Genesis 3: 1 – 24 - The Fall
Last week we looked at the story of creation in the book of Genesis. How God created a People, and he placed then in a beautiful garden to be the Land in which they lived, and as they carried out his purposes to spread that garden throughout the would, they would know his Blessing.
This week we are looking at the story of Adam and Eve to see what it can teach us about God, ourselves, and our relationship with God.
This is fundamental stuff, because these are fundamental questions about ourselves, which effect how we live our lives, how we treat others, and how we treat ourselves. This is literally the stuff of life and death.
It is no accident that Genesis is the first book in our bibles, because it tackles the BIG questions of life that are asked by every generation.
“Where do we come from? Why are we here? Why are people the way they are? Why are people mean to me?” If you have children or grandchildren you have no doubt been asked these same questions by very young enquiring minds. How did you answer?
One of my first jobs was working in life insurance. I quickly realised than many people in the industry where ripping people off, to take the big commissions, for their own selfish gain. But not everyone, some people were genuinely using insurance to help people, to enhance their lives and bring them stability. This often meant turning down the big bucks in favour of smaller commissions. I was faced with a dilemma : should I pursue wealth at the expense of other people, or should I use insurance to help people as it was intended? Attempting to answer this question took me on a journey, which ultimately led me to become a Christian.
One of the things that really troubled me, was how my first thoughts were always to be selfish, or always to lie to cover by own back. And how much effort and conscious thought it took to do things differently. But even when I made the effort, I couldn’t do it consistently, and would always lapse back into those first instincts. Was it just me? A result of my upbringing? Or were other people like that too?
What I discovered, is that absolutely everyone is like that. Scientists at the time called it ‘The selfish gene’. “Great,” I thought, “it’s natural. I don’t have to worry about it. I can just get on and make myself rich.”
But, what REALLY bothered me, is that the few Christians I knew, were different. How come they were not selfish, if selfishness was natural?
This is when the idea of sin and the story of Adam and Eve really started to make sense to me. It’s a simple story, but it explains clearly why I am the way I am, and is still the only explanation that makes sense to me.
The Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 7: “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” This clearly summed up how I was feeling.
The story of Adam and Eve is very simple: They are created by God in His image to enjoy the blessing of His creation. They rebel against God’s ways and sin takes over their lives. They are exiled from God’s presence until they can learn to trust God again.
This cycle of ‘God’s People rejecting God’s ways and being exiled from the land he has provided; unable to enjoy His blessings until they have learned to trust Him again,’ is a reoccurring cycle throughout the Bible. It starts in the Garden of Eden and continues into modern times, when God’s people reject the Messiah. “He came to his own, but His own did not recognise Him.” John 1.
The rest of the Bible, in very simple terms, is the story of how God seeks to reconcile humans to himself. It’s not just a matter of saying “Humans I forgive you, come back into my blessing”: God is holy. Holiness and sin reject each other in the same way that the North Poles of two bar magnets push each other away.
I’m sure we all did this experiment at school. Each magnet has one blue end and one red end. The blue ends are north poles and the red ends are south poles. Even if we force the two blue ends together with all our might, they will still push each other away as soon as we let go. What we need to do is flip one of the magnets from north to south – bring a blue end and a red end together so they attract each other. But how can we simply flip sin to holiness?
As we were reminded us last week, there were actually two important trees at the centre of the garden of Eden: the tree of Abundant Life and the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve were free to eat as much as they wanted from the tree of Abundant Life, but chose instead to steal from the other tree. The fact that when we hear this, we all go, “Huh, typical,” shows we can all relate to this behaviour. This in itself says something important about us and our nature – how come we can all relate so well to that behaviour, if we are not also exactly all like that?
Sin always has consequences, even forgiven sin. For instance, a thief who admits their crime, still has to do time in prison, to pay for their crime.
The first sign of sin’s consequences in the Garden of Eden, is that Adam and Eve hide from God. They fear the consequences of what they have done – they instinctively know what they did was wrong and that intimate relationship they had with God is lost. For the first time, they feel shame, which is ‘a painful feeling of humiliation’.
For a simple story, the story of Adam and Eve has suddenly become psychologically very sophisticated: we instantly know they have lost their innocence and everything has changed. And so does God – He knows exactly what has happened. When He questions Adam and Eve about what has happened, their first thoughts are sinful – they point the blame at others. But up until thy touched the fruit, they didn’t even know what ‘blame’ meant).
Adam and Even have died a spiritual death that now sets them apart from God – still made in his image, but no longer enjoying the blessing of his fellowship. They had become like me.
