Genesis 3 - God’s Sovereignty Over Sin
Main Idea: God’s good creation chose to rebel against their Creator, but He promised a Savior to rescue them.
THE RUIN OF MANKIND (vs. 1-8)
Mankind’s Enemy (vs. 1-5)
Mankind’s Choice (v. 6)
Mankind’s Regret (vs. 7-8)
THE RECKONING FOR SIN (vs. 9-13)
God’s Question (vs. 9-11)
Adam’s Blaming (v. 12)
Eve’s Deflection (v. 13)
THE REVERSAL OF CREATION’S PATH (vs. 14-24)
The Sky Ruler Was Downcast (vs. 14-15)
The Multiplier’s Sorrows Were Multiplied (v. 16)
The Gardner Worked Cursed Ground (vs. 17-19)
God’s Companions Were Exiled From His Presence (vs. 20-24)
GOD’S RESCUE PLAN
God Calls To Sinners
God Crushed Satan
God Covers Sin
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
Today, we are continuing our series in the Book of Genesis, chapters 1 through 11, and the series is entitled Sovereign. I told the Bible overview class during the 945 hour. Last week was super weird for preaching.
I've been preaching and teaching in different settings and scenarios. I actually preached my first message in 6th grade on James 1, I think it was 19 through 21.
And I assure you, it's very, very cute to hear a 6th grader go, try and say the phrase superfluity of naughtiness that you would find in James 1. And to this day, I'm not entirely sure what superfluity is, but I'm sure I can look it up now.
But last week, I've been in church, been listening to sermons, been whatever for a very long time. And last week was weird because there's no downside. It's Genesis 1 and 2.
Here is God's sovereign design, His good plan for the world. And there was no darkness, there's no sin, there's no thing to be conquered. And if we were just going off of last week, we might say, man, the Bible is just a wonderful book.
It has absolutely nothing to do with our world today. However, as today we journey into Genesis 3, we'll see that the Bible has everything to do with our world today.
If you had to describe the state of our world right now, would you describe it as under control? As in, don't worry about the economy or international warfare or politics or your job or your city. Everything is under control.
All of us would give a resounding no. Everything is out of control. Nothing in the current state of our world seems to be governed by anything other than absolute chaos, self-interested politicians and people doing whatever seems right to them.
But was it always this way? Last week, we saw a very different kind of world, the world God actually designed us to have, a world that was ordered, inhabited, and described seven times as good in the passage.
And as the icing on the cake of God's good world, He made little images of Himself to join in the work of filling and ruling the vast earth He'd made.
He started them off small with a little marriage, an easy job of gardening and animal husbandry, and only one rule. In everything God had made, everything had the label of good except for one thing, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
It's the only thing God said Adam and Eve could not enjoy, could not partake of, because eating the fruit of the tree would cause them to die. In a sense, the tree was the choice.
Adam and Eve could rely on God's definition of good and evil and listen to him, or ignore his definitions and define good and evil for themselves.
And truthfully, that's the same temptation that's put to us today, where we accept God's definitions of kindness, of marriage, of gender, of truth, or redefine them so that we can do whatever we want while feeling justified about it.
We're going to walk through Genesis 3 this morning and discover what went wrong with our world and what's gone wrong with us personally. Let's do this first.
Let's pray, and I want to encourage you, as we pray corporately, pray to the Lord personally. Ask God to speak to your heart. God does not want you to walk away empty-handed today.
He has something that he wants for you, because, Lord willing, what I say will come from the word of God. And when he speaks, he invites us to respond. And I'd invite you, ask him to speak to you today, and commit beforehand.
Whatever you speak to me about, Lord, I'm going to listen. Dear Jesus, thank you for today. Thank you for giving us the freedom to be able to be here.
God, thank you for the facilities that you've given us. God, I thank you for the people that you have given us to worship with. And God, I ask today that as your word is open, God, that our hearts would be too.
Lord, may we not shirk from obeying every word that you've said. And Lord, may you be glorified in our lives. Lord, if there's someone here today that does not know you as Savior, they've never turned to Jesus alone for salvation.
God, I pray that today they would consider that choice. Lord, we love you. We pray all of this in your name.
Amen. First, we can see in Genesis 3, the ruin of mankind. And it starts off in verses 1 through 8.
