From Garden to Courtroom

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

3 views

0 comments

00:02
Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 3 and hold your place at verse 8.
00:26
While you're turning there I want to make a few preliminary comments.
00:32
In 2015, an article was put out by the Wall Street Journal that stated that hundreds of churches in Europe have closed because attendance in those churches had plunged to near nothing.
00:52
And this has caused many folks to ask, well what do we do with these giant buildings that once housed worship services for God? Well, many of those buildings are being turned into, well, all kinds of things.
01:06
They're being converted into nightclubs.
01:09
Some of them are being converted into warehouses.
01:13
Some are even being converted into mosques.
01:18
And one in the Netherlands was converted into a skateboard park.
01:21
It's now an indoor skateboard park.
01:25
And this is also happening in the United States.
01:27
According to NPR, a centuries-old Methodist church was purchased recently so it could be repurposed as a bed and breakfast.
01:38
It's called adaptive reuse.
01:39
They take an old church building, they gut the inside and turn it into something else, but it still looks like a church on the outside.
01:47
So in both Europe and in the United States, where once beautiful houses of worship stood, now stand, as I said, nightclubs, warehouses, beds and breakfasts, and mosques.
02:02
And what this is, is this is a visible reminder of a very important truth.
02:11
Sin has the power to take something beautiful and make it ugly.
02:18
Sin has the power to take something that is intended to glorify God and use it for another purpose.
02:29
And I think that that's what we actually see in the garden.
02:35
What we're going to see today is what once was a beautiful place of communion between God and man is now going to become a courtroom.
02:48
Sin is going to take that beautiful place, that beautiful sanctuary, and turn it into a court of law.
03:00
So with our attention on the text, let us stand and read.
03:03
And we're going to read verse 8 all the way to the end to see this take place.
03:16
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
03:22
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.
03:37
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 me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.
03:51
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.
04:02
The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, curse it are you, above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, and on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
04:13
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.
04:17
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
04:21
To the woman He said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.
04:25
In pain you shall bring forth children.
04:27
Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
04:33
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.
04:41
Curse it is the ground because of you, and in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
04:47
Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.
04:51
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.
05:01
The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
05:06
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them.
05:10
Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, and knowing good and evil, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever.
05:20
Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden, to work the ground from which he was taken.
05:26
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.
05:39
Father in heaven, may you grant me mercy as I preach, keep me from error, give me boldness, keep me from cowardice, and bless your people.
05:50
And Lord, if there are those here who do not know the Lord, may this be a day of reckoning for them in Christ's name.
05:55
Amen.
05:57
Please be seated.
06:01
Now you know as well as I do, I don't normally read that much text, because I don't normally preach that much text.
06:08
But you also know if you've been here, we've been going through Genesis verse by verse, and I have already preached verses 8 to 13.
06:15
However, I felt the desire to remind you that what we see beginning in verse 14 is based on what happened in verses 8 to 13, and I felt like just jumping into verse 14 would be somewhat of a little premature.
06:31
Remember this.
06:33
What we have seen so far in Genesis is three primary scenes.
06:37
We have seen the scene of creation, and that is God creating the world.
06:44
That's chapter 1.
06:46
Then we've seen the scene which we might call the domestic scene.
06:51
God creates the family.
06:52
He creates man, He creates woman, He marries the couple, and that's what we see in chapter 2.
06:57
He gives them a place to live, He gives them a job to do, and He gives them one another to live together in the estate of matrimony.
07:03
So we see creation in chapter 1.
07:06
We see, if you will, domestication in chapter 2.
07:09
But then in chapter 3, we see failure.
07:14
In chapter 3, there's the introduction of failure, corruption because of sin.
07:21
Now, I want you to think of this, and I want you to keep this in your mind today because this is important not only for the theme of the sermon, but this is actually an important truth regarding the whole of Scripture.
07:31
Sin is a legal matter.
07:39
People often think of sin as a moral thing, and it is, but sin is a legal matter.
07:46
God has given a command, and He has given a punishment that goes along with that command.
07:54
Therefore, God has created a form of a judicial system.
07:59
If you do this, you will receive this.
08:03
This is the punishment that will accompany this act of transgression.
08:08
And the act has occurred.
08:12
And so we see, as I said in my introduction, we see the garden turn into a courtroom, and the judge walks onto the scene, and everything now changes.
08:29
I have a four-part outline today.
08:32
If you'll throw that up for me, Ms.
08:33
Pam.
