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Genesis 3:8-24 How Bad Is It?
Chapter 3 starting in verse 8. Verses 8 to 24. Here the word of the Lord. 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. 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 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 curse. It is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of all the days of your life. 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 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 Knowing good and evil now lest he reach out his hand and take also with the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out from 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. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word.
Carpe diem. Seize the day. It's a kind of more sophisticated way of just saying go for it or the Nike slogan just do it go for the gusto grasp the brass ring. Reach out your hands and grab whatever it is.
You want don't be shy. Don't hold back and don't let anything or anyone hold you back. Take hold of what you want, even if you have to push others aside. Recognize our culture and all of this the attitudes promoted in our day.
Recognize yourself. After all ours is the culture in which the motto to a popular TV show Survivor is out with outlast outplay. You can win a million dollars if you can lie and manipulate and betray and connive your way over others.
Apparently that's what we like because the show is so popular. The 43rd season is premiering this Wednesday. Another reality show called combat missions Accidentally turned out to be very different. It was produced by the same people who produced Survivor as a sort of his spin-off from that after Survivor was so successful.
But it was different in that it was gonna have a military theme and a very different kind of people. Ex-military men they were given war games kind of missions and put in teams and war games kind of missions.
To compete against other teams and the team that lost. Would have to select one man to kick off the team just like in Survivor if you've ever seen it however strange things happened. Every time I watched one of those shows and saw a team lose.
Instead of their team meeting when they have the team meeting and Survivor. They call it tribal meeting and everyone is desperately trying to hold on to their position trying to outwit outlast outplay.
Refusing to take responsibility to try to get someone else voted out to shift the blame to someone else. Instead of all that grasping for self-preservation the leaders of the losing team imbued with a military ethic that ethic which the individual has to sacrifice for the sake of the group the leaders of the losing team.
Would always.
Personally take responsibility for their team losing refused to blame anyone else and voluntarily quit. Predictably the show only lasted one season. So you got 43 seasons versus one and this passage our first parents are much more like Survivor.
They can they can outwit outlast outplay even the Lord God himself. They desperately don't want to be voted out of the garden. Instead they want to stretch out their hands one more time and.
Dodge death.
We see that here in two scenes first scene one four verses 8 to 13 is about God's interrogation Of our first parents and their prevarication and then seeing two from verses 14 to 24 is about condemnation and eviction.
In scene one God interrogates our first parents and they Prevaricate and was try to dodge try to avoid the responsibility. They try to hide and this is the first cover-up. In first is the crime and then there's the cover-up first.
They try to hide from God in verse 8. This is humanity in sin instead of trying to run to God. When their eyes are open so their eyes were opened instead of trying to run to God when that happened. They sought to avoid him hiding in the trees.
They were afraid of the Lord because they had grasped For equality with God remember the temptation you shall become like God they grasp for that. And so when God comes seeking walking in the garden in the cool of the day they hide.
Then God asked questions and the first this is the interrogation to Adam specifically God called to the man in verse 9. Since he's the head. God's question is simple, but penetrating. Where are you? Now this is not suggesting that God didn't know where the Lord.
God didn't know where Adam was rather the Lord. God was asking Why aren't you in my presence? Think about it. Why are you hiding? Why aren't you happily coming to me like you used to consider why you're hiding.
Where was Adam? Hiding from God. Sinners hide. God calls. So God calls and asks. Where are you? God's call has a way of Bringing Adam out of hiding and notice Adams reply in verse 10. I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
He was afraid and so he thought he hoped That he could make God someone who could be avoided. There's a new term for that now. Ghosting just don't respond to someone's text messages. Calls disappear like a ghost.
They were trying to ghost God. Like I said God's call has a way of bringing bringing them out. Well now they had reached out their hands and grasped their own will and they were afraid of the one who had reminded them That they weren't made for that.
Christians should be interested in dealing with our guilt not hiding. We should have a longing in our hearts to be right with God to be cleansed to have our sins dealt with even if that Means we have to humble ourselves to receive correction and rebuke and discipline.
