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In the beginning of creation, God not only made humans, he made angels. Angels are moral beings just like humans. They have a sense of right and wrong. Angels are not explicitly mentioned in Genesis 1, as we looked at a couple weeks ago, but in other places in Scripture, it's confirmed that they were created.
And it is clear that they rebelled against God because everything created by God is good. And Satan, who was a higher-ranked angel, sinned against God, and he was thrown down from heaven to earth along with a third of the angels.
Revelation 12 .4 tells us that. This is the first rebellion in human history. There is no mention of a redemption plan for fallen angels in Scripture. Ever thought about that? There is no redemption plan for angels, and it has not been revealed in Scripture.
In fact, Revelation says that they will be thrown into the lake of fire at the end of the age. This morning, we are going to look at the second rebellion, the rebellion of humanity. And what we are going to see is the bad news of the fall into sin, but we will also see a glimpse of hope for good news of redemption.
And this lays the foundation for the rest of the Bible where God's plan of redemption is made clear. What I'm going to do this morning is, as I was writing this sermon out this week, it occurred to me that this was a very long sermon.
And so instead of keeping you here until noon, what I'm going to do is actually split this in half. In Genesis 3, we need to do that because this is a very important chapter, and we need to find everything that is in here.
God has treasures for us to see in this, and it would be a shame if I just zoomed through it. So we're going to take this week to look at the first half of Genesis 3, and then next week to look at the second half.
And our big idea this morning is Genesis 3 is a telling of the darkest day in human history. And yet hope is visible to the one who looks closely. Genesis 3 is a telling of the darkest day in human history, and yet hope is visible to the one who looks closely.
And I have four observations, as you will see in your bulletin in the outline. We're going to look at the first two observations this morning, and then next Sunday we will look at the second two observations.
And if you can't be here next Sunday, you can always listen to it online because it will be up online. Something that I have mentioned on numerous occasions is that Genesis is a book of firsts. Two weeks ago we saw the beginning of creation, and last week we saw the first romance and the first marriage.
And today we are going to see a few more beginnings, and the first one is the first couple sins. And that's our first observation, the first couple sins. The other beginning we're going to see here this morning is in verse 1 of chapter 3, for the first time Satan is introduced.
So if you look at me, look at me in verse 1, that's on page 2 of your Bibles, 3 -1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. It says the serpent here, it doesn't mention Satan by name, but it says the serpent.
But this is a crafty creature, as this says. Satan and all the demons have the ability to possess other creatures. They can possess animals, and they can possess humans, and in this case a snake, a slimy snake is possessed by Satan.
And this is what he says to the woman in the second half of verse 1. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? There's something very suspicious about this snake, for him to say something like that.
And Adam and Eve's antennas should have been up. Satan is talking directly to the woman, but Adam is present. The you here, in verse 1, where he says you shall not eat of any tree in the garden, it's a plural, so we know that Adam and Eve are both present here, as Satan is talking to them.
And what Satan does here is he questions what God said. Everything God says is trustworthy. So this should have been a huge red flag for Adam and Eve. Instead of taking the words of God at face value, you can see that Satan is setting the table to twist God's words.
And this is what opponents of God do. They twist his words. This is what false teachers do. They take a text of scripture and they try to make it say what they want it to say, instead of what it actually says.
God said clearly to them, you shall not eat of this tree in the garden. And what does Satan do? He says, did God really say that? And so he's questioning the trustworthy words of God. The woman then responds to Satan in verses 2 and 3.
And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
The woman understands what God has told her. There's no confusion here. And she just admits, he told us we can't eat from this tree. She knows that she is not supposed to eat from a specific tree in the garden, and she knows the consequences of eating from it is death.
Now Satan responds, and notice closely what he does here. Verses 4 and 5. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
It is crystal clear here that Satan lies. He is a master liar, and this is what he's doing here. John 8 .44 calls Satan the father, he's the father of all lies. He's the greatest liar there is, and he lies right here to Adam and Eve.
Now in verse 5, Satan tells the woman that she can become like God, knowing good and evil. In verse 4, he says you will not surely die. We know that that's a lie, because God said the day you eat of this, you will die.
In verse 5, Satan tells a half-truth, which is also a lie, when he says God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. One thing we need to understand here is that at this point, Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence.
They had not yet sinned yet, but they could sin. But they didn't know evil, they only knew good at this point. And so the moment that they eat from the tree, which is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will know good and evil.
