is a problem. I don't have a problem. No, we all agree that there's something broken. And so what we're going to see in Genesis is kind of how this unfolds. One of the complaints that happens towards Christianity, and these two complaints happen at the exact same time, and it's kind of interesting, but if you'll listen out for them, you can hear them.
One of the complaints towards Christianity is that it takes a beautiful world. We have this beautiful earth, and everything's nice, and Christians come along and say, no, it's terrible. People are sinful. People are wicked. You're wicked. Like, Christianity is just, like, mad at everybody, and so, like, the world is just, like, happy rainbow place, and Christianity comes by and spray paints garbage on it.
Like, that's kind of a complaint that you'll get. The other side, though, at the exact same time, they'll say that the world is broken and chaotic, and there's death and pain, and Christians come along and just spray paint a little smiley face on it, and we're all like, we're happy, and we have hope. Like, that's, these two complaints are happening at the same time, and the truth is Christianity does 100% say the world is broken, and you are wicked. And if this is your first time hanging out with us, welcome. You're wicked. Intro to Christianity.
You are a sinner. But we also collectively at the same time 100% say, no, the world is beautiful, and it is glorious, and there is hope, and we get to see right now at the very beginning of Scripture where we get that, where that concept comes, that there is beauty and majesty beyond what you understand. There's hope beyond compare, and that we're more depraved and more wicked, and things are more broken than you could believe. So let's pray, and then we'll start reading the text. God, we thank you for this time that we have to study your word. We pray that you would use it to correct us and to train us, to convict us, and to change us.
And we ask for your power through your Holy Spirit to do that today. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so we're going to pick up in Genesis chapter 3, and so far what's happened in Genesis 1 and 2 is that God created everything in Genesis 1. He spoke it into existence. And then we saw that He kind of paused on day 6, and He created humanity in His own image. And then in chapter 2, we see this kind of zoomed-in look of what that looked like and how God created Adam and Eve, and He designed them, and He blessed them, and He surrounded them with everything they needed to flourish and to have joy.
And the last verse of chapter 2 is this, And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. That's where it ended. Now, that's a pretty little picture of marriage. They're in a garden. They have good things to do. Their needs are supplied for, and they're naked and not ashamed.
There's no shame. There's freedom. And some of you think, that sounds awful. And you'll see why in a second, why we can't have that anymore, why that doesn't work the way it's supposed to anymore, why nudist colonies are weird. We're going to get there. But it's a beautiful picture that God began humanity this way.
Chapter 3, verse 1. Now the serpent, it's a snake. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He's sneaky. He's up to something. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Okay, so we've got to understand a little bit what's going on here because this is kind of a weird intro to this story. So it says that of all the animals God made, the serpent was the sneakiest, the craftiest. We're told later in the book of Revelation that this is actually Satan, that he's the ancient serpent. So that Satan has infiltrated God's good garden.
Satan has infiltrated God's good design, and he is now at work against God. And he starts speaking to the woman, and he asks about this tree, and we read about it in chapter 2 and chapter 2, where God says, You may eat of any tree in the garden except for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it, you will die. That's all he said. Don't eat of that tree. So the snake comes along, and he says, Now we've got to pause for a second, because if you're new to this, you may want to go, Bible's cool with talking snakes?
Nobody's batting an eye at that? Like, you want to lean and look at the rest of your row like, y'all cool with that? Like, we're just, we're going to pretend like this isn't weird? A few things on that. One is, the Bible doesn't act like animals just talk. There's a later in the Old Testament where a donkey talks, and that was miraculous, and everybody acted like it was weird.
But God used a donkey to speak was a miracle that he performed. It wasn't like, yeah, animals used to talk. They didn't believe that. So they're having the same response, which is, wait, why is the snake talking to her? But it makes sense that Eve would not have been necessarily surprised or thrown off by this.
