MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Scripture: Genesis 3
Reader: Ele Bender
Today’s sermon is the conclusion of the sermon I preached two weeks ago about the Garden of Eden. I’ll start with some well-known jokes:
How did Adam and Eve feel when expelled from the Garden of Eden? They were definitely “put out”.
What did God say after creating Adam? “I must be able to do better than that!”
“What’s up Adam?” asks God. “Not to be ungrateful, it’s great here and everything but I’m lonely all on my own,” replies Adam. God thinks for a moment and then says, “I know what, for a small price I’ll create a woman for you and then you won’t be lonely anymore. She will be by your side all the time, submissive, loving, your helpmeet in every way.” “That sounds amazing,” replies Adam, “but what will this “woman” cost me?” God replies, “I can offer you all this for the low, low price of just one arm and one leg.” Adam considers this offer for a moment and then replies, “Seems a bit steep, what can I get for a rib?”
What did Adam say on the day before Christmas? It’s Christmas, Eve!
Why was Adam a famous runner? Because he was first in the human race.
The first computer can be traced back as far as Adam and Eve. It was an Apple with extremely limited memory, and it had just one byte. Then everything crashed.
Ok, back to Genesis 3. Why it has takes two sermons to preach on this chapter is that it simply has too much in it for one sermon only to do justice to it. I could have ploughed through it in one sermon but that wouldn’t be wise, for true learning and discipleship comes from retaining a teaching, and thus we learn by repeated learning. After all, Genesis 3 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible. The content of the “fall” of Adam and Eve has been the subject of much discussion throughout human history and around the world. And the topic of “free will” is widely discussed, even by non-believers. I saw a video this week of two atheists debating free will. It was fascinating but, in the end, it made no sense without God’s role in it. The New Testament explains the human condition in this way:
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all people, because all sinned…Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5:12, 14,15)
Do you understand this? Death came into the world through Adam’s sin. Life came through Jesus. That life is an expression of God’s grace.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21,22)
Listen, a person might downplay the “fall” story as being just a fairytale but, if they do, they will have no choice but to dismiss the NT teaching about Jesus, who is identified as being the “second” or the “last” Adam. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus make sense only when the “fall” is considered, and his overcoming of Satan, slavery to sin, and effects of Adam’s sin. We read,
So, it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (1 Corinthians 15:45-49)
We are all prone to taking the sceptics view of the Garden of Eden and the “fall” and even be embarrassed by having to admit we believe in them. I used to be prone that belief system, but as I have learned the Bible and theology better, now I believe in the factualness of the Garden of Eden and “fall” events. If they were not true, the New Testament and Jesus crucifixion and resurrection make no sense, and would be, in fact, lies. Death came through Adam, life through Jesus. Sin came via Adam. Freedom via Jesus. Let’s now revisit the Genesis 3 passages we went through last time:
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16,17)
God gave humans freewill because He wanted the ones created in His image, humans, to love Him freely and fully. If He made them without freewill, to be like robots, humans would obey Him, but they wouldn’t love Him. Giving humans freewill was worth the risk to God to have His beloved humans love Him back. That humans used that freewill to not obey or love Him, resulted in the “fall” of humans from the high perch at the top of created order on which they had been placed.
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’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 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.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 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. 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. 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. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so, I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:1-13)
The human tendency to be unwilling to admit to wrongdoing, but instead blame someone or something else is seen here in the almost-hilarious responses from Adam and Eve in which Adam blamed God and Eve for his sin, and Eve blamed the serpent. But they were guilty of sinning and it led to “curses”, two of which we looked at last time: first upon the serpent, an amoral creature whose curse was intended to be a reminder to humans of the consequences of sin, a “beware” sign, as it were. The serpent’s situation didn’t change at all for it was merely confined to staying as it was, a legless creature that would eat dust all its days (the eating of dust always being a symbol in the bible for having been defeated). The second curse we already looked at, and it was for the being who used and spoke through the serpent to speak to Eve. That was Satan. You need to know that no Old Testament authors identified Satan as being the one speaking through the serpent and doing the deceiving but later N.T. theologians did, an example of a doctrine I have often mentioned, which is that many biblical truths and doctrines were “concealed in the Old Covenant but were then later revealed in the New.” Concealed in the Old, revealed in the New.
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. 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.” (Genesis 3:14-15)
Satan struck Jesus’ heel by attacking Jesus and his followers, but Jesus would defeat him, crushing his head, as it were. We read.
