The Fall

Good morning once again. We are continuing in our series that is looking at the Gospel Story throughout the Bible. Just as a reminder, we are going through the Bible in one year, looking at how everything in scripture is a unified story that points us to Jesus as the savior and messiah. Last week Dan preached and you heard how God created the world and everything else and how it was all “very good.” Today, we are going to get to the not so great part, and see why we live in a world that has pain and heartache.

Prayer

Engage / Tension

If you have every been to our house, you know that we have a bathroom that is right off of the kitchen. It’s just a small bathroom with a toilet and sink, but there is another door in it that leads to a pantry. Amy and I had talked about getting a new vanity for the bathroom because it was a pretty old one and this last summer we decided to do just that on a random night. We were at Home Depot and they had vanities on sale and they looked good so we snagged one and brought it home. We had a delay in installing it because when I took the old one out I found a water leak that had to be fixed and so fast forward a few weeks later. The water leak was fixed and I had some time one Saturday to install it. I got the holes cut out of the back of it and everything ready to go, Amy helped me carry it in, and we realized something rather quickly.

We could not open the pantry door. In my wisdom I didn’t measure anything that night at Home Depot. I went based off of what I thought “looked” right and just got the vanity. To solve this issue, I did the only rationale thing. I liked the vanity, it looked good. The box was destroyed, I had the holes cut in it already, I can’t take it back. And I had a brilliant idea. So I popped the pantry door off the hinges, carried it out to the garage, and cut out a notch in it with my table saw! And just like that, the door would open again.

I bring that up, because it’s a story that illustrates how there are consequences to the decisions we make. I made a very conscious decision at Home Depot that I didn’t need to measure, I could just eye ball it. That was not the case.

We all know that our decisions have consequences, but yet how many times do we neglect to think about them? We often think of Adam and Eve and how they make their decision to disobey God and think, “How stupid were they? Why did they do that?” But yet, we all fall into the same category in our lives. We decide to do something, something that we know is wrong, something that we shouldn’t do, but yet we do it anyway. And like my bathroom vanity, we have to then deal with the consequences. But how do we deal with the consequences from when Adam and Eve messed up? That is what I hope we can hear today in scripture.

The Bad Decision

Genesis 3:1–7 NIV

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Here we are introduced to a new character in the Gospel Story, the serpent. The serpent here is described as being crafty, but think of crafty in the negative sense. There is a good kind of crafty that is positive, Proverbs describes that kind of crafty as being prudent. But here it is used in the negative sense. The serpent is deceitful, that is the kind of crafty that he is. But this serpent is different from any of the other animals. This serpent begins to speak to Eve. Now, that should make us wonder what the deal is with the serpent. It should inform us that the snake is being used here by someone else. Later scripture supports the view that behind the serpent is Satan himself, who is looking to bring about the fall for Adam and Eve. Revelation refers to Satan as the ancient serpent and we are told that Satan is the father of lies. So Satan is working through this animal to deceive Adam and Eve even though Adam and Eve should have control over the animals.

But the craftiness of the serpent can be seen in how he questions Eve. He begins by asking, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree?” The question that is asked is not at all true, but it creates doubts within Eve. I like how one author puts it, when he says this. “The question emphasizes God’s prohibition and overlooks the abundant provision of trees that God had given to Adam and Eve.” The tactic that Satan is using is trickery, did God really limit what you could eat? Eve responds by saying that they can eat from other trees in the garden, but that they couldn’t eat the fruit OR touch the fruit from the middle of the garden. Notice here how Eve adds something to God’s command. God simply said don’t eat it, but Eve says that they can’t touch it. While it might seem small, it shows us how we as humans often handle the word of God. God didn’t say that, but yet she believed it. Our beliefs need to line up with what God has instructed, not simply what we think.

But the serpent reassures Eve, you won’t die from it, in fact, once you eat it you will be like God and know good and evil. Really, what the serpent is proposing to Eve is that her and Adam could have the same knowledge as God. It raises the question of if God really is the source of all knowledge. So Eve looks again at the fruit, it looks good, added bonus of gaining wisdom by eating it, so she takes it and eats it and then gives some to Adam. At once they realize something has changed. They realize that they are naked and make some clothes for themselves.

So here we have the decision. Adam and Eve decided to go against God’s commands, they went with what they thought was the better decision, they thought they could maybe even be better than God by gaining the wisdom that the fruit offered. And as we continue on, we see the consequences of their decision.