08:35
What we see in verses 8 to 24 is we see the realization of guilt.
08:41
We see the interrogation of the guilty.
08:45
We see the condemnation of the guilty.
08:48
But then we see the provision for the guilty.
08:52
And that's the part I hope to get to because as I was preaching this sermon to myself, I said, wow, I don't think I'm going to be able to get there.
08:59
But I don't want to not get to the provision part.
09:02
So what I'm going to do, because I spent the last several weeks looking at the first two, I'm going to speed through those so that I can get to the third one.
09:09
So you guys ready? You buckled in? Because really, we've already looked at the realization of guilt.
09:15
That's verses 7 and 8.
09:17
In verses 7 and 8, we see the realization.
09:20
They realized they were guilty, and they felt shame.
09:23
They realized they had done wrong, and they felt that they had done wrong, and they have this shame, and so they decide to cover themselves.
09:30
They retreat from the presence of God, first by trying to cover their nakedness, and then when they realize that covering won't do, they run into the trees, hoping that somehow the trees will block them from the gaze of Almighty God.
09:42
And they run into the trees, and they try to find themselves somehow hidden, and they heard the voice of the Lord.
09:49
Or they heard, rather, the sound of the Lord coming in the cool of the day, as we talked about last week.
09:54
They ran for cover because they knew their coverings were inadequate.
09:59
I want to just mention one thing about guilt.
10:03
Guilt and shame are not the same.
10:08
Guilt is forensic, meaning it is legal.
10:12
You're either guilty or you're not.
10:15
Somebody would say, I feel guilty.
10:17
No, you feel shame.
10:19
Shame is the experience.
10:22
Guilt is actual.
10:23
It's legal.
10:24
It's forensic.
10:25
When you sin, you are guilty, whether you feel guilty or not.
10:30
See, God gives us shame to accompany our guilt so that we will recognize that we are guilty, and hopefully turn to Him.
10:41
You see, shame is not a bad thing.
10:43
We always tell people, you need to release your shame, get rid of your shame.
10:46
In one sense, shame can be bad.
10:48
If we are forgiven and we continue to live in shame, that's not good.
10:52
But shame is a check on our conscience.
10:54
When we are guilty and we feel shame, that's a good thing.
10:57
If you're guilty and you don't feel shame, there's something wrong.
11:01
So Adam and Eve are guilty, and they feel the shame of their guilt, and so they try to hide from God.
11:08
And that's what we see, the realization of guilt.
11:12
In Jim Boyce's commentary, James Montgomery Boyce, he said this is like the arraignment.
11:18
What's the purpose of the arraignment in a courtroom? To identify what's happened.
11:23
To declare the charges.
11:29
Well, the charges have been declared.
11:31
They have a command that they have broken.
11:34
So, God has come.
11:35
The judge now comes onto the scene.
11:38
What's next? The interrogation.
11:40
The first question, what does God ask? Where are you? Now, you would think if Adam were trying to hide from God, he would have not answered.
11:52
You ever think about that? God says, where are you? And Adam says, I hid because I was naked.
11:59
You think if he was really trying to hide, he wouldn't have answered.
12:03
But he did answer.
12:05
You understand one thing, and this is important.
12:09
When God calls us to his judgment bar, we will not be able to stay hidden.
12:16
When God calls us to judgment, we will not be able to stay in the trees.
12:23
Here I am.
12:24
I hid because I'm naked.
12:28
And the second question of interrogation.
12:31
How do you know that you're naked? Did you eat of the tree of which I told you not to eat? God gives Adam an opportunity for confession.
12:45
Adam instead uses it as a moment of self-justification.
12:48
This was last week's sermon.
12:50
Adam said, the woman whom thou hast given me, she gave me the fruit to eat, and I ate of it.
12:57
Remember who he's really pointing the finger at.
13:00
He's pointing the finger at God.
13:01
You gave me this woman.
13:02
She was supposed to be a helper.
13:03
She was supposed to be my helpmeet.
13:05
She was supposed to meet my every need.
13:06
Instead, she gave me the fruit of the tree.
13:08
It was her fault, but it was really your fault, God.
13:10
And that doesn't work with God.
13:15
God looks at the woman.
13:16
She says, oh, the devil made me do it.
13:20
So at this moment, God turns his attention to the guilty trio.
13:26
And God lays down three statements of judgment on these three guilty parties.
13:35
And I have to think this.
13:37
If you notice, I talked about the pattern of judgment last week.
13:39
First, he talked to Adam.
