February 16 Sermon: Fall and Promise

Consider these questions as you study Genesis 3:1-24:

1. How does the concept of total depravity influence the way Reformed Christians view humanity's ability to save itself?

2. What are the three main points outlined in the passage, and how do they relate to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden?

3. Why is it important of trust and adhere to God's revealed word, especially in the face of temptation and doubt?

Transcript:

As we look around us there is no doubt. On a large-scale we see this in the world around us. Wars, terrorism, political unrest, and violence. On a small level we see discord in families and people who are suffering. We see the sin in our own lives and we are not just victims in this broken world we end up as willing participants in it. We like to think there are human solutions to this problem. We see multiple political philosophies put out there as a solution with the goal of bringing about utopia. Yet, deep down we know our inability to do this. One of the key components of what we believe as Reformed Christians is the idea of total depravity. We believe that we are born dead in our trespasses in sins and we are incapable of saving ourselves. While much of the world believes that humanity is capable of saving itself and that society can evolve to a peaceful state, we see that deep down we really don’t believe this. Just look at the stories that populate much of our popular entertainment. I am not an expert by any stretch but, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any story that tells us about a group of people who achieve the utopian ideal. What we do see out there in abundance is stories of a dystopian future where people have forced people into their view of the perfect future but instead of the ideal and perfect world we find people who are being oppressed. Popular stories like The Giver or The Hunger Games show us that deep down we don’t really believe in the goodness of humanity. We actually believe that the world is broken and that people themselves are broken.

‌What we see is that the Christian few of the world corresponds with what we see in the world.

‌As we continue this morning through the book of Genesis we have moved on from the first two chapters and the true story of the creation of all that is seen and unseen. We once again are in the garden with the man and the woman and we receive a close up view of why the world is broken. It is broken because of our rebellion against God. We aren’t talking about oopsy daisies or little mistakes. We are talking about sin and that is rebellion against a holy God. When we sin we are putting ourselves in the place of God. We are determining that his law isn’t what is best but whatever we want in the best. This is why this chapter of Genesis is so foundational for us. It not only tells us why the world is broken. It lets us know why we are broken. It gives us the ultimate insight into why we so desperately need a savior who will save us from our sin and unbelief.

‌Before we dig into our passage for this week lets map out three main points that we will find in the text today.

‌The first thing we will see is that temptation comes to us when we doubt the word of God. In the garden God had given a clear word as to what his law was. The serpent tempted Eve to eat and did this through the questioning of God’s Word. We are tempted every day to trust whether or not we will trust God’s word and whether or not what he provides for us is sufficient.

‌Secondly, we find that God judges rebellion. The rejection of the commands of God by Adam and Eve was not something that God swept aside. He meant what he said in his word and he brings judgment upon Adam and Eve it comes down to us. He was our representative and he failed and in him we failed also. The curse affects us each and every day.

‌Finally, we will see that God is gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We will see clearly that the way in which God shows mercy to his children is to put the punishment on another. Here in Genesis 3 we see the fall and the promise of Jesus but we also see a picture of the gospel that shows us the interpretive lens that helps us understand the Old Testament.

‌That is a tall order to get in today so we jump to the first block of verses that will show us the temptation that comes to our first parents in the garden.

‌‌We get an interesting introduction to this part of the history found in Genesis. We see that the serpent was crafty. We see that this creature is crafty but we don’t get an origin story. We don’t know why the serpent is the enemy of God but that is what we see as the story progresses. This is no ordinary snake. We know though from what the Bible reveals later on that this serpent is an incarnation of Satan. We don’t know much about why the serpent is the enemy of God but scripture is clear. And just the existence of the serpent in this part of the story lets us know that evil was around prior to Adam and Eve.

‌Regardless of the limited amount of detail that we have been given we know enough. The was crafty and he went to the woman and asked her a question. Did God really say? That question is the root of all of our temptation to rebel against God. God firmly and clearly established the boundaries of what the man and woman could eat within the garden. Every tree was free game except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Very simple instructions. Very defined boundaries. God said that they could not eat from that tree. That was it. All other trees were fair game.

‌In the same way, God has established very clear boundaries for us. As we saw last week the law and commands of God reflect his very nature. He gives that law to not only show us how to live but to show us what his holiness looks like. He defines the boundaries for marriage between a man and a woman. He tells us that murder is wrong. We are shown that dishonesty is wrong. We could go through the commands of God and they are very, very clear. But what do we do. We muddy the waters right. We want to redefine them. We ask did God really say and want to set up a new morality. But as we see here that is where our first parents go off the rails and that is where we go off the rails. We desire to do something against the command of God and the question we are tempted with is did God really say? The answer is yes, he actually did. As your creator and as a holy God he actually does define what sin and rebellion against him is. As we will see at the end of the passage today there is forgiveness when we rebel in our unbelief but that does not change the law of God. It is clear.

‌And we see this was the pattern that got Eve. She misquoted God. A very dangerous thing to do. She said that God told them not even to touch it. God said nothing of the kind. He told them not to eat it.

