The Beginning of Our Problem
Genesis 3
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: Something happened. Something big happened! Anyone who has read the Bible recognizes the change. Between the end of Genesis 2 and the beginning of Genesis 4 everything changed.
When we left Genesis 2, everything was right with the world. God had made a perfect creation. ‘It’s good. It’s very good,” the Creator had said over and over again. Adam and Eve were living in perfect peace in a perfect Garden prepared just for them. No hunger, no thirst, no disease, no fear. Not only that, God himself lived in close personal fellowship with the creatures made in his image. Life was good.
That’s Genesis 2. But if you turn a couple of pages, it’s a different story. The Bible goes from perfect peace to brother murdering brother in two chapters. From chapter four on, Genesis contains bloodshed, hate, and every conceivable self-inflicted human catastrophe. Death stalks every life like a shadow. Revenge follows murder. Kinfolk hunt down kinfolk. Rape, incest, every perversion you can imagine, jealousy, greed, stealing, lying, drunkenness, war, corruption—its’ all there! Anyone who reads Genesis 2 and then jumps to Genesis 4 and beyond can’t help but ask—what happened? Who made this mess? Who’s going to clean it up?
It’s like when you and your spouse have gone out for the evening and left your teenagers home alone. The house was clean and neat when you left. When you return everything’s a mess. Toys, food, paper, soda cans—everywhere? What happened? Who made this mess? Who’s going to clean it up?
Something happened between Genesis 2 and 4. There is no denying that. There is also no denying that our world is more like Genesis 4 than Genesis 2. You don’t have to live in a big city to recognize this. Even small town, rural America has its share of human tragedy, brokenness, and hurt. As G. K. Chesterton, the greater British philosopher, put it, “Whatever else is or is not true, this one thing is certain—man is not what he was meant to be.” What happened? Why is our world such a mess?
Genesis 1 records the origin of the universe. Genesis 2 describes the life God intended. Genesis 4 begins the story of life as it is. Genesis 3 explains what happened. But Genesis 3 is not just a history lesson. It is every man’s biography. It’s our story, too. The names and surroundings have changed. Nonetheless, we walk the same path every day.
It starts with a temptation. Temptation is a fork in the road, a simple choice. God made man in his own image, Genesis 1 and 2 tell us. We humans are an amazing complex of body (physical stuff), soul (emotions), spirit (God-connectedness), and will (the ability to choose). God honored humans by bestowing upon us an amazing freedom. He didn’t make us robots or machines with every move pre-programmed. We are animals, but we are not just animals whose responses are dictated by instincts. Humans have freedom designed into us by God. Without that freedom, love would be empty; worship meaningless.
For that freedom to be real, the first humans had to know they had a choice. They could obey or not. A single tree of forbidden fruit stood in the middle of their paradise. God could have chosen any means. But there had to be one. If not a tree, then something else! What good is loving and knowing God if you have no alternative?
We learn a lot about temptation from Genesis 3. Evil always comes dressed up. It’s always attractive, never repulsive, at first. The tempter is a master of flattery, subtlety, deception, and distortion. He never starts with a frontal attack. He starts with suggestion not argument. He never asks us to deny God, just doubt him. He never questions God’s existence, only his goodness. He doesn’t call for outright disobedience. He just wants us to wonder if God is really as good as his word. He wants us to wonder if maybe God isn’t holding something back. Maybe life without God wouldn’t be quite so bad after all. Maybe we could be our own god and make up our own rules. Once those kinds of doubts take root, disobedience is only a short step away.
The Bible says all moral and spiritual disasters start in this same place. The New Testament says it comes from the lust of the flesh (wanting what we want, refusing to be happy with what we’ve been given), the lust of the eye (grabbing what looks good, judging and evaluating the issues of life superficially, rather than eternally), and the pride of life (dissatisfaction with being a creature, thinking we deserve better, thinking that somehow we could do a better job).
Eve listened. She tried to reason with the unreasonable. A wise man learns that you don’t reason with evil. You resist it. You can’t fraternize with it. You flee from it. Eve looked. She took and she ate. She offers it to Adam, who was with her, it says in verse 6, and he ate.
A simple decision. It was just eating. Eating was good and natural. But this was the one thing God had said, don’t do. A simple act, but far from innocent. Eve, and then Adam, faced a choice. They came to the fork in the road. It wasn’t about a fruit at all. It was about God. Can I trust him? Do I believe him? Not do I believe in him, but do I believe him? Is his word good enough? Do I trust him enough to do as he asks simply because he says so? That’s the stuff of which eternal destinies are made. That’s the choice of good and evil. It still is!
They made their choice. Everything changed. The results were immediate, but not what Adam and Eve might have expected. Their eyes were opened, the text says. Before they were naked and unashamed. Now they seek to cover themselves from one another. Fear and suspicion replaces innocence. Adam and Eve no longer trust each other. And for good reason!. When push comes to shove, each tries to blame the other. Fear replaces the close personal fellowship with the Creator. They hide from their maker. Nothing was the same.
But God still comes. He still seeks them out. He still cares about them. No matter how far a person runs from God, no matter how deeply he burrows into the underbrush of life, God still comes. He still pursues. He always finds. He still bids us to come to him.
But choices have consequences. They always do. So God pronounces his judgment. The two were forced from the garden and access to their source of life. Eventually death would overtake them. Some theologians call this God’s severe mercy. Physical death is the one thing that keeps evil in check. Imagine how bad evil would grow if humans had forever and ever to live and sharpen their evil skills.
They didn’t die physically all at once. Most humans don’t. We die bit-by-bit, organ-by-organ, cell-by-cell. From the moment we are born, we decay and deteriorate until finally the march of life takes us to death’s door. In the mean time, Adam and Eve lived estranged from God, from one another, and even from the creation over which they had been given dominion. From that point on, the two, and all their descendents would know pain, struggle, and heartache. Everything changed. Genesis 2 became Genesis 4. For most, it is still that way today.
Conclusion: If this were the end of the story, we would know a lot. We would know where we came from. We would know why we were made. We would know our possibilities. We would also know the reason our world is such a mess. If that were all, life would be a terribly frustrating, hopeless experience. If that were all! But it’s not!
This is just the beginning. God wasn’t finished. He had only started. Even Genesis 3 hints that there was much more to come. Did you hear the words to the Tempter in verse 15? “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; and he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Someone was coming, someone born of a woman, who would take care of the Tempter. This Coming One would be dealt a painful wound in the process, but the Tempter would be defeated once and for all.
Later in Genesis, God calls Abraham. He promises him a son and a family. From you will come a great family and a great blessing to the whole world. The rest of the Bible contains the story of how God kept those promises and many more. Eventually, the Bible says, when the time was right, God acted. Jesus Christ came. He was a descendant of Abraham, a fulfiller of all that the Old Testament promised. He lived, loved, taught, and died as a sacrifice for sin. He finally, totally, and utterly defeated the Tempter. He reversed Genesis 3.
Here’s the message of the Bible. Life is a mess. It isn’t the way God intended it. But Jesus Christ specializes in cleanups. He puts lives back together again. It happens the same way it started. With a choice. A decision to trust God and take him at his word. When that happens, it is the beginning of a whole new way of life!
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
