The Fall

Introduction

I’ve been working to introduce a larger theme for the rest of this year at Faith Baptist Church, which is formation. The book of Isaiah offers us a helpful image when it says: “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand.” It calls to mind the image of God at work, continuing to shape and mold His people. For Christians this is at the heart of our faith – being disciples of Jesus. Learners who seek to become like their teacher.

Some say that Baptists don’t believe in change, but I believe that people are actually always changing. Our moods change throughout the day, some of our ideas and opinions change over time, our hopes and desires change at different stages of life, and our maturity and wisdom change – hopefully,

Some of you might remember our beloved Canadian handyman Red Green who would recite the Men’s Prayer: “I’m a man, and I can change. If I have to. I guess…”

Well, not only can everyone change, but you will whether you like it or not. What matters is how you’ll change, and whether or not that change is good for you and those around you. Will it make you more joyful, or bitter? More peaceful, or anxious?

There are many forces competing to influence how you will change. Cultural messages, commercials, political ideology, social media, TV, movies, and books of all sorts, friends, family, peers, and so on. How much time and attention you give to any of these matters.

But there’s a deeper layer to this – a spiritual conflict happening between good and evil, life and death. God seeks to form you in a particular way. And the one we call different things – Satan, the accuser, the father of lies – is also vying to influence us. Ephesians chapter 6 puts it this way:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The Bible tells us that this has been true from the very beginning, and that’s the portion of scripture we’ll turn to and study today in Genesis chapter 3 as we ask if we want to be formed or have things our way.

Who We Are

I’ll read from Genesis chapter 3 shortly, but I want to back up to chapter 1 first, which we looked at last Sunday. If you want to know what humans are, what we are for – what story we should live by – this is a good place to begin.

And, as a reminder, I’m encouraging everyone to try to read the whole book of Genesis as we study it for another four weeks after this. Ideally read or listen to it more than once to start to build some familiarity with it that can bear fruit in understanding some of these themes and to create opportunities for God to speak into your life through His Word. Engaging with the Bible is a pillar of spiritual formation.

So, back to chapter 1 for a moment where we are told a story of how we came to be and what we were put on Earth to do.

Recall that God creates a universe and this particular planet and fills it with life and calls it good. But to complete His creation he adds humans are given the special distinction of being created in the image of God.

Other peoples and nations who lived alongside the Hebrew people also had concepts of the “image of God.” But they made it about their kings – the elite, the powerful who had the right to do what they pleased and to demand the service of others.

But the Hebrew scriptures come along with the world-changing notion that all people are created in the image of God. That means nobody is entitled to take advantage of anyone else or make them subservient – each person is of immeasurable value and worth because God has made them that way. There are no ordinary or unimportant people.

And God, the true king over everything, gave the people created in His image a job to do. Rule over creation on His behalf. That’s really important, and we’ll come back to it. Not rule over creation, period. But rule over creation on His behalf.

The “image of God” also comes with a job description. Help the world thrive. Take all the raw material and potential God has provided you and use it for the good of all creation. Tend the garden. Protect it. Help it grow. Use it to provide for yourself and your family and others.

When you go to work, when you raise children and love grandchildren, when you take care of your family, or support a friend, or volunteer in your community, you are being the image of God. These are very ordinary things that are also vitally important and even sacred.

Now I think we can move to chapter 3. Here’s where things go wrong. I’m going to read verses 1-19 in a moment. It will be on screen or you can follow along in your Bible however you access it. But first a moment of prayer:

Father God, I approach these words as more than words on a page, more than ancient wisdom passed along, more than helpful ideas that have shaped this world, but as your Word to me, and to those gathered in your name. Help us to receive them willingly and reverently. Believing that there is power in reading and hearing of these Words, I ask you to speak through them and my best efforts to reflect upon them. To the glory of your name. Amen.

Scripture Reading – Genesis 3:1-19

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.

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.”

