Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD, USA
www.mycrossway.org
View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118
I was reading Erwin Lutzer’s book The Serpent of Paradise, and he tells of an interesting story: There was a construction company that invited various contractors to submit bids for a major building complex. All things being equal, the contractor who submitted the lowest bid would get the job. All bids had to be submitted in secret. On the last day, a contractor walked into the office of the company his bid. To his surprise, the office was empty with the exception of a mahogany desk. Surprisingly there was a competitor’s bid on the desk. Unfortunately, there was a can of soda on the bid and it covered the competitor’s final number. If he could only see that number he could win the multi-million dollar job.
The contractor nervously paced the floor, knowing what was at stake. If he could just move the can for just a second he could see the number. He touched the can but quickly retracted his arm. He glanced around the room one more time, confident that no one was looking, he lifted the can quickly, and glanced at the number. To his shock, when he lifted the can, hundreds of BBs came out of the opened bottom, spilled onto the desk and rolled all over the floor. This was a setup. That contractor experienced the law of unintended consequences. He thought he could control the fallout of his dishonesty. One single act had repercussions he could not have anticipated, the can of soda was not as it appeared.
And that’s exactly what happened to Satan and to Adam and Eve when they set in motion a spiritual avalanche as a result of their sin. They too experienced the law of unintended consequences. Lucifer had no idea of what would be set in motion over his rebellion in heaven. And neither did Adam and Eve have any idea what would be the effect of them succumbing to the temptation.
Sin has consequences. Natural, spiritual, and eternal. Sin violated God’s law. It violated God’s nature. It violated God’s glory. It violated and destroyed paradise. It ruined the heart of Adam and Eve and catapulted the whole human race into continual decline. It gave power to the enemy, because now he had become, the god of this age, But in spite of all of those effects of sin, it’s important to remind you that man’s sin did not and does not threaten God’s sovereignty. Nor did it remove from God his nature of love and grace. Nor did it mean that God has turned His back on His people. Just as our judgment is in God’s hands, so is our redemption. Now let us turn to Genesis chapter 3 and read:
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8 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. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:8–13 ESV)
1. The Confrontation of Sin (vv 8-13)
We open this section with Adam and Eve experiencing the first kiss of death. They have covered themselves with loincloths of fig leaves. They are aware of their sin. It is exposed and magnified. A feeling of dread, impending doom, and guilt have robbed their paradise of peace. Now their reality is compounded by the sound of the Lord as He is walking through the garden and they hide from His presence.
Up to this day, whenever they would have heard God walking in the garden, they would have run to Him. They would have rejoiced at His sounding voice. But now everything is the opposite. Now when they hear the sound of Him walking in the garden, they run away from Him to hide. There is no rush on their part to God, no outburst of love, no cry of confession, no cry of repentance, no seeking of restoration. They hide. Man is still trying to do the impossible, escape from God in God’s own garden. Like Jonah, we get on a ship and flee.
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7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! (Psalm 139:7–8 ESV)
So the Lord God, probably in shining glory, some manifestation of the Shekinah, actually took on the form of a man and was walking in the garden. E.J. Young writes, “God is the infinite one. He is a spirit. In order to reveal Himself to man in an intimate way, He did appear during Old Testament times in human form. Such appearances were called theophanies...” So one of the blessings that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden was intimacy fellowship and conversation with God.
Verse 9 tells us that God is calling out to Adam looking for him. He’s not asking for information. He’s not wandering around saying, “Where are you, Adam?” He knew where Adam was because God is omniscient. What He was really wanting from Adam was for Adam to step forward on his own and confess his sin. It was a compassionate, loving, gracious, merciful God who is by nature a Savior seeking a sinner. Understand this: God seeks the hiding sinner. And it is here we find the first sight of grace and a possibility for reconciliation.
Frankly, had God just killed Adam and Eve, it would have been a righteous execution. There’s nothing in them that elicits from God any deserved kindness. It is just pure grace from God.
Verses 10-13 we find Adam’s reply and the subsequent confession and blame-shifting: Gen 3:10-11 “10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Understand this: man is unable to understand the truth of his fallen condition. That is the mark of depravity. The self-focus and shrinking from God, hiding sin, minimizing sin, are all part of our fallen condition. Rom 3:11 “11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.” We flee from Him. We hide. Worship is intentional, not emotional. We minimize and understate our condition, and overinflate our own righteousness. “Perhaps God is calling you from your hiding today: “Come out of your hiding place, from your self-reproach, your covering, your secrecy, your self-torment, from your vain remorse” (Bonhoeffer).
So God digs a little deeper. Verse 11: “And He said, ‘Who told you you were naked?’” 'Who told you? You’ve been naked since I made you. Who brought this up? Who told you this? Who told you and Eve that you were naked? Where did the shame come from, Adam? How did you all of a sudden decide that you were naked and that this was inappropriate?’ God already knew the answer and they already knew the answer. They had fallen into sin and corruption and the shame and awareness of being naked rose up from inside of them. And now God brings them to the fine point of their condition: rebelliousness and disobedience to His Word. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Blame shifting is the response of the sinner. Responsibility is capitulated, even if partially, to another person or force. Now, look at the responses of Adam and Eve. Nothing has changed since, by the way. Gen 3:12-14
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12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 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; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:12–14 ESV)
That’s what sinners do ultimately. When their whole sinful world collapses in on them, ultimately it’s God’s fault. He made the world this way. He put me in this kind of circumstance. He could have stopped it. “You gave me this woman and now look what she did!” Aren’t you, Adam, the head of the woman? Are you not the one who has dominion over the earth?