Because they already know good, but they'll know evil because they will have transgressed what God told them not to do. And so that's why this tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now the way that Satan presents it though, he makes it sound like when they eat of this, they're going to enter a higher place, that they will be like God in some way. And so he twists it to make it sound like this is going to be a good thing that you're going to have once you eat from this tree.
Satan plants in Eve the temptation to desire to be godlike, to be something greater than what God has assigned to her. And this is an important emphasis to make, as humans, God did not create us to be gods.
Okay, lowercase g, gods. He did not create us to be gods. He created us to be humans who reflect God in some ways. To reflect him in some ways is what it means to be created in the image of God. And when we talk about someone who is godly or becoming godly, we don't mean becoming like God in power or knowledge, knowing secret things that only he knows and having power that only he has.
What we are talking about is becoming like him in his holiness. We can reflect God in his holiness. But as far as having powers that only God has and having knowledge that only God has, that's for him alone.
That's not for us. And so when Satan presents this, this is how he's presenting it. You're going to become like God. And he's not talking about just reflecting him in his holy character. He's talking about them having this advantage that they don't have right now.
So it is clear that Satan is offering an ascent beyond the place that humans should be. And this is a temptation that humans face, to go beyond the limitations that God has given to us. And if you think about it, it's silly to desire this because we as humans hold a special place as God's image bearers.
If you think about it, Satan, why did he rebel against God? He held a very special place in heaven. Michael the archangel is the highest angel in heaven. And Satan was equal to Michael the archangel. So he was one of the greatest angels that there is.
And yet it wasn't good enough for him. He wanted to be like God. And so what did he do? He rebelled against him. And deep in our hearts is this desire to be something that God never meant us to be, to be God-like in a negative way.
This is a temptation that we face. The desire to be God, to have his knowledge, and to have his power is something that is forbidden. And we obviously could never arise to that. It's a foolish thing to ever want to be that.
But any time we try to do life our own way and turn away from God, we are becoming our own master. And in a way, we are becoming our own God. When we want to control our life and not let God control our life, we are becoming, we are desiring to do what only God can do.
We are desiring to be in a place that only God can be. And this is why it is so important to submit to the will of God in our lives and not to push him aside and live life on our own will. We need to realize who is in charge of our life.
It's not us. We need to follow him. We need to follow his will. And so this is what Satan offers her. And we see how Eve responds in verse 6. In verse 6, this is what Eve says. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Okay, so we see Satan deceives Eve. And Adam follows here. Satan deceives Eve. They eat of the fruit, and they sinned. This is the first sin in human history.
And if you look around today, you're going to see lots of sin. If you watch the news, you're going to see lots of sin. This is the first sin that was ever committed. And one question we need to ask, I shouldn't say ever, has Satan sinned before her?
But you know what I mean, first human sin. One question we need to ask is why did she sin? It seems irrational when you think of it. Does it not? It seems irrational. God told them in verse 16 of chapter 2 that they could eat of every tree in the garden.
They had their choice. There were probably thousands, maybe millions of trees that they could have eaten from. But look what they did. They turned away from all that they were free to eat, and they went after the one thing they could not eat.
Does this sound familiar? This is what we do as sinners. If we're honest, there are so many good gifts from God, but we get curious. And we make the decision that His gifts are not enough. So we want something that is forbidden.
And I can't say what that might be in your life. We all have different desires. We can all get steered in different ways. But you have something in your life that God says is forbidden, that does not belong to you, that you may be desiring right now.
And it's good to examine that in your life. Not only is this your experience, mostly adults in this room right now, even with kids this is your experience, but as parents we see this with our children.
We see this with our children. As parents, we love our children, and they are so precious, but disobedience from little ones is something that every parent faces. Brianna and I have had this experience, and I'm sure all of you have had a similar experience.
Babies have all these toys. All these toys. Every toy that you can imagine. But they don't want the toys. They want the DVD player. They want the outlet. They want your laptop. They want to go up the stairs.
The list goes on and on. They want to get in the garbage. That's a new one for us that we've been going through. We laugh about it, but it shows you the sin from an early age. They want something that's forbidden.
They want something that they can't have. And we as adults, if we're honest, we say absolutely. That's what we do. We face those temptations to this very day. God has all of these good gifts for us, all of these trees that we can eat from, and yet we often long for the one thing that is forbidden, thinking that somehow it's going to make us happier.
