When I was a freshman in High School, we had an outstanding 9th grade football team. We were the best in our District. Our coach put a strong emphasis on discipline and teamwork. As part of our practices, if one player on the team really messed up a play, the entire team would have to run laps around the field. All of us would be ticked off at the guy who made us run laps and personally none of us wanted to be the guy that caused the whole team to be penalized. I remember this guy named Herby. Herby was a great athlete, but he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He would forget or confuse the plays. He kept messing up, and we kept running laps. By the end of each practice, everyone hated Herby. But we all learned that no one was an island, we were a team. What one guy did or didn’t do, affected us all.
That’s the same lesson God’s Word teaches us in Genesis chapter 3. We’ve been on a series in the book of Genesis. Last week we looked at mankind’s decision to disobey God, declaring himself independent of God, and choosing to yield to the temptation of Satan. This week we are going to look at the consequences of that sin and God’s remedy for sin.
Proposition: Today from Genesis 3 you’re going to learn not only how your sin can affect both you and the people around you but also the wonderful way in which God deals with our sin.
Let’s turn to our text and take up where we left off last time in verse 7. Remember, Adam and Eve have just disobeyed God by yielding to the temptation. What we see next are the consequences of their sin.
First Compliment: In Genesis 3 you will find six consequences to sin.
First, your sin will bring guilt and shame. The first part of verse 7 says, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” They thought they wanted their eyes opened but when they got what they thought they wanted, they didn’t like what they saw. They had rejected God and apart from God they weren’t much. They had lost their integration point. God had been the center of man’s existence. He was the one who tied life all together, who made life make sense, and who met man’s deepest needs. You see, we all need an integration point. Anything other than God, whether it be another person, our work, sex, drugs, or anything else. If we try to make it our integration point, it will inevitably let us down and then it will eventually destroy us. Even good things, if they become our integration point, become sin and addiction. God was the integration point that kept their lives intact. Now they have rejected their integration point and begun falling apart. They have rejected God and become less than what they were created to be. In fact, they had become what theologian’s call depraved. Depravity is the condition of man apart from God that seeks the best for himself no matter who it hurts. It’s a propensity to do our thing and to go our way for our own self-interest regardless of how it affects others and regardless of what God thinks about it. Man was created to love God and love others, but now he is less than what he was created to be. Inevitably he feels ashamed. The first thing your sin will cause is guilt and shame.
Second, your sin will drive you to cover it up. Verse 7 continues on to say, “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” The most natural thing to do when you are ashamed is to find a way to cover it. Through their own efforts, they tried to hide their sin. People still do that today. We are ashamed of things in our lives and we try to camouflage them. We’re ashamed of what we have become and we don’t want others to see. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is someone among us who always wears long sleeve shirts, so that no one can see the track marks in your arms. Maybe you’re sitting in this auditorium wearing large quantities of cologne and popping breath mints like there is no tomorrow, so that others won’t know that you are a chain smoker. Could it be that your so concerned people won’t like you that you try to be something your not. Maybe you even tell stories about yourself that aren’t true, to impress others. There is no question in my mind that there is someone here with a dark besetting sin in His life that he thinks no one knows about because he has done such a good job of covering it up. Proverbs 28:13 says, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.” You may think you have it covered up, but its amazing how your sin is will usually catch up with you.
Illustration: Maybe you heard about the Boeing employees on the field who decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s. They were successful in getting it out of the plane and home. When they took it for a float on the river, they were quite surprised by a Coast Guard helicopter coming towards them. It turned out that the chopper was homing in on the emergency locator that is activated when the raft is inflated. They are no longer employed there. As the Bible says, your sin seems to have a way of finding you out. Sin is self-exposing. God intended it to be that way to lead the way to confession and repentance. But our original parents didn’t understand that. Adam and Eve decided it would be easier to just cover their sin. Your sin will entice you to try to cover it up.
Third, your sin will cause you alienation. Look at verse 8. “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” Apparently this was a common thing. The LORD God came to the garden to fellowship with the people He had created. But Adam and Eve have hidden themselves. They have alienated themselves from God. There has become a separation between God and man. If you notice God still wants fellowship but it is man who is hiding. God has come to restore light to their now dark world, and they don’t want anything to do with it. John 3:19-20 says, “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” Have you ever gone into a dark damp basement and turned on the light. When you do, you’ll see bugs scatter everywhere because they don’t like the light. Evil recoils from light. Man in darkness, does not like the light God brings because it reveals all of his sin. Man has alienated Himself from God. Sin has alienated God from man. In a few verses we’ll see that a wedge of alienation has also been driven between Adam and Eve as a result of their sin. Some of you know what that’s like. Maybe it’s your sin, maybe it’s someone else’s sin but you have former friends and near relatives who you haven’t spoken to for years, because sin got in and caused a division. Sin alienates people from one another and it alienates us from God. With this alienation comes fear.
