The Fall of the House of Man

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Don Filcek, Beginning with God: A Walk Through the Book of Genesis; Genesis 3:1-24 The Fall of the House of Man

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This is a message from the series, Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis, by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsak.
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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and we're going to go ahead and get started.
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So if you could find your seats, that would be great. Appreciate all the chatter, and hopefully you guys were safe on the roads on the way in.
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No accidents or anything, right? Good. Take advantage of the worship folder that you received when you walked in.
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Just some different announcements and activities and things that are going on. You can take advantage of that. You also received a connection card when you walked in.
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There's a place for you to put prayer requests on there, your information. Update any information that you have on there for the office.
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We do pray for the prayer requests that are put on the back of this every week as a leadership. There's also a place for you to just interact with us, tell us what you like, what you don't like, what's going on in your lives, that kind of stuff.
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If you turn that into the black box back here, and it's your first time with us, and you turn one of those in, then I'd ask you to please also take one of the coffee mugs that's on the desk back there.
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It's just our way of saying thank you, glad that you chose to come together and worship with us this morning. And then also you received an offering envelope.
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Those also go in the black box back here. We don't pass an offering plate here, we don't want anybody to feel pressure, oh no, the plate is here,
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I have to give something. We want it to be between you and God, but that envelope is made available for you, you can put it in the black box if you choose.
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Also there's a place to recycle these right next to that. If you're not going to use this this week, please just recycle it and we can reuse it next week.
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With those announcements out of the way, I want to jump into Genesis chapter 3, just kind of an introduction to my message.
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I like to get our minds thinking about that before the band comes and leads us in worship, and so kind of figuring out where are we going this morning.
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And I just want to point out to you that many of you have read Genesis 3 before. Have you read it before? Raise your hand if you've read
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Genesis chapter 3. So you kind of know where we're going this morning. Genesis 1, creation. Genesis 2, zeroing in on the creation of the man and the woman.
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Genesis 3, bad things are going to happen, right? Do we know that? You already knew that. We really start the service standing on the edge of a cliff, okay?
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And we have an opportunity to stand on the edge of the cliff and look at the pathway that winds down and plunges down the sides into darkness.
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You see, the last two weeks we saw God create a very good earth. We've seen God caring for us and creating a great habitat.
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He shaped and formed the man. He created abundance and blessing and a paradise for that man.
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He gave to mankind all of the trees of the garden except for one. And he created the first community in the context of marital relationships between the first two humans.
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But last week, we also know that the very first prohibition had been given, that he told them, you can eat from this abundance.
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I've given you this amazing garden with all of these trees and you can eat from all of them.
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I called it the forest of permission with the tree of prohibition. So you had one tree that you couldn't eat from and God had blessed mankind with all of this abundance.
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Hey, all of this is available to you, save this one tree. And there was this first law. And we talked about God as director having the right to declare law, having the right to tell us what to do and what not to do.
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And in this case, he only excluded one thing from the man and the woman. He said, don't eat from that one tree.
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So coming into chapter three, we have seen God completely engaged and delighting in his creation.
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He's been like a father in a maternity ward, I said last week, and he's doting on his children and he's delighting in them and he is blessing them.
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We see nothing but good up to this point from the hand of God. Would you agree with me on that? Genesis one,
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Genesis chapter two, showing the very nature of our God as good and caring and loving.
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He's been like a father, but there's no way around it. This text this morning is going to take a dark turn.
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And sometimes it's only in truly plumbing the depths of the darkness that we realize how bright and beautiful and glorious and amazing is the gospel of our
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Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Only when we really understand how dark things really get, that we really recognize how bright and glorious and beautiful is the good news that God sent his son to save us.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? I think that that happens both in a big picture, like we're looking at here, we're looking at the fall of humanity.
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But if we personalize this to some degree, we ought to be reflecting some on our own personal fall, because have we fallen?
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Have we sinned? Have we broken the commands of God? Have we rebelled as individuals? Yes. So none of us can point to Adam and say, well, that was his problem.
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That's a problem that we all share and something that we, if you see another human, you can know one thing for certain about that human, they're sinful.
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That's one thing that we know for certain. All of us are broken because of what we're going to read here.
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And yet, in understanding that darkness, coming face to face with the darkness of a fallen human, we actually see the glory of Jesus Christ.
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Now this may not ultimately be the most upbeat sermon you've ever encountered, but the fall of humanity into sin is a reality that I will not avoid for the sake of our comfort.
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So we plunge ahead into the darkness. So let's take a hike down the cliff into the vision of rebellion and open our
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Bibles to Genesis chapter three. If you take out the paper copy that's in the seat back in front of you, you can turn to page two and find exactly where we're at.
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And I say this every week, but we have given away a lot of Bibles since we first started. And we want you to have that Bible if you don't own a copy.
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So take that paperback one home with you. We've got a box full of those in the back room to replace the ones that are taken this week.
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But follow along in Genesis chapter three, as we read the entirety of this chapter together this morning, the very words of God to us.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.
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Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths.
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And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the
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Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?
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And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden. And I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
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And 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 who you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.
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Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. 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?
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On your belly you shall go and dust shall you eat. Dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
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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.
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To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children.
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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
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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.
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Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat 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.
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For you are dust and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.
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And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the
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Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us and knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
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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 the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
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Let's pray. Father, we come to a text this morning that plunges this very good creation into darkness and decay and destruction and corruption.
