The Fall

What are some questions about sin that you have had?

Can anyone try to define what sin is?

oxford - an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law; in other words it is breaking God’s law

At the beginning of creation, there was no sin. God had created the garden of Eden. He had created man and woman, Adam and Eve. They were able to live in the garden and enjoy perfect fellowship with God. But that doesn’t last forever.

We do not know the timeline of how long they were in the garden before this new character appears. But we do know that the tone of what we are reading here in Genesis changes. We go from this joyous event of creation to the nearly dark and gloomy events that happen in chapter 3.

Main point: Sin has broken our relationship with God, but there is still hope

At the beginning of chapter 3, we have this introduction of a new character.

Genesis 3:1 ESV

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

The serpent. The serpent is Satan, the devil. Revelation describes him as the deceiver of the world. He is the one who came to Eve and twisted truths to make them sound good. And because of this, sin entered into the world through Eve and then Adam. The bible is clear that we are sinners because of the sin of Adam.

Romans 5:12 “12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

Romans 3:23 “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

Sin is not something that you can avoid. And maybe it is easier to think of this as a nature and not just individual acts. We have inherited a sinful nature. This is what is called the doctrine of original sin. This means that we believe that we are sinful because we have inherited our sinful natures from our father Adam. We do not get some sort of option plan where we have a chance to opt out of it. We have zero choice as to whether we have this nature because of the choice of Adam. But we do have the choice of obedience, and we will get to that later.

So we have this serpent, which is Satan, come to Eve with one goal. Deception.

Has anyone ever heard of the Trojan Horse? The story of the Trojan Horse comes from the Greeks. The Greeks wanted to take over a place called Troy, but they were not able to. They were not able to over take them because of the city walls. So instead of brute force, they resorted to fighting with strategy. They built this massive monument style horse out of wood and offered it as a gift to Troy for their gods. But, it wasn’t just a wooden horse. Hidden inside were the Greek soldiers. So when the horse was rolled into the city of Troy, inside the walls, the soldiers appeared and defeated them and destroyed their city. They used deception.

Satan uses deception to trick Eve. He puts doubt into her head. He says, “did God really say ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden’”. Maybe you are thinking, well didn’t he? But no. It is like the witnesses in the trial of Jesus that we looked at Sunday. They took a truth, twisted just a hair, and made it sound good but it was still a lie.

See, God had actually told them that they could eat of every tree of the garden, except for one. The serpent took the truth, twisted it into a lie, and sowed seeds of doubt into Eve. This is one of the tactics of Satan. Doubt. Believing lies.

What is a lie that you know isn’t true but that you have been convinced of?

But even though Satan was trying to lie to her about what God said, she initially seems to stick to the truth.

Genesis 3:2–3 ESV

2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

So she confirms the words that God spoke to Adam. But Satan does not give up easily. He uses deception to try to manipulate Eve. He does that to us too. Takes truths and twist them in to lies.

Genesis 3:4–5 ESV

4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Takes it and makes it appealing. That is what sin usually looks like. Something appealing. But not appealing to our righteousness but our flesh. For many, it is things that are selfish. To make us feel better. Alcohol, food, drugs, unhealthy relationships, sexual immorality. They give us this temporary fix that satisfy our fleshly desires.

But this is not anything that brings glory to God. If we go back to the purpose for our design, it is to bring God glory. We are created in his image, to exact his will and purpose. So if we give in to our sinful desires, we are perverting his creation and distorting the purpose for our design. Sin gets in the way of that. Eve was about to come face to face with what sin does.

As we continue, it says that she saw it was good for food so she ate it. But not only that, she took some and gave it to Adam. So now, they had both broken God’s law. When we think of times that we sin and we know what we are doing, there are feelings and emotions that come up. What are some of the feelings we have when we sin and we know it?

When Adam and Eve sinned, they did not feel prideful or feel like they had accomplished something good. No, they sinned and then realized that they were naked. See, what the serpent said would happen to a degree, happened. Maybe they were not exactly like God, but their eyes were open to good and evil. They did not have some sort of godlike power but understood that they were vulnerable now. They felt fear and shame.