13:40
Then he talked to Eve.
13:41
Then he judged the serpent.
13:43
Then he judged Eve.
13:43
Then he judged Adam, and there's that sort of pattern there.
13:45
I think that when God judged the serpent, I think Adam and Eve were going, whew.
13:51
Like, you know, okay, we passed the puck, right? Because Adam points to Eve.
13:58
Eve points to the serpent.
13:59
And God says to the serpent, here's your judgment.
14:03
And this is Eve's, whew.
14:05
Okay, and then he turns it to the woman.
14:07
And at that moment, I imagine Adam is still kind of going, okay, all right, I'm still not, I'm still, oh.
14:14
And to the man, he says.
14:16
He didn't get out of it.
14:18
It started with questioning him, and it ends with judging him.
14:23
And what we're going to look at today is we're going to look at the three judgments that are given.
14:27
And this is really the heart of the sermon.
14:28
This is where I spent most of my time in preparation.
14:31
And I want to say this is probably the most difficult portion of this chapter, maybe even the most difficult portion of Genesis that we've come to so far, because there are some, there is some language here, and there are some things that happen here that are difficult to really understand exactly what it's saying.
14:51
So I'm going to help to try to give you the understanding that I've come to.
14:56
But there are times when I'm going to say I'm not necessarily dogmatic, because I do think that this does provide a few difficult statements.
15:05
But overall, we can't miss the main part of the narrative, and that is that God the judge is standing before these three guilty parties, and no one gets away from their responsibilities.
15:20
They all bear the punishment for their guilt.
15:25
Don't miss that part.
15:26
Don't miss the forest for the trees.
15:29
This is God the judge.
15:31
See, how many people do you know that will tell you God is too good to judge? It's the very fact that God is good that He does judge.
15:39
It is the goodness of God that should cause us to truly shudder before Him, because it is the goodness of God that reminds us that He will judge right.
15:55
He will not simply wink at sin, but He will judge sin as it deserves.
16:03
I don't know how anybody can read the Bible and say God won't judge sin.
16:07
It's right here in the very third chapter.
16:09
The first time sin is introduced, God doesn't say, Oh, you guys get a mulligan.
16:14
That was your one mistake.
16:18
It was okay.
16:19
We'll start again.
16:21
No, there's no do-over.
16:25
There's no second chance.
16:30
God brings judgment, and we begin with the judgment on the serpent.
16:36
Look at verse 14.
16:39
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.
16:46
On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
16:50
I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
16:54
He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
16:58
What we see here in the judgment of the serpent is we see a physical judgment on the physical serpent, but we also have to be reminded that there is a spiritual being who is behind this, Satan himself.
17:17
We know this from Genesis 12, Genesis 21.
17:19
It tells us that Satan was actually the one who possessed the serpent.
17:23
And so there is a physical judgment, and then there is a spiritual judgment.
17:28
And this is where I say it starts to get a little bit complicated because I do think that there is some of it that we can at least see as there is sort of a, not a mixing over, but sort of a blending of the judgment.
17:41
I'll explain what I mean.
17:42
Notice first that the serpent is now going to take on a different characteristic, a different physical characteristic.
17:52
It says that because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go.
17:59
You know, the snake is the only animal that slithers.
18:04
It doesn't have legs, and it doesn't stand up because it doesn't have any legs upon which to stand.
18:14
And so when we see a snake, don't you, do snakes creep you all out? Isn't one of the reasons, and I know some of you guys like snakes, and God bless you, I'm just going to pray for you, because that's just, but the snake has the oddest method of mobility.
18:34
It doesn't reach out, it doesn't step out, it coils and expands, and it coils and expands, and that's how it moves.
18:43
It's got this very odd mode of moving from place to place.
18:48
And we look at that and we say, how strange an animal this is.
18:55
But this text seems to indicate that that's not the way it was created.
19:00
The text seems to indicate that there was some kind of mode of transportation that the snake had prior to the fall.
19:09
Now, some people try to argue that the snake maybe had legs, and I've even seen some scientists, Christian scientists, that try to argue that there's actually places among the snake's vertebrae where legs could have existed at one point.
19:23
Some people, of course, use that as an evolutionary argument.
19:26
Some people use that as a creationary argument.
19:28
My answer is, I don't know.
19:30
Brother Mike and I have talked about this text at length, and I love Brother Mike because we spend so much time on the phone.
19:36
I'm glad we don't have to pay for minutes anymore.