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And Father, as we reflect on the actions of Adam and Eve, I think we can all relate to them in many ways.
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We see ourselves in rebellion against you regularly and routinely. And we need grace and mercy and forgiveness.
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And we need something to remedy this broken situation that we have. And I rejoice that even in this dark text, there are glimmers of hope.
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There are signs that you have not given up the pursuit of your people, but you have chosen even back then you had chosen to put a plan in motion for redemption and for reconciliation and restoration.
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I thank you that even as dark as things can get, that you are a God who comes in and can transform and change dark and dire circumstances where there seems to be no hope.
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And you can bring about restoration. Father, I pray that as we sing songs of worship and praise to you, that they would flow out of hearts redeemed and given over to you and reconciled with you in right relationship.
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Father, that we would recognize you as you are and we would sing these songs out of hearts transformed and changed by your grace and your mercy.
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Father, be with this entire service and allow us to experience your conviction, experience your challenge, and experience encouragement from you.
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I ask this in Jesus name. Appreciate the work that they put in every week and so very grateful for them.
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Hopefully you were able to come before the throne of God himself as he is and worship him this morning. I want to make sure that everybody knows to make yourself comfortable.
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I think there's some more doughnuts, coffee juice if you need that. Some of you might need a little more sugar, a little more caffeine to stay awake for the next half an hour or so.
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So, take advantage of that. Also, make sure you have your Bibles open in front of you. I want you to have Genesis 3 there on your lap so that you can reference it, look at it, see it.
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Make sure that the things that I say are actually in there. I might try to throw you a loop just to see if you're paying attention. Just kidding.
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I really don't do that on purpose. Genesis 3 has some pace to it.
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It starts right away. We've only seen three characters mentioned in the Bible so far. Three beings that have been mentioned.
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God, the first man, and Eve, the first woman. So, that's where we're at right now.
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God, Adam, and Eve. And then right away, now the serpent was more crafty. We're seeing a fourth introduction here.
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We're seeing a new character mentioned. And we know right away that it's one of the created animals.
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Now, the serpent was more crafty than all the other beasts in the field that the Lord God had made. Now, how many of you have ever wondered what this snake or serpent really is?
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Have you ever been curious about that? Is it a snake? Is it a dragon? What is it? All different kinds of people down through the ages have speculated on what this being looks like.
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Snake, serpent, dragon, dinosaur are some of the things that have been put out there for this creature.
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Lizard. There's so much speculation over what it was. But I think we can get caught up in the creature itself without recognizing what the text wants to communicate to us.
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And so, let's talk about what we do know about this creature according to the text. What does God say about it?
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And then maybe it will help to solidify for us, what is this being that we're looking at here? Because I think that by the end of this text, you might have in your mind what the intention of the author was, that this is something a little more than just your run -of -the -mill gardener or run -of -the -mill snake that you might kill in your backyard, okay?
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I think there's something more going on here. Let me explain this. The first thing that we know is it was created by God. The second thing we know is the serpent speaks, okay?
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Anybody put a pause on right there and kind of go, wait a minute, something's different here? Have any of you ever had, you know, you're out mowing the lawn and a garter snake goes, and some of you scream, whatever, and then you jump and then you catch it by the tail or something,
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I don't know what you do. But you see the snake and it rears up and talks to Anybody? Like, take in note of that.
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Like, that happens to you, you kind of go, okay, that's not normal, right? So the serpent speaks.
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The serpent is naturally crafty, according to the text. The serpent deceives the woman. We're going to see that.
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The serpent is punished, and the serpent will be a long -standing enemy of humanity and God.
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And lastly, the serpent will one day be defeated by an offspring of the woman.
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As we progressively go through that list, do you begin to see the notion that maybe something more than just a snake is in mind here?
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There's something else going on in the text. It ought to be clear that we're not observing just any ordinary snake.
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Those reading this in the times of Moses would not have thought this was a normal snake. They would have pursued this and tried to figure out what's going on here.
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And after reading the New Testament and references that are mentioned in the New Testament to Satan as the originator of lies, are we going to see a lie here, the first lie spoken?
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Also, we're going to see in the New Testament references that outright call him that serpent, that ancient serpent of old, or that ancient dragon, okay?
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I think that we're standing on pretty good ground to make a case that this serpent that we're talking about here is
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Satan. The New Testament refers to Satan as the serpent. So are you making that connection?
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The reason I'm taking the time to make this case is because I think if I handed you a copy of Genesis 3 and that's all that you possessed, you would struggle to know who this serpent is.
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Would you agree with me? But when you take this passage in the context of all the rest of Scripture, it kind of snaps into focus that what we have here is
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Satan in the text using a serpent. Even in Moses' time, they would have known that snakes don't speak and they would have been looking for something more.
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But the snake begins by asking a misleading question to the woman. Did God prohibit you from eating fruit from the trees of the garden?
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Now, we kind of have a notion that that might be an inaccurate question. Now, I mean, some of you have had professors say there's no such thing as a dumb question or something like that.
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Well, this is just a misinformed question. It appears at face value kind of like, well, no, that's not the case.
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That's not what's going on. It's kind of misguided from the beginning. But it opens a rift in the woman's thinking about God.
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To entertain this question requires some thought about the fairness of God. It turns the attention to the permission and prohibition, right?
