Garments of Grace

Introduction

The image has been on my mind all week as I’ve thought about this passage is one from a favorite TV show, Survivor. You know, a group of people have to live on an island competing for a million dollars. And every season, as the new groups make their camp on the beach, the first thing they do is start building a shelter. The roof of that shelter is always palm leaves, woven together, they spend so much time on it, collecting the branches, weaving them together. And inevitably a monsoon comes and this shelter proves to be worthless! There’s always footage of the group huddled under the shelter as rain water just pours over them, soaking wet and freezing cold. Then they get really excited when the have the opportunity to win a simple tarp—a tarp that can do what their palm leaves and all their work could never do, actually give them shelter.

That’s the status of Adam and Eve after they gave in to temptation and sin entered the world God had created. With sin came shame, consequence, and curse. Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves with fig leaves—totally worthless, futile. But God comes in and though they will be exiled from the garden, though there are consequences for their sin, God meets them by making garments that last and fully cover them.

And that is our main idea today: Even in exile, we're invited to trust that in His grace God will provide for us what we cannot for ourselves.

Cut Off (v. 22)

We’ll come back to those garments and the grace of God, but I want to look first at the two major consequences for Adam and Eve in this passage. First, in v. 22, God remarks that the humans have become like God—specifically in that they know good and evil—and as a result, God must cut them off from the Tree of Life, the fruit of which would give eternal life. This was not the forbidden tree, but because they had taken from the one, they no longer had access to the other.

Adam and Eve got what they wanted! The serpent’s temptation was that they could become like God if they ate from the forbidden tree. Your eyes will be opened, he told them, and you will have knowledge! They wanted this knowledge for themselves, they didn’t want to trust God to tell them what was right and wrong. That’s oppression, that’s the real bondage, they were tempted to think.

They got the knowledge they wanted, but they came by it cheaply. Instead of trusting that God knew what was good and evil and then listening to him, learning his way, they made themselves like God to know good and evil for themselves. And the moment they ate of the fruit their eyes were opened and they immediately saw themselves as something to hide, full of shame. Not because their nakedness had been inherently bad, but because they were now sinners in their disobedience, they now carried the shame of sin and they wanted to cover up!

Thus God had to cut them off from the Tree of Life. The image is this, there were two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the forbidden tree. They were allowed the one and prohibited from the other. God said here’s your choice: the tree of life, live with me, in my presence, in perfect relationship with me in this very good creation I have given you. But what do they do? They say, that’s not good enough! We want to be like you! We want to forge our own way. Forget life, we want knowledge! We want to be our own judges, no longer subject to you (even though you created us!), we will decide what is right or wrong in our own eyes!

They decided it would be better to be like God than to be in relationship with God.

Is this that different from world today? We’re happy to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, no longer appealing to a higher authority like the Word of God. Like a child rejecting the rules of their parents because they know better and their parents know nothing! We are constantly pushing against any authority at the expense of our lives!

Now we might ask, why does God cut them off from the Tree of Life? Because God doesn’t want them to persist in this state forever. It would be a worse to allow them to eat of this fruit and carry on in their new condition forever yet be far from Him. It is a saving grace of God to ensure that they would not live forever in this state of sin and shame. For immediately, upon cutting them off and kicking them out of the garden, God is at work making a way for humanity to come back to Him.

Kicked out (v. 23-24)

Where does this leave the first humans? They lost all that they had and now God must kick them out, exile them from the Garden. What do you think they were hoping for when the took that fruit? Instead of whatever joy or pleasure they expected, they encounter only misery. Rather than sitting on a throne (remember, they wanted to be like God!), they’re expelled from the garden. Rather than freedom, they become slaves to sin and slaves to the land and its hard work. They gained nothing and what’s worse, they lose what they had: an unstained, personal, intimate relationship with God. They found nothing when they ate that fruit, yet they lost everything!

The punishment might seem dire, even extreme. But we must remember the grace of God even in this. This is less that what they were promised. They should have expected to die, and yet God, in his mercy, has allowed them to live and, as we saw last week, he has promised to restore the very goodness of creation through a child, through a descendent of Eve. Yes, they will die eventually, but not immediately and it is a grace that they carry on for God to bring about, through Christ, the redemption of all creation.

{pause}

The greatest loss is their closeness to the presence of God! No longer can they walk in the garden with YHWH, no longer can they have this untainted relationship with their creator. So much of the rest of the story of scripture is God bringing humanity back to his presence. A central motif in scripture is this westward movement of exile and trying to come back from exile in the east.

Think about the instructions God gives for the construction of the tabernacle—remember, that mobile sanctuary that Israel had in the wilderness in which the presence of God dwelt among His people. [IMAGE 1] The entrance to the tabernacle was always to face the East with the Holy of Holies, the place where God’s presence dwelt, always on the western end of the tabernacle. So for an Israelite to come close to the presence of God—you would have come from the East, from the direction of exile and moved toward God. [IMAGE 2] If you were the high priest you could enter the holy place and in there would be a lampstand formed in the shape of a tree (maybe like the tree of life?) and in the holy of holies, where did the presence of God dwell? In between two gold statues of cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

The cherubim with their flaming sword guard the garden and bar entrance for humanity, and it is the cherubim that guard the presence of God in the most holy place. Do you see? God, for His tabernacle, takes the images and signs of exile and fallenness in Genesis 3 and repurposes them in the place where they meet His presence again. He makes a way back to Himself!