‌This so vital for us. We don’t want to add to God’s Word or misquote it. We want to stand strong in the word and what God actually said, not on what we think it says but Eve opens herself up to the next level of the temptation here with her misquoting of God. The serpent tells her that she will not die if she eats of it. Instead she will have knowledge. She will be like God. As I have pointed out, that is the ultimate temptation. We want to be like God. We want to set ourselves up as the one who determines what is good and what is evil. Ultimately, all of our sin and rebellion is us violating the first commandment of you shall have no other gods before me and we make ourselves the idol that we fall down before.

‌And our first parents take the bait, don’t they. The serpent is a superb angler bouncing the bait in front of Eve and she goes after it and swallows it so deeply the hook doesn’t even need to be set. She is all in and so was Adam. And they knew right away that they had rebelled against God. Their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. It is important that we understand the depth of what this means. It isn’t just that they looked down and suddenly they feel a need to be covered. The idea we are meant to understand is that they feel weakness and humiliation. They lived in a world where the idea of distrust would have been completely absent and now their world is shattered. They would have had no idea what guilt was and they now feel it completely. They do their best to cover up this shame by making themselves clothes out of leaves. I don’t we have any problem seeing what this tells us about Adam and Eve. They are trying to cover their guilt and shame and nakedness and it is a futile exercise. Fig leaves don’t go very far to make clothes. They make cover up them up but the leaves will wilt and fail. They are a terrible attempt to hide their sin and hid their guilt. The text is letting us know that they will need something more.

‌And so we have seen how the temptation came to them. They doubted the revealed word of God but before we go on to see the judgment of God we need to address a question that always comes up when we get to this passage. Why did God put these restrictions on our first parents if he is sovereign and knew that they would plunge humanity into sin and bind their wills so that all of those that come after them would be born dead in trespasses and sins. There are two parts to the answer. The first is that God gave Adam and Eve a will that was not bound because he wanted to have a creation that would love him and live in such a way that they would choose the sufficiency of what he had provided for them. The second part of the answer is the hardest part but it requires a trust in God’s Word. I’m actually going to have the kids remind us of one of their catechism questions to help me out this morning. Why did God make you and all things? For his own glory.

Romans 8 tells us that God works all things together for good for those who love him. Even though the world is broken we have a sure trust that God is stitching together history in such a way that it will bring glory to himself and in the end we will see how his power, his majesty, and his holiness was glorified in his creation. That is difficult but it is a trust that holy scripture calls us to have in a good, just, and holy God.

‌And we are going to see that goodness, justice, and holiness as we come to our second point regarding the judgment of God on the serpent and our first parents.

‌‌Verse 8 here makes it sounds kind of nice. We imagine a nice, cool stroll through a well-kept garden but the idea we are meant to have here is that God is coming in judgment. We are not meant to see this as soft footsteps of someone out for a casual walk. This is almighty God coming in judgment. We see this because Adam and Eve are not playing hide and seek with God hoping he won’t find out they have rebelled against him. They are hiding from his wrath. They have only known God as someone who is near to them in friendship and love but now he is coming near to them in wrath and it is terrifying. They are now not just naked and ashamed in front of one another but in front of a holy God.

‌And God questions them. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what has happened. He is sovereign. He is fully aware. Parents you’ve used this tactic with your kids. You know what they’ve done but you still ask them as though you are clueless. You want them to tell you what they’ve done, right? And this pro parenting move works for God too but as you can see Adam and Eve act like your children. The blame game starts. It’s always somebody else’s fault. The man blames the woman, the woman blames the snake but God doesn’t care whose fault it is. His punishment will come on all three of them and the it begins with the serpent.

‌‌We tend to focus on the first part of the curse because we see it as an explanation of why snakes are lacking in legs but it is verse 15 that really gives us an understanding of the curse. There is to be enmity between the serpent and the woman. This isn’t just telling us that ladies won’t like snakes. It is telling us that there is going to be a battle between Satan and the offspring of the woman. The offspring of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent but the serpent will only bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. What we are meant to see is that a blow from the heel of the seed of the woman will hurt his heel but the blow will crush the head of the serpent.

‌This is a very important verse for us. It shows us how to understand where the Old Testament is going from here. We are going to follow the line of the offspring of the woman through to the Messiah. This is the first telling of the gospel. It is known by a big word “proto-Evangelium”. While that word is big it is easily broken down into two parts. Proto means first, like the first part of our common word prototype. and Evangelium means gospel so it is first gospel.