The fourth truth is that your sin will bring fear into your life. Verses 9-10 read, “Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." If God is everywhere present and all knowing, why does He ask, “Where are you?” Didn’t he know where they were? Of course He did. God is inviting Adam to freely choose to confess and disclose his sin. But now Adam is afraid of God. He’s not sure what God will do to him. I mean God had said if he sinned, he would die. In fact, the law before time that will later be stated in Ezekiel 18:4 declares that the soul who sins must die. Remember, sin means separation. He would be separated from God who was His life. That spiritual death would eventually result in physical death. Since God is a holy God, He must judge sin and man is afraid of His judgment. But Adam has forgotten that God is also merciful. So, now he is afraid of God. Some of you are the same way. You don’t really trust God’s goodness. You’re afraid.
I know what it’s like to be afraid when you’ve sinned. When I was in the 4th grade, our school started an independent reading program. They said the work was independent and no one would ever look at what you did. You were to read a lesson, answer questions about it, and if you completed your reading before the other kids you were able to take a break and do whatever you wanted until the reading session ended. Well I thought the reading was boring and I thought that I had better things to do with my time. So I would glance through the reading, make up any kind of crazy answer, close my books and do something productive like make funny faces at the girls in class. Well on the last day of school we were asked to turn in all of our work. When they announced that, I thought I had been caught. I was felt guilty and I was ashamed of what I had done. I felt a sense of alienation from my teacher and my fellow students. I had no one to turn to. My heart started racing, my palms started sweating, and I was afraid. In fact, the teacher asked me if I was all right, because I looked so nervous and scared. Somehow, I smuggled most of my bogus papers out of the classroom and into the school dumpster. But I learned some valuable lessons that day about sin. I learned that my sin would lead me to a profound sense of guilt and shame. In fact to this day, I’m ashamed of what I did in that fourth grade classroom. I learned that my sin would bring a feeling of alienation from others. I also found out that my natural tendency would be to try to cover my sin. I also discover that with sin came great feeling of fear. Sin has consequence. Sin will bring fear into your life.
Fifth, your sin will drive you to blame others. Let’s read verses 11-12 And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?" Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate." Adam took it like a man. He blamed his wife. No more, “she’s bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” No now it’s, “God you know I’m ok. She’s the problem.” And from that day until now, every divorce attorney has had a job. In fact, Adam goes a step further and blames God. He said, “It’s the woman who You gave me.” “This is your fault God.” “Everything was great when it was just me and the animals.” Verse 13 says, and the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." She is saying, “I did it all right. But the devil made me do it. It’s been said, “To err is human; to blame it on somebody else is even more human.” That’s true and it can be traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
Sixth, your sin will produce painful and devastating results. V16-20 - To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ’You shall not eat of it’: "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
The fall caused structural changes in all of creation including the woman’s body. This may be hard to imagine but before the fall, a woman would have had no pain in childbirth. Right now all the women are saying, “Thanks a lot Eve.” Every destructive and malicious force unleashed on the world can be traced back to the fall of man. What Adam and Eve did affected all of us.
Your sin affects others. If you think your alcoholic binges aren’t going to hurt anybody, let me tell you about a family of three motherless children who lost their mother to a drunk driver. Then there’s the teenage girl who thought her sexual involvement before marriage was none of her parent’s business. Now her parents are raising her 18-month-old son. Or how about the married man who chose to secretly live a homosexual lifestyle and infected his wife and unborn child with the AIDS virus? Or maybe you’ve heard about the greedy and deceitful corporate executives who mishandled and lost their employees’ life savings. The list could go on and on. Sin is costly and it not only costs you, it costs all of us. The sin of Adam and Eve distorted our entire universe.
It certainly distorted God’s plan for marriage. In verse 16 God told the woman, “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Before this time there was total unity and harmony in the Garden. Man and woman were mutually submitted to one another. Now they are going to have a battle for supremacy. Notice verse 20, “And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Before this time God called their name Adam. Eve was known distinctly as Isha, “my other self.” Now Adam calls her Eve, “the mother of my kids.” God’s original creation has been twisted.