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Do you see how automatically the serpent says, well, what's God given you? What's he allowing you to do here?
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He's put you in this garden. He's given you all these great trees and he won't let you eat any of Do you see how the question is posed that begins to kind of question, who is
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God and what is he doing? Is he the one who's, he's prohibiting you from things? To entertain this question requires some thought about the fairness of God.
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But the question also serves Satan's plan by getting the woman to talk. Okay, so he's posed a question and she's going to correct him.
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And how many of you are like, like me, you really like correcting other people? Okay, so somebody says something false to you, and you're like, oh, no, no,
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I know the answer. I know the answer. And then you can't stop from talking. But you can't keep yourself from answering that question. Anybody like me on that?
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Three of you? I think a lot of us are that way. When we hear something inaccurate, it's like,
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I've got to speak now. Now I'm just compelled. And that's where he gets Eve into conversation.
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I think he's put a hook into her, in a sense of intrigue, interest.
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She's standing here, she's talking with one of God's creation, one of God's created animals, and she's going, what's going on here?
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So she corrects the serpent, as I think most of us would. Well, hold on a minute, you're asking the wrong question.
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She remembers the permission of God to eat the fruit from all the trees, except for one.
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The woman understands the bountiful blessing of God that he has planted her in a garden with beautiful trees and an orchard and all different kinds of things to eat.
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She recognizes his blessing and the goodness of God in this. But I think one thing can be missed, and we brush over it because of this intense dialogue that's going on.
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We miss something in verse 2. Notice this. I've missed this a lot of times. As a matter of fact, until this week,
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I never really noticed it at all. She is speaking on behalf of the man as well as for herself.
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She's speaking on behalf of the man. It says in verse 2, and the woman said to the serpent, we.
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Who's the we? She's representing the man as well in this dialogue with the serpent.
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And she says, we can eat from the tree, all the trees of the garden, except for the one.
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She's speaking for herself and for the man. And in verse 3, she recognizes the prohibition of God.
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They are not to eat from the tree in the midst of the garden. I don't want to make much of this. I want to just kind of brush over this real quick.
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But I noticed one thing. She doesn't name the tree. Now we know what the name of the tree is from last week, right?
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It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But I wonder if there came a point in human history, how long since the command was given, we don't know.
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But I wonder if there wasn't a point where they ceased to name it. They didn't even call it by its name. They tried to stay clear of it and stay away.
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And she doesn't even use its name for the tree. She says that one that's in the middle, we're not supposed to touch.
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That's the one that's prohibited from us. I think it would be wise, even if it's a little bit of a stretch from the text, it would be wise for us to have things in our households, in our families, and in our lives that we don't even name.
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We don't speak of those things. We don't talk of those things. We steer clear of those things.
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And we talk about what is good and delightful and what is lovely and what is right. But we wash away those things that are nameless.
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But also in verse 3, we see that the woman adds to the law of God. Now God prohibited them from eating it.
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That was the rule, right? He said, don't eat it or you will surely die. But she says that they can't even touch it or they will surely die.
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Now it's possible that God has expanded this rule later and we don't have it recorded to include touching the fruit.
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That's a possibility, right? That at some subsequent point to saying don't eat it, he later comes to him and says, you know what?
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Just don't even touch it. So there's that possibility there. But whatever the case in that,
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I don't want to read too much into her adding to the law there. But there is in this exchange a sense that the wheels have begun to spin in her mind.
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The serpent and the woman are having what I would call the very first theological conversation. The first conversation about God and trying to figure out who he is.
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And Satan has a way that he views God and he's going to show us what his theology is and he's going to rope
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Eve into his theology. They are probing the mind of God and for the first time a seed of questioning the motive of God has come alive in her.
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And she begins to question, what is God's motive for prohibiting this? Why prohibit it?
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She does know this one thing to be true. God has promised death if they eat from the forbidden fruit and she says as much here at the end of verse 4.
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But the serpent said, I mean at the end of verse 3, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
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That concept, I don't know how fully orbed or formed the concept of death was to the woman, what that entailed.
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I'm sure she didn't have a full grasp on what that word meant other than that was the punishment for eating that fruit.
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But the serpent now launches into an all -out assault on the integrity of God. He outright disagrees with God saying that God is wrong and they will not die.
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Do you see that in the text? You will not surely die. Direct disagreement with God.
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God says, you will die. You will surely die. No, you surely will not die.
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The exact opposite statement in Hebrew from what God says. A direct, complete lie, a disagreement with what
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God has said. The statement from the serpent is not just some academic disagreement.
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Well, God thinks this is going to happen. I don't think this is going to happen. It ultimately comes down to questioning the goodness of God.
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Has he openly deceived his creation? And Satan gets down to business in verse 5 ascribing what ultimately amounts to evil motives to God.
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The logic of verse 5 goes something like this. God prohibited Adam and Eve from eating the fruit because he knows they will become like him when they eat it.
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If they eat it, they'll become like him. Now what was Satan's first, those of you who have studied a little bit more than just Genesis in Scripture, what was the first sin of Satan?
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Pride. That he wanted to elevate himself to God. What is he holding out to the woman right now in his temptation?
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To be like God. If you eat it, you'll be like God. It's the same temptation, that same desire to achieve, to improve, to better yourself, to become on par or equal with God.