We're willing to undergo the sting of being held accountable for our sins because we eagerly desire to be made right. We don't just want to hide. Try to cover up Our sins to conspire with other people to pretend that our sins aren't really there that they're not really sins.
Unlike our first parents were willing to face God's wrath toward our sins because we desire him. More than we love our sins.
But.
Sinners don't really care about their guilt. Nowhere in this passage. Is there any remorse expressed for their sin? Now, they're ashamed but they're not repentant. A truly repentant person. A Burdened with a sense of guilt for his sins.
Runs to the Lord seeking cleansing. Pleads to God for mercy and forgiveness. But sinners do not left to ourselves have a have a tender God driven conscience. Sinners are not seekers. They're hiders. That's a new style of organizing the church.
Maybe it's not really so new. The philosophy is not really new but the some of the style is but called seeker sensitive. The idea is that we should structure the church everything we do from the way we dress to this music.
We use to the Bible translations around the sensitivities of people in the world. Because they really are seekers. Sinking God, that's the philosophy. That's the assumption now. Yes, we should be willing to lay aside every unnecessary Obstacle to the gospel like old-fashioned ways of dress or styles of music or Bible versions that people don't understand anymore.
But real seekers aren't hiding from God because God has given them a heart to seek him. That's not their natural condition. That's something God has done in them to make them into seekers. They're portrayed by John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress as people going through the recall.
I guess it's the old English word. The slaw the swamp the slaw of despond. The swamp of conviction as the Spirit is wakens them from spiritual death. True seekers. Feel to the bottom of their heart. Their sinfulness like a man trudging through a swamp.
Feels the muck and the mire the mud the vines and the thorns the danger from snakes and alligators all around him. He feels that the sinner under conviction has been awakened and now really is a seeker.
Feels that sin and his need for cleansing now to those kind of people.
Sure.
We should be sensitive. But that is not man in his natural condition left to himself. Left to ourselves. We hide. We don't seek. How bad is it? Well, the Bible tells us that no one not even one seeks after God as sinners.
We may we may like a little religion in our life like they wanted fig leaves. But unless God draws us first We don't want God. We're not seeking him. Religion is not always not even usually a good faith effort.
As in other words a sincere effort to find God. Religion is usually a way of hiding from God a way of covering up our shame without real repentance religion whether it be the false religion of the cults or other false religions or even a Moralized version of Christianity all about how what you should do be good little boys and girls it that's like these pathetic fig leaves here flimsy clothing.
It's a way of trying to cover ourselves. Without God's provision. And this is part of what makes the gospel so offensive to some. The cross says people are Sinful they're hiders and even religion rather than being a misguided but sincere attempt to follow God is really a self-willed attempt to hide to cover ourselves.
The first step to the gospel is to see how bad the situation is. How bad is it? We are not only dead in our sins. But left to ourselves. We rather like it that way. We prefer that we try to avoid God.
We're not seeking God. We're hiding and the gospel Exposes that it strips away the fig leaves and says that you can't be truly covered. You can't be shame-free. Unless God covers you. So it is God who comes seeking God who calls out for Adam who calls that for us.
God is not sitting passively by Waiting for us to go find him for us to seek him as sinners. We hide. God comes and God calls. God then asked two more questions. The first round about the second direct.
Who told you that you were naked in verse 11? Of course, no one told them. The point of the question isn't to elicit information. God's not, you know ignorant of what happened. God doesn't even wait for reply here.
He is getting Adam to focus in on what he did. He's trying to make him think and Adam should think. No one told me. How did I come to know I was naked? No one told me. I realized it when I Said my eyes were open.
I realized shame. Adam should take responsibility. He should confess. He should seek to be made right instead Adam Prevaricates. He refuses to confess and repent of his sin and verse 12. He blames his sin on his wife and The next verse the woman does the same.
She prevaricates she blames her said on the serpent. We hate to take responsibility. If we can't successfully hide from God, we'll try to dodge the blame. Someone else made me do it. It was my a bad upbringing was my environment.