And specifically in verses 1 through 5, we can see mankind's enemy. Now, as we walk through this portion of scripture, there's a lot of things that are all tied into the rest of the Bible.
The Bible is one cohesive story that all points to Jesus, and it's all meant to work together. So there'll be some verses that are referenced, bringing in some other thoughts that the rest of scripture tells us, here's how you view this environment.
And in no instances that more true than looking at the enemy of mankind. Verses one through five say this, we're going to read through them, and then we're going to revisit some of the specific phrases and things that are said.
Now, the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?
The woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, you must not eat it or touch it or you will die.
No, you will not die, the serpent said to the woman. In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. Here, as we think about it, we're coming in from the 21st century.
I, other than metaphorically speaking, I haven't had any conversations with snakes this week, and I don't know if you have either. It's something that seems odd to us. Now, as we look, you know, the Bible is an ancient book.
Was it something that was commonplace for snakes to be said to talk to people? No, as you read through the Bible, this is an oddity. This is not something that the Bible treats as, hey, here's just normal life.
Everyone just talks to snakes. There's a couple clues in the passage that help us know what in the world is going on with this serpent.
If you remember from last week, I took a little bit of time and highlighted a few things that were mentioned in Genesis chapter 1 that are meant to point the way to Genesis 3.
I mentioned, especially in the places around Israel, in Egypt and in Babylon, there was a great fearful belief that there were great sea dragons, the sea serpents and looked at the saltwater goddess Tiamat of the Babylonians.
And so the Bible says, hey, whatever was created, even the spiritual beings, God made them. For some people, belief in God, they'd say, okay, yeah, I can believe in God, but I don't really know about the devil or demons or angels.
But the fact is, the same exact document that tells us about God tells us that God is not the only spiritual being, that he has those that are subservient to him.
None of them are his rival, but one of these is who Scripture calls Satan, the devil, the accuser, the enemy of our souls.
In Revelation chapter 12, he is called Satan, the ancient serpent, the dragon, the one that accused us before our God night and day.
And here in Genesis chapter 3, the author is letting us know, hey, remember like the sea dragons, the servants, the sea monsters from Genesis 1? One of them is on land. Okay, something's a little out of place.
Then if you'll recall, as we looked at day four, and we saw how God put the lights in the sky to rule over the night and the day, shining forth that light.
And as you look at the rest of Scripture, as it talks about the stars, it doesn't say, hey, if you look at perhaps the sun or you look at the moon, it's really like the Egyptians thought.
It's not some God or goddess riding on a chariot around and around and around the earth, bringing you day and night. But God does say that the spiritual beings are often talked about in this same way, the stars of God.
And here we have someone that is talking about the things of God. If you look there in verse number five, in fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.
Where there is Elohim, depending on circumstance, you can either translate it as God, the one true God, or as gods, often talked about idols or other spiritual beings.
Says, hey, you will be just like the Elohim, the spiritual beings or like God himself. You will be just like them if you do this. Okay, so now we have this type of creature that comes in from the wilderness.
He's the same type of serpentine creature that we read about in chapter one. He knows things about the spiritual beings. Something's off with this serpent.
This isn't just your regular old anaconda. There's something different about this guy. Obviously, all the rest of scripture would tell us, this is Satan, this is the devil utilizing this moment.
How he talks to Eve even gives us some thoughts. He says, did God really say, you can't eat from any tree in the garden? Now, if you all remember from last week, did God say they couldn't eat from any of the trees in the garden?
No, He said they can eat from all of them except one. But Satan's framing implied God is so strict. Man, He's really restricting you.
And so here Satan adds to God's word. He said there were more things off limit than God actually said.
And then Eve replies in verse number two, we may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said you must not eat it or touch it.
Well, as you look back at chapter two, that wasn't something God had said. It was something that either Adam or Eve had added on to God's commands. Can I encourage you today, God's word is sufficient to name and define sin.
You don't have to find bonus sins that aren't in the Bible. God's word is sufficient.
Even as you look at the Acts of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees during the time of Christ, Jesus often got in trouble with the Pharisees because they put the laws on laws on laws on top of God's law. And Jesus says, you're missing the point.
The point is that relationship with God, it's not how many rules you can stack up. So then Satan's next statement as Eve says, no, no, no, it's just this one tree. We can't eat of it.