And the reason it makes sense is that Eve lives in a world where nothing bad has ever happened. She lives in a world where everyone and everything is to be trusted because there aren't any lies, there aren't any evil, there's no brokenness, there's no pain. So a snake talks to her, and she thinks, neat, I guess. I guess that's what she thinks. She doesn't freak out, but that's, it's the same with where you have to teach a children about strangers. Like, my wife was doing something the other day, and she told my son, he's three now, he's going to be sitting in the room by himself.
She was like, if anybody comes to the door, come get me, don't answer the door. He was like, okay. She was like, not even for the mailman, because he knocks on her door sometimes. And he was like, well, I can let the mailman in. And she was like, no, you can't. He's like, yeah, I know the mailman.
She's like, no, you don't. He's like, yeah, I do. And it's like, no, you do not know him. We're having to like explain to him like, no, no, no, no, you've seen him before, but you don't know him. He's not your friend. He's nice, I guess.
He's the mailman. Don't open the door. Like we have to explain to him. He doesn't get the concept. And so snake starts talking to her. And if a snake started talking to you, you would run away.
You'd have a better reaction. But she didn't because she doesn't understand yet. There's no evil yet that she knows about. Okay. So the serpent says, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
And we know that this is Satan. We do believe that Satan is real and he is at work to undercut what God has done. And we, it's really interesting that we get to see this unfold. And I want to, I want to tag something before we go any further in this story. I want to highlight something for us. There are some people who will try to argue that this is just an allegory.
This is just a little picture of try to give us an understanding of our world. But the Bible does not treat it that way. It treats it as if this is a real event with two real humans, Adam and Eve, who are the original pair that God created. And we believe that there was a literal Adam and Eve that God made. That he designed. The Bible treats it that way.
The New Testament assumes they're real. It treats Adam as a real man. It treats just the way it treats Jesus as a real man. And so we believe that this was a real couple with real events and a real description of what's going on. So the serpent says to her, did God actually say you should not eat of any tree in the garden?
And this is interesting because what he does is he comes along and he says something that's kind of outlandish. He stands next to her, slithers next to her. And then he says, huh. So you're not allowed to eat any of this, which isn't true at all. It's we just told in chapter two that God gave him all the fruit to eat except for one tree. But he does this blanket statement.
He still does this to us today. The enemy comes along and says, huh. So God's just anti love. So God doesn't believe that two people who love each other should have a, huh. So God just doesn't want you to have any fun.
Oh, so God just doesn't want you to be happy. Like he comes along and makes these outlandish statements. It automatically puts us off, off guard on the defense. So here's what she says. We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
Now, God did not say that. He said, don't eat of it. He didn't say, don't touch it. Now we don't know if Adam told her that or if she added it, or if she was confused, we just know that that's not what God said. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
What we're going to get to see this morning as we continue through this passage is how sin works. We're going to get to see how we're tempted, how we respond once we have sinned and how we ought to respond in our sin. And so what he says to her is, you will not surely die. And this is something that the enemy continues to do. He tells us that there will be no judgment. What God said won't happen.
That's not true. You won't actually get in trouble. It's not that bad. You won't die. That was an overstatement. That's not really how that works.
Look at it. He knows. And then he tells her that God's a liar. You'll not die. For God knows when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, some of that is true.
She will be like God, knowing good and evil. But what he's impressing upon her, what he's making her believe is that God is withholding something good from you. Now, of good and evil, which one does she not know anything about yet? Evil. She knows good. God placed her in a garden and it was good.
God brought her and Adam together and said it was good. God ends creation by saying that everything is very good. What has he withheld from her? Evil. So the enemy comes by and he says, he's withholding from you.
But what's he withholding? Evil. No. And so often that is what we have to understand is true about sin. It's true about the things that God steps in and says, you don't want that. It's that he's not withholding good things from us.
He's withholding things that are harmful, things that will destroy us, things that hurt us. And some of you feel the way she feels today. Is God good? Is he withholding from me? Does he really have my best interest in mind? So, verse eight.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And this is how temptation works. We are always sinning visually and mentally prior to sinning actively. So she looks at it and she starts convincing herself. She sees that it's going to taste good. She sees that it looks good, that this fruit is pretty, it's lovely.
