Baring It All

I. Genesis 3 is like cooking an egg you can have it scrambled, poached, steamed, over easy, or the other 100 ways to cook an egg. What I am trying to say is Genesis 3 has been preached just about every way it can be. So to find a new revelation can be difficult.

A. The book of Genesis is a deep book; on the outside it may look like a mere history lesson but contained within the 50 chapters that make up this book are some of the Bible’s deepest types and symbolism that carry over all the way to Revelation. Many of these types can be found here in Genesis 3 with the story of the fall of man.

1. It is here we learn how the enemy uses the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. We get a glimpse of the prophetic announcement of the virgin birth, the battle between God’s Kingdom and Satan’s kingdom. It is here we learn how Christ will suffer a bruised heel but how He will triumphantly crush Satan’s head. It is here that we learn that man cannot cover his sins but that it would take the shedding of blood for our remission. Though man could not stay in the Garden a plan was in motion to get us back in fellowship and communing with God.

B. When we read this story we usually walk away with the knowledge of how we came to be in the state we are in now. It makes since to us when we read early in the Bible to why there is so much pain in the word, why work and child birth are difficult, we now know why the earth travails and groans. Sin not only destroyed a convenient relationship but it turned the world upside down.

1. It is so easy to move forward after reading this chapter everything seems cut and dry. But it was what Adam and Eve did after they sinned that caught my eye, the Bible says, “they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.” I know that this is a type of how man tries to cover his sins and that it will only take the covering of the Lamb of God. But there is something else here; the question I had to ask myself is why fig leaves? Why not papaya or a palm leaf, why even give us such detail; the Lord could have had the writer only say it was an apron made of leaves.

2. In scripture when something is mentioned with added detail, it means that we need to be paying attention. Every jot and tittle, every dotted I and crossed T in scripture is important, not one Word of Scripture is wasted. In scripture we sometimes get the phrasing “a certain … (ex.)” there are no details given we know little about these certain people, places, or things.

a. Such as the boy that gave up his lunch of bread and fish to feed 5000, he is famous but who is he. He could easily be a type of the church, in how it relates to our given. We give our tithe and offering our names are not attached to the money, and though we may never know how it impacts the Kingdom it is still going forth and being used to touch thousands. Our sacrifice of giving may never be revealed here but when we get to heaven we will see that every Sunday when we gave we were feeding thousands. Many times the information is not there because it was not important to the scripture, many times there is some symbolism to it but other times that information just was not needed.

3. But if you look at that story of the feeding of the 5000 in Mark 6 there is a verse that says Mr 6:39 And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. Of all the Gospels only Mark gives us such detail by including that Jesus made them to sit on green grass, but why? The answered is found 5 verses earlier in Mr 6:34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. Now it begins to make since because Jesus said in Joh 10:14 I am the good shepherd, and know my [sheep], and am known of mine. This takes us back to Psalms 23 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. (2) He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. Jesus had them sit in green grass, because only the Shepherd knows how to lead His sheep to a place of provision. There are many verses just like Mark that give us a little extra information to expose an even greater revelation.