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And I would say idolatry of self is still the fundamental sin that you or I face every day. Isn't that ultimately the root of every evil and every sin that we commit is self -worship?
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I deserve, I need, I have earned,
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I get this, whatever. God prohibited them from eating the fruit.
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He says, no, the only reason God has prohibited you from eating the fruit is because he knows you will become like him.
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You will grow in knowledge. God is trying to hold you back says Satan. In essence, the first temptation boils down to this.
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The first temptation is to question the goodness of God. Does he really have your best interest in mind?
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Does he really know what's good for you? Now, he's afraid. God is afraid that you're gonna rise up to his level.
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And so he's not permitting you to eat this. And the root of most sin begins with that very thought.
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Is God good? Does he have my best interest in mind? Does he really know what's good for me? I need something, but God is keeping it from me.
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He doesn't really want what is best for me. And that's the starting point of human depravity. We question if God is really good.
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Is he really kind? Is he really gentle? And the human race still has a tendency to see
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God as a cosmic killjoy, right? He's up there watching us, making sure we don't have any fun.
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Isn't that what a lot of people think about God? Isn't that the perspective of many in our culture? God is just looking for the opportunity to put you under his thumb, squash you.
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That notion that he is not good is a fundamental flaw that is introduced through the temptation that we're seeing here.
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The idea that God is suppressing us. And we see here where this type of thinking gets us in chapter 3.
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I cannot overestimate the devastation of verse 6. I cannot express words in the
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English language to really convey the importance and the significance of verse 6 in the scope of human history, in the scope of the world, in the scope of my life, in the scope of your life.
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What we see in verse 6 comes down to where you live moment by moment. This replication of to follow
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God or to not follow God. Look at verse 6 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 she ate.
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And she ate. Here we plunge into the darkest abyss.
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For the woman is enticed. She sees that the fruit is edible. It's good for food. It looks super delish.
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That's what it says in the text. That's a loose translation. It looks almost as good as a piece of French silk pie from Rixie's.
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It looks good. And she also believes what Satan says, that it is good for making one wise.
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And wisdom? Wisdom is a good thing, right?
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Is that a good thing to ascribe to? To desire wisdom? It's going to make me wise.
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She's going to do a little self -improvement here. She's going to make herself a little bit better. Is it more useful to be wise or is it more useful to be foolish?
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Come on, people. Better to be wise, right? She's just making a good choice.
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You've got a chance to be wise or to be foolish. Who's not going to eat this fruit? This is going to make me wise. I'll be more useful to God if I do this, right?
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I'll still follow Him. I'll still follow Him, but I'll be more able to follow. I'll improve myself, be better.
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So she took the fruit and ate and gave it to her husband and he ate.
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Anybody here that's eaten anything yet today? Hopefully you have, otherwise you are going to nod off here in just a second.
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Is eating a pretty simple process for us? A pretty small thing for us to eat something?
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Not a big deal, not too complicated or complex. It's just kind of like putting your mouth to it, swallow it.
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That is the act that plunges humanity into darkness. Ooh, they ate, but what did they eat?
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The only thing in God's created order that they were told not to.
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The only thing that He prohibited from them and that is what they ate.
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And she gave it to her husband who I know that a lot of people recently have pointed this out. I think as a kid nobody was saying this, but now it's a really big deal to point out in verse 6 that she gave it also, or she also gave some to her husband who was with her.
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Do you see that in the text? It's not just Eve and the serpent having a conversation. Adam is there kind of standing by.
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I picture him kind of with his arms folded, maybe his hand kind of like this, just like kind of observing this. He's a real gentleman, so he's like ladies first and she eats the fruit.
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And I picture him kind of like, what did God say was going to happen when you eat the fruit? You're going to die, so he's kind of watching.
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What does death look like? Because I haven't seen any changes yet. How long did he have to stand there and wait until he would determine that nothing bad had happened?
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I mean, he's like, okay, 15 minutes have gone by, half an hour, a year. But I mean, he's standing there and he eats with her.
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Now, one thing that's key in this is that Adam is held responsible through the entirety of Scripture for this event.
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He is held responsible. Paul in Romans chapter 5, Romans chapter 5 is about Adam.
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Go back and read that if you get a chance this week to reflect on this event from the New Testament perspective.
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And you will see that we are all sinners because Adam sinned and there's a lot of theology in there. But Paul speaks of sin coming down to each and every one of us in this room through Adam.
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Adam, the one that was the representative for the human race, and he fell. He was the first human created and therefore his sin is pictured as the origination of sin in the human race.
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He represented us. And I dare say, lest we become arrogant in ourselves, we each made that decision with Adam.
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Because you know what? When you were born, did you have to sin? In essence, you've chosen to.
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Each and every one of us has. We've replicated Adam's folly by sinning ourselves.
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And I dare say that, it's fair to say, each and every one of us will sin before the sun goes down today.
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Again, we will replicate the sins of Adam in ourselves, right? So some of you might have a tendency and hypothetically say, if it was me,
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I would have just stood strong. I would have been a rock. No, not so much. He represented us and he was a faithful representative of what you or I would have done in the same circumstance.
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When they eat, they immediately gain knowledge and it's not quite what they signed up for.
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How many of you know that sin promises one thing and then grants another? Have you experienced that in your life like I have?