We can't touch it. We can't define good and evil for ourselves. God says, this is evil, and we can't say that it's good to eat.
Satan in defiance of God says, no, you will certainly not die. Satan wants you to doubt and disobey the word of God that what he has said, his promises are not true.
That goes for if today you do not know Christ, you've never entered into that relationship with God, Satan wants to convince you that you will be A-okay in this world and in the next without the Lord.
He wants you to think that there is no punishment for sin. He wants you to think that your life will be better off without Jesus. That's not true.
For the believers here in this room, Satan wants you to doubt that the Lord is good. That is the specific statement he's trying to make to Eve. He says God is holding out on you.
He's not giving you his best. And frankly, it's just not true. Satan says in verse number five, in fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
You get to make the decision. You don't have to listen to him. You make the choice for yourself.
We can see this fall, this ruin of mankind, this fall of Satan referenced in some other places in Scripture. In the prophets, in Isaiah 14 in kind of poetic fashion, the prophet writes this about Satan.
How you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning, son of the dawn, you have been cut down to the earth, you who defeated the nations. But you said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God.
The ones I told you guys about earlier. And I will sit on the Mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
I will make myself like the most high. The same temptation he gave to Adam and Eve. You will be like God.
This was Satan's aim. He says in verse 15, Nevertheless, you will be brought down to the grave, to the recesses of the pit. And in Ezekiel 28, a similar poem is written.
He says, you had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect and beauty. You were an Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering.
The ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the barrel, the onyx and the jasper, the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald, the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets within you. On the day that you were created, they were prepared.
He says here, you were a beautiful, angelic, spiritual being, Satan. But, verse 14, you were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God.
You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. He's called a cherub, one of the cherubim.
And there's two words in the Old Testament that are spoken of in relation to what angels are like when they're not perhaps interacting with humans, what they appear to be in God's heavenly throne room, if you will. Two words are used.
The first is seraphim. And it's taken from some of the pictures that you would find in the country of Egypt where they have cobras that would be kind of in the throne room of the pharaoh. And it would be very intimidating.
You don't want to mess with a guy that can stick some cobras on you. And so cobras, especially in that region of the world, have, you know, kind of the wings that flare up, and you get the whole tongue thing. They have that going on.
And so in the picturing minds of the Egyptians, they would just draw out those little wings into big wings. And you'd have basically snakes with wings on their head. And the biblical authors adjust that image a little bit.
And you can read about that in Isaiah 6 and some different things. The important part of when the Bible describes spiritual beings is, hey, here's not like a physical thing that you should look for. Here's the type of thing that they do.
They are in the presence of God.
They are, if you will, looking at His holiness, guarding His holiness in the sense of they are there, and they are there in rebuke and in seeking to kick out those spiritual beings that should not be there, as we would read about in Revelation 12.
The other words, so there's the seraphim, kind of the snake type ones. The word seraph is like venomous, burning, and it's the burning ones, and then you have the cherubim. And this is referenced.
You can look at some different descriptions in Scripture. This is the real weird looking animals where it says, hey, what if you put together all the coolest parts of each animal and made one super animal?
You know, the boldness and the terrifyingness of a lion, the strength of an ox, the flying of an eagle. What if you put together like all the best things in the world? This is the cherubim.
Read about it in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 and 5. Again, the point's not, hey, here's like this literal physical thing you can find. This is telling you these are the mighty ones.
These are the ones that are powerful. And so scripture says Satan was a created being. He's not the eternal enemy of God.
It's not yin and yang. It's one of God's creations, fell. Tempted to evil, rejected God and his ways, and was not content in going down himself, but he wanted to take down humanity with him.
Do you realize today that your soul has an enemy and he wants to destroy you by inviting you to doubt God and disobey him?
1 Peter 5, 9 says be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion is walking about seeking whom he may devour.
Scripture would tell us greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, but may we always remember our souls do have an enemy, and we must be on guard against temptation and evil.
So we see first mankind's enemy, but then in verse 6 we see mankind's choice. It says this, then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.
So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Here we see that the woman saw.
The rest of scripture would tell us we walk by faith, not by sight. Just because something seems right to us does not mean that we should do it. She saw a couple of things.
First, that the tree was good for food. The Apostle John in 1 John 2 would write that there are three kind of enemies of our souls, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. She saw that the tree was good for food.