It was my friends or my family is because I was too poor. It was Whatever something done to my ancestors. It's the chemicals in my brain. Whatever. It's not my fault.
The devil made me do it.
How bad is it? The sinner cannot take responsibility for his sin because he has put himself in the center of the universe. He judges good by what's good for me and bad. What's what's bad for me? It's declared that what he wants what he does is right.
If someone tells the sinner He is wrong. Then something must be wrong with that other person. They must be oppressive or repressive or primitive or unenlightened.
Intolerant.
Insensitive uncaring or whatever a favorite term in our day for sinners. To avoid responsibilities to accuse the other person of being.
Judgmental.
Right. How many times you see that any standards that make some sinner feel ashamed for his sins No matter how well-rooted in the Bible are quote judgmental. The sinner cannot stand to be questioned to be rebuked.
That's why one of the best indicators of true godliness with your heart is really seeking the Lord. Whether the Holy Spirit is genuinely work in your heart and you are reaching to be made new by him. One of the best signs is How you respond?
To rebuke.
Whether you accept correction if you don't think you need rebuke or.
Discipline like.
Adam and his wife. Here you immediately attack the one who gives it you prevaricate you try to avoid it. You dodge it change the subject maybe turn the tables of the corrector blame shift. Those are signs that we're still reaching out to grasp what we want not laying our out our hands openly before the Lord Receiving what he's giving.
But notice that Adam goes beyond just passing the buck to Eve. He slips in this line about the woman.
Whom you.
God Gave me in verse 12. In other words, he's telling the Lord God. It's her fault and your fault God since you gave her to me. You should have known better. You should have known it would happen. It's your fault God.
You did it. He makes a sin worse. He blasphemes by blaming God. The sinner not only hides from God, but when confronted he attacks God. You gave my tempter to me. It's your fault. Such hard-hearted self-centered people cannot be brought to God by just.
Sweet words.
Being a sinner is a terrible desperate condition. How bad is it? Our condition is so bad that even after we've been cornered even after we've been caught in our sin We'll do anything in our pride and our willful insistence that we are God.
To avoid confessing our sins. To avoid taking the blame. Will desperately look for an excuse will demand that others help pretend that we're not responsible. Some religious people will even hire preachers to tell them that they're all okay.
I'm okay. You're okay. Everything is fine. Hirelings who help them hide from conviction will hide from a seeking God and when cornered Attack that God. And if we could only get our hands on him, we'd nail that God to a cross.
So seen one ends with our first parents trying to avoid their Responsibility hiding defiant and angry at the only one who can give us any hope. Now sinners try to dodge the blame but God makes it stick and then the true God Passes his verdict on the three wannabe gods standing before him seen to Condemnation and eviction.
First the serpent.
Though all were condemned only the serpent was cursed. He who tempted this woman to eat Himself will now eat Dust in verse 14. In other words, the slithering of snakes is symbolic of God's judgment on the tempter.
So when we see a snake today, we can be reminded as Martin Luther wrote the Prince of Darkness grim We trembled out for him his rage we can endure. For lo his doom is sure. His doom is sure a revelation.
The back of the book portrays the the ultimate judgment on Satan. But his doom is not just sure. Because we've read the back of the book it's sure because we've read now the front of the book. Right from the beginning God shows that he has no real rival.
Satan is not his rival. Satan is condemned from the very start. God says in verse 15. I will put to the serpent to Satan. I will put enmity of a strife conflict hatred between you Satan and the woman.
God can do that between your offspring. Satan has offspring or the seed the sons of the daughters of the devil between that and her offspring. The seed of the woman the one who comes from the woman alone.
Yes. Yes, the serpent will will get to bruise. The heel it says of the one who will come from the woman. He will inflict a wound on him. See the woman will be wounded. But that one will he says crush.
Satan's head.
His doom is.
How bad is it? Well, the woman is condemned to pain and conflict in verse 16 I will multiply your pain or toil or labor in in childbearing or the word there could be or conception. Maybe the whole process of giving birth we even now call birthing labor, but here it's the whole process of conception and pregnancy and birth.
