Genesis 3 (Audio only)

The following sermon is by Nathan Hargrave, the teaching pastor at Twelve Five Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. Our prayer is that this message will help you grow in your knowledge of God so that you might be equipped for every good work.

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Genesis 3 and the Need for Christmas

Alright, well open up your Bibles. This one's going to be an easy one to find. Genesis, chapter three. Genesis, chapter three, and bear with me because I want to read the entirety of the chapter. And then we're going to skim through it and look specifically at one verse today.

It's Genesis, chapter three. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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.

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. 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.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 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.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return.

The man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed a cherubim and a flaming sword and turned every way, that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life.

Let's pray again. Lord open our eyes, God. Open our hearts and minds to hear your truth. Guard me from error that I would only speak truth from your word, Lord. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, amen.

I love it. And this is the time of year where we start to see all the nativity sets and the Christmas decor. We got it all over the house, don't we? We've got it everywhere. It looks like Christmas threw up in here.

But and we've got the nativity set over by the coffee maker. We see a little manger set with the wise men and the shepherds. And so we see this all over. We drive around, we see the little plywood cutouts of that same scene with the lights shining up on them.

And that's good. We get to be reminded in the process. And it's really expected at this time of year that when we go to church that we're really going to focus on and hear about the birth of our Savior.

And that's kind of the norm, isn't it? The pastors preach a Christmas sermon at Christmastime. And after all, it is tradition, isn't it? Tradition can be good. But usually we do. We stop preaching through our sermon series, which we've done today.

We've been preaching through Philippians and we've just put that on pause so that we can focus our attention and hone in on the season. Because that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's good that the church universal collectively focus their attention together at this time of year.

But I would say that unfortunately what happens is that we lose sight. We lose sight of everything within the white noise. We lose sight of what we're truly celebrating in the midst of all the decor, in the midst of the traditions, in the midst of the gathering with family and all of those things.

We get lost in the presence. We get lost in the season. But I think it's because we're so familiar with this story of the nativity. We all know that Jesus was born, don't we? We all know that here. Even the lost world knows that.

Even the lost world and other religions acknowledge it. There's so much evidence in the fact that Christ was truly born and lived a life that our entire nation celebrates Christmas. So everyone knows it.

But I think that that causes us to get lost in the mix. That causes us to get lost because we know about the wise men. We know about the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We've heard about it since we were children.

We know about the shepherds that came to see Jesus as a baby. We know about all of these things. We know about the virgin birth, hopefully. We know about the virgin birth. We've heard about it over and over again.

We just sang about it just briefly in a Christmas song. We know he was born in Bethlehem. We know there was no room for him in the inn. We even know that he is the incarnate God. That this is the God-man that had come to be born.

We talked about that a little bit two weeks ago about the hypostatic union, didn't we? Yet during this season of Christmas, I think we have a tendency to forget about the why. The why was Jesus born? Why was it necessary for the eternal son to be born in the likeness of men?

Because again, we love the nativity, we love the idea, and we get lost in it. Why did Christ stoop so low? Well, to answer this question, I think we must go back to the beginning, which is what we've done so far this morning in reading Genesis 3.

Beginning's a good place to start, isn't it? We have to go back to the beginning. That's a good place to start. Some believe that Jesus is not really seen until the New Testament. Some believe that we see this judgmental, wrathful God in the Old Testament, and then finally we see this side of God through Jesus in the New Testament.

But we all know that we see him throughout the prophets. We even see him in the Psalms where David is writing of a Messiah, one to come, and in a picture of that we see him. But the truth of the matter is we see Jesus instantly in Scripture, don't we?

Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning was God. And next week we're going to be looking at that in detail. We see in John 1 and in 1 John 1 that Jesus was there at the beginning and nothing was created apart from Jesus.

So right there at Genesis 1 .1. But I would say we see more specifically God's plan through the work of Jesus here in chapter 3 of Genesis. Our main passage of this chapter today is going to be verse 15 because I want us to see our kind and gracious, loving, sovereign God right here the very moment that men disobeyed him.