19:38
You know, cell phones, we used to have to pay for minutes because we would both be way out of money.
19:42
But we talk about this text, and he mentioned like a skink has sort of a slithering way, but it still has legs, and perhaps the snake had legs, and part of the judgment was the removing of that.
19:55
Now you're just going to slither like on your belly.
20:03
That's possible.
20:05
I've also heard some who say, well, perhaps the serpent never had legs, but what it had was the ability to be upright like a cobra.
20:15
You've seen a cobra when it goes to strike.
20:17
It comes up onto its tail, and it pushes off, and some people say maybe it wasn't that it had legs and God removed legs.
20:25
Maybe it had a stronger rear and a stronger tail, and it was able to move with a certain, still serpentine, but yet upright form.
20:36
What's the answer? I don't know.
20:39
I don't know.
20:40
I know this.
20:41
When the judgment came, it was prostrate, face down, on your belly.
20:49
You're going to be now on your belly, and that's how you're going to move.
20:55
That's part of the judgment.
20:58
And we say, okay, that makes sense, but what about this whole eating dust thing? It says, dust you shall eat.
21:07
If there's one thing I know, Pastor, I've been to the zoo, and snakes eat mice, and snakes eat other snakes, but snakes don't eat dirt.
21:17
Snakes don't eat dust.
21:18
This is a scientific inaccuracy in the Bible.
21:23
Well, this is where I think we have to interpret the Bible according to what's known as the phenomenological language, or the language of appearance, and the language of appearance is like when we say the sun comes up.
21:35
Well, the sun doesn't actually come up.
21:36
The earth rotates, and that's why the sun looks like it comes up.
21:41
And I think that what we have here is the judgment on the serpent is you're going to have your face in the dirt all the time.
21:47
Not that you're literally digesting dust all the time, but you're literally going to have your face in it all the time.
21:55
And this term, to eat dust, is actually found throughout the Scripture as a statement of defeat.
22:02
To eat dust was a statement of being the defeated one.
22:09
And we still use this today.
22:11
Eat my dust, right? When we go run, or we say, oh man, he bit the dust.
22:16
Then there's another one bites the dust, right? It means he's defeated.
22:20
So it can have that sort of understanding of it's not that he's really eating the dust, but by having his face down in the dust, it's showing his defeat.
22:32
Now here's where the big question comes in.
22:35
The big question is this.
22:40
Why punish the snake? He was a vessel.
22:46
It'd be like you driving too fast in your car, and the police officer takes a bat and just beats your car up.
22:52
Like the car didn't do anything.
22:53
I'm the one who chose to drive fast.
22:55
The car was just a vessel.
22:58
I'm not going to ask if you ever thought about doing that, Adam.
23:00
But you know, the vessel itself, we don't punish.
23:06
We punish the mind behind the vessel, right? A snake is an unintelligent creature.
23:10
Even in the garden, they didn't have intellect and emotion and will like what it would take to have this conversation.
23:17
We know the serpent is possessed by the devil.
23:21
And so here we have the devil.
23:25
Why punish the snake? I must tell you, it's a difficult question.
23:28
And the best answer I have come up with is that when Satan took on the serpent and possessed the serpent, there were consequences for the vessel that accompanied it as a reminder.
23:45
I'll give you a good thought on this.
23:48
Later, we're going to see that when Adam sinned, the ground was cursed.
23:52
Ground didn't do anything wrong.
23:54
But the ground is cursed as a reminder of the spiritual curse.
24:01
And so I think the curse on the serpent stands as a reminder of the spiritual curse that came upon the devil.
24:12
So every time you see a snake, you're reminded.
24:17
Satan used this tool as his weapon against mankind.
24:23
And God brought judgment upon the serpent as a picture of the ultimate judgment which was on Satan.
24:31
And the ultimate judgment on Satan is actually in verse 15.
24:36
The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.
24:40
That's not just talking about stomping the heads of snakes, even though that's a figurative way of understanding it.
24:47
That's talking about when Jesus Christ came on the cross and crushed the head of the serpent, and turned over the work that He had done in the garden.
24:55
And next week, that's going to be the sermon.
24:58
Because next week, we're going to stop everything and just look at verse 15.
25:01
Because verse 15 is what's known as the Proto-Evangelium, or Latin, for the first proclamation of the gospel.
25:09
The first proclamation of the gospel is this.
25:11
The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent.
25:15
And we're going to see that more next week.
25:18
So let's move on.
