Pentecost III
Genesis 3:9-15
The right winger skates down the side as his teammate with the puck leads the charge. Suddenly, a big, burly defenseman on the other team gives this right wing a colossal body check into the boards. He goes down to the ice, missing a few more teeth, crumpled over in pain. Satisfied that he did his job, the punishing defenseman looks for someone else to harass. After a few moments of lying motionless on the ice, the right wing gets up and starts skating, not to the safety of his bench, but back into the play. He sneaks by the defense that wasn’t expecting to see him, receives a pass, and flips the puck past a stunned goalie. The next morning on the front page of the sports section, there are two pictures of this hockey player. The first picture shows him getting absolutely pummelled, and the headline reads, “Great Fall…” The second picture shows him pushing that puck into the net, with the headline finishing with the words, “Greater Recovery.”
“Great Fall – Greater Recovery” would also be a good headline for our sermon text this morning. Here we see Adam and Eve fall flat onto their faces; and they look pretty ridiculous doing it. But here we see the Lord God making a miraculous recovery: lifting Adam and Eve and a world of sinners back to a life of perfection and righteousness. Great Fall – Greater Recovery.
Part I
Genesis Chapter 3 is the saddest chapter in the whole Bible. In Genesis 1-2, we have the account of the Lord God creating this magnificent and exquisitely pure world. Step by step, God adds piece after piece to his creation, until it is finally ready for the masterpiece of God’s creation: human beings. Then God creates the man, then he creates the woman, then he brings them together and establishes marriage. Then he blesses them and makes them the caretakers of this majestic earth that he created for them.
And now we get to Chapter 3, where this perfection came falling down like a house of cards. In the verses before our text picks up, the devil approached Eve. The devil approached her with the same thing that he uses to get everyone to fall, a lure. We use lures when we go fishing. A lure is something that is supposed to look good to the fish you are trying to catch. When I was growing up, I had a lure that looked like an injured fish. The fish was bent a little, right at the bend there was a reddish spot that was supposed to look like a wound, and as this lure moved through the water, it simulated a fish that was having trouble swimming. This lure looked like a nice, easy lunch for a bigger fish, until the fish tried to take a bite and found out that he was the one who was going to be lunch. The devil also uses lures to try to catch people. And he’s got a whole bunch of lures that look very appealing to people. In our text, the devil opened up his tackle box and pulled out the double lure of knowledge and power. He tried to get Eve to think, “Eve, you know good, but you don’t know evil. Just think, if you knew what evil was like, you’d be just like God! Wouldn’t that be cool?” And Eve found this lure irresistible. Her husband Adam was also tantalized by the thought of being like God, and he bit as well.
And now, stuck with this lure in their mouths, the Lord God comes to them. He called to Adam, “Where are you?” And notice how Adam reacts. He does what so many people do when they are caught in a sin. He admits part of it, but leave out some of it. He says, “well, I was naked, Lord, so I hid from you.” But he had been without clothes for his whole life! What he omitted was that fact he now had shame over his nakedness. What he omitted was that it was his complete fault that he now had shame and fear of God. God doesn’t accept this lie on Adam’s part. He further probe’s into Adam’s life and asks the straightforward question, “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
Now here was Adam’s chance to come clean. To be a man. To take responsibility for his actions. And how does he do? He falls…in a big way. He tries to shrug off his guilt by pointing to two scapegoats: “the woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree.” What he’s really saying is, “look, it’s really Eve’s fault, and it’s really your fault too, God. If you hadn’t put Eve into this garden, none of this would have happened!” Eve doesn’t do much better. She tries to place the blame onto the serpent, and ultimately on God, who let this lying, deceiving serpent get into their perfect garden.
What Adam and Eve both do, is they play the blame game. What they are saying is, “Yes! We are sinners. Yes! We broke your law. But it isn’t totally my fault. There were circumstances, there were good reasons for our sin that were out of our control.” A partial confession like this is really no confession at all.