In Romans 5:12 Paul writes, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Through Adam’s sin, the depravity experienced by Adam has become our common condition. Like Adam, all of us have decided we know better than God. We have all rejected God’s way, chosen our own way, and said, “Independent of God, I shall be as God.” All of us have been infected by the sin virus and have inherited a sin nature. In Psalm 51:5 David writes, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”
This fallen nature explains how the events of September 11th were possible. It explains how Andrea Yates could heartlessly drown her five young children. It’s the only way to explain the animalistic cannibalism of Jeffrey Dalmer, the concentration camps of the Nazis, the Cambodian killing fields and the horrible genocide currently going on in the Sudan. It also explains why I can sometimes be so self-centered, so uncaring, and so un-Christlike. Someone has said, “If man is made in the image of God, God must be a devil.” Man was made in the image of God but man has fallen. Now Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Personally, I don’t trust myself. I know under the right circumstances, I’m capable of just about any horrible sin. Don’t believe this nonsense that says man is basically good and only needs a better environment, better education, and a better economy. Depravity is found on beautiful tropical islands, among brilliant PhD’s, and in billion-dollar corporate boardrooms. We don’t need a little push from below. We need a powerful lift from above. We all need Jesus Christ.
I’m not saying that man can’t do good things. Of course he can because though distorted, he still bears the image of God. But left to yourself, you will gravitate toward self-serving evil. To sum up mankind, Mae West said, “Whenever I have to choose between two evils, I always like to try the one I haven’t tried before.” We have a propensity for evil. That’s why Jesus said we were to pray, “Deliver us from evil.”
Transition: Sin is painful, costly and devastating. It is costly to you and it’s costly to those in your life. So what can be done about it?
Second Compliment: God has a remedy to the sin problem.
I told you that there was a declaration of God from the beginning of time that declared “The soul that sins must die.” But there was another decree. A decree before time that declared, “One may die for another.” The innocent could die for the guilty so that the guilty could go free. That’s why Peter tells us that Jesus Christ was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
You see, God had a plan before man sinned. God would permit sin but he Himself would bear the penalty of it. Let’s read verse 15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” There was going to be a warfare between mankind and the powers of darkness. A man got us into this mess and a man was going to deliver us. The woman’s Seed was going to bruise the head of the Evil One. So God became a man through the womb of a virgin woman named Mary and in His humanity he became part of the lineage of the seed. He was called the Seed of Abraham, and the Seed of David, He was the Lord Jesus Christ. And when Jesus went to the cross, his heel was bruised. They say that skeletons of those who suffer crucifixion typically have massive bruises on their heels because their full weight is driven into the base of their feet. On the cross Jesus had his heel bruised but he crushed the head of the Serpent when He rose from dead having defeated death, hell, and the grave. He was triumphant over principalities and powers, openly making a show of them.
To do so required the shedding of blood. Look at verse 21, “Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.” For fur coats to be made an animal had to die and shed its blood. One must die for another and blood had to be shed. This was a shadow of what Jesus Christ became the fulfillment. He shed His blood to cover our sins.
Finally we see in the last verses that God’s redemption plan is bigger than the current order. Let’s read verses 22-24, “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.” Man was forgiven and reconciled to God through the death and shedding of the blood of an animal. But God had something bigger in mind. He didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life and live forever as a fallen but forgiven man. God had in mind the coming of Jesus Christ to die in our place that we could not only be forgiven but become the righteousness of God in Christ. Rom 5:17-19 “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” And beyond that God had in mind the redemption of the whole Universe at his Second Coming.
Transition: In one sense Genesis 3 gives us the first Gospel message. So what have we learned this morning?
Conclusion
Review: There are great and horrible consequences to sin. But there is a remedy to sin that can be found in Jesus Christ.
Application: Today I want you to recognize the high price of your sin. Your sin will cost you. It will cost you in guilt, shame, alienation, and fear. There will also be a price to be paid by the other people in your life. Even the people you love the most. But instead of blaming others for your sin or trying to cover it up, you need to recognize God’s remedy. Come clean today. Acknowledge your sin, turn from it and turn to Jesus Christ. He shed his blood for you so that you can be forgiven now and you can spend the life to come in the joy and wonder of His immediate presence.
Direction: Here is what you need to do. First, recognize that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We’ve come short of God’s best for us. Now we deserve God’s judgment. But God has made a way. Second, turn from your sin and turn to His Son Jesus Christ. If you follow Jesus, you must leave your old way of living behind and begin to follow His way. Third, live the rest of your life in obedience to Him. Rather than giving in to your old depraved self, you can daily make a decision to follow Christ. As Ephesians 4 says, you can “put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”
Let’s pray together.
