Genesis 3:1-15

Introduction

MPS:

I laugh when people ask us about our time homeschooling

There are different philosophies of early childhood education in homeschooling

The classical method is awesome it teaches reason and thinking and memorization of different things like latin

We did Classical Conversations Coop a few years and one day Morgan wasn’t able to take the boys so I went

I was an outcast immediately

Every other dad their was like a lawyer with 12 kids who all could play a musical instrument and here I am with a tat sleeve and two kids who have names-like we are country as pond water

it god worse

I went to beaus class and sat in an unsersized chair as they sang latin declensions …no idea to this day what that is

So I made a few jokes about it to the die hard moms in their and just got mean glares…i should have taken the hint

But we got to history and I was done

They sang histoircal moments from flash cards to childhood rhyme songs

I was done…like the worst atrocities in history to old mcdonald had a farm

And general custer led his men to a masacre at big horn

The russian revolution saw the czars and their children murdered

I made a joke and the moms started shielding their kids from me

I think I have done the same thing as classical conversations with genesis 3

It records the worst day in human history and i see it the way a renaissance painting depicts it

Like adam and eve doing this interpretive dance with an apple in hand a snake in a tree

But its deep with truth and damage

But bursting with victory we long for through the suffering of Good Friday and victory exploding as it promised Easter

The Anatomy Of Sin (1-7)

If you are here today and you are skeptical about the Christian Message or tense up at the sound of words like sin i get it

Doesn’t it seem archaic to talk like that?

Haven’t we progresses past this type of prehistoric language?

I acknowledge that there are churches who have just beat people over the head with this sin stuff

So keep an open mind…because if you are concerned with whats wrong with the lord and your life. If you are concerened with fear and sadness and grief and cruelty. If you are here and you are wondering why can’t I be what I aspire to be why can’t I ever achieve what I want to achieve as you are struggling with sin

it is not hopeless or dark it is what gives immeasurable hope to the Christian Message nothing else can ever give you

See if you believe things aren’t the way they are supposed to be you already believe in the biblical anatomy of sin

This passage is the greatest glimpse into the anatomy of the bible

The bible is not a rule book to keep

It is the story of reality

It’s the story how things are and why we are separated and searching for the distant memory of the paradise lost

Chapter 3 opens with this unnamed serpent …

He was the most shrewd of all God had made

I think we believe the renaissance paintings here too much

The language to describe suggests a shiny and luminous appearance, which would get Eve’s attention.

He begins the anatomy of sin with a question:

Genesis 3:1 CSB

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”

He presents a lie of God’s original and loving permission to us

In a shrewd way the hustler is a parasite off of God’s goodness

Cornelius Plantinga says:

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin The Mask of Sanity

To do its worst, evil needs to look its best. Evil has to spend a lot on makeup

He wants her to believe the building Dna of sins anatomy

to believe that God is an absentee land lord who is holding out the good life from you

Plantinga again says: from them to us Our base problem is unbelief. Failing to trust in the infinite God, we live anxiously, restlessly, always trying to secure and extend ourselves with finite goods that can’t take the weight we put on them

Eve and this snake maximize the prohibition and minimize the damage

Did God say you can’t eat from any tree”? maximize the prohibition…God said eat from all of them just not this one...

Eve follows in questioning God’s decision making ability when she adds…God told us we can’t eat OR touch it...

maximize whats being held out on you…and minimize what will happen when you take your fullfillment into your own hands

Genesis 3:4–5 CSB

“No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

He was right that they would see differently

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant they would have the capacity to make independent judgements about how things should be…

Sin is asserting that you are god and should be on the throne to bring about your wants, and longings, and choices because the big guy upstairs is clueless and mean…and won’t really do anything about it

I have lived the wreckage of believing the same lie

I was in control of defining the good life and the world giving me the good life

I beleived life owed me something more than what it was and I hated God and everything for it

When that fails..when the world fails to give it..when you fail to reach it you believe you are a victim

There is no one more dangerous then a victim and we all believe we are victims of life…

Eve was the first to believe she was a victim of the good life being held out on her

listen to this ...

Genesis 3:6 CSB

The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Enter Adam’s participation trophy

He was their the whole time oblivious trying to impress her with all the animals he got to name

Oh i called this one a koala , look that one I called a sting ray how cool is that …probably asked her are you ok? is anything wrong? 100 times...oh is it snack time already? awesome hey who is this guy your talking too

In reality he heard all of it and wanted the same thing she did…imagining the good life was being kept from him

That choice is the spray paint can to God’s perfect masterpiece…and we have all held the can and it has cosmic consequences

Why is it not only wrong but also foolish to offend God? God is our final good, our maker and savior, the one in whom alone our restless hearts come to rest. To rebel against God is to saw off the branch that supports us

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

Their eyes were open but not how they thought

Comprehensive Consequences (8-13 & 16-24)

They are immedately seperated from God, themselves, each other, and even nature itself