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Sin kind of says, oh, this is going to be fun. It's going to be entertaining. It's going to be good. It's all right. And then you actually sin and it's like, that's not so good anymore.
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All of a sudden, something has changed. They immediately gain knowledge and they immediately recognize their own nakedness.
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And that's the strangeness of what sin does. It doesn't remain isolated into one area of life.
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Sin has a tendency to creep and seep and infiltrate all areas. It's kind of like the concept of the skeleton in the closet, except the skeleton gets out and walks around sometimes, right?
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Do you get what I'm saying? I mean, we like to try to think that we can keep sin contained in a vault in our lives, pull it out, play with it once in a while, put it back, and it's not going to have any impact.
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I'm not hurting anybody, right? Have you ever heard that? It's not hurting anybody. It's just between me and this person or whatever, and it's going to be okay.
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And that's a lie. Disobeying God by eating a piece of fruit. You see a logical connection between nakedness and fruit?
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There's no connection there. Disobeying God by eating a piece of fruit affects the intimacy, the openness, and the innocence between the first married couple.
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Not a whole lot of logic in that connection, but it's an unintended consequence. And I would say to you that sin has unintended consequences that you or I cannot master or control.
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So you think you can contain sin, you think you can manage it, you think you can, you know, it's okay,
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I'm above this, and I can just do this for a little bit, and it will own you. How many of you know that you can't control the consequences of your sin?
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You don't get to choose them. They come with the results. So the first humans, they sew fig leaves together to make the first clothes, and in our text we have the origin of clothes.
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Now any worldview needs to account for things the way that we see them. Anybody ever notice that humans are the only ones that wear clothes, except for that occasional dog or cat or whatever, and that's our fault, okay?
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Just saying, you know, you know what I'm talking about, you've seen them online. And we wear clothes, and in all honesty, if you talk with a secular humanist, you talk with an atheist, you talk with somebody who believes that this all came about by evolution, and they have no accounting for why in the world humans wear clothes.
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It's not logical. If you understand evolutionary process and you understand what they say was the process down to the ages, number one priority, eat stuff, okay, to keep going, all right?
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And at some point in history, what we have to believe is that animals stopped the priority of eating stuff and foraging in order to just take a little time out of the day to make some clothes and to sew, and that's kind of an illogical comment.
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You always go to warmer places, you're going to gravitate towards the migration and all that stuff, and so there would have been no need for clothes.
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There's no explanation out there that I've seen, and I did some research even this week. So that's something you have to wrestle with.
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A biblical worldview says this right here, that sin brought shame and shame brought clothing, okay?
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So there's at least the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview holds tight on some of these things that we could see as evidences.
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That's not to say that if somebody comes up with an evolutionary perspective on why people wear clothes that all of a sudden scripture is wrong on that, but it's just interesting that they struggle with that.
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Some worldviews have a hard time dealing with the things that we actually see in reality. But anyways,
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Adam and Eve like two kids who just broke mom's vase while playing ball in the house. What do you do when you break mom's vase while you're playing ball in the house?
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What do you do? Glue it together. You run and hide, okay?
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That's at least what I did. I don't know where you thought you were going to get away with it, you know, like your mom, she knows where you're at, right?
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I mean, she's going to find you and then hiding is going to make it worse, right? So they run and hide.
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When they hear God coming, there's something theologically significant about God coming to the garden.
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In verse eight, God visits the garden and he still engages his fallen creation.
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He's still in active pursuit. I believe that this is not the first time that God ever came down in the garden. I think it was an understanding and an expectation and often
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God would come down and walk with his people in the garden. He interacted with them. He related with them.
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And the culmination of time, the end result ultimately of this creation, when things are finally restored is
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God with us. Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means
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God with us. And one day on the new earth, he will be our
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God and we will be his people and he will make his dwelling place among his people for eternity.
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He's a God who engages us, who loves us and delights in our presence and wants to spend time with us.
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Do you see that in the text that he comes down in the garden to be with them? And even after the fall, he's still in pursuit of them.
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He hasn't disengaged even after sin. Now I want to point out God hasn't lost
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Adam. It's not like he's like, oh no, where did the people go? I thought I had a call. I know I put a couple people in this garden.
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Where are they? Where are you? I think the question shows the expectation that Adam and Eve, I see this here,
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Adam and Eve came running when they heard God in the garden. When God came down in the garden, they heard him, whatever that sounded like, the rush of a wind or whether it was footsteps or thunder.
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I don't know. What did they hear? They knew that hearing that meant God was there and they came out and they talked with him.
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And he's like, okay, this is interesting. First time I've come down and where are you?
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Do you think he knew what had already happened? Yeah, he already got it, but he's going to draw them out.
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So Adam steps out of the bushes and explains that he was hiding because he recognized his nakedness and he was what?
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Afraid. The first time we see fear in scripture. I do not believe that Adam had any notion that Eve had any notion of what it meant to fear.
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They had a loving, kind, gentle relationship with their maker prior to this. He comes down in the garden.
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I picture hugs all around and hey, how's it going? And thank you for all of this. And this is awesome and delight and worship and joy and unity and connectedness.
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And then now fear, the fear of God begins here in our text right here.
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And that fear has come down to where we live, even here in Matawan, Michigan, the fear of the
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Lord. It says in scripture is the beginning of anybody know the fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of wisdom says that all throughout the wisdom literature and Proverbs. But I would say because fear of God after sin, after sin, that's important.