Adam and Eve had this perfect scenario and setup and perfect relationship and communion with the Father, with God, and they fell, they disobeyed, but God shows us grace right here because this was always plan A for God.

The fall and then Jesus having to come and pay for our sins was never plan B. This was always God's plan from eternity past. Man did not fall and then catch God off guard and God looked at his son and said, well, we got to go to plan B.

That didn't work like that. It was always set this way from eternity past. But before we focus on verse 15, I want us to see the reason for verse 15. So look with me at verse 1 of chapter 3 here and we're going to skim through up to that point.

Chapter 3 starting in verse 1 says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. Now I don't want to spend a ton of time here, but I do think it's important that we seek to identify who or what this serpent was or at least what this serpent represented.

There is some discussion as to whether or not this was just another created animal in the garden, which opens up a whole other level of discussion about the fact that it spoke. I mean, did every animal speak in the garden?

Did this catch Eve off guard? Is that what caused her to be distracted? We don't know, but this opens up a whole other level of intrigue and questioning about who this serpent was or what this serpent was, which leads some theologians, men like John Calvin, to believe that this serpent was actually possessed by Satan, that this was actually Satan, the deceiver, which is what I currently hold to.

I believe that's the case, and I will make a small case for that today. But the text isn't clear. The text is not super clear, and when the text isn't clear, I think it's not clear for a reason, because we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, don't we?

And since we believe that Scripture is clear, whenever we run into passages like this where there's things that are left out, they're left out for a reason. God wants them left out. So why is it not clear?

Why is God not clear as to who this serpent is here? Well, I believe it's because of what the serpent represents. It's what the serpent represents. It's not as to who it is per se. It's the fact that this is sin.

I believe the serpent represents sin. This is sin entering the world, and sin really deceiving the woman, trying to pull her away from God, and we'll see that as we go on. So how do I come to this conclusion?

Well, one of the ways is through the imagery that we see all over Scripture. We begin to see this imagery, particularly in an account with the people of Israel in the wilderness. If you remember over in Numbers chapter 21, 8, I think we have the passage up here.

You can jot it down. If you remember, many of the people of Israel are being bit by this viper, by a serpent. And the Lord said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.

What's the significance of this serpent on a pole? Well, we get that clarified in the New Testament. John 3, 14 and 15, we see, and it says, And Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. This is the exact situation that we're talking about in Numbers.

So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. Do you see the correlation there? This is imagery, that God is using this imagery here of we are bit by the serpent of sin, every one of us.

And what is it that must be done? We must go and we must gaze upon Christ. That was the significance. All the people of Israel that went up to this serpent on the fiery, this fiery serpent on the pole and gazed upon it, once they were bit by the serpent, were healed instantly.

They were healed from this. So this is the significance that we're looking at in the imagery that God has set up. And that's why I believe this is a serpent up front. God uses His imagery very intentionally.

Now, this is just one of the reasons that I come to this conclusion of the serpent here in chapter 3. We'll look at the passage with me again here. He says, He, this is the serpent, said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

Now, do you see the subtle lie of sin? You see that there, planting a seed of God being a withholding God? A God who could possibly be keeping something from you. Look at it. He says, you shall... Did God actually say?

Did God actually say that? There's almost this hint in there of the serpent telling Eve that, hey, I don't know that this God can be trusted. I don't know that this God is a trustworthy God. I think He's withholding something from you.

It's that seed of doubt being planted in her head. Which is the same thing that happens to us, but then Eve takes the bait. Look at verse 2 with me. It says, 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.

And then here's where Eve adds to God's words. She says, neither shall you touch it. Notice, God didn't tell them they couldn't touch it. God just told them they couldn't eat it. But here, that seed of doubt that God is a withholding God has already started to cause Eve to add to God's prohibition.

She adds to God's one and only prohibition. And then she says, lest you die. Now the serpent pounces on this opportunity in verse 4. Look at verse 4 with me. But the serpent said to the woman, you shall 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.