Hey, yeah, this is going to be tasty. She says it was delightful to look at. It's a beautiful fruit.
I've got to try it. And she saw that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, a wisdom bereft of God, bereft of his definitions, bereft of his commands. That is that pride of life.
So she took it and she ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. If you remember back in Genesis 1 and verse number 28, God gave this instruction to Adam and Eve.
It says, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth. The serpent was one of the ones that was supposed to be subdued, that was ruled over.
It was Adam's job to obey God's word, to listen, to follow through, to not allow any of this conversation or these actions to take place. And yet in his apathy or perhaps curiosity, he allowed every bit of it to take place.
Today, may we not be guilty of this sin, a sin of apathy, of simply allowing things to always be how they've always been in my life. I guess I've done it for this long. I can just let it continue.
May we be vigilant against the enemy of our souls. May we be vigilant to obey God's commands and in following him. Satan rarely wants you to sin all by yourself, or at least he never wants it to stay that way.
Who in your life is constantly encouraging you to gossap, to get drunk, to do things you know God doesn't want for your life?
Don't allow yourself to doubt the one who is life and goodness because of the influences of those that don't know what the end result of their actions is.
As Proverbs says, the one who walks with wise men will be wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed. So this was mankind's choice. God said, There's only one thing you guys can't do, and they did it.
So in verses 7 and 8, we can see mankind's regret. It says, Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked. So they sowed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Ironically enough, exactly what Satan said would happen technically did happen. He said, In the day that you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will know good and evil.
And now, verse 7, their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they attempted to make coverings for themselves, loincloths and some older translations, aprons for themselves. It wasn't a full covering.
They covered the bare minimum. And this is true for us today in the religious realm. We are consistently looking to cover up our own sin.
I can cover my sin. I can be baptized and have my sins fine. I can give my money and be good with God.
I can pray enough. I can give to enough charities and all be fine with God. I can do it.
I can make the covering. Verse 8, Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Hear God's coming.
Do you notice something even perhaps from what we read last week in Chapter 2 and this week from even what Eve rehearsed? The penalty for eating of the fruit was death. And they're not dead.
Like they know sin now. They have shame. They have guilt.
But they're not dead. The Bible says in Romans 6 23 that the wages of sin is death. The Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
Today, every person alive has sinned. Because of our sin, all of us are equally under this condemnation. We have said things, done things, and thought things that go against God's nature.
And yet we have not yet been punished for our sin. We've not been condemned. God doesn't send an angel down to them to tell them what they've done wrong.
He personally goes after this errant couple. Have you been in this position where Adam and Eve were before? Ashamed of what you said to another person?
Wanting to hide from guilt over how you took advantage of someone? Let me comfort you with this thought from the passage. God did not strike them dead for their sin when they disobeyed.
He personally came to them. Today, in your guilt and your shame and your regret, God is pursuing you and wanting you to come clean to Him. He knows your sin.
He knows that you failed, but He's inviting you to confess and forsake your sin, not be punished for it. We can see as God comes then the reckoning for sin that we can see in verses 9 through 13. We can see God's question in verses 9 through 11.
So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, Where are you? Do you think God was just like really bad at hide and seek? This is a question not for information, but a question of examination.
And he says, Where are you? And why is that? Adam's not with God.
There's a longing for fellowship. He says, Where are you? He's examining his state.
Where have you gone? What have you done? He asks, Where are you?
He's inviting him to find forgiveness, to find reconciliation. Verse number 10, Adam said, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked. Which, who had made Adam naked?
It was God. He said, Hey, this is good. In this world, there is openness.
You're not having to worry about all the things that we worry about now. There is no shame. There is no guilt in this place.
But now Adam's saying, the state that you created me in is evil. He's redefining what God had created and made. He says, so I hid.
Then God asked him, who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? Here he gives him two questions.
It's a simple, who told you that you were naked? Well, Adam told Adam that he was naked. And then did he eat from the tree?
Yes. But in verse 12, we see Adam's blaming. In verse 12, the man replied, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate.
He doesn't answer God's first question, and he blamed someone else for the answer to the second question. And notice here, he says, the woman you gave to be with me. Again, what God had given him as a very good gift.
