Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD, USA
www.mycrossway.org
View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118
We are now coming to the closing verses of Chapter 3. We started this journey in July with our series, “Beginnings.” As we conclude this series, I hope you have drawn a more deep appreciation of the significance of God’s Word, especially when it comes to creation as it relates to our own redemption and salvation in Jesus Christ. With that in mind, I want to make a few more comments before we move into the text. We’re going to touch on some sensitive topics today and in the new year as it relates to our world. I’ve studied prophecy all of my Christian life, as I know many of you have as well. Never before have we witnessed our world the way it is today.
Where in history have you ever witnessed the entire world, as almost as if it has been orchestrated, to the point where the world responded to a situation like this puffed-up pandemic? Where? Never! Just this week I was reading an article of a young boy who was bribed to get the jab, without his parent’s consent for some pizza. The LAUSD has also taken it upon themselves to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all children over the age of 12. They must receive the jab before January 10, 2022 or children will be forced into virtual learning and blocked from entering campus. The district follows a "safe schools to safe steps incentive program" that is meant to ensure measures are set for vaccinated students to get prizes. Think about this. Would you in 2019 believe what we are witnessing like the lockdowns, surrender of rights, schools indoctrinating our kids, parents being federally investigated and arrested for speaking out, quarantine camps, riots, forced injections, pastors being arrested, deceptions, communication control, and the control of global powers like we’ve never seen before.
The prophetic clock is moving at such a dizzying rate, it is almost hard to keep up with everything that is happening. I heard a pastor tell his congregation that someone asked him why he doesn’t talk about the Middle East as much as these other things. Think about it. It’s easy to talk about these things that are happening somewhere far away. But it’s a whole different ballgame when it’s happening right here and you are the center of it. Christians that only want sugar-coated messages and feel-good worship will have a hard time following God’s will and living for Him. We must know God’s Word and how it relates to us and the world around us.
What if I told you that everything going on today is part of God’s plan? Do you know that Satan is not in control? Do you think that any of this has caught God off-guard? No. It hasn’t. God is still in control. There are times when God’s love is tough love. Everything happening, however, is a part of God’s ultimate victory. In fact, Genesis 3 and specifically verses 20-24 are the commencement of the plan of God that is coming to fruition before our eyes.
Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. (Proverbs 19:21)
But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. (1 Corinthians 2:7)
What is in the verses we are about to study is part of Christ woven throughout the Old Testament. If you remember from our previous weeks, Chapter 3 is the resultant judgment on the serpent, woman, and man for their rebellion against God’s command. And even before His judgment on the Woman and Man, while the Lord God was imposing judgment against Satan, God was providing words of hope and redemption for the man and woman. Then judgment is handed down to the Woman, and then the man. In each case, God’s grace abounds in His righteous judgment. In God’s judgment, there is provision and mercy. What we find now in this little section of Scripture today is nothing more than amazing. In these 4 verses, we have the necessary elements for salvation. So as soon as man falls, God sets in motion the means of redemption. Let’s read them together:
20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:20–24)
1. Salvation Requires Faith
The first element required for our Salvation is Faith. The Gospel is a message of God providing our salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone. There is nothing you can add or do to receive the gift of Salvation. Paul makes this clear: Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” and again Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,” We are not saved by our works. Anytime anyone adds works to the message of the Gospel, the Bible makes it clear they are not of God. Whether it be good deeds, giving money, religious ceremony or penitence, church attendance, praying to saints, and so on. All of these things are false doctrine and false gospels.
Now you ask, what about Adam and Eve since Jesus had not come yet. When Adam and Eve were first in the garden, they believed in God. They trusted God and they believed what God said and thereby they were in communion with God. Then along came the serpent and the serpent told them lies about God: that God was flawed, that God was defective, that God was jealous, and God didn’t want them to know good and evil. The moment they stopped believing God and started believing Satan, they were thrown into the depravity of sin without any hope apart from God’s intervention.