Genesis 3:8 CSB

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

The one who knew them

Who made them

Who walked with them…now they hide

this is the consequence of rebellion

They hid because they were naked

God says lets take a walk and adam says i can’t im naked

the use of naked here means …naked…but it conveys that they were fully known

they didn’t lose their clothes they never had them

what they lost was their purity, they lost their sense of adecaucy and acceptabliity

That is why the bible says sexual sin is so much more destructive to our soul then anything else

We feel regret not joy

we lose our purity

we all have this sense of loss…

why is it that you feel the way you feel?

this feeling of inadequacy, insecurity, like we can’t ever just arrive?

it is because we all have this memory trace of glory loss, or greatness lost, of paradise lost

It’s not like they werent naked before what changed is that vulnerablity was now something they couldn’t stand

Before they chose to be their own masters they had no problem with radical vulnerability

And we have unbeleivable creativity in finding ways to hide our vulnerability

we are pro’s at hiding those things that if we don’t cover we will never be loved

they hide from each other with fig leaves, they hide from god in the trees, and they cover from their own eyes with blame shifting

they have to completly control what is seen and known about them

Are we any different?

why do we exhaust ourselves to work and earn? why is it some of us have to save the world be the helper for anyone? why do some of us have this tough exterior? why do we kill ourselves in a gym and diet to maybe be attractive enough?

We cannot deal with our inadequacy if we don’t do something

WE all grab a fig leaf…and it never works

We are also separated from each other

every dimension of life is hit by sin

Genesis 3:16 CSB

He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.

Now rule means that a man will tend to try and dominate women because of the emptiness sin creates

That is why most domestic abuse cases are men abusing women, sin tends to make men oppress women

men will idolize power

and her disire will be for her husband

The language means that women will make the relationship an idol

of course there are gender differences …they are different idols

Tim Keller says the positive comlementariness of maleness and femaleness under sin now becomes mutually confirming addictions”

Adam was the first man to ask are you ok? is something wrong? question everythinng

She was the first woman to say I am fine but not say the truth so she can control

That same need to cover up impacts how we treat each other

originally we were in charge of nature and now its in charge of us

now it controls us

and it even fights against us

Geroge Whitfield once said “have you noticed when you move close to nature the birds chirp at you, the snakes hiss at you, the dogs bark at you?…because they know…they know that you have a quarrel with your master”

nature that should be our friend is now our enemy because we rejected our place in the grain of the universe

Romans 8:22-23 says everything is

Romans 8:22–23 CSB

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

We want to be set free and Easter in Genesis 3 is the great hope we now get to hold too

As wanderers east of Eden God has given us the way home

We needed a second Adam to win where the first Adam lost

The True Adam (14-15)

Dorothy Sayers was a British Novel writer in the early 1900’s.

She wrote crime novels and the main character in her books was Lord Peter Whimsy.

Whimsy was a bachelor in her books and alone when not on the case solving crimes.

Eventually a young woman appeared in the books.

The character had the same biography as Sayers the author and what became clear was this.

Sayers saw her main character as broken unfulfilled and alone.

Unable to fix himself.

So she wrote herself into the story to save him from his heartache.

The Gospel means that God has written himself in to our story because we cannot fix our oldest problem

Even on the worst day

Even when we broke God’s heart he had already made a way

He was going to write Himself into the story of the people he set His affections on and do what the first adam failed to do

Genesis 3:15 ESV

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

at unimaginable pain and cost he would cover and kill the dragon and get the girl

The anti creation is a desert wilderness

As adam was tested in the garden the second adam was tempted in the wilderness adams sin created

That is the reason the temptation narratives of Jesus are in the Bible

It is why they are so important

Will the second Adam fall where the first Adam did

Remember the anatomy of sin and see the same temptation to reject the fathers design

Luke 4 lays it out

Tell the stone to be bread …why have it hard? use your power not to suffer? Reject the obedience of this father who would leave you hungry?

where the first adam was disobeient to the Word of God the second adam says it is by the word he will live

he then tempted Him with all the kingdoms and power of the world

Men idolize power remember

So Jesus fully man fully god was tempted just like we are to take the power reserved for God and be glory theives…and the second Adam is faithful to submit to God’s power and reign

Exactly where the first adam failed

lastly he is given an half truth from the psalms…and Jesus retells it back to satan as it was intended…as eve should have done...

Faithful where the first adam and we all fail

And look at the best part

Restoration touches earth

this earth where all isnt how its supposed to be was restored in the wilderness

Mark 1:13 CSB

He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels were serving him.

after the second adam was faithful …nature and man were in the right order..

He was with the animals just as Adam was before sin..

The temptation of Jesus was when He won…through obedience he took the throe

As trees fill the pages of genesis 2 and 3 a tree was His coronation

The abundance of paradise regained was purchased on a tree outside of the city as the second Adam took the last place left to stand in for us…the father turned away from the son so he would never turn his back on you

Adam and Eve were sent out of Eden

A flaming sword kept them out

The flaming sword kept us out …

We needed the only one who alone could sacrafice himself to walk into it and break it on his own body

That is what was happened on Good Friday

He took the sword

Easter was the breaking in of New Creation into reality

Easter in Genesis says He is the first born of the New Creation we will share