Though a way back is coming, we must recognize the severity of this exile. The word used for exile in v. 24— “He drove out the man,” —is a Hebrew word that elsewhere throughout scripture is translated “to divorce.” You see, the covenant is broken so this is an act of divorce! It’s traumatic, it’s a rupture that should never have happened!

Sin separates from God. Intimacy with God is replaced with alienation or divorce from God.

Even more significant regarding this word to “drive out,” the Greek translation of the Old Testament that would have been known to the Gospel writers, uses a word that is later used to describe what the Spirit of God does to Jesus in Mark 1:12 “12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” Jesus is then tempted in the wilderness by Satan. Do you see? Jesus relives Adam’s exile and His temptation, but where the first Adam failed, this second Adam, Jesus, he overcomes! He resists temptation! He is undoing the curse and it is through this second Adam that we will find our way back to God fully.

For at the death of Christ, the veil in the temple (separating the people from the Holiest Place where the Cherubim guard the presence of God), that curtain was torn in two and the way to God was thrown wide open! It’s spelled out in that New Testament reading Dave did. Hebrews 10:19–22 “19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

The way is open. Come back to God through Christ.

Yet Met with Grace (v. 20-21)

I want to close by going back to the beginning of our passage to v. 20-21. We see how that even in the midst of such sorrow and consequences, and in fact before they are kicked out of the garden, there is an act of faith from Adam and Eve and a great act of grace from the Lord.

First is Adam’s act of faith: “The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Adam stood here, condemned to death because of his disobedience, about to be kicked out of the garden and yet he is looking to the future and trusting that yes, He and his wife will live and bear children. He should be expecting death, the punishment for his sin. But remember, God had just promised that He would raise up some future descendent of this first couple that would crush the head of the serpent. Adam’s response is not despair in his punishment, but instead he trusts God! He turns his mind not to death, but to the hope of life that God has just promised. It’s as if he’s heard the gospel and responded in faith! Eve will be the mother of all the living, including the mother of the snake crusher!

That act of faith from Adam is then met with a great act of grace from the Lord! Genesis 3:21 “21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” God clothed them, covered their nakedness and shame. And he did so not with the fig leaves the humans tried to use, leaves that were worthless to cover, but with garments of skin that would last.

Do you see? Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves with fig leaves, a manmade attempt to try and cover their sin and shame. Yet we know that garments of fig leaves would not last, they offer no warmth, no real protection. Nothing. They were trying to find a security and salvation on their own, yet this futile. They needed a salvation that came from outside of themselves and that could only come from God, He does for them what they were unable to do for themselves.

We talked earlier about the empty promises of our culture. Now I want us to ask: what in our world and culture do we use to try and cover ourselves like Adam and Eve with fig leaves? They tried, but the couldn’t fix themselves.

How are we doing the same? What are we finding hope in that won’t last? Is it a legalism, if I just do all the right things then maybe God will accept me? And if I do enough things, eventually it will make up for those bad things! NO! This won’t last, as soon as we mess up, as soon as we lash out in anger to our spouse, as soon as we judge our neighbor, as soon as we gossip about our coworker—then the whole thing comes falling apart just like a couple of fig leaves in the rain and wind.

Maybe it’s not legalism, but rather those things you’re chasing after. If only I can make this amount of money—only if I get this job, this relationship, this status, this position. These things will make me feel whole, that will make me feel secure and safe, this will fix the shame I feel, then I’ll be OK. Brothers and sisters, these things do not last and they fail at every turn: they cannot give us life, they cannot make us whole, they cannot keep us safe and secure, they cannot cover our shame. We cannot do this ourselves and we need to stop looking for fig leaves to do what only God can do for us.

They cannot deal with their shame. But God can, will, and does. It’s an act of grace that meets them even in their punishment. We might say this was the first sacrifice in scripture. God had to have killed an animal to make these garments. Instead of Adam and Eve dying, an animal was killed as a substitute, and through the shedding of this animal’s blood, they could be covered.

And of course, this points us to the substitute, the sacrifice we have in Christ Jesus. For sin, there needed to be a death, God accepted the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, and it is on the basis of His blood shed for us that our sins are forgiven and that God clothes us with righteousness—covering our sin and shame for good.

Jesus was exiled into the wilderness and remained faithful in the face of temptation, undoing Adam and Eve’s failure. Yet even still, He was cut off from God, felt the forsakenness of death and sin on the cross for our sake so that he could offer himself as a covering for our sin. He felt the curse of death death so that the curtain could be torn, making a way back to the presence of God and life clothed in His righteousness. He restored and undid what the first Adam lost for us all. The garments of skin here in Genesis 3 point us straight to the cross of Jesus Christ.

I want to end as I have been in the habit of doing in this Genesis series. From the beginning to the very end. Jesus has made the way back for us into the presence of God, but we know this only in part today. This passage invites us to put our faith in God who meets us with grace and who covers our sins and clothes us with righteousness when we cannot. But we also look ahead—ahead to that day when we will enjoy His presence perfectly. We’re not making our way back to a garden, but rather a city, in this city we will dwell with our Lord. And this is description of that city in Revelation 22.

Revelation 22:1–3 ESV

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

Do you see? The curse will be undone, we will be brought back into His presence and we have access to the Tree of Life. Brothers and sisters, even in exile, we're invited to trust that in His grace, God has provided a way back to Himself through His Son. And one day, the way back will be complete. No more curse. No more exile. Just life, in His presence, forever.