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Fear of God after sin makes sense. It is a sensible, wise, knowledgeable response to encounter
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God as a sinful human to have fear. Would you agree with me on that? That's reasonable. That's logical.
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But I want to point this out. And this is very important for those who are in Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation.
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I think we have a hard time wrapping our mind around what that implies for our relationship with God moving forward. I do not believe that Adam ever feared
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God prior to his first sin. Fear of God is not the only reasonable response to encountering him.
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And I think we've got in our minds that, oh, to encounter God is to fear is to fall flat on our faces, to grovel in his presence.
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I do not believe that that will be the end result for those who are in Christ. There is therefore now no condemnation.
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I think we will relate to God when we meet him on the basis of therefore no sin, no remembrance of sin.
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As far as the east is from the west, he has cast it away from us. I think we will stand in his presence and delight in him when he comes back for us, those who are his.
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Now, those who do not have the covering that we're going to talk about later for sin, I think there is a significant depth of fear that is reasonable for those whose sin have not been dealt with.
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It's a scary place to be. Respect is always sensible. I think when we stand in God's presence, are we going to be flipping about it?
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Is there a little difference in nuance between the word fear and reverence? Yes, there is.
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Will we be reverent in God's presence? Will we glory in him? Will we worship him? Absolutely.
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Worship is the proper response, even as people whose sins have been washed away, we will still be reverent and worshipful.
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But fear now is a crucial way of showing respect to our creator as fallen beings. Now, they already made fig leaves, but Adam and Eve still feel naked and exposed.
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Apparently, they weren't very good at making clothes yet, so they're not very well covered. And the connection between shame and nakedness is clear now in the text.
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Adam's response is something like, I heard you, God, walking in the garden, and I was ashamed, and so I hid.
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And this shows the way that sin provides a carnal knowledge. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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They've come into a set of knowledge that once known cannot be unknown. Do you know what
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I'm talking about there? To know what it's like to get high, to know what it's like to lust, to know what it is like.
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And that breeds a whole host of knowledge in our mind that can create cravings, and longings, and temptations that are horrible, and they can be terrifying to behold in a person's life.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? The type of knowledge that once known cannot be unknown, and you can't undo.
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How many of you would like to have a do -over again in life? A few things? I'm not even talking about your whole life.
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How many of you would take it if God held out a do -over on one situation in your life? You'd take that? Would you do that?
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I know I would. I think all of us would. We open a Pandora's box of unintended consequences when we rebel against our
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Creator. Does He know how life really works best? Has He set down in His Word how life really works best?
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But do we question His goodness on that? Well, did you really mean that that was the way it was supposed to be? Did you really mean that we weren't supposed to do this?
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Are you sure? Because that looks pretty good to me right now, just one little bite, just one hit, just one peek, and who knows what you or I could become.
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You know what I'm talking about? We do not know the end result of our sin.
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We sin here thinking we've got it well contained, and that thing will explode in our face, and that's reality.
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Try as we might, we cannot repackage sin into the same box it came out of. We unpack it.
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Any of you ever do that with your kid, like a piece of electronics? You're trying to get that thing back in the box to return it, and that's not going back in.
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You're like, I know this styrofoam is supposed to go on the end, and it's not fitting. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
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It does not ever go back in the box for me that way, and I think that's a good picture of sin. It's like you unpack it, and you think, oh, this is going to be delightful and great.
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Oh, let's get rid of that thing, and it doesn't fit back in, and it squeezes its way back out.
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Things do not return to the way that they used to be, and as we sin, if we indulge in a life of sin, we grow more worldly wise.
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We become more experienced in sin. We become more jaded and less spiritually sensitive, but God asks a couple of questions leading to what
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He already knows. Who told you you were naked? He says to Adam, and wait a minute.
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If you're acknowledging that you're naked, have you eaten from the tree with the knowledge of good and evil? Have you eaten that?
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Now, can you imagine how the man and the woman must feel? You put yourself in that situation. God, down in the garden.
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They've just eaten the fruit. How are you feeling? Is fear an understatement for that sense of what is going to go down now, terrifying?
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Now, I think all of us can relate to that in some degree, because have you been caught in a sin before? Have you been caught in a sin, a lie, whatever?
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But probably I'm guessing that the one who caught you and called you out wasn't God. Just guessing.
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So in that case, I think that what we've got here is just extremely terrifying. So what does
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Adam do? What would you do? What do we all do? Pass the blame. So he passes the blame to the woman, but the way that he passes the blame to the woman gets really ugly.
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In essence, he challenges God on the value of the gift that was given in woman. He actually is going to challenge
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God on that, as if to say, you gave me this woman and look what she's done. He really makes an important effort.
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He makes an extra effort to point out, remember God, you gave me this woman. You're the one who gave her to me.
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I want to point out that what we see right off the bat when sin enters the scene is there is now division between God and the man.
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There's division between God and the woman, and there is division between man and woman. All of the relationships that were there are now severed and broken to some degree.
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There's the blame game and shifting going on and all of the stuff, and there's fear between man and the woman, fear between man and God.
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So God turns to the woman. I mean, the man turns to the woman, blames her. The woman turns to the serpent and blames him, and the serpent just sits there and just flicks out its tongue.