Redemption requires repentance and repentance requires faith. The kind of faith that surrenders our own will and comes back to God. What are you clinging to in faith in your life today that you need to give back to God? Anything we put before God in our lives is idolatry. And idolatry is not limited to evil passions. Idols can also be "good" things that we've made "ultimate" things. They may include our children, spouse, physical attractiveness, money, job, or friendships. We may look to money or comforts to fill a space which they cannot fill. All of these things are not inherently evil, but they become a problem when we begin to believe that they satisfy us more than God. This is what happened with Adam and Eve with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
But something happens in Verse 20 with Adam. Gen 3:20 “20 The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” The meaning of Eve means “to live; to give life.” Do you see the shift here? She goes from eating the fruit and introducing sin and death to being named by Adam and “to live” because she is not the mother of all living. What happened?
In Gen 3:15 God said,“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.” Adam heard God’s word and believed God and put his faith in God’s Word as truth. He know that this was prophetic and through Eve God would fulfill this prophecy. The very fact that Adam names his wife “to live” is affirmation that he believes the promise of verse 15. He believes that there will be a seed from the woman who will crush the head of the serpent. The victory over Satan, the victory over sin, the victory over death will come through the seed of the woman because she was the mother of all the living.
2. Salvation Requires Atonement
Salvation also requires atonement. We move from man’s response to God’s provision. Gen 3:21 “21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Once Adam responds in faith, the next thing that happens is that God clothes them. This is an act of grace. Instead of killing them, God covers them. Now, what is happening here?
As Adam and Eve were in the Garden, Gen 2:25 tells us “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” When sin entered in, Gen 3:7 says “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” They did this because all of a sudden they are attempting to cover their shame. We do this all the time. We lie, we put on a front, we look to money or status to bolster our egos, or we measure ourselves against others, we may turn to substance abuse, eating disorders, pornography, or anything else we can find to cover our woundedness.
The point is our attempts to cover our shame are futile and inadequate. Adam and Eve felt shame for the first time and God reinforces that by making permanent garments out of animal hide to clothe them. God provides for man’s physical clothing and also covers them spiritually. The entire work of salvation is foreshadowed here. God doesn’t find and sheer a sheep. He covered them with the skin of the animal. This means that for the first time, an animal’s life was sacrificed. God clothes the naked sinner and there is no longer shame in your life for your sins.
Rom 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
This introduces for the first time in Scripture the matter of atonement or covering of the sinner through the death of an innocent substitute. God chose the animal; God killed the animal; God took the skin of the animal and covered the sinners. This is the first death in the world. What a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God who was also slain by God.
3. Salvation Requires God’s Security
This brings me to the third element required for Salvation, God’s security. It is God who made the promise to Adam and Eve of redemption in Genesis 3:15. Nobody, not anyone forced God or coerced God into it. There was no bargaining from Adam and Eve to convince God. God made the promise. God makes the atonement. God covers them. This is all the work of God. But now look at Gen 3:22 “22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
I want you to see this isn’t some fear of God that somehow man or Satan is going to succeed in their diabolical plan for immortality. That’s what I always thought. This is yet another act of Grace and another act of Mercy. You see, man now has the knowledge of good and evil and can, in their minds, determine the difference between good and evil and it is evil that will drive them and consume them.
God says, there is a problem, because, “Man might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” Why would is that a problem? Because he’d be eternally evil. He knows the reality of death, the finality of death, the horror of death; and he’s going to be tempted to avoid death. Do you see God’s wisdom, His grace, and His provision in this?
O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. (Psalm 97:10)
4. Salvation Requires Hope
24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24)
God expels man out of the garden permanently. He appoints angels with flaming swords to guard the entrance. Notice God expels them to the east so that every time Adam sees a sunset he is reminded of the paradise that was lost. From here, their suffering expanding and suffering continues to expand. This world is not our home. Heaven is our great and glorious hope.
“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” (1 John 3:3)
“16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (1 Thess 4:16-18)
Why would God who loves us and forgave us to live in hope for something yet to come? Because hope is the perfect ground of our faith that strengthens the most vulnerable areas of spirituality. There are days you will have to make some very difficult choices and hope will set the compass of your heart.
That’s the love of God. So committed to our redemption that He cares more for what we need instead of what we want. Faith, Atonement, Security, and Hope. We see those in Genesis 3 and as God clothed Adam and Eve through the first sacrifice, we know for certain He sacrificed again to cover our sins completely. Except for this time, it wasn’t an animal who would pay the price for sin, it was His only Son, Jesus. Will you come to him today?
