When Everything Falls Apart

Marci and I celebrated ten years of marriage on March 5, 2021. We celebrated by going to South Dakota where we got to see Mount Rushmore and the surrounding area. Now, I have always been fascinated by mountains, but living in Houston my whole life with little opportunity to travel, I have rarely seen or experienced mountains personally. We flew into Rapid City and drove to our destination. The next day, we went and experienced Mount Rushmore. Nobody can quite prepare you for what it is like to lay eyes on it for the first time in person.

The experience was great, but the thing that took my breath away was exploring the black hills of South Dakota after we left the national park. We drove around until we got to a lookout point. We lost track of elevation. We got to the end of the path and there were giant rock formations in our way. So we decided to cross the safety barrier and go climb these rock formations. Oh. My. Goodness! The view we got was breathtaking! There were peaks and valleys for miles. You could even see Mount Rushmore way out in the distance!

Reflecting on that trip this week got me thinking. Life is full of peaks and valleys. There are high points and there are low points. We often try to avoid the lows and live the highs, but life doesn’t work that way. The ups and downs of life remind us that things are not always what they are supposed to be. The world we live in is broken, and everyone is still trying to figure out why.

The Bible provides the story for how things have become what they are. Genesis chapter three tells us how God’s creation that was very good became something that is very bad. But today we are not just going to look at the story of how corruption entered an otherwise perfect world. We are going to see that the sequence of events in this chapter present a pattern that still impacts us today, and that God has provided a solution for breaking the cycle.

We are going to look at four truths that begin to take shape in Genesis 3, but we still experience in modern times. The pattern of temptation and sin, of guilt and shame, and of the grace of God.

Temptation still whispers.

Chapter two showed us the more intimate relationship between God and man, how God was helping Adam learn to exercise dominion over the earth, and the joining of Adam and Eve as partners in representing God to the rest of creation. They were given a command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the only prohibition they were given.

The next chapter opens up by introducing to us a new player in the story.

Genesis 3:1–7 NASB95

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ” The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

Now, there are a lot of questions to consider here. Why is the snake talking? Why isn’t Eve surprised by this? Could all animals talk before the fall? These are questions we are going to consider on the 23rd in our Wednesday night Bible study. What I want to focus on is the activity of the serpent, who we know as the Devil, or Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2). The name Satan means adversary. He is the bad guy in the story. He enters the scene and asks a simple question. He leaves a part out, but his plan is to cast doubt on what God said.

Eve responds by correctly stating God’s command, only that she adds a condition with three words: “or touch it.” The authority of God’s word can be called into question whenever we are either ignorant of his commands or we have manipulated his commands in some way. The serpent knows what the command is. He just wants Eve to doubt it. Eve doesn’t seem to have the whole picture because there has been an amendment to the command. Do you know what your Bible says, or do you just think you know what your Bible says?

It gets worse. The serpent calls the consequence into question. “You will not surely die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The claim here is that Eve is incomplete. God has not given her everything. There are things she lacks, like a knowledge of good and evil. Could you imagine what being oblivious to evil must have been like? This one thing, this gap in knowledge, sowed the seed of curiosity and that was all that was needed. Curiosity led to doubt...doubt that God had been truthful...doubt of their completeness...doubt that God was who he said he was.

As the story goes, Eve gazed upon the fruit of this tree and noticed three things. First, there was a physical practicality to taking the fruit. It was good for food. It would provide a physical satiation to hunger. Second, there was aesthetic beauty. You are far more likely to buy fruit if it is flawless in appearance than if it has a few blemishes. The fruit was pretty. It was nice to look at. Every marketer on the planet knows that packaging matters. Third, there was the potential for gain. It was desirable to make one wise.

Now, does God want us to have all these things? Does he not want us to have food to eat? Beautiful things to look at? Wisdom? Of course. But he is the provider of those things. He wants us to trust that he will. The taking of the fruit is the removal of a dependence on him and a violation of the command he set in place.

If Adam and Eve wanted to know what evil was, couldn’t they have just asked God? Couldn’t they have said, “Nah, we’re good. We got all this other fruit to eat. We’ll ask God later about this tree.” They could have, but they didn’t. But you and I experience the same thing.

Temptation whispers there is something you want and God doesn’t want you to have it. Sin is acting on that belief and seeking to acquire the thing you lack through your own means. Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias said sin is the pursuit of any legitimate pleasure through illegitimate means. Temptation still whispers that there is something you and I lack and God doesn’t want us to have it. So then we commit sin when we seek to act on that belief.