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I don't know if that's what really happened, but I just kind of picture that. He's just sitting there kind of like, this is what
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I do. I crack myself up.
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So God gives a curse to the serpent, speaking to both the crafty animal that was being used, but also to the spirit that animated it.
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So what we have is kind of a dual curse going towards the animal that allowed Satan in and to Satan himself.
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And so we see kind of two prongs to this punishment. The serpent is given a very lowly place, moving through the dirt and groveling in the dust.
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Now, I want to point this out. Anybody really get hung up on the words eating dust all of your days there?
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Do serpents eat dust? Those of you who know a little bit about biology, do serpents eat dust? No, they eat mice and things like that, right?
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So what's going on here? Is he talking about the dietary habits of serpents and snakes here? Is that what this is really coming down to?
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No, there's a figure of speech. Eating the dust is a Hebrew phrase that's often used for abject humility.
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As a matter of fact, it's used of people multiple times in the Old Testament, especially throughout the minor prophets, where it's told of a people who have been conquered that they eat the dust.
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Now it's not like that means they set up a table and they've got, hey, could you pass the dust please? And they're scooping that out for their kids and stuff.
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That's not what it's talking about. It's just a picture of abject humiliation. And that's what happens to the serpent, a significant humiliation to it.
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Hostility is the curse between the snake and the woman. And this is more than just a common fear of snakes. How many of you women are generally afraid of snakes?
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Not real big fans. I think that there's a general notion of that. But one of you is sitting out there going,
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I'm the exception. I love snakes. Okay, awesome. But it's more than that. It's not just this sense of fear that, oh,
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I don't like snakes. The snakes don't like me. But it's a picture of the battle between the children of the serpent and the children of the offspring that's going to be mentioned here.
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And down through the ages, there's been an ongoing battle between the forces of Satan and the forces of God. Each one of us are engaged in the battle, whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not.
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Either we are offspring of that serpent, Satan, or we are offspring of the one who will crush the head of that snake, that serpent.
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Paul calls Jesus the offspring of the woman, pointing back to this passage.
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And I want you to look at your Bibles, put your eyes on it for a second and look carefully at verse 15 with me for just a second.
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We are seeing the seeds of the gospel, the seeds of hope, the seeds of light in this dark text right here.
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I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. What we're seeing here is punishment, right?
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We're seeing God pull out judgment. And in the middle of it, he says this, and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.
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What are the pronouns that are used in the second half of verse 15? His and he. Masculine singular pronouns.
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A man is going to come who will be born of woman who is going to crush the head of the serpent.
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Any guesses? All the way back in Genesis 3, we are seeing
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Jesus. He's already been mentioned. He's been mentioned as that the one who comes will be a male and he is singular and he is an offspring of the woman and he is going to crush the head of the serpent.
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Paul calls Jesus the offspring of the woman in the book of Galatians. We went through that book over the summer, this past summer.
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And he's pointing back to this passage when he does so. Jesus Christ is the offspring of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent.
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In verse 16, the woman receives her punishment and the whole, I would call this an entire complex of punishment that comes to the woman.
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And because it's interrelated, there's some unique features to it that can be talked about individually, but the whole ball of wax of the punishment that comes to the woman has more to do with sexuality and the entire reproductive angst of society than anything.
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Having babies will be a strong desire for her, but it will be hardship and difficult for this to occur.
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It is the increase of physical pain in childbirth, but also the broken relationship with the man that is included in this curse.
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She will now have an unhealthy desire to control her husband and men will have an unhealthy tendency to rule with an iron rod over woman.
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Does that gel with what you see in history? Does that gel with what you've seen down through the ages?
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Even some of the struggles and strife in our culture and our society even today centers around this inequality and difficulty and this struggle between gender.
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Do you agree with me? It's an ongoing struggle. The punishment to the man includes the curse against the ground.
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It will not readily yield crops and will require hard labor and toil to produce food.
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Thorns, thistles, and weeds will impede the work of man. The same word for pain given in the punishment that the pain in childbirth will be multiplied to the woman is here also given to the man.
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Now, I don't really want to compare pains here. I mean really, far be it for me as a man to ever really talk about the pain of childbirth.
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I was there for the birth of all three of my children. I don't even want to go there, but the fact of the matter is both are issued pain in this life because of this fall.
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He will experience pain and the futility and difficulty of his work in this sin -cursed place. And in verse 19 comes the final and ultimate curse.
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You will work the ground until the ground finally swallows you whole. You will die. You will go back to the dust.
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Death is not mentioned directly in the punishments here by word, but that is clearly what God means in the statement that we will return to the dust.
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And death therefore comes into this cursed world because of our sin.
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That which was very good has now become broken. After the trial and the sentencing that we've just seen in the text, the man gives a new name to his wife.
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One of the first acts after punishment, after sin, one of the first things that he does after receiving his punishment is to name his wife, which is ultimately an ancient act of authority, to name something, to declare its name, to have the authority to give it a name was significant in their culture.
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It means to exercise control over it. This ultimately implies to the ancient mind that the man now possesses the woman.
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I believe that this first act after the fall is a precursor to all kinds of injustice and abuse by men against women.
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And what we see here is him exercising authority over her right away. The curse has taken root and he's running with it.
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And that's what's going on. But the name he gives her is a name of hope.
