MEASURE UPON MEASURE – JUDGMENT and CONDEMNATION – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 15 (Section 1)
SPECIAL NOTE: The post before this one (Part 14) is an overall coverage of all Chapter 6 – the Judgement leading to Condemnation. The Lord restored all that and brought justification. I have expanded that whole chapter with a more detailed approach and it has resulted in two parts. I hope it gives a deeper understanding of what Jesus Christ did for us in His death.
CHAPTER 6 - THE SIXTH CONSEQUENCE - CONDEMNATION
ADAM AND EVE BEFORE AN AWESOME GOD
We come to the sixth consequence of Adam’s failure. It will be the last one we do. This time we are thinking about CONDEMNATION. Associated with condemnation is judgement and mixed in there is the word VERDICT. We will see what God’s verdict was.
Right at the start of God’s pronouncement we had a verdict that contained all the elements we have done prior to this. Just to refresh our minds we look at the relevant passage:-
{{Genesis 3:15-19 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel.” To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth. In pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” 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. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground because from it you were taken - for you are dust and to dust you shall return.”}}
Adam and Eve had just heard the various pronouncements of God in response to their sin. They stood before their Creator without excuse, utterly exposed. He was merciful to them. They were not destroyed. They would have to battle a stubborn earth that was cursed, and come to know sorrow and separation. Death would be ever present for them.
As they stood there, racked with guilt and overshadowed by shame, they had listened to the judgments enumerated by God against them; ones we have been considering. These were the consequences of their sin, but they did not understand what the consequences involved, because they had no concept then, of what a curse would be in reality; what labour pains would be in childbirth; or what hard work and toil would involve in practice because the earth was cursed; or what separation from God would be like because they had never known that at any time.
I like to think about human nature. I suppose that comes from my years of teaching, but one of the foibles of human nature I do observe is the lack of comprehension in human beings to rationalise the outcomes of behaviour. When you lay out before people what will happen if they transgress or venture into an area that is forbidden, these people can’t understand the gravity of such a warning and a number of them still go ahead. I suppose they reason away the fact that it will affect them. For the criminals, often reality is missing until they are actually caught in their crime. The concept of what punishment really is, is not taken onboard. This is most noticeable in the incorrigible child.
Paradise for them was ending. They no longer deserved the Garden for the pair of them were revealed for what they were (or could we say, had become). They had been weighed in the balances of the righteousness of God and had been found wanting. They had come before the bench of the divine Judge and had been declared guilty. That was a whole new experience for them – a dreaded one. God had passed His verdict.
I can’t recall if I have mentioned this anywhere in these studies, but I firmly believe both Adam and Eve are with the Lord in heaven today. Unlike any of us today these two had known the deep seriousness of sin resulting in what they had become. They had come into condemnation. We have just been born that way. There is a marked difference. From the time of the fall in Eden I believe the pair followed what God set out to be acceptable in His sight.
Additionally, to be acceptable, God showed them the way when He sacrificed that sheep to make them garments of skin. We did that earlier if you remember. Why did Abel bring an animal sacrifice to the Lord? The answer is simple. He had been taught by his parents that it was the way God made for them to be acceptable and forgiven.
I sometimes warn about vain speculation, but at times I do try to think into issues. We do not know what heaven is REALLY like and our minds think of what it might be like. You and I will just be one of the “ordinary” people who have been redeemed among the billions who will be there. However I do wonder what it is like for Adam and Eve and the disciples who lived with the Lord, such as Peter and John, and Mary his mother. They are in a special class I can’t explain, but they are not in a special class, for we are all equal in the Lord in His Body in another way. I will leave it there.
After Adam and Eve sinned, no longer could they be reckoned as faultless before their God. Sin had its deadly hold on them. All the previously mentioned consequences of their sin had now become the very nature and practice of their being. They stood there: guilty and shameful, separated in communion from God, knowing more and more the meaning of sorrow and death. They would begin to see the results of the curse all around them. The Judge’s verdict was clearly proclaimed. Paradise would be lost to them for the decree against sin had to be announced. It could not be otherwise. They would be expelled from the garden.
The great English poet and writer, John Milton 1608-1674, wrote one of the most notable pieces in English literature - PARADISE LOST. It is a massive work of thousands upon thousands of lines, but here are the closing lines of the poem.
In either hand the hastening Angel caught
Our lingering Parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain - then disappeared.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
Yes, with utter guiltiness, they stood there before God in the Garden CONDEMNED by their sin. Did they confess to the offence? No they did not. They played the blame game! They resorted to excuses! Adam blamed Eve – {{Genesis 3:12 The man said, “The woman WHOM YOU GAVE TO BE WITH ME, she gave me from the tree and I ate,”}} and in effect it was God’s fault as “He had given the woman to Adam.” Eve made the excuse of it being the serpent’s fault – {{Genesis 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” and the woman said, “THE SERPENT DECEIVED ME and I ate.”}}.