All the way to the point where they looked at themselves and understood that they were physically exposed. So they covered themselves up in an attempt to protect themselves. But just covering themselves up was not enough, they heard God coming and they hid.

God, the one who created not only them but everything, who is all knowing and all powerful was coming. And they though that they could hide. We can somewhat laugh and chuckle about that, but we do it too. We sin and think that God can’t see us. But ultimately, our sin is against God. Psalm 51:4 “4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,”.

In this moment, this is what they felt.

God was there, they were hiding, and God calls out to them. Not because he didn’t know where they were. God is sovereign. But God does this to make Adam come face to face with his own sin. Adam had sinned, realized his sin, tried to cover it up, and then heard God and was afraid of what would happen. This was not some sort of unknown sin. They knew that what they had done had broken fellowship with God. And they were hiding and trying to cover themselves up.

Adam’s sinfulness really shows through though. Because instead of facing his sin, he puts the blame on Eve. He said, “the woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit so I ate it”.

It is natural for us to try to blame our sins on something else. (Well they made me do it, I couldn’t help it, the devil made me do it). Adam blames it on Eve. It isn’t like he wasn’t there. He was. And he didn’t stop her, he didn’t lead her. And then, when God confronted her, she blamed it on the serpent. “Well the serpent is the one who deceived me”.

The natural reaction to sin is to minimize what has actually happened by pointing somewhere else. All of what is happening here, from the serpent deceiving to what Adam and Eve are doing here with the shifting of blame, reminds me of a magician using sleight of hand. The natural reaction is to look in a certain place but the magician does something to take you attention somewhere else and you end up confused and dumbfounded. Adam and Eve are trying to do this with God. They know he is looking where they don’t want him to so they are trying to point his attention somewhere else.

But this tactic is futile. They have sinned and they will pay for it. But God doesn’t let the serpent get off free either.

In verses 14 and 15, God is addressing the serpent.

He is letting him know the curse that will be on him. God tells him there will be this enmity between him and the woman and between his offspring and her offspring. Enmity is opposition or hostility. There will be enmity between his offspring and her offspring. This struggle will happen and what we will see throughout scripture is that this hostility is portrayed in the unfolding of redemptive history.

Through the woman, we will get Jesus Christ. Through the serpent, we have Satan and the sinfulness of the world. So there is this struggle that we see throughout scripture of righteousness and sinfulness. And it culminates with Jesus on the cross.

This is what many refer to as the first gospel message. The promise of the coming messiah that would defeat sin and death.

But he also makes a promise to Adam and Eve.

He promises Eve that child bearing would be painful. This is physical suffering that is brought on by the curse. But it also symbolizes the frailty of humans. Of actually having to feel pain. This is a byproduct of sin. Pain and death. God also told her that she would be ruled over by her husband but that she would want to do the opposite. I can imagine that the first marital fight happened not long after this.

God then addresses Adam. Adam receives a curse dealing with labor. Now, before sin, it wasn’t that Adam did not labor. He was in the garden and was under the directive of God to work the garden and keep it. So work is not the curse. The curse is that he now has to work apart from God. What used to be joyful will now be painful.

But the pinnacle of the curse is death. It was not immediate death. We see the grace of God even in the midst of Adam and Eve’s sin. He could have struck them dead on the spot and started over. But no, he banished them from the garden of Eden with the promise of pain and suffering and eventual death.

Romans 6:23 “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So, although Adam and Eve have now sinned and have been banished from Eden with the promise of death, there is still hope. That hope lies in the coming Christ who will come from the seed of the woman as promised by God.

Jesus will come, he will live a perfect life, die on the cross, be buried in a tomb, and rise from the tomb 3 days later. And when someone believes in Jesus as Lord and savior, their life in changed.

It is not that they no longer sin, but they will not experience the eternal punishment due to them because of their sin. And that is because Jesus bore the punishment in our place.