The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. (Rev. 12:9)
The apostle John explained the situation with these words:
But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8, NLT)
And in his Gospel Book, John recorded Jesus’ own words which he said on the night before his crucifixion:
“Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.” (John 12:31)
In his death, Jesus would take the sins of all humans upon his body, bringing forgiveness to all, and freeing them from the effects of sin as well as slavery to sin and Satan, who was defeated/crushed that day. Jesus is the key, for he has ended Satan’s reign in this world, in which everyone is automatically his slave. Jesus restored freewill to humans, so that now we can choose how to live, as slaves to sin and Satan (hopefully, not!) or as “slaves” to Jesus, doing His will. Identifying himself as the coming Messiah, the Son of Man who was prophesied about in the book of Daniel, Jesus said this about himself:
So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36)
Truly, this is good news, the best news! But so far this sermon has been a repeat of some of the points I made in the last sermon. But now returning to Genesis 3 and going on to the additional “curses” we have not already looked, curses which God meted out in the Garden of Eden:
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.” (Genesis 3:16)
When I was in seminary, my Old Testament professor Dr. Bruce Waltke contended that the original Hebrew word for “desire” is not a positive one as in the wife having a romantic or sexual desire for her husband, being attracted to her husband, but was actually a negative one, and he encouraged us to look at the word’s usage in Genesis 4:7 in which God warns Cain, who was plotting to kill his brother Abel, to be very careful because “sin desires to have control over you”.
“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:7)
Two decades after the NIV which we and most evangelical churches use, the New Living Translation came out and which my professor Dr. Bruce Waltke worked as one of the translators and writers, and it translates Genesis 3:16 in the manner which my professor predicted all new or future Bibles would:
Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16, The New Living Translation)
So, the curse for the woman would be twofold: a physical pain in childbirth and a psychological and emotional one that is more in keeping with the negative relationships shown in the other Garden of Eden “curses”, that being a constant tug-of-war for mastery in a marriage between husband and wife. Such tension was not God’s original “very good” creation order but is a result of the curse.
I mentioned a few weeks ago in passing that the first part of the curse for the woman, that of pain in childbirth, was used by the cult of Diana/Artemis in Ephesus to bring fear women. I need to explain here what I alluded to in that earlier sermon. They were instructed to cry out to Diana/Artemis for safety while giving birth. This was a controlling tactic that gripped the women giving birth in fear. Well, many of those women became Christians but they still feared that in childbirth they would die if they didn’t call out to Diana/Artemis. Paul explained in 1st Timothy 2 that was not the case as their faith in Jesus would be enough to keep them safe or saved during childbirth. As well, against the false teaching of the cult of Diana/Artemis that women were above men and that Adam was the first one to sin, thus reversing the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden, Paul said, “Uh, uh.” By the way, the tendency in Ephesus for the newly-converted women to be teaching those harmful and incorrect Diana/Artemis teachings was the reason why – in that setting and in that setting only, for elsewhere in the early church Paul commended female leaders – Paul instructed that women should not teach. Elsewhere Paul wrote,
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Later, Paul expanded on the equality between the genders by writing:
Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. (1 Corinthians 11:11,12)
Returning to God’s chastising in the Garden, God next speaks to Adam:
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. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 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.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
Work, as originally prescribed by God in the Garden of Eden, was good. It involved caring for and tending to God’s creation. But, after the fall, work would become a sweaty chore in a fallen creation. Life would never again be easy for Adam or other men. However, Jesus undid all of that by become our “Sabbath rest”, as I have mentioned previously. Concerning creation, as well, Jesus will do a restorative work:
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:19-22)
Paul tied all this together just a few short verses later:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
So, even in the fall, God’s hope, love, and care were present. The best part of this, as we read in the Book of Revelation, concerns the coming of the new heavens and the new earth at the end of time:
No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. (Revelation 22:3)
Finishing up in Genesis 3, we then come to some concluding verses:
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. (Genesis 3:20)
The Hebrew word for Eve means “living” and has always been interpreted as meaning that Eve was the “mother of all the living”.
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. (Genesis 3:21)
This act of God’s compassion and care for the couple expresses one of the most vivid and visual examples of forgiveness to be found anywhere in the Old Testament. God, in His paternal mercy and perfect love, showed in this act of making clothes for them, His forgiveness toward the humans, even though they sinned and then blamed someone or something else. God’s mercy rather than the couple’s merit of it is the focus here, a beautiful, lasting picture and reality.
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” (Genesis 3:22)
This theme of the danger of becoming “like one of us” we will read again in the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 but the word for God used here, Elohim, as we know, is plural, which Christians explain by pointing to the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So, the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:23,24)
After death had entered the world, no one would be allowed to re-enter the Garden of Eden, back to paradise with God, where they might seek, once again, the “Tree of Life” where, by eating it, they would gain eternal life. But God didn’t leave things there. He didn’t leave humans to struggle on their own. Indeed, later chapters will prove this to be so as He went with His people, caring for them and looking after them. The biblical story now shifts to the ongoing message of God redeeming His people, saving them and freeing them from the wiles and work of Satan and sin. The rest of the Bible is the story of God drawing humans back to Him, a thing that would culminate when He sent His son, Jesus, the prophesied about Son of Man and Messiah. At the end of time as portrayed in Revelation 22, as we have mentioned in earlier sermons, the Tree of Life appears once again and there will be no more sickness or death. Before any of us gets there, however, Jesus has opened the way to paradise today for any who would turn to him in faith, just as he said to the repentant thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” God is merciful and full of love. In this life, we can live as freed people, serving Jesus without fear or hesitation. And then, in the next life, there will be no curse. We are truly blessed because God is a caring and loving parent and Creator. Let’s pray…
