God's Big Picture: Genesis 3-4

CIT: The Fall has corrupted humanity to its core, which breeds sin and destruction, but God has given us hope in Jesus Christ.

4 Aspects of the Fall

Satan’s Deception

What the Fall has done to us

What a sinful world has done to us

Our hope in a fallen world

Satan’s Deception

Satan’s deception is rooted in questioning God’s Word Gen.3:1-5

He questions if God was holding back something good from Adam and Eve.

When Eve answers saying that they will die, Satan deceives them by making them question if God is truly good in what he gives to them.

In other ANE creation stories the god’s actually hold back what makes humanity like the god’s, but in the Bible God gives humanity his image, already making them like him.

They should have remembered that God made them in his image, so they already are like him.

Our temptations are rooted in questioning God’s word as well, but we can be sure that trusting in God’s word will keep us from sin

Num. 23:19

Ps. 119:9, 11

2 Tim. 3:16

Satan’s deception is rooted in reaching around God for the blessing of God.

We often assume that the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was bad so that’s why God told Adam and Eve to not eat from it, but remember God called his creation “very good.” So this tree was not bad for them, God very well one day may have let them eat from it when the time was right, but they needed to be patient.

Satan deceives them into taking the blessing now instead of waiting for it.

He tried the same thing with Jesus in Matt. 4:8-9 but Jesus remained patient and had, “all authority in heaven and on earth given to” him.

Satan tries this still with us. Take premarital sex for example, sex in the confines of marriage is a good gift and blessing given by God, but when we seek to engage in sex outside of marriage, or engage in things like pornography we are trying to take a blessing that God has promised to us before the correct time.

Satan’s deception is rooted in subverting God’s good design

In the creation of man and woman God has a good design for them. Man was to be the head of the family, leading Eve how God leads both of them, and Eve was to his true companion an d helper completing them.

However, Satan bypasses the head, Adam, and goes directly to Eve in his deception. In this manner he is subverting god’s good design in uprooting what God has ordained in the family order.

Satan still does this with us today. Things like homosexuality and transgenderism are major evidences that Satan is seeking to subvert God’s good design of sex between a man and woman in the confines of marriage, and the good design of gender.

But he also does it in tempting us to cheat on our school work or lie to our parents which is subverting God’s good design of honest living.

This is not meant to scare you into legalism so that you won’t fall victim to Satan’s deception, there are many pitfalls in legalism that I can teach on another time, this is meant to warn you that Satan is trying to do whatever he can to turn you away from God’s word, God’s timing, and God’s design.

What the fall has done to us

Broken families

Gen. 3:16 shows us that because of the fall the good design of the family has been broken and now we see that the woman’s desire will now be to be the head of the family, but the husband will “rule” or domineer over the wife.

This is why we see so many broken families now.

Broken work

Work was given to man by God as a gift in Gen. 2:15 as something to enjoy and worship God through, but now in Gen. 3:17-19 the concept of work now becomes labor. Something that we no longer want to do.

Guilt & Shame

Before the fall Gen. 2:25 tells us that, “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” I was always confused as a kid because my first thought was, wouldn’t they be cold? But that’s not the point, the point of them being naked and not ashamed is that they are pure, the are sinless, there is no guilt bringing shame that is causing them to want to cover up their bodies.

But now in Gen. 3:7-8 Adam and Eve had become guilty by breaking God’s law of not eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, therefore they felt shameful for breaking God’s law so they sought to cover themselves up because their purity was gone.

Death

In Gen 3:19b, 24 God tells Adam and Eve that they will die and he casts them out of the garden, away from the tree of life, away from their source of life which was God.

RC Sproul was once asked this question, “If God is so loving and gracious, then why was his punishment of Adam and Eve in the garden so harsh?” His answer, which was legendary, was simply, “What’s wrong with you people?!?!” But his answer is completely right, what is wrong with us that we would think that God is ungracious in this moment. god promised death for breaking the law, but instead of wiping out humanity on the spot he allows them to continue to live out their days until they die of natural causes. And not only that, he also let’s an animal take their place of immediate death and clothes them with the animal’s skin.

What a sinful world has done to us

Sin leads to sin

This is where we see the story of Cain and Abel. In Gen. 4:2-5 we see that Cain is a farmer and Abel is a sheep herder. They both go to offer a sacrifice to God, Abel gives the best of his flock to God, Cain gives some fruits and veggies, but not his best. God accepts Abel’s offering but not Cains, so Cain does what everyone thinks he’ll do, resort to murdering his brother out of jealousy.

See, Cain sinned in not giving his best to God as a sacrifice, then he sinned by being overcome with jealousy, then he sinned by murdering his brother. Sin leads to more sin if we do not repent of it and ask for forgiveness, for “God is faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness and cleanse us from all sin” if we confess our sins and repent.

When I was in high school I liked to ride around in my truck and listen to music, I had a CD by my favorite band, August Burns Red, and I would drive around and listen to that CD at full volume. But I never started out at full volume, I always started out at a low volume and as I kept driving i would slowly turn up the music until all I could hear was the sweet sounds of ABR. But then when I would get home I would turn off my truck without even realizing that I left the radio at full volume. There was one day that my dad and I got in my truck to go to the mall and when I turned on my truck ABR immediately began blasting through the speakers. He about jumped out the truck he was so scared. He looked at me and said do you always listen to your music that loud?? You’ll go deaf one day! See to me the music didn’t seem loud because I was used to it, but when my dad got in the car he called me out for having my music too loud.

It’s the same with our sin. When we sin without repenting we become blinded to it, it seems normal, like listening to ABR at full volume, but one day someone may call us out on our sin, and rightfully so. This will give us a moment to come to God in confession and repentance because we have a hope that our sin has been paid for and that we can truly be forgiven.

Our hope in a fallen world

Gen. 3:15 tells us that a Savior is coming to crush the serpent. That he will redeem us from our sin.

Jesus has come, and in his death on the cross he has paid for our sin, and in his resurrection he has crushed the head of the serpent and has secured our hope for life and forgiveness.

We have a hope now that we can be forgiven, we have a hope now that we have a Savior, we have a hope now that we can resist temptation, we have a hope now that our guilt can be forgiven and our shame removed. We have a hope now by grace through faith in Christ Alone!