That is the trouble with the world. It is all full of excuses because of sin. “It’s not my fault. I was born that way.” “It is my upbringing, so you can’t hold me responsible.” “The whole problem lies with Adam, not me.” “It’s my parents fault.” “I have had a deprived life,” and so the excuses go on and on. People will not take responsibility for their own sin. In the final analysis, it will make no difference. Each will bear his and her own sin and be accountable for it, either in repentance to be born again, or at the white throne judgement for eternal condemnation.
JUDGEMENT AND CONDEMNATION – SIN’S RESULTS
Their sin had condemned them and their expulsion was the sentence. God’s verdict was “guilty” so the sentence was passed. This last consequence of sin is JUDGMENT or CONDEMNATION . Notice God’s action in this verse from {{Genesis 3:24 “So HE DROVE 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.”}} God drove them from the Garden and never could they return. I sometimes wonder what the difference would be between God driving man out,” and “God asking them to leave”.
They were now to live in a world reacting to the curse, populated by people in rebellion against God, who come under condemnation and the judgement of God because of their individual sins. The tree of life was forbidden to them. What a terrible condition their present position was - condemned by sin; and of the utmost seriousness - condemned by God! This was now to be their lot. Their lot became our lot too for {{Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned”}}
May we NEVER think we are morally or intellectually better, or religiously cleverer than those two. That would be a deluded presumption. Just yesterday I preached on this verse – {{Galatians 6:3 “If anyone THINKS HE IS SOMETHING when he is nothing, he deceives himself,”}} and its parallel verse – {{Romans 12:3 “Through the grace given to me I say to every man among you NOT TO THINK MORE HIGHLY OF HIMSELF THAN HE OUGHT TO THINK but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith”}}. We would have fared no better than Adam and Eve, and probably much worse.
We have all disobeyed and sinned, and like Adam, we have all forfeited our right to the sinless blessings of God’s Eden, the sweetest place of communion with our Creator. Through all generations, the condemnation of God rests on every individual and therefore the just judgment of God hovers above the sinner’s head, about to fall at any moment. The merciful God withholds impending judgment so that the sinner might repent, but far too many squander the opportunity so they can further their evil by rejecting repentance.
It is important to realise that we were not under this condemnation of sin solely because Adam sinned. We are under that condemnation because of our own sin. Paul, in the first three chapters of Romans declares the whole world to be guilty before God. In chapter 1 he argues the entire gentile world guilty and under condemnation. In chapter 2 he brings all the Jews guilty before God and in chapter 3 all mankind is guilty in God’s court and consequently all are under God’s condemnation.
We too, were all born in a state of expulsion from the presence of God, with the verdict of guilty on our account and the sentence of condemnation upon us, and for all who continue unrepentant and unconverted, there ultimately will come a time when they will stand in the presence of God. That will occur before the great white throne, an awesome time when the very earth and heavens flee from the Lord’s presence. The eternal judgment will be announced and the destiny of all unredeemed sinners will be the lake of fire into which they will be thrown.
It was a sad, a very sad day, when the two condemned people walked out of Eden now to map out their own lives in a cursed world. It was into that cursed world that Christ came to meet the problem of CONDEMNATION by making it His own. As we consider how that was done we shall trace out the Saviour’s Road in this last consequence of sin.
I am going to have to break this Chapter 6 here because of size and we will carry on next time with such lovely verses relating to God’s wonderful gift for us. That is what God restored for us in greater measure than Adam ever knew.
Before I close I wish to share a very beautiful hymn with you. I don’t believe I have ever sung this one but the words are magnificent:-
[[ This was sung during the Sunday worship at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (Spurgeon’s). ]]
Hymn 608 from our hymn book, Psalms & Hymns of Reformed Worship. (Though Baptist, Spurgeon held to some of reformation Theology). Please think about all the words in this hymn!
WHEN this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon radiant sun,
When I stand with Christ on high,
Looking o’er life’s history:
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe
.
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When I stand before the throne,
Dressed in beauty not my own;
When I see Thee as Thou art,
Love Thee with unsinning heart:
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.
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When the praise of Heaven I hear,
Loud as thunder to the ear,
Loud as many waters’ noise,
Sweet as harp’s melodious voice:
Then, Lord, shall I fully know,
Not till then, how much I owe.
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Chosen not for good in me,
Wakened up from wrath to flee:
Hidden in the Saviour’s side,
By the Spirit sanctified;
Teach me, Lord, on earth to show,
By my love, how much I owe.
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The author of these words was Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-43)
The Tune: Wells. Composer: Dmitri Stepanovich Bortnianski (1751-1825)