When in reality, it leads to death, just like it led to death for Adam and Eve. This is how sin works. You are tempted either by Satan, probably a demon that he has sent, or your own sinful flesh. Sometimes we like to point the finger and say, you know what, the devil made me do it.
Well, sometimes we just did it ourselves. It's our fault. So this is the first observation from Genesis 3, the first couple sins. The second observation is the first couple feels ashamed as they face God.
Now as Adam and Eve ate, they noticed an instant change for the worse. If you look with me at verse 7, you will see this. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
We need to look at the end of chapter 2 to see the difference between before and after. In verse 25 of chapter 2, Moses wrote, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. At the end of chapter 2, they were naked but were not self-aware, and they were not ashamed.
In chapter 3, we notice a difference. Verse 7 says, they knew that they were naked. This is to say that for the first time, they felt ashamed. They had a new experience that they never had before, and this was a negative experience.
Before they were naked together and didn't even notice it, and now they were naked and became self-conscious and felt bad about it, and that's because they had sinned. So what did they do? They put together clothes, and obviously, they couldn't go to the nearest mall and buy an outfit.
They sewed fig leaves together and some other loincloth to cover themselves, and as they sinned, now they faced the fearful reality of facing God because God told them that when you eat of this tree, there will be consequences.
When you eat of this tree, you will die. If you think about it, when we sin in our own lives, there's consequences, and the greater the sin, the greater the consequences there are, but even in small sins, there's still consequences, and for Adam and Eve, there were consequences.
What we need to point out is that before they sinned, they had fellowship with God. Adam and Eve had wonderful fellowship with God. We saw earlier that God spoke to them. In verse 8, it actually says that God was walking in the garden, and they heard the sound of the Lord God, in verse 8 here, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
Now, God was not actually walking here. This is important to point out. When these human features are given to God, there's actually a term for this. It's called anthropomorphic, we're using anthropomorphic language when we say that God walked, or God's spirit, he's invisible, he does not walk, but here, this language is used, and this is highlighting his presence in the garden with Adam and Eve.
To walk with God is a theme in Genesis. It is a positive theme of fellowship with God. What we'll see in a couple weeks is in Genesis 5, 22, it says that Enoch walked with God. So this was fellowship that they had.
But here in verse 8, as God walks in the garden, Adam and Eve are not walking with him. Rather, they are hiding from him. The second half of verse 8. If you think about this, obviously you can't hide from God, but Adam and Eve were so ashamed that it led them to try to hide from the omnipresent one.
Now, in verse 9, the confrontation between God and the first couple takes place. God could have struck them dead in this moment, and you know what? He would have been right to do so, but he didn't. We see God's character come out here.
One thing we learned this past summer is that God is gracious and merciful, he's patient. He's patient with his people. We should be so grateful how patient he is. He didn't strike Adam and Eve dead right in this moment, he's patient with them.
So instead of striking them dead, he treats them like a loving father. This is what he says in verse 9. God reaches out to Adam and says, we need to have a conversation. Just like maybe one of your parents in your life, or a mentor in your life comes to you and says, you know what, we have a problem, we need to talk.
And they do it in the right way. They approach you in the right way, gently, and say, we need to talk about this. That's essentially what God is doing here to Adam. And notice here, this is worth noting, and I mentioned this last night, I spoke to a men's group last night in New Auburn, which is about an hour and a half away.
Mark and I had a good time together there. And I pointed this out to them, talking about male leadership. If you look at verse 9, who does God reach out to first? Eve was the one who was deceived, and she sinned.
We know that Adam was present. God reaches out to Adam first. And this is worth noting. He reaches out to the leader of this family, this married couple. This is not just a coincidence. I think there's a reason he does this.
And one thing I want to stress is the equality between man and woman. God created men and women to be equal, but he created men and women for different roles. He created the man to lead in that relationship.
He created the woman to be the helper. And the role of helper does not mean she's inferior in any way, but there's this equality. But there's this role, these roles that God has given, these good roles that we should embrace.
And so when God talks to Adam first here, he's saying, you know what, you're the leader of this relationship, and you blew it. You should have been protecting Eve from this serpent, and you didn't protect her.
So he calls out Adam, but he does it gently. And if there is a conflict in your household that cannot be resolved, and God knocks on your door, you know what he's going to ask for? He's going to ask for the husband.
He's going to say, what's going on? Why haven't you resolved this conflict? What are you going to do about it? Why haven't you been leading your family spiritually? Why haven't you been leading your family in general?