And then she starts telling herself what it'll accomplish for her, that it'll make her wise. She completely buys in to what the enemies told her. She's elevated herself to the position of God and she doesn't even know it. You see, what she's done is she's placed herself to where she gets to evaluate whether what God said was true or good or not. C.S. Lewis said that it used to be that we understood as humans that we were the ones on trial before God, that God got to sit in the judge's seat and we stood before him in the dock, which is the place where you would stand to be judged.
And he says, but we flip this and we've put God in the dock and we sit in the judge's seat. That we're the ones who get to decide whether or not he's right. We're the ones that get to evaluate whether or not what he said was true or not. And so she places herself where she is now convincing herself to do this and elevating herself above God. She wants to be like God, forgetting that she was already made in God's image. So she talks herself into it.
And this is what we do. This is how we approach sin. We see something that we want and we start convincing ourselves that it'll be good for us. We see something that we desire and we start talking about, you know, I'd look really nice with that. That would be really good. My granddad was a pastor and I remember him telling this story one time in a sermon.
He said when he was little, his family didn't have a lot of money and he remembers going to school and kids would bring in 10 lunchboxes. And they started bringing those in and they had different colors and he saw them and he really wanted one, but he knew there was no way his family was going to be able to get one. And so he said, he watched the little kids at his lunchbox next to the swings and go get on the swings and start swinging. He saw the lunchbox. And it started to like glow and get bigger. Like this was his window.
This was his moment. So he snuck over there and he says he stood watching the kids swing up in the air, swing back, swing up in the air. And he said he swung in the air and he owned a lunchbox. And he swung back towards the ground and he no longer owned a lunchbox. My granddad, while he swung in the air, didn't own a lunchbox. And when he swung back down, my granddad was the new owner of a beautiful lunchbox.
He had picked it up when he was in the air and started walking off with it. He had seen something and he had begun to convince himself that he needed that. He pictured what it would be like. He knew how much joy it would bring to him, how much life it would bring to him. And any of us who have actively pursued sin, we should know what's about to happen. We should see what happens next.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. Now we should all be shocked. Everybody's jaw should hit the floor with what happens next. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. The text did that on purpose. It's a twist.
They just M. Night Shyamalan'd us. We all assumed Eve is by herself talking to this serpent. And all of a sudden in this moment, she bites and then we're told, and he just almost appears in the story. She hands it to her husband who was with her. What was Adam doing?
I can tell you it was not what he was supposed to be doing. Adam and Eve were in charge over all of creation. Adam was given the role to keep this garden, to guard, to keep it, to defend it. And there's a serpent in here. And we can assume it's okay for the serpent to be there. But as soon as the serpent starts questioning God, Adam and Eve should have said, you don't have a place here anymore.
You're not welcome here anymore. But do y'all want to know what Adam did? And men, do you want to know that we're tempted to do it today? We're told later in 2 Timothy that Eve was deceived, but that Adam was not. She was tricked. Adam wasn't tricked.
He was waiting to see if she would die is my best guess. He just, he was going to see how it went. Did it work out for her? He just kind of put her out in front of him and was like, we'll see. If she dies, I got more ribs. That's my best guess.
He was like, you want to make this decision? We'll see if it works. And husbands still do this. I don't think that's the correct decision. I don't think it's how we should handle our money. But you know what?
Hop out in front. And if it falls apart, I'll stand back here and know I was right. You can take the beating. You can hold the bag. And he let her just, he just waited. She ate.
He was like, is that good? She didn't fall over. Cool. But there was a slight delay on what happened. And all of us who've sinned know this feeling. She gave it to her husband who was with her and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Now the text is assuming that we know what it feels like to be naked in front of people. But we have a clue as to what showed up. See, what we read earlier in the chapter two was that man and the wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now they know they're naked and they're what?