The Consequences

Genesis 3:8–24 NIV

8 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 trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 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.” 16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

God walks through the garden and begins looking for Adam and Eve. Even going so far as to actually call for them. “Where are you?” In this interaction we are going to see how God deals with their disobedience, but throughout this passage we can see time and time again how God was merciful and loving to them. God knew where they were, he knew what had happened, but he comes to them and gives them a chance to approach him. God even gives Adam a chance to explain what happened and the first thing that Adam does shows one of the consequences of sin. It’s not Adam’s fault, in fact it is kind of God’s fault! That woman that YOU put here with me, she is the one who gave the fruit to me. I think most of the time we read this passage and think that Adam is throwing Eve under the bus, but in reality he is telling God is is primarily his fault. You put her here with me, you made her, and look at what she has done as a result of you making her and placing her in the garden. When God questions Eve she then does the same thing Adam did. She blames the serpent for deceiving her. Sin has a nasty habit of making us want to play the blame game. When we mess up, when we do something we know we shouldn’t have, we often result to the blame game just like Adam and Eve. “I only did it because they told me to! I only said that because you did this or that to me!” Our first response to sin is often try to get out of it, blame it on someone else.

While it doesn’t necessarily help us, I often wonder what this passage would be like if instead of hiding from God and blaming each other for what had happened, what if Adam and Eve ran to God? What if they approached him and admitted what had happened? Yes, there would still be some kind of consequence, but how would that play out? Just a random little bit that I find interesting.

But God then gets into the consequences to their decision. First, he curses the serpent for what he has done and says that there will be enmity between the the woman and the serpent. And even though the serpent will strike the heel of Eve’s offspring, he will crush the serpent’s head. (We are going to come back to this)

Then we have the list of consequences for Adam and Eve. Childbearing is now going to be painful and the relationship between man and women is fractured, it will be different from what they have experienced up to this point because of their sin. The ground will no longer just provide food for them. Instead they will have to work the ground, fight weeds and thorns in order to get food. And finally, they will return to the ground. Just as God created Adam from the dust, so they will eventually return to be dust when they die.

These are quite the consequences to their decision. And while we once again might be tempted to say, “Oh geeze, thanks you guys.” We have to recognize that we do this every day. Every day we choose to do what we think is right, we choose to exclude God in our decisions, in the words that we say, in the way that we treat others, in the actions we take. We neglect God just like Adam and Eve did, and so we ourselves are also guilty.

Despite this though, despite the consequences that God gives to Adam and Eve and humanity as a result of their disobedience, God doesn’t abandon them. God could have just destroyed Adam and Eve right then and there, but yet he continues to love them. In fact, he goes so far as to actually help them in their new struggles, struggles that they brought on themselves. Adam and Eve had tried to make clothes, but they were not very good. So what does God do? He creates clothes for them out of the hides of animals. The covering that they created was not good, not God created a covering that was good enough for them. This points us to the fact that we are never able to cover our shame and guilt on our own, the only way to cover that is to rely on God for an appropriate covering.

But, if we go back to when God curses the serpent, we see that God goes farther than providing for their immediate need. Eve will have a descendant who will crush the head of the serpent even though his heel is struck. This is the person who will come and deliver them from the consequences of sin.

This is what the Old Testament is pointing us to. This descendant who will come and defeat Satan, sin, and death, this descendent who will set things right, just as they were in the garden initially. In Genesis we are going to see how this process begins. We will see how God narrows it down to the family of Abraham and his people, then it will be narrowed down to the tribe of Judah and the line of David, and eventually we will see how this descendent that God speaks of all the way back in Genesis 3 is actually Jesus of Nazareth who is Emmanuel, who will defeat sin and death for us. There is a lot that we will cover between now and the arrival of Jesus, but already we can see that God had a plan to save us. God was already at work to redeem us even before Adam and Eve stepped foot out of the Garden.

Application

While we have touched on a few application points to our lives throughout this passage, the main takeaway that I want us to have this morning is this. Even in a broken and sinful world, God loves his creation, us, enough to provide a way of salvation for us. That is the greatness of God’s love towards you. Despite our sin, despite our brokenness, God loves us deeply and unconditionally and desires to have us return to him so that we can have a relationship with him.

And instead of hiding like Adam and Eve did, instead of trying to avoid God, I hope that we would run to him. That we would admit our sin to him and ask for forgiveness through Jesus and through that we would experience the gift of God that is eternal life in Jesus.