People are still skilled today at playing Adam and Eve’s age-old blame game. “Yeah, I cheated on the chemistry exam, but everyone knows that the teacher puts tons of unfair questions on the tests and cheating is the only way to pass them.” “Yes, I broke the company rules, but they’ve never been enforced before. Why did they single out me to bust?” “Sure, I don’t always do what my parents tell me to do, but they really don’t understand my life. Things are a lot different now than when they were growing up. Besides, if they were a little more consistent, it would be easier for me to follow their rules.” “I admit that I haven’t been the perfect wife or husband. But things would be a lot easier for me if my spouse was more responsive to the things that I want in life.” Yes, the blame game. It hasn’t gone away. Human beings have even gotten better at it.
When we see Adam and Eve making these flimsy excuses to God, we need to say, “do I act any differently? Do I take responsibility, or do I blame circumstances or blame others for my failures?” Hidden guilt and denied guilt is not forgiven guilt. Adam and Eve found that out.
Part II
They fell, and they fell greatly. But the Lord not only brought them to a realization of their guilt, but also a way out from under their guilt.
The devil’s plan had worked to perfection: he had succeeded in corrupting the Lord’s creation forever…or so he thought. But God had a plan that was older than the devil’s. From eternity, the Lord had planned to save fallen mankind. He told Adam and Eve about that plan and he spoke this curse to the satanic serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
As I mentioned before, this is the saddest chapter of the entire Bible. Because without Genesis Chapter 3, how different would our world be! And yet, even in this depressing section of the Word, God’s grace is just dripping through these verses.
Grace is seen in the first verse: “but the Lord God called to the man.” That Adam and Eve were still alive after their sin was grace enough on God’s part. The Lord had said, “the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” But God had not immediately struck them down. And on top of that, God wants to give Adam a chance to admit and repent of his sin.
Of course, in one sense, Adam and Eve did die that day. There are more kinds of death than just stopping breathing. The Bible describes another kind of death: spiritual death. A person who is spiritually dead has no hope of a future with God. They are left living their lives cowering in a corner, terrified of what will happen after they leave this earth. That’s what Adam and Eve were: spiritually dead. But here we see how God raises the dead. Genesis 3:15 is sometimes called the Protevangel, which is a fancy word for the first Gospel promise. Through the promise of this seed of the woman, God transformed Adam and Eve from spiritually dead to spiritually alive. All of a sudden, they had a reason to live! All of a sudden, they had a reason to serve God again! They were going to live in a paradise once again; all because of what this Savior would do for them.
Great Fall – Greater Recovery. In the same way, the Savior rescues us from our falls, our failures. Jesus Christ was born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.
And now, as the prophecy says, there will be enmity, hatred, war, between the offspring of the devil and the offspring of the woman. The offspring of the devil are those who do not take up God on his offer of forgiveness. The offspring of the woman are those who have been made spiritually alive through the Gospel message.
This past week, we were in Jacksonville NC, which is home to one of the largest US Marine bases in the country. And walking around the city, you see a lot of Marines. You can tell that they are Marines even if they aren’t wearing a uniform. Their age, their upper-body strength, their haircut gives them away. In the same way, believers show that they are the offspring of God. We don’t wear a badge or uniform. We don’t carry a Christian ID card. But by the way we live, we show ourselves to be God’s followers. Let you life shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify that Father in heaven.
It’s been said that character is what you do when no one is looking. And the Lord’s encouragement to you, now that he has saved you, is to live as a Christian. Live that kind, gentle, pure, forgiving Christian life. And live it not just when people are looking. Live it when only your Heavenly Father sees what you are doing. You see, that’s another part of Christ’s victory over the devil. Not only has he done away with the punishment for our sins, but he allows us, through the Holy Spirit, to master the sins that want to rule our lives.
Conclusion
Sometimes people think too hard about this story. They think, “well, if God created the world, and then the world became sinful, but God knew that it was going to be sinful because he knows everything…isn’t God a little responsible? Or at the very least, aren’t we right in asking the question, “why did God create a world he knew would fall?” The weatherman who predicts the course of a hurricane isn’t responsible for the damage caused by that storm. And the Lord’s foreknowledge of the Fall doesn’t make him responsible for it either.
But isn’t it a great comfort to know that where the Lord saw a great fall coming, he had planned a greater recovery? God is 100% responsible for our getting up from our great fall. With apologies to a dated commercial, “We’ve fallen, but we CAN get up”…all due to the fact that God kept his promise to send that Savior for our sins. Amen.
sdg