It is more difficult more fraught more worrisome especially for women. Then was intended and then in pain it's a different word for hurt. You shall bring forth children to the very process by which the woman is the mother of all living is now sharply marked by Pain a reminder of that original sin the pride of life.
Even the original purpose for which he was made to be a helper for husband is Disrupted. Remember she was made to be helper fit for him now. Marital strife. You know the battle of the sexes is another poisonous fruit of sin in verse 16.
Your desire Shall be contrary to our perhaps could be to rule over to dominate the man, but he shall rule over you otherwise God's saying there's gonna be a battle of the sexes and you're gonna lose and Even though both men and women suffer from it.
Haven't women suffer the most throughout history and still today. From broken marriages from abuse all that comes from that. How bad is it? Well, the man is condemned to hard labor in verse 17 because two things he listened to his wife rather than God.
Remember.
He loved the benefits of going along with her rather than being faithful to God. And because he ate from the tree that God told Him not to eat he grasped for equality with God disregarding God's command as if he could do such a thing and He took the fruit of his work.
He was a gardener. As a gardener He took fruit that he's not supposed to take and so his work is cursed. Work is was originally a blessing from God. It was all satisfaction. Now toil pain is added to it.
Now the word there for toil and at the end of verse 17 is the same word used for the woman. Having pain in labor He gets pain in.
Work.
The drudgery the obstacles the thorns of verse 18 all the the pains that often make work something we dread Are the result of sin. And then there's physical death. They've already died spiritually separated from God trying to hide Trying to keep separate from God and now their bodies will die.
They were made from the ground. So they'll go back to the ground in verse 19. For you are dust and to dust you shall return. Now right here, it seems odd reading along. Seems almost out of order in the way we might think because then I don't think says that you are dust and the dust you shall Return in verse 20 right after being sentenced to death.
We're told finally.
The woman's name.
You know, he paid attention up to now. There's Adam and his wife or the woman. And now only now. After their sentence to death you will die. You will go down to back to dust back to the ground. Now we're told the woman's name is Eve mother of all living lives.
Their lives will end but human lives will continue through Eve. And then God makes the suitable covering for them not flimsy fig leaves but animal skins. God can cover our shame. But there's a problem.
Our first parents are sentenced to death but the tree of life is There in Eden and so behold look at this. God says the first 22 pay attention to this. This is important. Man has become like one of us knowing good and evil.
He's no longer innocent he's dead and sin is condemned to physical death, but.
Now.
In verse 22.
Last.
Numbers numbers to avoid the risk of something. We must avoid. Some we must do not something that's necessary to prevent this evil lest He reach out his hand again. Reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
Notice it's an incomplete sentence. The sentence is like interrupted in the middle. There's no object or does it finish? It's like the danger is so urgent. God has to act before finishing the sentence because to be an immortal sinner would be Unbearable, it would be unbearable for there to be sinners human beings.
Sinful human beings. Who are eternal who are immortal. If our first parents had stretched out their hand and aided the tree the tree of life They would have been saved from death. And they've asserted themselves once already just telling them not to do it.
Obviously not gonna work. They've asserted themselves once already. They've stretched out their hands and grasped that forbidden fruit. And now all they have to do is reach out one more time. But God will not let them.
God will not casually excuse Sin, he will not let defiant sinners Have eternal life. He wants to make sure that sinners know How bad it is? How bad is it? Well, our first parents had two trees one to give life and one to give death.
They've already seized the fruit for death and now they want to get life without salvation. They will live eternally while dead in their sins. If they would have believed and loved and submitted to God first they wouldn't have reached out for that wrong fruit and then they could reach out and eat from the tree of life and live forever and They would not have to taste death.
But they failed. And so have we all. How bad is it? It's so bad that something great did die that day our first parents ate of the wrong fruit in our modern language. We can call it relationship with God.
Intimacy with God in the Bible. It's called righteousness eternal life. Whatever you want to call it. It's dead and now our bodies will follow. Every tombstone every graveyard is a monument to that sin.
