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.’ ”
4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:15-3:19
God is there, creating for a purpose.
Adam & Eve had been given positive commandments: to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth (1:28), to care for it and govern it. They were commanded to eat of all of the fruit of the garden (except one), and of all of the vegetables. Adam is commanded to care for the Garden. Eve is designed to help Adam.
If Adam & Eve had been focused on the positive commands God had given, we might all still be living in a Garden today (not just a “Garden City”). But they were not. They were preoccupied with a negative commandment, the one not to eat the fruit of one tree.
We are often pulled away by temptation simply because we lose our focus on what God has commanded.
Imagine from God’s perspective. God had given so many good commandments, each designed to help humanity live a life of fulfillment and fruitfulness. His negative commandment was, surely, also for this intent. God had not designed humanity for shame, for evil, for destruction, for dissipation. God made humanity with purpose, for good, but they were distracted from that purpose by desire for that one thing which God had told them they could not have.
He gave them freedom to choose.
So God is there, giving purpose
And God is there, giving freedom.
There are two strange responses to this story:
1. To blame God as the One who is culpable for the crimes of the serpent, Eve & Adam.
2. To think of the taking of the fruit of the knowledge of good & evil as a good thing, liberating humanity from the domination of God.
If you do much reading you’ll come across both arguments. The second is so ludicrous that I believe it does not deserve a counter-argument. The first, however, at least has some rational basis.
He is there, He never left them. Though they may have fellowshipped with him only in the cool of the day, He never was absent from them (Psalm 139). He knew they were disobeying. So, why didn’t He intervene? Why didn’t He stop them from doing the thing He had told them not to? Why didn’t He prevent the inevitable consequences of their failure to trust and obey Him? And a related question: Why did God create Satan, knowing he would rebel and even lead angels astray?
As Isaiah describes Satan:
You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. Isaiah 14:13
Why would God allow such a creature in the Garden in the first place?
First of all, in answer to any such question beginning “Why did God . . .” not one of us, and no group of us, is qualified to answer the question. The Bible does, however, make clear that God made us with free will. Pastor Chuck Smith said it this way:
“For love to be meaningful the power of choice must be there. For obedience to be meaningful the power of choice must be there . . . When I choose to love my choice to love becomes meaningful to God. I am not like a robot, where God pushes some button up in heaven and the machinery in my body directs an automatic response “I love you, god”. Not only must there be the power to choose, but God must honor that choice that I make . . . That means I have the ability to choose my destiny, and when I make my choice God respects the choice that I make. If I choose not to be with God He honors that choice. This is why it is so ridiculous to say God sends anybody to hell. He doesn’t. He never has and he never will. Man goes there by his own choice which God respects and honors. If you choose to go to hell, God will respect your choice . . .
God calls on us to make a choice and God seeks to influence our choices. But when you come to the bottom line, it’s your choice. Satan also seeks to influence your choice, but the bottom line is neither God nor satan is able to make the choice for you. You make the choice yourself. God creates us with the ability to choose our own destiny.
Chuck Smith C-2000 series, Genesis 2-3.
This is a frightening responsibility if you think about it. You and I have the ability to choose whether to go to hell or to go to heaven, whether to obey the Creator of the universe or to reject His instructions.
We have freedom, complete freedom.
As Jeff Strite said in his sermon on Genesis 3:
And where did God plant that tree? Smack dab in the middle of the garden.
He didn’t put it at the edge of the garden… or 10 miles away. He put that tree right in the middle of the garden where they’d have to pass by that tree EVERY DAY.
And then it occurred to me…
He put that tree in the middle of the garden where they’d have to pass by it every day.
Every day they pass by that tree.
Every day they have to make a choice – do I obey God or not?
Jeff Strite -Sermoncentral.com
He is there, creating for purpose.
He is there, giving freedom
He is there, seeking the disobedient
. . . the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Luke 19:10
We often feel that when we sin, God hides himself from us. Nothing could be more opposite to the truth. In the Garden, God was seeking, it was Adam & Eve who were hiding.
He is always seeking us, especially when we are living in rebellion against Him. Jesus illustrated this point in a number of parables, the Lost Coin, a lady lost a coin and the whole village rejoiced when she found it. A man lost a sheep, and he rejoiced more for the one when he found it than in the 99 who had not run away. The father of the Prodigal/Lost son rejoiced when his son came home. All of these parables teach us the nature of God, that He is seeking us. We leave Him. We forget about Him. We ignore His instructions, and while we are suffering the consequences of disobedience to God we cry out “Where is God”?