We still hide.

Both Adam and Eve take the fruit of the forbidden tree and something happens. Their eyes are opened and they discover their nakedness. So, quick question: Did the serpent tell the truth? Yes and no, which is why he is so deceptive. He said their eyes would be opened, and they would know good and evil. But they had to commit evil to know what it was. But the next few verses spell out the aftermath of the incident.

Genesis 3:8–13 NASB95

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Imagine being born in a perfect relationship with God. There is no evil. There is no rebellious spirit in you. Everything is as it should be. Then you commit your first offense. The first instinct is to hide. When we sin against God, our first instinct is to run and hide. Adam and Eve never knew what that was until this moment. Their eyes were opened. They realized their own nakedness, which I think is less about the fact that they had no clothes on and more about illustrating vulnerability. They got a rude awakening to the realization that they were vulnerable. They were unprotected. Their condition had become unsafe.

Now, God is omniscient. That means he knows everything. So he never asks a question he doesn’t already know the answer to. He knows what they have done, but it provides a teachable moment. Adam and Eve cannot hide what they now know. The genie is out of the bottle.

When you sin against God, is it not your tendency to hide from him or distance yourself from him? As if he doesn’t already know? But we fear facing the music. We fear owning up to our actions. We shift into self-justification or placing blame as Adam and Eve did. “But God you don’t understand. The woman you gave me gave me the fruit and I ate it! But God you don’t understand! The serpent deceived me and I ate it!” Our tendency today is to do the exact same thing they did. Let’s blame someone else for our bad behavior rather than own up to what we’ve done.

Sin has entered the world. Now sin has its consequences...

Sin destroys everything.

The effects of sin are something we see and feel every day. Because this has happened, God pronounces curses on the guilty parties as a righteous judge.

Genesis 3:13–19 NASB95

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”

In a moment, the paradise that was Eden had fallen apart. The serpent is the most cursed of all animals. The pain women experience in childbirth is multiplied. Work to produce food is much more difficult than intended. What I want to show you is a breakdown of four broken relationships as a result of this moment.

First, there is a broken relationship with God. Fellowship with him in the same way is no longer possible. Second, there is a broken relationship with self. Sin has distorted our own self image and sense of self worth. The things that we are born to do are much more difficult. Third, there is a broken relationship with others. The wife’s desire will be for her husband, but he will rule over her. Have any of you experienced disharmony in your marriage? Fourth, there is a broken relationship with the rest of creation. Our relationship with the ground is that we now contend with thorns and thistles, with droughts, famines, work not playing out like we though it would.

The world became broken. But there is still good news.

God’s grace still covers.

Before we continue, I want you to see that God is a gracious God. In verse fifteen, God provides the first version of the gospel. Enmity is hostility. There is a hostility between the serpent and the offspring of the woman, but it is clear that there is a specific offspring to which God is referring. This is indicated by the third person pronoun “he.” God intends to bring a savior who will ultimately defeat the serpent and his offspring. This is the anchor to the thread of promise that will be woven through the rest of the book. God doesn’t have to do this. He could have offered no hope, but out of his love for us, he has offered hope.

In addition to this, God does something else he doesn’t have to do.

Genesis 3:20–24 NASB95

Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

God clothes Adam and Eve in garments of skin, which requires the sacrifice of an animal. God could have left Adam and Eve to figure it out, but his compassion and care for them led to providing coverings more suitable for them.

1 John 1:9 NASB95

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God, through Christ, has provided the ultimate covering for our sin. Yet we still run from him when we sin against him. Yes, there are consequences for our bad decisions. The fact of the matter is the pattern we see here is the same pattern we go through every day. Do you think God is holding out on you? Are you tempted to seek something you think God doesn’t want you to have? That becomes an opportunity to take that to the Lord in prayer. The trick is learning to wait for him to provide it.

Because temptation deceives and sin destroys, we must cling to God’s Word and trust His provision.

Do you believe what God’s Word says? Do you believe it so much that you are willing to follow it? Are you willing to follow it even though it will mean delayed gratification? Do you trust the Lord enough to wait for his provision?

When everything falls apart, what do you turn to? Do you turn to self-justification? Is it someone else’s fault? Or are you brave enough to look in the mirror and recognize the problem just might be you? The good news is God sent his Son to redeem you and help you recover his original design for your life. But pursuing God’s design for your life isn’t possible when you insist on steering the ship. Rather, let’s run to the one who redeems.