Ashamed. Shame enters the world. And I don't know if you've ever been embarrassed or felt shame but it crawls up the back of your neck and it covers you. I don't know if you've ever been in a moment where you got caught red-handed or you broke something and then your parents show up and you're trying to explain to them that you and you can just tell that your face is it feels like your head has swollen up and you've turned bright red and you know they know you're lying and bees like this is what happened. That they got what they wanted which was the knowledge of good and evil. But it wasn't what they thought it would be.
And for all of us who've convinced ourselves to sin and to pursue something. Sometimes it happens immediately. Sometimes it takes a little while but we always get what we chased after. And it ends up being not what we thought it would be. You see my granddad said that after he began to walk away with his new lunchbox for the first little bit he could just tell how handsome he was and how good he looked. People knew how wealthy he was because he had this nice lunchbox.
And the further he went the more he realized he felt like everybody was looking at him and that lunchbox got heavier and heavier and heavier and the weight of it became unbearable. And he felt like he was exposed. That everyone would know that he was a fraud and everybody would know whose it was and like this was going to fall apart and so he said he walked back while the kid was still on the swing and he went up in the air and he didn't own a lunchbox and when he came back down he did. But this one wasn't as easily returned. So here's what happens to us in our sin.
We are exposed. It sticks to us. We feel it. It's that moment in the dream when you're giving the presentation at work or in front of a class and suddenly you realize in your dream that you don't have any clothes on. This has been imprinted in us that we're exposed and shame covers them. And so here's how they respond and you'll see that this is how we respond that we learned all of our beautiful tricks from them.
It says and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. So fig leaves are just a big leaf so they found some and they covered themselves up. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. This is one of our favorite and first responses to sin. We try to cover it up and we try to hide. I'm going to give you some of the ways that we cover sin up.
One of my favorites has been to promise myself very sincerely that this is the last time I'll ever do that. And I'm an honest person so I believe myself. Okay. Alright. That's a fig leaf. That's all that is.
Okay. You know what? I did sin but you know I'm not ever going to do that again. And I can always tell this is so wicked in my heart because that's in that same moment I'll be saying this. The reason I don't have to tell anybody. The reason I won't have to talk to my community group about this is that this was the last time and it'd be weird to talk to them about the last time I ever did something and I don't need to bring that up and this will be the last time and I promise it'll never happen again and I just try to convince myself but that's all that is is me trying to cover it up.
We try to cover it up with religious activity. I don't know if y'all know this but religion the idea that we can do things that make God love us we can do things to stand before God and say we're presentable all that is is elaborate fancy fig leaves. It's ornate fig leaves. See we're Christians. We believe that we don't come to God and present to Him things that we have done that make us worthy and valuable and lovable. We believe that we were made lovable that we fell into our sin and that Christ had to remake us that He had to die for us and that we present what Christ has done on our behalf to God.
We don't present what we have done but good works and religious activity is a fig leaf. I've been bad I've sinned but now I'm going to be good. Now I'm going to work really hard I'm going to turn over a new leaf. You ever heard that? Just add fig leaf to it. It'll be more biblical.
Turning over a fig leaf. I'm going to be good now. I'm going to behave now. I'm going to sow oh you don't even know my sowing skills are beautiful. I will look so good in these fig leaves. That's what we do.
That's what religious activity is. I'm going to work really hard and I'm going to prove to God that I'm okay because I'm going to make up for all the stuff that I did that was messed up. We hide. Oh man we hide. How many of us are sitting in here today and we have a few things that we've told ourselves you can never tell anybody that. I'll confess some things.
I'll confess some sins but I'm not confessing this one. Everything would fall apart if I did. This one I'll take to the grave. This is the one I'm hiding forever. If I tell people this there's no way I can keep going. There's no way they'll still love me and I just want you all to know that's such a trick.
I want you to understand that when you do that when you're in a community group and you've convinced yourself I don't have to confess this. I'll never tell them this. If they really knew about it they wouldn't really love me. But the problem is you never feel really loved because you know they don't know you. You consistently continue to tell yourself yeah but if they really knew and so we hide it. That's what they did.