And God is going to do that. And it's an honest discussion, but it's a discussion that needs to happen, because Genesis 3 presents this to us. And we need to listen to what God is telling us here. And what is interesting is that in the early part of the story, the focus is on Eve.
She is the one the serpent deceived. But God talks to Adam first. Adam's sin here is a sin of passivity. He should have been watching, but he did not. He should have been protecting her, but he did not.
And actually, when the Apostle Paul writes about the sin, this first sin that Adam and Eve committed, he actually just mentions Adam's name. He doesn't even mention Eve's name. Because he's highlighting this leadership role that he was supposed to play, that he failed it.
But now the focus is on Adam. God's question to Adam is intended to draw Adam out, so that he will explain what happened. It is a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is when you ask a question, and you don't expect someone to respond.
And so God presents this to him, and Adam responds in verse 10 to the question, where are you? This is what he says. So God says, where are you? And this is what Adam says. I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself.
So Adam here admits that he is naked. And the fact that he is covered up, he is showing his humiliation. But he does not admit that he and Eve ate from the tree. You notice that here? He doesn't just, he doesn't come clean and say, you know what, we did this.
He says, he said I hid myself. He doesn't even acknowledge what they actually did. In verse 11, God asks two more rhetorical questions that draws this out, and points to Adam and Eve's guilt. In verse 11, he said, who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? So in verse 11 here, God draws him out. Earlier, Adam admits that he was naked, and God asks him, how do you know that? For he would only know that if he had sinned.
Secondly, God asks another question that shows why he is in this place of guilt. And God makes clear that the both of them are guilty for eating from the forbidden tree. So we see here how God draws them out.
God's drawing Adam out here, and Eve out, to get them to confess their sin. And so he does this, he approaches them in a fatherly way. And Adam, of course, has to come clean now. He knows that God knows everything.
And obviously, Adam should have known this. Of course, God knows what he did. But he's scared because of the sin that he committed. And Adam no longer hides this from God. He admits now, knowing that he cannot hide this sin from God.
He admits, okay, so Adam gets a little bit better here, but we still have a problem. He assigns blame. Verse 12. The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.
So he blames her. He says, you know what, it's her fault. She made me sin. Does that sound familiar? I catch myself doing this all the time. I mean, not just in my marriage, but in general. If I sin, I'm always trying to find someone to blame.
How quick we are to exonerate ourselves and point the blame to someone else. So the very thing that Adam did, we do all the time. It's our sinful nature to do the very thing that he did. And it's humbling when we realize that when it comes back to it, there's only one person to point it, and that's ourselves.
We are the problem. I mean, of course other people are the problem, too. We know that. But what we need to face, we need to face the reality that we, ourselves, are often the problem. And when we sin, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
So God talks to man first, and now he transitions from Adam to the woman Eve in verse 13. And he doesn't, you'll notice here, he doesn't let Eve off the hook. He mentions to her and tells her her fault.
Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. He says, what is this that you have done? And so he goes right after her there. The woman would have been next to Adam while God was talking to her.
And after gently approaching them, God is very direct with Eve. Okay, so what we've seen here this morning is that God has confronted Adam and Eve, and now he delivers the consequences of their sin. And what we'll see next week, what we'll see next week is that there are consequences for sin.
The first consequence is for the snake, for Satan. The second consequence is going to be for the woman. And the third consequence is going to be for Adam. And what we're going to see is that we feel these consequences to this day, and we will until Christ returns or we enter God's glory in heaven.
And so what we will see next week is two glimpses of hope. This morning we saw the bad news, but next week we're going to see two glimpses of hope. We're going to see the offspring crushing the serpent, crushing Satan, and the first mention of sacrifice for sinners, which is at the end of this chapter, which is pointing to the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
And so I hope you can make it back next week to part two of this sermon. Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we looked at this passage this morning, and Lord, this is the darkest day in human history. And it's a day, Lord, that all of us feel the effects of every single day because we fight with sin.
And so Father, we see the bad news, but we also see the good news. And we rejoice that there is good news, that because of Jesus Christ, because of what he has done, we have hope. We have hope to be restored to this paradise, to be restored to this fellowship with you.
And so Lord, I pray that we would realize how precious Jesus is, that he paid the once-for-all sacrifice at the cross so that we might live, so that we might be reconciled to you. And so let us hold tightly to that and let us turn from our sin, these sinful tendencies that each one of us have in our life.
In Jesus' name. Amen.