We are continuing our Dust to Life Series today and are now in Genesis 3. Some theologians consider Genesis 3 to be one of the most important chapters in the Bible because without it, we can’t even begin to understand the darkness that pervades the earth. In other words, after the account of the Fall in this chapter, we can better understand why the world is the way it is today. Not only does it explain human nature and why we aren’t inclined to seek God but it also explains the moral and natural evil that exists in the world. No one can deny the existence of hate crimes, corruption, and wars but why do these exist in so-called civilized societies today? The fall also accounts for pandemics, diseases, cancer, and for earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters that take the lives of innocent people.
Last week we saw how Eve, after engaging with the serpent, began to diminish God’s goodness, to distort His words, and downplay the consequences of disobedience. She opened herself up to the serpent’s viewpoint about who God is and began to doubt, distort, and eventually she and Adam defied God’s Word.
Satan did not fill Eve with a hatred for God but with a longing for something she thought would better meet her needs. She listened to the serpent, they succumbed to the temptation to obtain knowledge apart from God - apart from their relationship with Him. But they found out, to their horror, what God meant by death. This was the life they never expected. St. Basil the Great said, “For God is life, and the deprivation of life is death. Therefore, Adam prepared death for himself through his withdrawal from God.” Realizing the depth of their destructive decision and the wrath it incurred, they felt shame, fear, and guilt.
Gen 3:8-24
8 Now 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 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the livestock, and more than any animal of the field; On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat All the days of your life;15 And I will make enemies Of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
16 To the woman He said,
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
17 Then to Adam He said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; Yet you shall eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
20 Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. 21 And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.
We can see three things taking place here:
? God’s Questions
? The Curse
? God’s Covering
Let’s look at:
1. God’s Questions
In v. 8, the Hebrew brings out that right after they sinned, God showed up in the garden. The Garden of Eden was the special place of God’s presence on earth, as was the tabernacle and temple later in human history. Eden was a prophetic picture of the new Jerusalem where the presence of God will dwell with man forever (Rev 22:15). God came into the Garden like he normally did to meet and teach them, but what should have been a time of joy now brought dread. In v. 9 He called to Adam and asked him this question, “Where are you?” What was God really asking Adam?
This rhetorical question from an omnipresent, omniscient God was obviously not inquiring as to their location but was addressing their cover up, their attempt to hide from Him, and the excuses for disobedience. This question wasn’t meant to condemn but to cause them to confess and repent and to be responsible for their actions. God could have pronounced an immediate judgment on their actions, but He didn’t. Adam answered, “I heard your voice, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
Does this sound familiar? Do we attempt to cover our nakedness and shame, past sins and failures, by keeping up appearances? Shame comes from doing something dishonorable or immoral but can also come from feelings of inadequacy.
What are some things people hide behind to cover their shame? Maybe we hide behind busyness to justify our disobedience to God. Maybe we hide behind perfectionism, good deeds, ministry or superiority, intellectualism, alternative viewpoints, etc. Today’s Zeitgeist uses mass shaming to manipulate, to extort, to guilt people into compliance or to silence them. It has come to the point where Christians are made to feel ashamed of the values they hold and what they believe about Jesus. But here in chapter 3 Adam and Eve felt shame for what they had done against a holy God.
How often do we try to cover our shame when we have acted in a way that goes against what we know is right or when our failure is so obvious. We have probably all had times in our lives that we even tried to escape God’s presence and His people.
God asked two more rhetorical questions: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat? No one had to tell Adam that what he did went against God’s command - Adam knew in his conscience that he had done the very thing God told him not to do and he was guilty. Adam was given responsibility to take care of the garden, but he allowed sin into this beautiful, perfect paradise. Despite the knowledge of his culpability, and the pain it caused, Adam didn’t take responsibility for his own actions or apathy. As one OT scholar said:
In passive self-interest, he observed the tempting of his wife and her eating without even voicing an objection. He was not fooled as she was, but knowingly and willfully listened to her voice and took the fruit (cf. 1 Timothy 2:14).
To evade any accountability, he blames his wife for his sin. “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Remember the first words out of Adam's mouth concerning Eve in chapter 2? He was like, “wow, what a gift from God, she’s perfect!” There was such intimacy—such oneness—such joy. But now fallen Adam would not only blame his wife, but like the serpent diminished God’s goodness. “God you're the one who made her and gave her to me. You're the One to blame.” How often do we blame others for the negative consequences of our own bad decisions? Have we heard other people do this? Does blaming ever solve the problem?
One insurance company posted a claim to show the extent people will go to avoid accountability: “Going to work at 7am this morning I drove out of my driveway straight into a bus. It was not my fault, the bus was 5 minutes early.”
The book of James tells us that we are all responsible for our own actions when under temptation - for our own sin apart from other people’s actions. (1:13-15). We have the power to choose life or death in every situation. Now God turns His attention to Eve in v. 13, and the question He asks her is: “What is this?” (What’s going on?) How is Eve’s answer different from Adam’s?
Like Adam, Eve didn’t take responsibility for her actions, blaming the serpent for her deception and sin but, to her credit, she stopped short of blaming her husband and God.
What’s interesting is that no one admitted any guilt, no one said sorry or forgive me, not to God nor to each other. Eve chose her own path against God’s will and it had devastating consequences.