It’s a very powerful thing to read the bible and discover that the heroes of the stories are not saints, but ordinary, fallen, messed up people, like me. This is when the Bible speaks truth directly to our hearts and our spirit. The Bible doesn’t hide anything, it shows us a mirror of ourselves and we realise our need for God.
Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden. Their lives became much harder, because they can no longer enjoy all the blessings God has given them.
In our case we start from a place of sin. First we need to recognise it’s presence in our thoughts, lives and actions, then recognise it’s power over us, in order to be reconciled to God.
Flipping us from sin to holiness, is not something we can do for ourselves: it is something we have to rely on God to do for us.
This recognition of sin in my life was the turning point. I recognised I needed to be reconciled with God.
Adam and Eve needed to own up to their sin and ask God for forgiveness. Instead they choose to blame each other and blame the serpent (who, of course, is Satan).
At this point (v15) God curses the serpent. However, this curse is also a promise, because God says the serpent (Satan) will ultimately be crushed – ultimately defeated.
God created Satan - a heavenly being, represented in the Genisis story as a Serpent, as part of His good creation. But just like Adam and Eve, Satan rebelled against God. There is a sense here that God’s perfect creation is already being corrupted. In Luke, when the 72 return from their mission to spread the Good News of the Messiah and exclaim, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions.” What happens in the heavenly realm appears top be reflected in what happens on Earth, and what happens on Earth appears to be reflected in the Heavenly realm.
In the same way that the force of God’s spirit in the world is personified in the Holy Spirit, so the force of evil in the world is personified in Satan. It appears God can’t just remove Satan from creation, as he seems, somehow, to be woven into the fabric of creation itself. But God has a plan to defeat Satan. When God curses the serpent, there is the suggestion that God through humans, will defeat Satan. This is the first foreshadowing of the cross of Jesus in the Bible.
On the cross, Jesus defeated Satan, crushing him like the serpent’s head, in an act that reverberates throughout the whole of creation. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul writes, “ The created world was held back from fulfilling its purpose. But this was not the result of its own choice. It was planned that way by the one who held it back. God planned to set the created world free. He didn’t want it to rot away. Instead, God wanted it to have the same freedom and glory that his children have.”
It's an odd solution when you think about it: that God himself should become human and sacrifice himself, to pay the price for the consequences of my sin. So that I might approach God, without being repelled like those magnets. So that I might have just a small taste of the fellowship with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed so freely in the garden of Eden. So odd, in fact, that Satan doesn’t yet realise he has been defeated – he thinks he killed Jesus on the cross, not realising that Jesus willingly sacrificed himself to reconcile us with God. Satan really doesn’t understand the power of the risen Christ. I didn’t understand that power either, but I do now.
What have we learned about God, this morning?
• We have learned that God’s holiness and our sin repel each other, like magnets
• We have learned that even though we rebel against God and His ways, just as Adam & Eve did, and so are estranged from God’s full blessings, He does not abandon us.
• We have learned that right from the beginning God had a plan to deal with sin and bring us back to live in fellowship with Him.
• We have learned that God through Christ, will not let evil triumph.
What have we learned about ourselves and our relationship with God?
• We have learned that we are all sinners, but that sin is not a natural. It is a corruption of God’s creation.
• We have learned that Christ, through His sacrifice on the cross, offers us a way back to God, a way to deal with our sin, so it does not rule over us.
So with these lessons in mind, what must we do? What action must we take?
• We need to make sure we are reconciled with God.
• We need to acknowledge our sin – that we are not living in God’s ways.
• We need to ask for God’s forgiveness and accept Jesus as our saviour.
• We must commit to live life on God’s terms, so we can receive the abundance of his blessings.
None of this happens instantly. Although it may start with a one-off even or a single realisation, it is a process, that we repeat over and over again. Each time surrendering more of ourselves and each time moving closer to God.
When I acknowledged to God that I was a sinful person, asked for His forgiveness, promised to live life His way, and invited the risen Jesus into my life, it changed everything. The spirit of God entered my heart, helping to kick Satan out of residence, helping me to fight those sinful instincts.
I’m not perfect, and I never will be in this life-time. But day-by-day I am learning to become more obedient, more like Jesus. Day-by-day, that sin which the story of Adam and Eve shows resides unnaturally in my heart, mind and soul, is slowly being defeated as God reconciles me to Himself.
Finally, on the day of Christ’s glory, I live in the hope, that all of my sin will have been flipped to something approaching holiness, so I am fit to live in fellowship with my Lord and eat from the Tree of Life.