How bad is it? It's so bad. We're evicted from paradise. No, since then we've been yearning for paradise. We've been wanting to return to paradise to a utopia where everything is perfect. The communists promise a workers paradise.
If only we'd be free of the oppression of the aristocrats and of the capitalists. The capitalists promise a consumers paradise. But the invisible hand of the market leading everyone to greater prosperity.
If only they'll each reach out and grasp for whatever it is that makes them happy. Religious sects often promise a utopia in their communes if only we'll follow their rules. Poets write a paradise and Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.
Politicians promise each election year that all the ills of society will be solved. There will be paradise. If only they are elected now, they're promising they'll cure cancer. If only they're elected we might each think.
With enough money only you had enough money only the family was cooperative. Only the kids would do what they're supposed to do. The spouse would come around that we could have paradise on earth. That's all we need right?
But here we see it is so bad. We have only paradise. Lost it's so bad. We were evicted. We weren't just kind of politely shown the door the verb there in verse 24, you know drive out they were driven out.
Expelled there was some violence. There was some wrath in this eviction. It was forceful and angry.
Get out.
Sinners could not live in God's paradise. To ensure that they would not return God had the entrance sternly guarded. Cherubim always protecting the glory of God were posted there as guards. A Flaming sword was with him to kill any human being who tried to enter the lost utopia.
Never again, would we be able to enter the paradise we were made for? Until someone is killed. How bad is it? Someone would have to die Before we could enter into Eden through a new and living way.
That.
How bad it is? How bad is it? It's so bad the sons and daughters of Adam Are now offspring of the serpent. God told the serpent back at verse 15 remember that he will make enemies. God himself will make enemies of.
The seed of the serpent and the offspring are the seed of the woman. They'll be in conflict. It's so bad there will be an ongoing war between the offspring of Satan and the offspring of Eve on The one side are those who are the offspring of Satan?
Jesus told one group of people that they were sons of Satan. He said in John chapter 8 verse 44 you belong to your father the devil and You want to carry out your father's desire? He was a murderer from the beginning and not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him when he lies he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of lies and Jesus is saying to these people He's your father.
So the offspring of Satan are those who decide they will believe lies instead of the truth. Especially the truth about Jesus. That's exactly what our first parents did in their sin. They believed a lie about God.
He was just trying to keep them down. He that the way happiness the fulfillment is some other way that God's way they are sinners and so are the offspring of The serpent that's how bad it is. That's how bad we are to be a sinner.
To believe the lie that we can be in the center of the universe. We can be like God Is to be a child of Satan. So then who are these other people or this perhaps this other person. Those opposed to the offspring of the Satan the who's this?
Seed of a woman. We know it's a very strange phrase and all of the Bible. I was almost always probably always in the Bible someone's the sea or the offspring of the man. This one time someone is a seed offspring of the woman.
Now. We know just from this chapter that they or he cannot be sinners. Offspring of the world because sinners are our hiders and their offspring of the serpent. So this offspring of the woman who will crush Satan's head.
He's not a sinner he will never stretch out his hand and Take what God said not to take. He will not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But he is born of the woman. So he's a human being. He's an offspring of Eve of the woman.
But not of Adam. How is that possible? Now this suggests he won't be born of a man like what would happen in a virgin birth. He's the offspring the seed promised who will triumph. So here it is in Genesis chapter 3 the gospel the good news that God will deal with the guilt that would sink us down to hell and we Don't really want to deal with it.
We just want to look good. We want to cover up and not be reminded of our sins because we're hiders but God comes seeking us. Anyway, right in the very first chapter in which sin appears the gospel appears.
Immediately.
The good news That God will provide a perfect one who will lay aside all but love and bleed for Adams helpless race. Amazing love. How bad is it. It's too bad for us to handle. It takes the one who was God born of a woman letting go of What we tried to grasp rather than stretching out his hands and grasping for equality with God.
He stretched out his hands and had a spike driven through them. Won't you stretch out your hands now and take hold of him.