25:19
So we've seen that judgment on the serpent is both physical and spiritual.
25:24
Now we see the judgment on the woman.
25:28
And we see that it regards relationships.
25:32
First, the relationship to childbearing.
25:35
That's a physical judgment.
25:37
And then the relationship to husband, which is an emotional judgment.
25:43
Let's look first at the relationship to childbearing.
25:48
I have to take a sip of water, excuse me.
25:54
That said, I've got a lot to say today.
25:56
This is a big text.
25:58
He says, To the woman I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.
26:02
In pain you shall bring forth children.
26:04
Your desire shall be...
26:05
Now here's...
26:06
I'll get there in a minute.
26:07
Your desire shall be for your husband and you shall rule over him.
26:10
We'll talk about that in a minute.
26:11
Let's look first at the childbearing part.
26:13
Prior to the fall, no children were born.
26:17
There are no proto-lapsarian children.
26:22
Or pre-lapsarian.
26:24
Pre-lapsarian means before the fall.
26:25
There are no pre-lapsarian children.
26:28
Only people that exist prior to the fall are Adam and Eve.
26:32
So we don't know what birth would have been like had there not been sin.
26:37
But my assumption is it would have been a joyous experience devoid of pain.
26:45
However, I know now that I have...
26:51
having been in three birthing rooms that it ain't that way no more.
26:57
Childbirth is a tremendously difficult experience.
27:02
Any woman who has been through it knows that that's true.
27:07
And I think an argument can be made that this goes beyond just childbirth because it references pain and childbearing and pain in bringing forth children.
27:15
I think that there's also a sense in which not only will there be pain in the physical act of childbirth, there's pain in raising children.
27:23
It's one sinner raising a little baby sinner who's going to grow up to be a child sinner and then he's going to grow up to be an adult sinner.
27:30
You're going to have this relationship.
27:32
You're going to make sinners and they're going to behave like sinners.
27:35
And they're going to be subject to the corruption of sin.
27:39
This is why we have miscarriages.
27:41
This is why we have infant mortality and SIDS.
27:47
And this is why we have child cancer and death and disease.
27:51
All of these are products of sin.
27:54
And think of the heart-wrenching pain experienced particularly by the mother in all of this.
28:01
In pain shall you give birth and in pain shall you bear.
28:06
I think this is showing that sin is...
28:09
Sin is more than just it's going to make it harder to push the baby out of the birth canal.
28:15
But then we get to the really harder one.
28:18
I think that one is pretty self-explanatory.
28:21
Even if we just limit it to just the physical pain of birth, that one's fairly straightforward.
28:26
The second one is so difficult, I have to say I have read so many commentaries on the latter part of verse 16 that I could literally give you six different options as possibilities as to what it means.
28:42
All of them, I think, potentially true or not.
28:48
And I'm not saying I don't have a thought on the subject, but I am saying it's not as easy as it may come across.
28:57
And I want to give you...
28:59
I want to give you what the argument, what the issue is.
29:03
You see, if you read in the ESV, and what I found this morning, you know what, I don't use this.
29:06
This is my Bible for preaching, but this is not my Bible for study.
29:09
I leave it here, and I use this when I'm here.
29:12
But my Bible for study is on my desk, and it's a different edition of the ESV.
29:16
This reads differently.
29:18
Did you notice, Brother Mike? I know you did, because we've been talking about this word for two weeks, and I didn't look at this Bible and see if it corresponded, because I forgot this is a different edition.
29:27
The ESV has gone through several editions.
29:29
This is a different edition.
29:31
And if you have an ESV Bible, look at me, look with me at verse 16.
29:36
Because it says in verse 16, your desire shall be for your husband.
29:41
But in some of your translations, it says your desire will be contrary to your husband.
29:46
Who has contrary? You have a different edition of the ESV.
29:50
That's wild.
29:51
But you notice there, there's a superscript, right? The superscript is that little number, and that number takes you down to the bottom.
30:00
In this version, the superscript says against, but in yours, it says toward your husband, right? In the superscript, if it says contrary.
30:07
It's so weird that one says it one way, it's like you've got two...
30:10
I thought the translations would at least agree on this.
30:13
Apparently they don't.
30:14
And I'm learning this on the fly.
30:17
But the point of the matter is, the question is this.
30:21
Will her desire be for her husband? Or will her desire be against her husband? Will her desire be to cling to him? Or will her desire be to rule over him? That's the argument, right? Some people will take you to Genesis 4, and in Genesis 4, the same word is used, and it says sin desires to have you.