Will Rogers once remarked that there are two eras in American history—“the passing of the buffalo and the passing of the buck.” The Metropolitan Insurance Company once listed these among its clients’ excuses: “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished.” “The other car collided with mine without warning me of its intention.”
If you read Adam’s sin through the lens of today’s world, you see the language of victimhood. Do you remember the Menendez brothers who murdered their parents and then asked the court for mercy on the grounds that they were orphans!
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13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:13 ESV)
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8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8–9 ESV)
2. The Curse of Sin (vv. 14-19)
Calvin and Hobbes provided one of the great cartoons of the 1990s because it so perfectly captured the growing no-fault ethos of the decade. The cartoon is mostly a monologue by Calvin, the little boy, to his tiger friend Hobbes. It begins with the two walking along and Calvin musing, “Nothing I do is my fault.” The next frame shows Hobbes scratching his whiskers as Calvin expostulates, “My family is dysfunctional, and my parents won’t empower me! Consequently, I’m not self-actualized!” Then we see Calvin, eyes shut, and arms crossed, doing a poor me: “My behavior is addictive functioning in a disease process of toxic codependency! I need holistic healing and wellness before I’ll accept any responsibility for my actions!” Hobbes responds, “One of us needs to stick his head in a bucket of ice water.” The strip ends with Calvin walking on saying, “I love the culture of victimhood.”
As we already noted sin has left a curse. God’s curse is the absence of His blessings and the fall of Adam and Eve is only one of two places in the Bible where God pronounces a curse (the other being on Cain). There is a greater reality we often fail to see and that is there is hope in the curse. We are not victims, but the recipients of what is justly due.
Man’s sin does not threaten or diminish God’s sovereignty. It only changes how we relate to that sovereignty. Now look briefly at the oracles as a result of the fall:
First of all, there’s a curse in verse 14 on the serpent: Gen 3:14-15 “14 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; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
This is an amazing pronouncement. The serpent was cursed to be a snake because God wanted to remind us of the depravity of sin. Every time you see a snake you should be reminded that the one who was once the anointed cherub, the one who once was the choir director of heaven, the one who was Lucifer’s son of the morning, has allowed rebellion and sin to corrupt him to slithering on the ground and eating dirt. That’s what sin does, doesn’t it?
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42 Whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, any swarming thing that swarms on the ground, you shall not eat, for they are detestable. (Leviticus 11:42 ESV)
When Eve took a bite of that fruit and then gave it to her husband, Satan must have been exhilarated. He must have thought he had victory over God. He may have thought that he had overthrown God. He had exercised dominion over God’s sovereignty and a third of the angels had gone with Him. And now there were only two humans in the world, and they had chosen him over the true God. Could this finally be the triumph of Satan over God?
Well, the answer is, he has not. God is still sovereign and now God pronounces a curse on Satan and His ultimate victory over Satan. Starting in verse 15, “And I will,” [divine and decisive action] “put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.”
Satan’s thought was this: “I’ve turned Adam and Eve, the human race, against God.” And God says, “I’m going to turn the human race against you.” In his judgment, God breaks up the unholy alliance between Satan and the woman. Now you say, wait a minute, how can this be? Man and the culture of this world are decidedly in opposition to God. We are deteriorating into everything ungodly. Where is there enmity between man and Satan?
Look at the rest of verse 15. Gen 3:15
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15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15 ESV)
Now the question I have for you today, is who is “he” that will bruise Satan’s head? What we have here is an astounding gospel prophesy. The first of thousands this Book leads us to know the ultimate victory of Jesus over Satan and sin. Satan may have thought he defeated God by turning the human race against God, but God put in place at this moment the ultimate victory of Jesus, the only son of the Living God, becoming mana and defeating Satan.
Verse 15 should literally read “He shall crush you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.” The heel of the seed of the woman will be bruised. Isaiah says, “He was bruised for our iniquities.” And if you go to the cross you remember Luke 22:52 and 53 says that Jesus confessed that “this is the hour of the power of darkness, this is the hour of the power of darkness.” Satan bruised Him at the cross but that bruise inaugurated the redemption of all these sinners who would love God and hate Satan.
At the same time, the One whose heel was being bruised would crush the head of Satan. The marvelous work of Christ on the cross is the crushing blow on the head of Satan. We aren’t very far into the Scripture until we come to the cross, are we? Christ has already appeared in chapter 1 in the creation. Then we see Him already in chapter 3 as the Redeemer.
What is amazing is that the curse on man hasn’t even been given and hope appears. God delights in mercy. Before He pronounces a curse on man and woman or expels them from the garden, He gives them the promise of salvation. What an amazing promise. What a gracious God. And it is here that the gospel begins. Will you embrace that hope today?
