Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Paradise Lost
“Genesis” means “beginnings.” This first book of the Bible introduces us to the beginning of creation and lots of other things. Today we’ll look at “The Fall,” the beginning of sin and all that goes wrong with the world. It would be nice to blame Adam and Eve, our first parents, but if we’re truthful, we all find a way to rebel against God from time to time. G. K. Chesterton put it another way when he said, “There is only one doctrine that can be empirically verified: the doctrine of original sin.” We have all tested it as we have each sinned against God.
But we’ll also see that God is not surprised by the first couple’s fall from grace, nor from ours. Indeed, he has had a solution to our sin problem from the very beginning. In fact, when we look at the story of “Paradise Lost,” we discover something important about God, something important about Satan, and something important ourselves.
First, let’s start with God: we see in this story that God wants to bless us with everything we need, including himself. He told the first man, “Feel free to eat of any tree in the garden of Eden, any tree that is, except one.” Healthy protective love gives boundaries. Some people say, “Why did God even plant that tree of the knowledge of good and evil if he knew Adam and Eve would choose it despite his warning?” From the very beginning, God allowed his children the ability to disobey, for without that, how can one freely obey? And what kind of a relationship would he have with them if he compelled their obedience?
Now compare what God gave them with what he declared off limits: they could enjoy many, many trees with wonderful fruit, but would need to avoid just one tree. The Hebrew conveys very empathically in Genesis 2:16, “You may freely eat;” today we might say, “Eat to your heart’s content.” The New King James Study Bible notes, God gives “permission before restriction.”
We have a generous God. Sometimes we focus only on his restrictions, thinking he holds back all the fun stuff. Yet, the Bible says his commands are not burdensome, but are for our own good. And we’re like the child who sulks because Dad won’t let us play in the road, even though we have a large fenced yard all around us.
Consider all the blessings God gave this first couple. Not only did they have lots of food, they had productive work—to take care of the garden; they had God’s presence as he walked with them in the cool of the day; and they had all this forever, as indicated by the Tree of Life. They had everything they needed. They of all people should have been most grateful. Yet they were not content.
Instead of focusing on what they did have, they focused on the one thing they did not have. Instead of trusting God and his word, they trusted the word of a creature we now know as Satan. The Bible calls him the devil, the father of all lies (John 8:44), the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10). And we see him here, the craftiest of all the creatures, misleading Eve with half-truths and outright lies.
The first thing Satan did was to get Eve to question God’s goodness. He did this by exaggerating God’s boundaries. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Now Eve corrected Satan’s error immediately, but notice how she was now focused on what she did not have instead of what she did have.
Next Satan questioned God’s motives. He said in verse 4 and 5, “You will not certainly die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” He suggested God lied to them out of jealousy that they would become like him. This is ironic, because Adam and Eve were already like God. They carried the image of God within them. In thirsting for all knowledge apart from God, now they would gain some knowledge all right, but it would all be evil knowledge.
Recently we watched a show about Aldrich Ames, the Soviet mole in the CIA back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. One day he reported in fear to his KGB handler, stating he had been ordered to take a polygraph. The Soviet agent assured him he could pass it, that all he needed to do was to couch a little truth within each lie. So that is what he did. And that is what Satan does with us. He feeds us half-truths, or half-lies, just as he did Eve.
The Fall tells us much about God and about Satan, but it also tells us much about ourselves. Like Adam and Eve, we too are susceptible to temptation. Now temptation itself is not sinful. Like the saying goes, “The sin’s not in the bait; it’s in the bite.” But sometimes we set ourselves up unnecessarily. If you play with fire, you’re going to get burned. Like Eve, we stare at the forbidden fruit, we think about how good it will taste, we look at it with lust, we justify how it will make us wiser, we reach out and touch it, and finally we give in to it. 1 John 2:16 describes temptation as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Eve moved through all three.
The story goes that Abel one day asked his father, “Dad, why don’t we live in the Garden of Eden anymore?” And Adam replied, “Son, your mom ate us out of house and home!”
To be fair, Eve sometimes gets a bad rap. Adam is equally to blame, and I’ll show you why. 1 Corinthians 10:13 assures us, for every temptation God will provide a way out, an exit, if we but watch for it. Eve had a way out standing right next to her. Satan had been talking to Eve in the plural, as in “you all,” so it appears Adam was standing there the whole time, but he was silent. Even though God had given him the boundaries, even though he had walked with God in the cool of the day, even though God had given him a helpmate to complete him, Adam stood by, seemingly blinded to what was unfolding before his very eyes. And then he took the fruit from Eve without a word of objection and thus abdicated his leadership role as the first human being.
Which led to a massive problem for the human race: Sin introduced death. Satan questioned whether Adam and Eve would truly die, and you might think he was right, since they weren’t struck by lightning on the spot. But that very moment they began the dying process, sure enough, for sin always leads to death: death of innocence, as they realized they were naked; decaying of relationships, as they covered themselves in shame, blamed each other, and hid from God; death of eternal life, as he banned them from the garden and the Tree of Life; and yes, physical death, as their bodies began to age.
Romans 3:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” The human condition is 100% fatal. And yet, early on, God promised a solution. In Genesis chapter 3, just beyond our passage today, in verse 15 God promises one to come—an offspring of Adam and Eve. The serpent will strike his foot; oh yes, Satan will do all he can to hurt this one to come. Yet this promised Savior will strike the serpent’s head. A foot strike you can survive, but a head strike is fatal. Satan is going down for good, and it’s all predicted right here in the third chapter of the Bible.
The name Adam means “man.” The first man failed. He stood idly by, passively participating in the destruction of the human race. As we read earlier, from Romans 5, verses 12 and 15: “Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned ... How much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many?”
The Bible calls Jesus the second Adam. He came to complete what the first Adam, the first man, could not do. The God-man Jesus came to die in our place, to take all our sin upon him, so that we could be reconciled to a loving God. Paul writes, in verses 18 and 19 of Romans 5, “Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
Jesus reverses the curse. And in the very last chapter of the very last book of the Bible, we find that someday we get to return to the Garden of Eden, except for one important difference: instead of one Tree of Life, now there will be two! A double blessing of God’s eternal life, in fellowship forever with the God who made us and the Son who saved us. God’s plan will be complete.
Let me close with the question God asked Adam and Eve after they sinned and hid from God: “Where are you?” That’s a good question. Of course, God knew where they were, and he knows where we are. But he asks the question to get us to think about it. Where are you with God’s plan to pay for your sin? Are you hiding from God in shame? Are you blaming others for your failures? Or are you throwing yourself at the mercy of a loving God who ensured your sins were paid for on the cross? Let us pray:
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for providing a way to resolve our sin problem. If we are honest, each of us—like our first parents Adam and Eve—have rebelled against you. We have believed the lies of Satan over the truths of your word. And there have been terrible consequences. And yet, you say that Jesus’ blood on the cross can cover all of our sins. Help us to accept Jesus as our Savior, the only one who can set us right. And help us to be grateful for all you give us—especially your forgiveness—and point others to Jesus’ love at work in our life. In his name we ask it, amen.