30:53
And in the ESV, one of the translations says sin's desire is contrary to you.
30:57
It's so weird that they add that word in.
31:01
Anyway, the point of the matter is this.
31:03
What is it trying to say? Well, I think it has to be balanced with the next part.
31:11
Because whatever it's saying about her desire, whether her desire is to rule him, or whether her desire is to cling to him, and there is a Song of Solomon verse that uses that word desire, which means to draw near.
31:23
So, it can be that.
31:25
The issue is his ruling over her.
31:30
Because ultimately, what is happening in the fall is an, I would say, an exacerbation, but maybe a better word would simply be an exaggeration of the headship of the man.
31:43
You remember the man always had a position of leadership.
31:47
Even in chapter 2, he was the husband, she was the wife.
31:50
He was created first, she was created second.
31:52
He had the position to work and keep the garden, she was created to do what? To be his helper in working and keeping the garden.
31:59
So, there was already a position of headship.
32:02
And now this position of headship somehow is going to experience a form of corruption.
32:12
Some people think the woman's going to rule over her husband and he's going to rule over her.
32:16
And this is going to create this ultimate sense of grudge between the two.
32:22
And I can see how they can come up with that, because I've seen a lot of marriages where the wife just wanted to rule over her husband.
32:29
Have you ever seen that? Have you ever seen the opposite, though? Where the man just totally dominated his wife? So, we see both, right? And I've seen women who didn't have a desire to rule over their husbands.
32:46
And I've seen husbands that ultimately were submissive to their wives.
32:53
I will say this.
32:55
Throughout human history, there has been a basic pattern.
32:58
And the basic pattern is that men have dominated women because of physical strength and typically a difference in personality.
33:09
Men have a tendency to have the personality of dominance.
33:12
Not always, but in general.
33:17
And we see this, I think, as the example of this is what will happen.
33:23
There will be this ruling of the man over the woman.
33:26
In Genesis 2, they had a position of headship that was fully mutual, fully loving, fully committed, and there was no, there was unity.
33:40
Now that unity is going to be interrupted, somehow.
33:45
Now that unity is going to experience a time of genuine and hard disunity.
33:53
Whether she desires him and he rules over her or she desires to rule and he rules back, there's something that has been introduced now.
34:05
What do we have in Christ that is supposed to be the change of that? The call in Ephesians 5.
34:17
Husbands do what? Love your wives.
34:22
And wives do what? It doesn't say love your husband.
34:26
It says respect your husband.
34:29
You know why women are called to respect their husband and not love? Because she does have a role in the house to respect the position that he is in.
34:40
And why is he called to love her? Because in his role as head, he must be a loving head to his wife as Christ is to the church.
34:51
So, there is here in Genesis 3 a difficult thing to understand, but we see in Christ what we could say is the answer to the issue.
35:03
Whatever the issue may be, we have a way to be, as it were, redeemed when we come to Christ and husbands love your wives.
35:13
Let me tell you this, if you use Genesis 3.16 as a reason to mistreat your wife, then you have absolutely, absolutely misunderstood the text.
35:24
If you say, well, I'm allowed to rule over you.
35:27
It says right here that's part of the curse.
35:29
You have not, because as I said, yes, the curse includes this dominating relationship, but in Christ we are redeemed and in Christ we are called to love our wives as Christ loves the church.
35:54
There's a lot more I could get into.
35:58
The Septuagint gives a little help on this.
36:02
The Septuagint reads like this, Thy submission shall be to thy husband.
36:05
He shall rule over thee.
36:07
And I think that's the balance.
36:08
I think the Septuagint helps.
36:10
But ultimately, in the end, what we see is we see a judgment upon the woman.
36:21
We see a judgment upon the serpent.
36:24
And now we come to the judgment on the man.
36:28
This one is the longest.
36:30
It goes through several verses, but really it's fairly straightforward.
36:37
It says in verse 17, 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.
36:50
Cursed is the ground because of you.
36:52
In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
36:54
I do want to point one thing out.
36:56
Notice that God reminds Adam of what he did.
37:00
He didn't really do that with Eve and the serpent so clearly.
37:07
He says here, Not only did you eat of the tree, but you listened to your wife.
37:13
You listened to somebody other than me.
37:17
I told you, On the day you eat of this you shall surely die.
37:20
The serpent said, No you won't.
37:23
Your wife repeated that.
37:24
And you listened to them rather than me.