To Be Fallen

What’s wrong with the world? Some of you might say “where do I start?” This week Russia started goading a NATO ally with drones, there was the disturbing murder of an American conservative influencer on university campus, here in Halifax no spectators were allowed at the tie-breaking Davis cup tennis match because it was apparently too dangerous for the Israeli athlete playing, and I fielded an unusual number of calls from people who can’t afford rent or food and have been calling every church and agency and organization in the Halifax area hoping someone can do something.

Meanwhile, at the individual level, I think we know that something holds us back from being the people we ought to be. We all know that it should be possible to be better, we all have expectations for ourselves that we aren’t able to meet. It’s very easy start down one path that seems right, until things go very wrong.

Genesis 3 helps diagnose the root of the problem humans suffer from so that we can actually treat it. So let’s pull a few things out of the text.

In the narrative, Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, are enjoying the beautiful garden God has placed them in. Then in chapter three the evil actor in the story – the serpent – arrives. And the serpent goes to work on Eve. He wants Eve to doubt that God is working for good, or that God can be trusted to provide the best for her.

He suggests that, actually, God’s commands are holding her back, keeping her from something that should could have if she rejected God and took it.

We’re not going to do this line by line today, but the serpent is indeed crafty, using misrepresentations and distortions of what God had said and half-truths about what would happen if the first humans rejected what God had told them.

One of those half-truths is the reward of eating this fruit of the knowledge of good and evil – that they would “become like God, knowing good and evil.”

But they already were like God – created in the image of God. And they had already had a sufficient source of knowledge of God and evil – God Himself, if they were willing to listen to Him.

So now we go back to the thing I said we’d go back to. To live as the image of God is to rule over this world on God’s behalf. There’s a lot we can do, but also things we are not free to do, and it is God who determines what is good and what is evil, not us.

The serpent wants Eve and Adam to reject God’s authority and try to rule on their own, to decide for themselves what is good and what is evil. To try to be God, rather than simply be images of God.

And they go along with it. Eve is front and center in the narrative but Adam is around for some or all of what happens and is at least as responsible for the path they choose to take.

The rest of the chapter describes the consequences of this decision to reject God’s rule and the role given to His images.

First, their eyes were opened, like the serpent promised. But what was revealed in their disobedience was a sense of shame, the guilt for sin that led to self-consciousness and embarrassment, which is all at work in their sudden realization that they are naked and their fear of meeting God in the garden.

Next God curses the serpent itself. And finally God describes other consequences that come with have chosen to reject His rule over the world – discord between man and woman and between people and creation itself.

That’s one angle on the Christian story of the source of our problems. What’s wrong with the world? We like the idea of ruling, but not on God’s behalf. Humanity has rejected being God’s images and insisted that we should get to be God. We should get to decide what good and evil are for ourselves, without any limits or boundaries imposed by anyone or anything else.

What does that look like?

It looks like people using violence or even leading others to war because it advances the interests and ambitions of a particular person or powerful group, without fear that there is a higher authority who will hold them to account.

It looks like creating systems and structures that exploit the many to enrich the few.

It looks like abandoning the very idea of actual truth and replacing with whatever feels right.

It looks like being blind to your own flaws and vices and stoking anger and outrage about the ways other people are wrong.

It looks like devaluing or even trying to tear down things that are central to the job description of being the image of God – family, community, meaningful work, and care and concern for others.

It looks like hopelessness – giving up on the idea of building a good future for yourself and those around you and just wallowing in despair that the world is too broken to bother with.

Am I crazy, or do you also see a lot of this going on around us today? And I think it’s getting worse, not better.

We live in a post-Christian culture, and one in which no other organized religion is a major competitor to the Church. It’s not Islam or Buddhism or the new atheism or new age spirituality that is most effectively pulling people in and convincing them to follow in its ways. It’s really the temptation of the serpent. Don’t rule on God’s behalf. Be God. Decide good and evil for yourself. Accept no boundaries or limits or obligations you don’t want.