So not only does this serpent accuse God of blatantly lying by saying, you will not surely die. He goes on to presume upon God's intentions and panders to the creation's desire to be the creator. Let me say that again.

He goes on to presume upon God's intentions and panders to the creation, Eve, desire to be the creator. And you see, this is at the root of all of our sin. Notice what he says there. He says, you will not surely die.

Verse 5, he says, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Our desire is to be like God, isn't it? Our desire is to have what God has, know what God knows.

Our desire is ultimately to gain the glory and honor that only God deserves. And in that, we feel as though God is somehow withholding God. Whenever God says, thou shalt not, we see this as a limitation.

We don't see it as a protection. We see God as withholding from us, as if God is keeping something from us. When we say, and we look and say, thou shalt not lie, we think that God is withholding from us at times.

Because let's be honest, sometimes a lie seems to benefit us. Sometimes sin seems to benefit us for a season. But we lose sight of the fact that even the smallest of lies, even the smallest of sins is not for our benefit.

We don't see God as a protection. We don't see God as guarding us and saying, don't eat of that fruit. You can have all the other fruit. All the other fruit is good for you. You can have all of it, but you can't have that fruit.

Just the fact that we can't have that fruit makes us think God is holding something back from us and we wanna be like God. And this is undoubtedly the kind of thing that is going through Eve's mind in the moment, which leads her to verse six.

Look at verse six with me. 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. Notice the leadership role switch there. We'll save that one for another day. Verse seven says, then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked.

I find it interesting. Anytime I read this particular verse, verse seven, their eyes were open and they knew they were naked. Was this fruit so good that it just blew their clothes off? No, they were already naked.

So what's changed? What has changed in their perspective? What's changed is the fact that they now carry shame. They now carry shame. Their conscience bore witness to them that they had been in perfect communion with God and each other.

And now something has switched and they know it. And now they're exposed. They're exposed for what they truly are in that moment. So what did they do? And it goes on, it says, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

This is the very thing that we try to cover up our nakedness with, isn't it? There's a song by a Christian rapper named Lecrae. Some of you may know who I'm talking about. Song called Just Like You. I wanted to share a lyric.

This has always stood out to me. Every time I hear this song, this lyric has stood out to me as a poetic form of this particular passage. So I wanted to share it with you. Now remember, I'm not cool like a rapper, so I'm not gonna be able to have the flow.

So I'm just gonna say it. It says, I remember the first created being and how he shifted the blame on his dame. For the fruit he shouldn't have eaten. And now look at us all out of Eden wearing designer fig leaves by Louis Vuitton.

That's always struck me. I love the poetic nature of that. And he drives home the point very close to home for us, I believe, applies it to us. Because what Lecrae is saying in this passage is that we try and cover our shame in the same way that Adam and Eve tried to cover.

But instead of fig leaves, we've gotten creative. We mask it with money. We mask it with a good job. Mask it with reputation. We mask it with our physical image. Mask it with our personality. We mask it with our nice car, our big home.

We mask it with all of these expensive clothes and how people perceive us. We mask our shame. I mean, I could go on and on all day, couldn't I? This world is filled with all the things that we like to go to to cover our shame.

And to cover our shame is exactly what Adam and Eve are doing in covering themselves with a loincloth, or not loincloth, but covering themselves with the fig leaves. But just as Adam and Eve, what we find is what we see in verse eight.

Look at verse eight with me. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? As if God didn't know, right? He's given his children an opportunity to speak up. Verse 10 says, and he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

Adam and Eve were probably fairly proud of their fig leaf bikini creation. They're probably thinking, man, we've got our nakedness covered up. We've got our shame covered up. We've created something. And they're probably fairly proud of it.

That is until the presence of God. We do the same thing. We become quite proud of our accomplishments in our Louis Vuitton fig leaves. But the moment we're confronted by the holiness of God, the absurdity of our fig leaf bikini creation gets exposed.

The absurdity of us trying to cover our shame with anything is exposed before the holiness of God. And our shame and nakedness, when they are exposed, they're exposed for what they truly are. And that is hideous.