In v. 14, God now turns His attention to the serpent but there is no question, no conversation, just a curse for deceiving the woman. Let’s look at:
2. The Curse
In vv. 14-15, God said: Because you did this, you are cursed more than any animal on this earth. God cursed this creature and the one who animated it. Whatever nobility this animal had before the Fall is now gone. 1) You deceived Eve into eating the fruit and now you will eat dust for the rest of your life. Dust speaks of humiliation, affliction, defeat, and death. 2) There will always be fighting/strife between you and Eve and your offspring (those who have come under his authority) and her descendants. One day there will be a battle between one specific descendant of Eve, you will bruise His heel, but He will defeat you and every enemy (sin and death) ultimately bringing an end to the curse brought on by sin. Satan’s curse is final and eternal.
In v. 16, God says to Eve: Your pain will greatly increase in childbearing, (though there is no mention of a curse here). Some scholars hold that pain in childbearing was a humbling reminder of the Fall, and that mothering will also be filled with times of emotional pain. However, her failure alongside her husband was not the final word from God, she is reminded of the hope that lies in God’s promise that a Redeemer will come through her lineage. Second, though she and Adam were meant to enjoy the harmonious partnership of marriage, because of her sin, marriage would not always be a place of perfect love and peace. There will be struggles, strife and competition - a battle of the sexes.
Even Eve desire to be with her husband her fallen propensity will be to control her husband and Adam’s fallen propensity will be to dominate his wife. However, for believers in Jesus Christ, life in the Spirit removes the sting of the curse, so that a much more harmonious and loving relationship is possible (Eph 5:22-23). The new creation order calls for husbands to exercise love and protection as the head of the family without harshness and for wives to show respect to their husbands. It’s a relationship of mutual submission to each other in love. You are not enemies but allies. That means encouraging and allowing your spouse to be who God created them to be in the marriage.
Finally, in vv. 17-19 God pronounces a curse on Adam. Because you have listened to your wife and have eaten from the tree, 1) the ground is cursed because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life. It will grow thorns and thistles for you and you will eat by the sweat of your brow. 2) one day you will return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.
Because he ate freely from the forbidden tree, now he will have to labor to eat from the cursed ground. This curse strikes at the innermost nerve of his life: his work, his activity, and provision for sustenance. Life will be hard, and he will have to work the land < adam until the day he returns to the very dust < adama that formed him.
The original sin of Adam and Eve brought a whole set of problems to the human race: conflict, pain, hardship, alienation from God and each other, and finally death. God could have scrapped all of creation and pushed the reset button but instead He announced a solution to the sin problem through Eve’s descendent. Her childbearing, which in a sense was cursed, would also result in the restoration of all that went awry in the garden. Let’s look next at God’s redemptive solution:
3. God’s Covering
In v. 20, Adam and Eve accepted the consequences of living in a fallen world and realized life will go on despite the curse. By faith Adam renamed his wife from woman to Eve < Hava, which sounds similar to the word for life. She will be the mother of all living. Even in the midst of dust and death there is hope of life and restoration.
Even God while pronouncing the curse, provided the solution (v. 21). We see the first recorded death in the Scriptures - God providing a sacrifice. He killed an animal and clothed them with the skin to cover their shame. The Jews understood the connection.
For God’s justice to be satisfied a perfect payment must be made, innocent blood must be shed to atone for the guilty one. A life was taken in exchange for the one seeking forgiveness. But the animal sacrifice only postponed God’s judgment until He would supply the perfect sacrifice, His son who was without sin and would willingly take God’s wrath upon Himself for our sin and shame.
As we will see in chapter 4 this was their future hope but it would not come to pass in their lifetime. Unending life will come eventually, but first the serpent needed to be crushed.
Vv. 22-24 Now in their fallen state Adam and Eve would be banished from the Garden of Eden. Why? The Lord God cared for Adam and Eve and this was an act of mercy. If they ate from the Tree of Life they would live forever in their fallen state. But God sends them out and places cherubim at the east entrance (east speaks of resurrection, hope). The Jews would have understood that God placed the cherubim in the tabernacle and temple, over the mercy seat, where the high priest would sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice. It was there that God said he would meet Moses. Why is this truth so significant?
It is interesting to note how trees are mentioned throughout chapter 1-3 depicting man’s changing relationship with God. First, in chapters 1 and 2 the (fruit) trees are signs of God’s bountiful provision. In chapter 3, a tree is the ground for inciting the man and woman to rebel against God and the place where they would seek to hide. Finally, when the man and the woman are cast out of the garden, their way is barred from “the way to the tree of life” (v.24). The full extent of this inspired account in Genesis 3 focuses on trees and is understood in light of the role of the tree as the place of punishment and death (Deut 21:22–23).
Galatians 3:13 tells us, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” And we know that Eve’s one descendant in particular, Jesus Christ, would come to redeem us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He would be hung on the cross and die and take the consequence of our curse upon Himself. He will defeat every enemy, including sin and death, and will ultimately crush the devil's head bringing an end to the curse brought on by sin. When we look forward from this point, the role of the tree becomes the place of hope and life (Prov 13:1; Rev 2:7; cf. Gal 3:13).
Rom 5:19 says:
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
Adam and Eve who were made in the image of God came to realize that true happiness, joy and life doesn’t come from being like God or being their own god but from having a relationship with Him and experiencing His life.