There’s a scene in the sitcom Park and Rec where the anti-government head of the parks department – Ron Swanson – is planning to slaughter a live pig in order to BBQ it at public event in a park in front of children, and an officer asks if he seriously thinks he’s going to do that. Ron pulls out a piece of paper and says “Not to worry, I have a permit” and hands the officer a piece of paper that just says “I can do what I want.”

That’s the spirit of our age, and, and to some degree of every age, because this is the original temptation that corrupted creation. I can do what I want.

I can just move on from this relationship if I’m bored or someone else catches my eye.

I can put any substance in my body that I enjoy without considering how it might affect anyone else or how dependent I might get on it to function.

I can spend hours criticizing and attacking people on the internet, and losing my ever-loving mind if anyone does the same to me.

I can adopt a Christian persona and feel very righteous while I just engage in politics or doomsday-ism or weird tangents that have little to do with Jesus or becoming more like Him.

I can do what I want, and call it good.

But as Jesus taught and led a group of God-seekers He said something very different. Jesus – who the Apostle Paul also called “the image of God”, the clearest example of one who truly lived as God’s image in every way, Jesus said that simply doing what you want is the broad road that leads to destruction instead of the narrow way that leads to life.

Not only can you not murder, but you can’t indulge your anger instead of seeking reconciliation and forgiveness.

Not only can you not commit adultery, you can’t objectify people or entertain lust about others.

Not only can you not break an oath, you can’t make them at all because you are expected to simply tell the truth and do what you say in every instance, earning the trust of all who know you.

Not only can you not seek revenge, you are supposed to shame your enemy by doing good to them.

The citizens of God’s kingdom love their enemies, and pray for those who persecute them.

The give to the needy and try to avoid being seen or given any reward.

They pray humbly and discreetly.

They don’t obsess over wealth or possessions, being careful to have a health relationship to money.

They don’t fear tomorrow, believing that God will care for their immediate needs.

I know, some of you are thinking “there goes, Borden, doing the Sermon on the Mount again.” I’ve been ending up back there a lot, I can’t seem to help it, because I look at the world and I look at the Church and I see that we need it. Because to quote that very teaching of Jesus one more time:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Not whatever we want, but the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Conclusion

How do you become a person who can do the will of our heavenly Father?

By letting God form you.

First you have to decide what to do about the serpent and his temptation that resonates all the way from the beginning to now. Are you God, who gets to decide what is good and evil? Or are you God’s image, who needs help to do things God’s way? Are you accountable to a king? Or do you get to do what you want?

For those who want to live faithfully as God’s images and push back against the curse of the fall, let us seek spiritual formation. Learning from God’s Word to better understand His will. Turning regularly to Him in prayer to find the strength and discernment to do His will. Joining together in community to be encouraged and find good examples of doing His will.

What could you do this week? Maybe the Genesis reading I’ve been nagging you about? You could combine and prayer and scripture on your own in something like the Lectio Divina we practiced today. Read, reflect, and pray over a small section. Or build up a habit of short and regular prayer. Set your watch to remind you a few times a day to pray. Memorize a short prayer you repeat when you feel stressed or overwhelmed or any other time. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me…”

I’ll keep trying to offer options and tools and encouragement this season. But only you can decide if you actually need it. If you actually want to be formed, or would prefer to just do what you want, wherever that leads.

Let me offer a closing prayer to reflect together…

Lord God, search our hearts. Help us to see if it is true that we desire to do your will, or if we mainly care about enacting our own will.

Am I ruling on your behalf as your image? Or am I trying to be God in my relationships. In my finances. In my business practices. In my online activity. As a parent, grandparent, spouse, child, or friend.

As we come now to the Lord’s Table, we acknowledge that we are fallen people. Made in the image of God, but corrupted by rebellion against you. We need the body given for us, and the blood shed for us. Help us to recognize our need for your grace, and to have faith in the power of your forgiveness as we do this in remembrance of you. And in remembrance of you in this coming week may we invite you to form us that we might be more like your Son who gave all for us. Amen.