And we hide ourselves in the bushes away from the presence of God. And this is why we must be in God's word. If we want to be within the presence of a holy and perfect God and to see him for who he is, we must be in his word.

And we must constantly be in communion with him because this is what Adam and Eve found themselves in. They hid themselves from God because they couldn't be in the presence of God. So here again, God asked the question.

He already knows the answer to. Look at verse 11. It says, he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? I can't help but think of God like a father who already knows what's gone on.

Mom's already called him and filled him in on the entire situation. And now he's come home from work and he gives the children opportunity to fess up. He comes in, you wanna tell me what happened? As if he doesn't know, but he already knows.

God already knows. But yet, instead of confessing, you know what usually happens with the kids? The blame game. It's so-and-so's fault. They did it. They led us to this. And that's exactly what Adam and Eve did.

Look at verse 12. It says, the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me. Notice, not only does Adam, we focus on that all the time. We say, well, Adam blamed his dame, right? But he didn't just blame Eve.

He ultimately blamed God. He said, the woman you gave me. You set me up, God. You did this. You gave her to me. You should have given me somebody that wouldn't have done this. So he's blaming God. She gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.

Our shame is never our fault, is it? Our shame is always someone else's fault. And when we blame someone else, guess what? It's ultimately us blaming God. Because if God is sovereign, if God is in control of absolutely every molecule of this universe, then when someone does us wrong or someone leads us astray or someone deceives us or we believe that someone is in the wrong, we are ultimately not blaming them.

We're blaming God because God allowed it. And that's exactly what Adam did right here. But in that we see the grace of God, don't we? We see the grace of God. Look at verse 13 with me. Hey, buddy. He just wants to preach.

It's all right. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. I want you to notice something. Adam and Eve aren't dead yet. God told them, you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.

And they're not dead yet. This is a testament to the grace of God, isn't it? He could have struck Adam and Eve dead in that moment and started over, but he didn't. Which there again just proves the point that this was always God's plan A.

This wasn't plan B. But instead of striking them dead, he shows his grace and begins to list out the consequences, starting with the serpent. Verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. And now we have finally made it to our verse for today, verse 15. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. Theologians refer to this verse as the Proto-Evangelium. It just means the first gospel. Church fathers throughout history have seen this verse for what I believe it to be.

It's this first introduction of God's plan A, brought in in the fact that we see the incarnation right here in Genesis chapter three. Not only do we see Jesus in Genesis 1 -1, but we see him very specifically in a plan.

So I want us to see four things today about this. The first one is an announcement of enmity. Announcement of enmity. I want us to see this enmity in multiple layers. Verse 15, read that first section again.

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. This enmity, this animosity is instigated by God himself. God is the one that's created it. He's created this animosity and enmity for a reason.

And one of the layers that I believe we see, and again God is about his imagery, remember? He's very specific about his imagery. But with face value, this hostility between the serpent and the woman reflects this universal enmity between the people have with such reptiles, don't we?

You ever wondered why that is? Why is there such a fear and hatred for snakes? It's deep within us, we all have it. Eve didn't have it up front. Notice Eve didn't have that fear. She stood and had a conversation with one.

But we have it, it's ingrained in us. God has created this animosity. And that's why this verse is commonly misunderstood because it's seen at that face value of imagery there. But I believe it serves as a prototype.

I believe that imagery is a prototype. It's that very thing. It's this imagery of what God is laying out before us. And we see this imagery carried out throughout scripture. And we already spoke about the serpent on the pole in Numbers, we see Christ as a representative to heal from the bite of that serpent, the bite of sin, and that that would be Christ on the cross.

But then we even see it, you can jot these verses down, I'll have them up in here, Matthew 23, 33. This isn't the only time in the book of Matthew. The book of Matthew, I think Jesus uses this phrasing four to five times, if I'm not mistaken.

But this is just one of them. He says, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? This is derogatory. This is terribly derogatory to refer to a serpent, to a viper.

So you can see this enmity has layers in it. Deuteronomy 32, 33 says, their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps. There's poison. When you refer to viper, when you refer to this serpent, it's in a sense of negative, it's in the sense of death.