I have a wife. I happen to really like my wife, and I don't know in this instance if I'd be throwing her under the bus going, hey, God, yeah, this just terrible, literally perfect person, like this one created very good. Yeah, she used to blame.
No, Adam was right there the entire time. If you know Hebrew, all the times that the serpent says, you can do this, you will not die, you eat it, your eyes will be opened. It's plural masculine.
So he's talking both to Adam and Eve the whole time. So he's kind of directly addressing Eve, but he's talking to both of them. And the man was right there the entire time, said and did nothing.
So Adam blames Eve. And then in verse 13, we can see Eve's deflection as well. So the Lord God asked the woman, what have you done?
The answer is she ate the fruit. And the woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. She says, I'm not really responsible for the eating because like he, the devil made me do it.
Well, did the serpent force feed her the fruit? No. She chose.
Adam and Eve's redefining of good and evil continued, as they state that what God gave them was bad, and what they did was acceptable, excusable. Our world and we personally do that each day. We say that our gossip and slander is just truth telling.
Our lust is normal red-blooded humanity. Our greed is financial stewardship. Our out of control anger is fine because Jesus was angry twice in the gospels and a thousand different ways.
When was the last time you fully admitted you were wrong and that you needed forgiveness? When was the last time you apologized to your wife or your co-workers or your friends?
God gave Adam and Eve a chance to clearly confess their sin, and they chose the same path we choose, self-justification. I'm justified in my actions. I did nothing wrong.
So as a result, we see the reversal of creation's path in verses 14 through 24. First, in verses 14 and 15, we can see that the sky ruler was downcast, spiritual being called Satan.
Verse 14, So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.
I want to mention here quickly, some people in a slight misunderstanding or misreading of Genesis go, Okay, so snakes had legs at some point.
Remember what I mentioned earlier with the wings and the serpents, the cherubim, all of those things are meant to be brought into play. He says, you no longer get your wings, you're grounded. You were exalted.
You were on the mountain of God. You were in God's presence. You were a cherubim.
You were one of those in the throne room. And now you're grounded to earth. He says, I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike your head and you will strike his heel. Here, God says, there's going to be a hostility between the offspring of the serpent, which if you know much about angels, you go, hey, well, they don't really like marry, have kids a whole lot.
The thought is those that will follow in doing the exact same type of lying and killing and manipulation that the serpent did, those that are in that line, and the offspring of the woman.
This is what's often referred to in theological speak as the proto-evangelion.
It's the first promise of Jesus coming, that yes, sin is entered into the world, there is wickedness, there are these effects of sin that will be mentioned by the Lord, but he's not going to abandon mankind.
Before he even tells Adam and Eve, hey, here's the punishment for what you've done, he's already promised a Savior, one who would come, who would crush, strike the head of the serpent.
What's interesting in the latter part of the verse, he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.
Scripture would obviously indicate that Jesus is the one through his death, burial and resurrection, he defeated Satan, he made a way that we could be reconciled to God, that we would not suffer the punishment for sin of eternal separation from God
and death in hell, but instead we can be reconciled. But also in Romans 16 and verse 20, the Apostle Paul writes this to the believers there.
He says, The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly, and the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
There is an element in which God is using you, or wants to use you, to accomplish the exact same work that Jesus did, that you would share the gospel with those around you, that you would in times when the temptation is given to you of rejecting
God's definition and adopting your own, God's giving you the opportunity to crush a serpent. And then he says, and you will strike his heel, that the cost of salvation would come through suffering, and that would be elucidated on in many other places
in Scripture, most notably Isaiah 53, and in the trial, the beating, and the crucifixion of Jesus. That God's way of working in this world is not often through the easy. It's through getting a snake bite on the heel.
It's through being unjustly imprisoned and killed as Christ was. Satan has an end date, the date when he's crushed forever, thrown into the pit, never to escape. But he wants to bring as many image bearers of God down to the pit with him as he can.
Are you following his style of disobedience and redefining? Or following God in his way? So we see that the sky ruler was downcast, but we also see that the multipliers' sorrows were multiplied.
Taking that phrase from Genesis 1 and verse 28, where God says, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. So one of the tasks that humanity was to do was to make more humans, to make more images of God, more people that God would love.
But we can see in verse 16, the multipliers' sorrows were multiplied. He said to the woman, I will intensify your labor pains. You will bear children with painful effort.
Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you. Here, this is not God's great design. This is the effects of sin.
When you turn away from the source of life, and you embrace sin and death and chaos and disorder, this is the natural consequences. Here, God's not putting something on Eve that she would not have otherwise experienced. He's warning her.
In this new world that you guys have embraced and created through your sin, there are things that now will naturally go wrong. Notice he says, I will intensify. He doesn't say I will originate your labor pains.
That came with sin. Says you will bear children with painful effort. This is sin's effect.
This is not God's cruelty. You can read in Revelation 21 and 22, God's design, where he says in that new earth, there will be no pain. Abandon God, abandon his blessing, his good, and his protection.
And then a very interesting phrase, your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you. First time I read over that, I went, what in the world is that trying to say?
But thankfully, because the Bible all works and fits together and the words that are used are meant to tie together, the exact same phrase is used in Genesis, just one page over Genesis chapter 4 and verse number 7, where God speaking to Adam and
Eve's son Cain says this, if you do what is right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.
He says sin wants to dominate you, wants to control you, but you need to dominate or control sin. You need to tell it no. So here again, not God's good prescription of what he had said in Genesis 1 and 2.
The natural effect of sin is you will have a desire to dominate, to rule over, to control your husband, but he often is going to do that to you. He says these are the effects of sin.
Wives realize today that there is a desire for domination working in you, for your husband to do everything you say, to adopt your every opinion, and an anger that will rise up in you when he doesn't. Realize that that's not from God.
It's a result of the curse. When the ideal couple decided they didn't want God's kind of world, which included God's kind of equal, loving, complimentary marriage.
And husbands, realize that the desire to dominate your wife, to have her obey your every whim, is not a desire from God. Paul's admonition in Ephesians 5 to husbands was not, husbands make your wives obey.
It was husbands, sacrificially love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. So you see in verse 16, the multiplier sorrows were multiplied in verses 17 through 19, the gardener worked cursed ground.
He said to the man, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, do not eat from it, the ground is cursed because of you. Here in verse 17, he says, you didn't listen to me, you listened to her instead.
This isn't a demeaning of women. He says, you had two people telling you two different things and you listened to her and not to God.
He says, now because of your choice, not because of her, don't say the woman you gave to be with me, this is because of your choice, the ground is cursed because of you.
You will eat from it by means of painful labor, just as in verse 16, I will intensify your labor pains. He says, you will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you.
Now, there's animosity, if you will, from nature itself. He says, and you will eat the plants of the field instead of the easily plucked fruit from the trees in the garden.
He says, you will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground. Adam and Eve's desire had been to be exalted spiritual beings. They would be like God.
They would be like the Elohim. But instead, they're right back to the dirt. He says, since you were taken from it, for you are dust, and you will return to dust.
Remember today that should Christ carry, one day all of your possessions and money and houses and things will go to someone else as you go six feet under. A time is coming when all of us have to die.
The question today is, are you living your life now in anticipation of that day? Are you waiting to tell your cousin about the Lord?
Are you putting off reconciling with that sibling for another 10 to 20 years over something that happened three decades ago? Even more important, do you know Christ as Lord and Savior today? Have your sins been forgiven?
Have you turned from self-justification to Christ's payment for sin alone? You'll go to the dust one day. What will you have to show for it?
Things that will just go to someone else or a legacy of love for others and a life lived for Jesus Christ? Then we can see God's companions were exiled from His presence.
Verse 20, The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. I do find it funny. He named all the animals, got the wife, didn't actually end up naming the wife until after this point.
It seems like maybe some things were out of order a little bit for him. Verse 21 says, The Lord God made clothing. So they had the aprons, they had the loincloths, they did their best.
But God gave, if you will, a coat. It's the same type of word used to talk about Joseph's coat of many colors. God gave him his best.
It says, He made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them. He covered them. He atoned for them.
God covered the effects of their sin and shame just as He wants for you.
The Lord God said in verse 22, Since the man has become like one of us, spiritual being, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat and live forever. Can you imagine immortal wickedness?
Undying Hitler, Dahmer, or Jack the Ripper? Immortality and immorality are a really, really bad mix. Now, this is not God's forever plan.
Again, reading Revelation 21 and 22, what God has for His people is the tree of life there in the New Jerusalem that we are invited to eat from, to partake in, to enjoy life with God forever.
