The Lord's Love Crushes . . .

The Lord’s Love Crushes . . .

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of God through which the Holy Spirit guides our hearts and minds today is recorded in Genesis 3:8-15

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the tree of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

The man said, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

So the LORD God said to th serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And 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.” (Genesis 3:8-15 NIV) – This is the word of the Lord.

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

“There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiates 1:9 NIV), King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiates. Many in the modern world may disagree. They consider the modern world more advanced, more sophisticated, than the ancient. Granted, we have devices and technology unimagined years ago, but has the world or the people in it really changed? Are people innately different now than years ago? Has human nature fundamentally changed because we have cars and space shuttles, televisions and computers? “There is nothing new under the sun.” We can learn much about ourselves from those who lived long ago.

God’s Word for today takes us back to the beginning. What we learn about fallen human nature in the days of Adam and Eve teaches us about our human nature today. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Yet this historical account in Genesis 3 teaches us not only about our fallen nature. It teaches us about the Lord’s love – his unchanging, constant love. The Lord’s love that was at work to seek and to save Adam and Eve is at work to seek and to save you and me.

What does the Lord’s love do as he works to seek and to save us sinners? The Lord’s love crushes. Crushing isn’t usually considered a loving act. But whether it is loving or not depends on what is crushed. Crushing a bee in your hand before it stings your child who is deathly allergic to it is an act of love. The Lord’s love crushes. That’s the theme for today. First of all we want to see that the Lord’s love crushes our excuses that try to hide our guilt. Then we want to see that the Lord’s love crushes our enemy who wants to destroy us. May the Holy Spirit comfort us with the joy that such love of our Lord does not change.

1) The Lord’s love crushes our excuses that try to hide our guilt

The text begins in the middle of the record of how sin came into God’s perfect world. Remember what has happened up until this point? God created a perfect world in six, normal days. On day six he created Adam and Eve from whom we’ve all descended. He created them in his image, that is, they were holy and sinless like God. He gave them the rule over the animals.

How could our first parents thank the Lord God for the wonderful world he had given them? He provided them a way. He gave them the Tree of the Knowledge or Good and Evil and told them not to eat from it. Each day as they gladly obeyed their God’s command, they would be worshipping him with thankfulness.

So we see the perfect relationship of love, thanks, and joy between God and our first parents. Satan aimed to change that. Who is Satan? He was originally created as a good angel. But he and his followers rebelled against God and were thrown out of heaven. His name, “Satan”, means enemy. He is the Devil, the father of lies.

He uses a snake to speak to Eve. “Did God really say, ’You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1 NIV) He tries to get Eve to doubt God’s Word and his love. Eve corrects him that it is only this particular tree that God commanded them not to eat from so that they wouldn’t die. Then the snake says, “You will not surely die . . . For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know good and evil” (Genesis 3:4, 5 NIV). With this lie Satan deceives Eve. She no longer believes God’s Word. She turns her back on God’s love. She eats. She gives some to Adam, who had stood there and failed to intervene. He, too, eats.