37:28
The genuine failure of Adam is all over the place.
37:31
I was talking, Lori and I were talking about this this morning.
37:33
Adam failed by not protecting his wife.
37:36
Adam failed by allowing the serpent in the garden.
37:38
But Adam also failed by listening to somebody say, God's word isn't true, and he believed it.
37:46
I will say this to you.
37:49
The biggest danger in the world right now is not political.
37:53
It's not socio-economic.
37:54
The biggest danger right now is there's people who are preaching this word who don't believe it.
38:00
I may tell you I don't understand everything in this book, but it's true.
38:04
And it is not dependent on my understanding.
38:07
It's not dependent on my ability to wax eloquently about Hebrew and Greek.
38:12
It's going to be true regardless of whether I stand or fall.
38:19
Eve told him, The serpent told me, God's a liar.
38:25
And Adam believed it.
38:27
So God reminds him, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife.
38:32
And eaten of the tree which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
38:36
Cursed is the ground because of you.
38:37
In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
38:40
Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.
38:45
No longer will Adam eat from the abundant fruit of the garden.
38:51
Now he will wrestle with the ground for his sustenance.
38:56
The sweat of his brow and his calloused and bleeding hands would serve as a reminder of his failure.
39:05
I do want to make an important note.
39:08
In the same way that headship is not part of the fall, but a perversion of headship, work is not a part of the fall either.
39:17
Some people say, Oh, we get to heaven, we're just going to sit on clouds and strum harps, and we're going to do nothing.
39:23
Wouldn't that be awful? If you didn't have anything to do in heaven, but sit on a cloud and strum a harp and eat grapes or whatever, whatever people imagine.
39:31
No.
39:32
The garden was a place of joyful vocation.
39:37
Did you know there is such a thing as joyful vocation? To enjoy what you do, and do it without being broken down by it.
39:49
Adam had joyful vocation in the garden.
39:51
To work and keep the garden.
39:53
He had a good job, and he never tired, and he never bled, and he never bruised, and he never calloused.
40:00
Somebody asked the other day, Did Adam need shoes in the garden? I said, I don't think so.
40:06
One, because he was naked.
40:07
But, I said, I think the terrain of the garden was plush, and there was no need for a rubber sole to protect him.
40:18
Why do we wear boots to work? Because work is hard on our feet.
40:24
And the older I get, the more my knees hurt, and the more my ankles hurt, and the more the balls of my feet begin to get sore, because I'm carrying around a lot of weight, and every time I step, it's pounding on the ground.
40:40
So Adam has to now experience this.
40:43
When he goes to cultivate the ground, it's not going to always cooperate.
40:47
If you've ever been a farmer, or worked with people who try to grow food, you know sometimes the ground is very cooperative, and sometimes the ground fights back, and sometimes it doesn't want to do what you want it to do, and sometimes it doesn't seem like it's getting the nourishment it needs, or the sunlight it needs, or the water it needs.
41:03
And it's a constant battle, and it's a constant struggle.
41:06
Now Adam's going to experience this struggle.
41:15
I want to just point out to you, we don't have to go there, but in Romans chapter 8, Paul reminds us that the ground itself...
41:26
What happened? Everything okay? Did we lose power? Don't worry about it.
41:31
Alright, so Paul reminds us that the ground itself is yearning for redemption.
41:42
Now that's what we call personification, because the ground doesn't have a brain, the ground doesn't truly have emotions, but he says all creation is yearning like a woman in childbirth for the redemption of the earth.
41:58
This is Romans 8, 19-23.
42:03
The earth is experiencing a curse, and then we see the most, I think the most important part of the judgment is verse 19.
42:19
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.
42:24
For out of it, that is out of the ground, you were taken, and to the dust you shall return.
42:37
You are dust.
42:39
Adam, you are dust.
42:41
You were made from earthly elements, now because of sin you will return to those elements.
42:46
You've heard this said at funerals.
42:49
Ashes to ashes, what? Dust to dust.
42:53
That's from the Anglican book of common prayer.
42:58
God said, you will die.
43:00
On the day that you eat of this, you will die.
43:04
Now I did have, I had a great question last week.
43:07
Zoe came to me after service, and I want to thank you, Zoe.
43:11
It was a very good question.
43:12
She said, Pastor Keith, he said he was going to die that day, but he didn't die that day.
43:18
I said, that's a very good question.
43:20
That's a question that even theologians and scholars have wrestled with.