But He says in this state, without their sins being forgiven, without that new heart that comes through accepting Jesus, this is not going to be good for them.
Verse 23, So the Lord God sent him away from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
Instead of enjoying God's work, where God had planted the garden and God had brought all the animals, He now has to do everything Himself from the dirt that he was taken from.
He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming whirling sword east of the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of Life.
It is interesting, at the very beginning of the chapter, we get the serpent, the one that Ezekiel would identify as one of the cherubim, and at the end of the chapter, we get the cherubim only.
One disobeyed God, plunged humanity into sin and death, and the other ones are following God's commands. So, I don't know about you, the rest of us are like, great, awesome story. I'm a little scared of what's going to happen.
This is why there is God's rescue plan. First, God calls to sinners, just as he did in the garden, come to me and find forgiveness and not condemnation.
As 1 John 1, 9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Romans 10, 13 says that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
If you're here today, God is calling to you. Do you know Jesus as Savior? If you don't know him, don't put it off for another day.
Don't wait for some better time. Today is the day of salvation that God has for you. Turn to him.
Listen to him. Secondly, God crushed Satan through his death, burial and resurrection. The payment for sin is death.
And Jesus died in our place so that we would not have condemnation, but that we would have forgiveness and reconciliation to God. Jesus was buried and he rose again. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
And God wants to continue crushing, stomping on Satan's head through your walk, through your words, through your actions, through your gospel witness this week.
Will you choose to follow God, to obey him, or will you choose to listen to Satan's redefining? And lastly, God covers sin, just as he did with the clothing that he put on them. They tried their best and it wasn't enough.
God did what they could not. Your wrongs have been paid for through the blood of Jesus, and you can be made new. His death, his sacrifice in your place is enough.
It is all that God requires, and he will not take any substitutes. Today, will you choose to obey God and trust his definition of right and wrong? Will you turn to him for salvation?
Will you run to him in your moments of failure and sin? Mankind, we blew it. And it wasn't just these two.
Every single one of us, we've blown it. We've chosen to rebel against our Creator, who only ever had good intentions for us. But he promised a Savior to rescue us.
He pursued us, that though we were hiding and ashamed and guilt-ridden, He came. He came in the person of Jesus. Living, He loved us.
Dying, He saved us. Buried, He carried our sins far away. Rising, He justified freely and forever.
One day, He's coming back. Are you prepared for that day? If today you were to return to where God had made you from, if you were to die today, do you know Jesus as your Savior?
It's not something that you have to give enough money to a church in order to experience God's forgiveness. It's not doing enough things. It's not going on enough missions.
It's not saying enough prayers of a specific kind. It's turning to Christ alone.
Romans chapter 10 says, If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that you're repenting from sin, you're turning to His way, you're not going your own way anymore. He's the one that's calling the shots in your life.
We confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts, that God has raised Jesus from the dead, we will be saved. It says, For with the heart, confession is made to salvation.
And with the heart, man believes, resulting in righteousness. Scripture would say that Abraham, a guy that we'll get to eventually in Genesis, he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
All of the works that you could try and do, it's just the loincloths of Adam and Eve. What he wants to do is he wants to clothe you in Christ's righteousness, to give you what you could not make on your own. Have you accepted Jesus?
If you don't know Him, I beg you, please. At the end of service today, I'm going to be right at that back table.
I would love to talk with you or set up an appointment for later this week where we can talk about your eternal state before God, about knowing that Jesus is your Savior and your Lord.
For those of you that are believers, temptation is not just for everyone out there to redefine good and bad. It's true in our heart. We excuse away our sin.
May we not do what Adam and Eve did, try and hide it away, try and put our own coverings on it. Turn to God. He is not coming to condemn you, but to rescue you.
Bring your shame. Bring your guilt. Don't wait until you've cleaned up your act enough to come to God.
You can't ever get it clean enough. Love the song that says, If you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all. It says true belief and true repentance are the only graces that bring you nigh.
Will you call on God today? Let's stand. Let's pray.
Let's sing a song that, for many people, is a great reminder of this truth, the song Just As I Am. God doesn't love some future version of you that cleaned up your act. That was holy enough.
That was good enough. God loves you where you are. While you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.
While we were his enemies, he made us alive. He loves you. He wants you to follow him.