And then Revelation 12, verse nine, when speaking of Satan himself, which by the way, is one of the verses that I refer to and holding to this is Satan speaking in the garden, says, and the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who's called the devil and Satan, and the deceiver of the whole world.

I mean, this passage helps us see another layer of that enmity and that is the enmity we have with Satan. There's an enmity here. First Peter 5, eight says, be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

He is our enemy, isn't he? This is another layer of us being able to see the serpent from the garden. And again, like I said, these two passages are just two of the passages that bring me to the conclusion that that serpent was actually Satan speaking in the garden.

But another layer of enmity that I think can be assumed is that of the world and the church. The world and the church are at odds. We'll get into the depths of that another day because that opens up a whole new can of worms I don't think we have time for this morning.

But I could go on and on with this imagery. Are you following? Do you see what God has laid out here by using the serpent? Anytime a serpent is referred to in scripture, it is in the context of sin, it's in the context of Satan, it's in the context of poison, it's in the context of danger and that feeds directly from Genesis three in verse 15 here.

So you can see the levels of enmity through this imagery, but it doesn't end there. He says in our passage there, it says between your offspring and her offspring. Now this is where this passage gets interesting.

And so it leads us to our second point and that is an announcement of the virgin birth. Y 'all were wondering how does this tie into Christmas? Well now here we are, we're getting into it. The announcement of the virgin birth because we all know that Jesus was born of a woman, right?

He's born of Mary and this had to be so because if Christ would have been born in Adam, he would have been born in sin, he would have been born under the curse. So Christ had to be sinless, hence he could not have an earthly father, he could not be born in Adam.

Now there's much debate as to what offspring is referring to here so let's look at it a little bit. And it says I will put him in between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

First we see the enmity is between the serpent and the woman individually. But secondly this hostility is shared by their offspring. So there's a Hebrew word that's being used for offspring here, Zorah.

Zorah is this Hebrew word and unfortunately it can be referring to a group or an individual. So this can be seen in the plural or in the singular. And this is why it gets tricky and many people have a hard time coming to a hard conclusion about verse 15 being the Messiah and the virgin birth.

But I want to show you why I believe this word Zorah, offspring should be translated in the singular. And here's why and there's a couple of reasons. Bear with me, I know we're getting a little bit technical here and I don't want to lose you but this word is used 59 times in the book of Genesis.

59 times. But the majority of it is in reference to a patriarchal narrative. A patriarchal narrative, what do I mean by that? Is when offspring is spoken of it's referring to a father, the patriarch. We were all born in Adam, right?

The father, why does it say we're not born in Eve? She's the mother of all living and that's why her name is Eve but why are we not born in Eve? Because this scripture is a patriarchal image and any time you use this word Zorah it's within the context of that, of this patriarch, of coming from a father.

You see the genealogies. You know, when you're reading through your Bible and you start getting lost in those chapters of the genealogies, so and so, father so and so, and so and so, father so and so.

That's important for us to understand because it shows the lineage and it shows that we are all born in Adam but here it seems as though Adam has nothing to do with this situation in chapter three of verse 15.

The language is very specific. There's no denying the fact that it refers to her offspring. Well, that's impossible. She can't have offspring, not without Adam but Adam's not in the equation here. And this, this is the reason why I believe this is a reference to one offspring and that's Christ.

This is imagery showing the virgin birth to come, that he would be born of a woman, that he is born in Eve. He is born through Mary because the sins of the father because as we go on in this passage, we'll see that, notice who gets blamed.

Eve isn't ultimately the one that's to blame. She suffers consequence but Adam suffers the blame because Adam is the patriarch and he is going to suffer the consequences and so Christ could not be born through him and that's what I think this is referring to.

Even the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible refers to this word, the word that they use is in the singular. So there's just a lot of evidence here that I believe points to the fact that this verse is referring to this and I believe we can assume it's in the singular individual and that it's Christ who we're talking about, that this is the virgin birth.