They covered themselves in front of each other and then they hid from God which means that God's a little more unbearable in our sin. You ever have a friend it's like I remember in high school when I was walking late to class and you're like hurrying and you're trying to I gotta be and then you see someone else who's in your class and immediately both of you are just like hey cool. This is not so bad to walk in late with somebody. Do you know what I'm saying? So there's some amount of in our sin we can find a little bit of company but not before God.
And so we hide and I just want to ask how's that working for you? How's hiding working for you? Because it doesn't work well for them and God in his grace does something that I hope he is doing for us today. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him where are you?
And I hope God's doing that today. And for some of you who have been hiding who have been running who have tried to make the most elaborate fig leaves I hope that God right now in his grace is saying where are you? That he's calling you out. Some of you have no desire there's a part of you that has no desire to follow Jesus has no desire for any of this stuff. You hear us talk about community groups every week and you're like they sound like they're the worst. Some of you have been to a community group once or twice and you're like I hate this but you keep coming here and I'm praying our hope is that it's because God keeps saying no, no, no, no, no, no.
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? And he said that's Adam I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Now is that true?
Kind of. This is another thing we love to do in our sin. Anybody ever been in a community group and half confess the thing? Just me? Okay, you don't have to raise your hand it's cool. You kind of confess like what he hid because he was naked or because he did the thing that God told him not to do?
Yeah, me and my wife we're just kind of struggling right now I want you to pray for us. You don't say I'm really stressed out at work so when I come home I yell at my children I yell at my wife and then I start drinking just to calm myself down. I do that every day. You say you're struggling and you need some prayer but that's the I hid because I was naked. He doesn't say I'm hiding because you remember that tree you told us not to eat of? We both did and I did and I willfully did it even though I think she was tricked I wasn't and that's why I ran away.
He doesn't say that. It's like a kid you hear a lamp break and you come in the other room and there's a kid there holding the cord and you're like did you break that lamp? And they're like what are lamps? I've never even heard of this. I don't even understand the concept. No, this was I was trying to fix it.
That's what we do. We kind of confess a thing because we know we're supposed to but we have this other part that we hold back or we try to make it sound a little better and we think we're clever. They did this on their own with no help off the cuff and they taught us how. We're going to see the next way that we respond to our sin. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. Just wanted to point out the fig leaves didn't work.
If he had made really good fig leaves he wouldn't be hiding behind a tree. He said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? God does this in an interrogation style but he knows the answers to the questions. the man said here's our next go-to the woman whom you gave to be with me gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Who gets blamed at the very last part of the sentence? I ate. He doesn't say I ate.
He doesn't answer yes I ate. He says the woman whom you gave to me she he's hoping he gets confused by the end of the sentence. She gave me some food we were there there's a snake like he just and how much do we do that? How many of us downplay our sin and we say things like this? Yeah when I was in high school I made some mistakes because I was kind of running with a rough crowd. So they weren't sins and they weren't willful they were mistakes you know like when you spill milk on somebody it was a mistake and it really what me was the rough crowd.