43:24
How do we understand the fact that God said on this day you will die, and he didn't die that day? And I said, there's really, we have to understand this first from the perspective of the spiritual, because there are both physical and spiritual judgments.
43:38
And in the spiritual sense, Adam did die the very moment he ate.
43:42
Because in the very moment he ate, there was a spiritual separation between him and God.
43:47
And just like in Ephesians 2, it says we're born dead, you know, and you're dead in your trespasses and sins.
43:53
As soon as Adam ate, he was separated from God, and he was under God's judgment.
43:57
Therefore, there was a spiritual death that he was experiencing.
43:59
But also, the moment he ate, he began to be subject to physical death.
44:05
And the promise that he would die would eventually come true.
44:09
He would die.
44:12
930 years after he ate of the fruit, he died.
44:16
So the promise of God did ultimately come true.
44:20
He died on that day spiritually.
44:22
He died physically.
44:23
He began to die physically that day.
44:27
And he would eventually, his body would catch up with his spirit.
44:30
But this is what brings us to the last part.
44:32
And it really does.
44:33
And I know I'm over time.
44:34
I'm going to tell you a secret.
44:36
I have this timer.
44:37
It quit working.
44:37
I thought I was at 30 minutes and had plenty of time.
44:39
I've probably been going for like an hour.
44:40
So I'm sorry.
44:42
So I'll bring it to a close.
44:44
Because I do want to point this last thing out.
44:46
The provision for the guilty.
44:49
Look at verse 20 to 24.
44:51
One, what's the first provision for the guilty? Life will continue.
44:55
He calls his wife Eve.
44:56
Why? Because she's the mother of all living.
44:58
Life will go on.
45:01
That's faith.
45:02
By naming his wife Eve, he expresses faith in the fact that life's going to continue.
45:07
God is going to be gracious.
45:10
God covers them, in verse 21, with skins.
45:13
That's a picture of atonement.
45:15
That's God's grace.
45:17
So this is a provision of grace in the midst of judgment.
45:22
But the last thing is God kicks them out of the garden.
45:28
And you say, how is that gracious? Because there is grace in excommunication.
45:34
How is there grace in excommunication? If God would have allowed them to live and partake of the tree of life, they would have continued to live in sin forever.
45:48
God does not want us to live in sin forever.
45:53
God does not want us to live...
45:55
Can you imagine having to live this life forever? With all the pains and all the struggles, and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse, and you're going to be like this forever? No, we yearn for redemption.
46:06
We yearn to be fixed.
46:09
We yearn to be completed.
46:10
This can't be what's forever.
46:13
You ever heard somebody say, this world's so bad it's like it's under a curse? It is! And the curse is going to be redeemed.
46:20
One day, you're going to get a new body.
46:23
One day, you're going to have a new heaven and a new earth.
46:26
One day, everything will be back and better than it was before.
46:33
But until that day, you cannot eat of the tree of life and live like this.
46:41
Excommunication is an act of grace.
46:43
God sets them out of the garden to protect them from eating of that tree and living in sin forever.
46:55
But another tree would come.
46:59
Many thousand years later, a tree would be planted in Jerusalem.
47:05
Not really planted, but buried.
47:11
And upon it would hang the Son of God.
47:18
And that tree would be the new tree of life.
47:23
And Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself.
47:27
You see, when Jesus was lifted up, He became the new tree of life.
47:31
And how do we have redemption? Look upon the Son and believe.
47:41
We go to the Son.
47:43
We repent of our sins.
47:45
And we trust in His ultimate provision.
47:51
There is a tree of life for us.
47:53
We have not been excommunicated from it.
47:56
We've been called to come to it.
47:58
Come to the tree.
48:00
Come to Christ and live.
48:05
So my call to you today is, if you have not come to Christ, come today.
48:11
The Bible says today is the day of salvation.
48:16
Let's pray.
48:18
Father, I thank You for Your Word.
48:19
I thank You for Your truth.
48:22
And I thank You that even in the midst of judgment, there was grace.
48:27
Father, oh God, how merciful You are.
48:30
How gracious You are.
48:33
Lord, may it be that we, if we are believers, that we experience anew and afresh the sense of Your grace.
48:42
But if there are non-believers here, Lord, that they would come running to the tree of life that is Jesus Christ.
48:48
He said, I am the vine, You are the branches.
48:52
He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.
48:57
He said, I am the bread come down from heaven.
49:02
Lord, may we see Him as He truly is.
49:05
And it's in His name we pray.
49:08
Amen.