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It's a name of hope in the promise God gave over a victory over the serpent. God has promised an offspring to defeat the serpent and Adam names her the mother of all the living pointing to her role in bringing forth offspring.
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Her name will be Eve, the mother of the living. And in what is the hope that that God gave them, that she will have an offspring, that she will be the mother of the living and not just the mother of the living, but ultimately the mother of the one who will defeat the serpent.
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But God remedies their makeshift fig clothes. They weren't very good. And so he does so by killing an animal and making leather clothes out of the skins.
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And what we have here is the first record of an animal killed to cover the shame of sin.
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Do you see that in the text? That ultimately the cause of the death of this animal is the shame of the man and woman.
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I do not think it's a stretch to see a foreshadowing of the sacrifices for the covering of sin and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ who will shed his own blood to cover and to atone for the sins of the world.
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In this case, an animal died to cover their shame. Ultimately, the son of God himself is going to die to cover yours and mine.
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In verses 22 through 24, it's apparent that the man and the woman have not yet eaten from the tree of life and gained immortality.
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Since he uses the word also there in the text, you'll see what I mean. And since humanity has slid into the realm of self -guided morality,
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God does not want them to live eternally in this way. So he casts them out of the garden and places a guardian.
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The word is used in the text, cherubim. Anybody ever seen a cherubim before? You know what that is?
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I don't even know what that is. I think it highlights to me sometimes as I'm reading scripture, there are some things that God created that you and I don't even know about.
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We don't even know what this thing is. We lump all those things that we don't know that are mentioned in scripture, we call them angels. There's never an association between cherubim and angel, but we just kind of do that because it makes more sense of the world to us or something.
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We like to categorize things. I don't even know if a cherubim is an angel. I really don't know what it is. A seraphim,
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I mean, they're floating around the throne of God singing songs and praises to him, but I don't know what that means.
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I don't know what they are, what they look like. I mean, you have some descriptions in scripture, but I have a hard time picturing those things in my mind.
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So there's a guardian, a cherubim that's placed in the guard to protect the tree of life. And this casting out,
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I want to point out, is not part of the punishment. Punishment's already been doled out and given, but it's actually a grace according to the text.
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Can you imagine humanity in unrestrained eternal sinfulness, living forever and ever as sinful beings?
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God wants more than this for his image bearers, and he casts them out and lets death be our reality and puts a block on our eternal progress into sinfulness.
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And I picture God to be brokenhearted and heavy from the darkness in this text. God is not shocked by these events.
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Would you agree with me on that? God is not surprised, he is not caught off guard. It's not like, oh no, what did they do?
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This wasn't supposed to go this way. But I do not believe that he is unmoved by these events.
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He loves his creation. He considered it very good, and now it has fallen into subjugation to sin and to death.
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A very dark backdrop has been painted, and the implications of Genesis chapter 3 echo down through history, all the way, and the echoes can be felt in our own lives as we're tempted, even this week, to walk with God or to not walk with him, to believe that he is good and that what he has laid down for us is right for us.
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But the glimmer of hope is found here in the promise to the woman and a covering given for shame. Even in this very dark text, there is hope.
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Jesus Christ is the offspring of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent. God, even then, was planning his redemption through the one offspring.
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And he came and he lived a sinless life and died to cover our sins. Like that first animal died to provide covering for the shame of Adam and Eve, Jesus Christ died to cover our shame and to provide forgiveness and protection for anyone who would put on Christ.
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If you put on Jesus Christ and asked for his sacrifice to be your covering for sin, then please join in communion as we pass that out this morning.
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But if you have no idea what I'm talking about, like put on Jesus, put on a covering for sin, what is all of this about, then
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I encourage you to please come and see me at the end of the service. I would love to talk with you further about what a relationship with Jesus Christ looks like.
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But for all of us, we can kind of talk through sin, we can talk about sin, and we can see all of this, but I could make all kinds of applications.
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But here's the reality. We're messed up. Would you guys agree with me on that? Every single one of us.
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If you're not nodding, then you're lying. Okay, so every single one of us messed up in a variety of areas of our lives, in all of our capacities.
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And yet God in his mercy has sent Jesus Christ to provide a way for us. My goal in this is we would delight in the gospel, having heard a message in the darkness of the pitiful condition of our heart in blackness and rebellion against God, that the hope would shine all the brighter for you this week.
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That you would walk with a lighter step, that you would walk in rejoicing and gladness, because a way has been provided that we will stand before God, not based on fear, not based on hiding our shame, but because our shame has been covered by Jesus Christ.
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Let's pray. Father, there is significant darkness in our hearts, and we encounter a text where rebellion is just the centerpiece.
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And we see it in our own hearts, and we see it in our lives, and we mess things up, and we totally go from one mess to another in our lives.
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But Father, you have made a way for us to be reconciled with you through grace, to be growing away from those messes and towards your kindness and your gentleness and your love towards others.
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And Father, I pray for more of that in my life and in the life of everybody who is here. Father, that we would recognize that our primary problem is idolatry of self, that we have a tendency to worship ourselves.
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And Father, that you would help us by your power to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself.
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Two greatest commandments that you have given us. Father, that as we have a chance to take the bread, to remember the body of Jesus that was broken for us, to cover us in the blood of Jesus that was shed for us, as we take the juice and reflect on that amazing covering, so valuable, so rich, so lavish, and you have poured that out on us to cover our sins and our shame.