Yet He never leaves us nor forsakes us.
STORY of Chris (from Jeff Strite’s message on Genesis 3, Sermoncentral.com)
He is there, creating purpose.
He is there, giving freedom
He is there, seeking the disobedient
He is there, allowing consequences
Paul said “the wages of sin is death . . .”
God proclaims consequences to each perp:
Adam, will have to sweat and labor and get his hands dirty to bear fruit. It will no longer simply happen by nature.
Eve will have pain in giving birth, and will always be striving with, rather than helping, her husband
The serpent will slither in the ground and will be crushed at some future point by the seed of the woman.
There are consequences for sin.
A carpenter had a rule in his house that if you confessed to something wrong you would always be forgiven. His son disobeyed him, and when he confessed his disobedience, the father first spanked him, then began to explain the reparations he would have to perform as a result. His son said “but dad, you told us when we confess we’ll be forgiven”. The man took him to his wood shop. He gave him a hammer and nails and told him, “Son, drive some nails into this board”. The son did. Then he said “Now, pull the nails out”. He did. The father said, fill in the holes you’ve made, make the board like it was before. The boy sat there for a while, trying to figure out how to fill wood which had been displaced by nails.
“Son”, the father explained, “the nails are like sin. Pulling them out is like forgiveness. But the consequences remain.
God proclaimed the consequences to Adam, Eve, and the serpent. Consequences for sin are built into the fabric of the universe. They are a gift.
What if we sin and there are no consequences for our error? Well, for one, they would have lived on forever in a sinful state, with no hope for redemption.
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
. . . thy seed shall bruise His heel, but He shall crush your head” (Genesis 3:15).
“Years ago, there was a preacher in Boston Massachusetts named S.D. Gordon.
One Sunday he got up into the pulpit and pulled out a rusty, old, beat-up rusty bird cage
First he explained how he had come by the cage. He said that that week he had encountered a boy about 10 years old carrying this cage containing several miserable small birds that the boy had obviously trapped for some reason. Curious, he asked the boy what he was intended to do with them. "I’m going to play with them...have some fun with them." the boy responded.
Gordon thought about that for a moment - then asked "What will you do with them after that?" "Oh, I have some cats at home, and they like birds" said the boy.
That didn’t set too well with Mr. Gordon, so he asked the boy what he would take for the birds.
Surprised, the boy blurted: "Mister, you don’t want to buy these birds. They’re ugly… They’re just field birds. They don’t sing, or anything."
Nevertheless, the preacher persisted, and soon struck a bargain with the boy for the birds. When the boy was out of sight, he opened the cage and set the birds free.
In the pulpit, Gordon held up the empty cage and then he told another story
He told of how Satan had boasted that he had baited a trap and caught a world full of people. "What are you going to do with them!" Jesus asked him."I’m going to play with them, tease them; make them marry and divorce, and fight and kill one another." Satan replied. "And when you get tired of playing with them, what will you do with them then!" Jesus queried. "Condemn them." Satan answered. ’They’re no good anyway."
Jesus then asked what Satan would take for them.
"You can’t be serious," the devil responded. ’They would just spit on You. They’d hit you and hammer nails into You. They’re no good." "How much?" the Lord asked again.
"All your tears and all your blood; that’s the price." Satan said gleefully.
So Jesus paid the price, took the cage, and opened the door.”
We often read Genesis 3 and speculate if we had been there we might have chosen differently than Adam and Eve and the whole world might be different. . . . as Lancelot proclaimed in Camelot “if I had been the partner of Eve we’d be in Eden still”. But the truth is each of us HAS been there in the Garden, with the opportunity to obey or disobey God, and each of us has chosen as Adam and Eve did, to disobey God. What is unique about Adam and Eve is not their disobedience. It is only that they disobeyed first.
The Apostle John was right when he said
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” 1 John 1:8-10
Adam and Eve are interchangeable with you and me.
But the one character in the story Who is not interchangeable is God. His response is emblematic of how God deals with each of us based on our sin. His nature and His plan are evident.
Come, Desire of nations, come! Fix in us Thy humble home.
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed, bruise in us the serpent’s head;
Adam’s likeness now efface, stamp Thine image in its place;
Second Adam from above, reinstate us in Thy love.
Hark! the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King.”