And it really what me was the rough crowd. I wasn't really a part of them I was there when we made the mistakes but I wasn't like how many of us do that? How many of us do this? Yeah we're having some problems but my wife yeah I know I did that but if you knew my parents if you understood what my husband was like how many of us
Elevate ourselves as Eve did to evaluate what God says and then use blaming others and blaming God God I know your word says this and I know it seems clear but I also know that I'm in a circumstance that you probably don't understand and they didn't really understand the circumstance when they wrote this and if people knew what my wife was like people knew what my children were like
People knew what my boss was like if people like if you just it's in us to sin to cover to hide to blame God you're the one who made me like this I love the movie Fiddler on the roof it's a play but I love the movie I haven't seen the play very often and he says Tevye says dear Lord you made many many poor people and I realize
It's no shame to be poor but it's no great honor either and would it have been so terrible if I had a lot of money he kind of looks at God and that's what we do we look at God and we say we know but why not me why am I in this situation why were my parents like that why did my life work out like that why are my children like that and it's this idea that God
Somehow is to blame for our choices and our actions and our sin and we got it from Adam who passed all this down to us then the Lord God said to the woman so God says she gave me the tree and I ate and the Lord God says to the woman what have you done and she does another thing that we do she says
The serpent deceived me and I ate she was deceived she was tricked he tricked me so we blame evil we blame the concept of evil we say yeah well you know the world's a messed up place we're just living in the system so the Lord God said to the serpent and he's about to curse the serpent he's about to curse Adam and Eve
And we're going to notice something in the text they do not immediately die but death enters the world and spiritual death enters the world we notice spiritual death entering the world the moment that the relationship between them is fractured and they have to hide from God they're no longer alive the way they were they're no longer designed the way they were everything's broken and that's how sin works
It takes a good thing and it twists it there is no evil that stands alone there's only evil that corrupts something that God has already made good and so some of us some people maybe want to read this and go hold on a second time out this seems like a very over aggressive heavy handed response to eating some fruit fruit I think death is overkill but the truth is this it wasn't just that they ate fruit
Every sin R.C. Sproul says every sin is an act of treason it doesn't matter how big we deem it that if God is the king of the universe and we decide to have an uprising against him to revolt against his good will revolt against his good design that we want to elevate ourselves to his position that we want to get rid of his decrees that we want to sit in his throne that we want to be
The king over our lives it's treason and that death is an appropriate punishment for traitors for those who would usurp the throne so the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field and on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring you shall bruise your head and you shall bruise
His heel so God curses the serpent and then he says this I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring and we're going to talk about that again in a second but it's kind of this prophecy of what's going to happen and then to the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing pain existed before the fall in small measure it was a helpful thing he says he's going to
Multiply it I have two children my wife recently had a baby he's about six months old I think that came true that he multiplied pain and childbearing it's bad and she was like they gave her drugs we've done some things by God's common grace to kind of fight some of that and then he says your desire shall be contrary to your husband and he shall rule over you or your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you depending on which way they translate
That phrase in your Bible but there's this idea that what was going to be a beautiful kind of marriage dance like this perfectly leading perfectly stepping in time with one another is now broken and there will be pain when it comes to children and there will be pain in relationships and there will be pain between men and women as a result of sin and to Adam he said because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree I have that I made a big board
And I put that up in my house so that anytime my wife tries to tell me anything I point at it it's not true you guys my wife's small but she's fiery so what his point there is not that you shouldn't listen to your wife what his point is that what we were talking about earlier where rather than leading rather than serving rather than defending he put his wife in a position to take the blame and to take the fall and then blamed her because you've listened to the voice of your wife
And have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you you shall not eat of it cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat of the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return death enters the world pain enters the world and we will now survive by scratching and clawing and by the sweat of our face we'll be able to make it until we will have fruitless
Active fight scratch claw tooth and nail to eat by the sweat of our face and then at the end of that we die that that's what we have that's what's happened because of sin and that's the world that we live in where everything is beautiful and good and designed by God and there's so much loveliness and there's so much majesty and that it's so completely marred by sin and our relationships are marred by sin and our relationships
To God are marred by sin and to each other and it's broken apart and that's where we live and that's who we are and then he says this the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them then the Lord God said behold the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life that was also in the middle of the garden and eat and live forever
Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken he drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life so God sends them out of the garden he sends them out they've been removed from the place he made for him their relationship with each other is broken their relationship with him is broken and they're sent now cursed
To try to work and make it and eventually die and this is us and this is where we find ourselves but there are three pictures of the gospel in this text and I want to encourage us the way we want to respond to sin the way you want to respond to sin is you want to use Adam and Eve as a playbook cover hide blame I want to cover I want to hide I want to blame I want to get myself
As separate from this as possible I want to do enough good works to make this go away I want to do my little religious activity I want to do these things so that God will love me that I'll be okay I want to try to make up for it I want nobody to know but I want us to see how we ought to respond to our sin in the back part of this chapter that we just read so he looks at pick back up in verse 14 Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts
Of the field and on your belly you shall go and dust you out shall eat all the days of your life I will put enmity meaning you'll be enemies with between you and the woman between your offspring and her offspring he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel now the New Testament does some interesting stuff with this that he's going to have offspring what we see is that the enemy is going to be destroyed he's going to have his head bruised
Although he's going to harm the one who does this he's going to have his head bruised by a specific and that singular offspring it's not ancestors it's ancestor he says I'll put in between you you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring everywhere in the Bible that a genealogy is done it is done father to father to father to son father to son father to son every once in a while the highlight a female if we know a little bit about their story
Here God says there's going to be a woman who's going to give birth the only person in the Bible and the only person in the world that was born without a father on earth was Jesus so God makes this promise to the enemy I'm going to send someone who's going to crush you the first way we ought to respond to our sin is to acknowledge that we're not the ones who get to beat it you're not the one who's able to overcome this you're not the one who's able to fix the promise fix the problem God has promised
Someone else to do it secondly it says this in the text look at verse 21 and the Lord God made for Adam and Eve and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them God did not look at them and say no no no don't cover yourself stay naked he says I've got a better covering I've got a better covering than what you can accomplish the second thing that we ought to do in our sin is to go to God and expose our sin
So that he can cover it that's what happens in Christ see we're told that everything that we hide gets uncovered everything that we hide gets exposed that on the last day God's going to bring it forth that what we whisper he's going to shout from the rooftops but that everything that we expose everything that we bring to him in our sin he covers and so they had to come to him and they had to remove their fig leaves they had to quit hiding
And let him cover them we're clothed in the new heavens and the new earth by God's glory by Christ's grace lastly then the Lord God said behold the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken he drove out the man at the east of the garden of Eden
He placed the cherubim that's a type of angel and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life the way back to the tree of life is for someone to face the sword of God's wrath the only way to make it back to the tree of life is to face God's wrath and so the way we respond is we admit that we can't fix this problem we expose our sin before God and we place our faith
In Jesus who took the wrath of God on our behalf so that we might re-enter the garden and be given life see Jesus Christ fixes what falls apart here in Genesis chapter 3 and that's our hope it's the only hope we have that we would trust him who died for us and rose again that we might have life Raz and Kelly are going to come back up some of you have been hiding you've been hiding for a long time
Some of you have some actual fig leaves that work they work around other people Adam and Eve could have kept on going with the fig leaf thing until God showed up and some of you that's what you've got you've got acceptable fig leaves for your family for your co-workers for your neighbors but one day you stand before God and everything gets exposed and so I would encourage you to go to God and lay yourself bare to confess your sin
To be open about it to admit that you're wrong and place your faith in Jesus who takes God's wrath on your behalf that you might have life that the way to the tree of life is open again because Jesus Christ went to a cross and took God's wrath on our behalf so in a second Raz is going to play the guitar and give us a little bit of time to just pray to reflect some of us believe in Jesus but we've been hiding we have some things we need to repent of some people need to go grab somebody and talk to them that's in your group
And confess some sin and work some things out and then when you're ready when you've confessed when you've dealt with your relationship with the Lord and with others if you're a Christian in the room we'd invite you to take communion which is where we celebrate that Jesus Christ's body was broken for us that his blood was shed for us and that we have a new covenant with him not based off of our work or our labor or our ability but based off of his and if you're not a Christian in a moment while everybody else is taking communion please just stay where you are
And then we'll have a chance to sing and pray and be dismissed and if you've never placed your faith in Jesus you can't because it's not about your work it's about his so we would encourage you to expose your sin have Christ cover you with his love and his good work and then you may take communion as well let's pray God we thank you for how good you are thank you for the love that you've shown us I pray right now Lord that you would help us feel the weight of our shame
And our guilt and our sin before you that we would not grow comfortable with it that we would not begin to accept it and therefore never get rid of it I pray that we would confess that we would be honest that we would be real about where we are that you might cover us and clean us refresh us and give us life in Jesus name Amen