‌I am not a big fan of the music genre of hip-hop but there are some doctrinally sound Reformed rappers out there that I appreciate listening to because of how they are able to succinctly explain sound doctrine. There is one called Result who has a song about this and the song is actually called proto-Evangelium. A few years back Josh and I were coming back from a relatively early orthodontist appointment in Sioux Falls and I was listening to it and he heard the word proto-Evangelium and he was confused and said “Did he just say peanut butter jelly dog?”. So you are in pretty good company if you are confused by the word but what I don’t want you to be confused by is what it tells us. I remember where I was the first time I heard this truth. I was sitting in the front row of my Old Testament Survey class at Northwestern College in St. Paul in September of 1993. I heard that Jesus was prophesied in Genesis 3 right after the fall and I was, honestly, upset that I had gone 18 1/2 years of my life and no one had ever told me this. I have since made sure that this is pointed out to people. In fact, my catechism classes get regular reminders of this.

‌The reason why is that this helps us understand and interpret our Old Testament. The stories that we read there are not moral tales like Aesops Fables. They are the unfolding drama of how God is going to redeem his people for himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We will get to how this is pictured for us in our last point but first we need to look at the rest of the effects of the curse delivered by God.

‌‌For the woman we read that there will now be pain in childbirth and that there will be strife and distrust in the marital relationship. For Adam work is now a burden. There were no thorns or thistles prior to the fall but now there are weeds and working the ground is difficult. We see this because it will take his sweat in order for him to eat and get what he needs to survive.

‌And finally we see that God is good on his promise. They will die. There was no death in original creation. No disease. No bloodshed. But now, Adam will return to the dust from which he came. A reminder that he is a created being. His desire was to become like God but with when he is reminded of his ultimate demise he is also reminded that ultimately he is not God his quest to be like God has failed.

‌And so we see this second truth from this passage that God judges sin in the curse of pain and difficult labor and in death but we have also seen that God is going to redeem his creation through a promised one who will one day crush the head of the serpent and we see what the messiah will do pictured for us vividly as we close out the passage and see our final point for today.

‌We have heard of the gospel in the curse upon the serpent but here we see it vividly pictured for us. Eve and Adam had tried to cover their shame with clothes they had made themselves. But they would be brittle. They would not truly cover their nakedness and the shame of their sin. But God in his mercy had another plan. He made clothes that would truly cover their nakedness. This alone is a gracious act by God but there is something very important that we need to see in the details here. What kind of clothes did he make? Clothes of skin. Something had to die to cover the sin and shame of Adam and Eve. They tried to cover their own shame and it was a miserable attempt. But God, in his mercy shed the blood of another so that the sin and shame of our first parents. This is a picture for us of what God promised in Genesis 3:15. The promised one who would crush the head of the serpent would shed his blood at the cross. Our attempts to cover our sin and shame fail because we are frail. But God in his mercy pours out the punishment for our sin on another, the Lord Jesus Christ. What we are meant to see here is that just as God covered Adam and Eve in the garden through the death of an animal, God covers our sin and shame through the death of his Son. That is the truth of the gospel and it is the crux of the Christian faith that we are made right with God, not by anything that we do but through the work of Jesus Christ in our place.

‌And as we finish up our passage we see that even though their sin has been covered the creation is broken and in their fallen state they will not be allowed to live forever.

‌‌The final part of the punishment for their rebellion against God is that they will be banished from the garden. They will not be allowed to eat from the tree of life anymore because they are now fallen. So they are sent from the garden and guardians are left to protect the tree of life. This part of the story is important because when we get to the end of our Bibles what do we find. In the book of Revelation we see that humanity is once again able to have access to the tree of life. Not because of anything that we have done but because of the shed blood of the Lamb. The defeat of the garden is undone by the victory of the one who was slain to cover the sin and shame of our rebellion against God.

‌And as we finish up we will see three ways that we can take this passage from here out into the world this week.

‌The first application is to remember that we live in a fallen world. As we have seen so far in Genesis it gives us a foundation for understanding the world around us and this event gives us insight into why our world is so broken. This is important because it reminds us that this world is frail and will never be perfect. It reminds us to look to the kingdom of God for the ideal. Utopia will never come this side of glory. That doesn’t mean we don’t work to better our society or ourselves but we look to the fullness of the kingdom of God for perfection because we won’t find it in any human solutions.

‌Secondly, pick up your Bible this week and remember the story that it is telling us. Remember the promise of God in Genesis 3:15 and how it points to redemption in Jesus Christ. This will not only help you to interpret your Bible correctly but it also can drive you to love your neighbor because you will understand all that God has done for you to bring you to himself and then you serve him because he has first loved you. Looking at scripture with Christ at the center shows us the unbelievable love that God has for his creation.

‌Lastly, having seen the beauty of the word of God and it’s story of your salvation be mindful to trust God’s Word this week. The way the serpent tempted Eve was to get her to question the revealed word of God. We have the revealed word in holy scripture and temptation will come to us and in the same way it came to our first parents. Every day we are tempted to ask “Did God really say?” and we must reject the temptation to rebel against his word and live for him.

‌And we can live for him boldly because he has covered our sin with his perfect righteousness. When we fall in to sin we can know that we have been forgiven because he has paid the price and covered our sin and shame with his precious blood.

‌So, leave from here today and step into the world boldly trusting in God and His Word to guide us.