God At The Fall Of Humanity Series

Last time we considered the Bible’s teaching that God created everything for a purpose.

This week we see that shame is NOT something humanity was made for, but something we discovered through our disobedience to God.

When we think about the Fall, we always think about it from a human perspective.

We talk about the nature of Satan and how he tempts us.

Surely that’s appropriate. It is good for us to know the strategies of our enemy so we can fight a good fight against his methodologies. Looking from the first of these approaches, at the nature of sin, James Drake sees in this passage five aspects to the nature of sin:

Concerning Sin:

1. There is always a cover-up (7) 2. There is always conviction (8-11)

3. There is always culpability (12-13) 4. There is always a curse (14-19)

5. There is always a cure (15) James Drake – sermoncentral.com

That is a really nice outline for this passage before us this morning, focused on sin. And I think it is appropriate.

This morning I don’t plan to talk about sin or satan much.

If we don’t talk about sin and satan, we usually talk about the nature of humanity-after all, it is called the Fall-it is not the fall of Satan or the fall of God. It is the Fall of Humanity. . . but that name is not in the Bible. It’s just a name we give to this passage, the story of the first temptation and man’s first big failure. Maybe, again, it is good for us to meditate on our human nature and how that is displayed in the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

But I’m not planning to focus on humanity today, except how we humans are related to Someone else.

That Someone is the central character of the entire book of Genesis-the only one maintained from the beginning of the story to the end-God. God is, in fact, the beginning and end of the entire Bible. It begins with Him creating and ends with Him judging as is required because of the Fall and all the Falls that follow. It ends with the re-creation.

This morning I would like to focus on the God of Genesis, and His role in the Fall of humanity. In it we see much which should help us understand our relationship with Him today.

Concerning God in the Garden:

He is there, creating purpose.

He is there, giving freedom

He is there, seeking the disobedient

He is there, allowing consequences

He is there, providing/promising redemption

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”