Genesis: The Fall

Paradise Lost: Deceived It’s my joy to open God’s Word with you this morning! In the 1991 film, Grand Canyon, starring Kevin Kline and Danny Glover, Kline’s character is an immigration attorney in Los Angeles who after attending a Lakers basketball game gets in his Mercedes Benz and starts driving home, but then gets caught in a traffic jam…and so he decides he’s going to bypass it by taking some side streets, and remember this is before GPS in every car and on every phone, and so his character breaks out from the traffic jam… And his route takes him along streets that seem progressively darker and more deserted until he’s in inner city Inglewood. It’s there that his Mercedes breaks down, and he quickly gets to a pay phone to call for a tow truck, but as he’s making his way to his car, 5 young thugs show up who start displaying their guns and threatening Kline’s character if he doesn’t get out of the way and turn the car over to them. Just at that time, the tow truck driver, who’s played by Danny Glover, shows up and right off the get go, you can see that he’s an earnest, hard working man, and he sizes up the situation real quickly, and so as an older man he takes the young leader of the gang aside tries to speak truth to him. He looks into the eyes of this street tough young man and says, “Man, the world ain’t supposed to work like this. Maybe you don’t know that yet, but this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be able to do my job without askin’ you if I can. And that dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you rippin’ him off. Everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.” “Everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.” I don’t know of another single sentence uttered in a film that captures our plight so well. “Everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.” Now, maybe you’ve never uttered those words before, but I bet you’ve felt them. From the daily irritants of life, like getting flipped off on the highway for driving at the speed limit, or the frustration of your workplace, to larger issues, like divorce, disease and death, to attacks on religious communities like we’ve seen in the past week, with the shooting at the LDS church in Michigan, and the attack on Thursday in Manchester at a Jewish Synagogue during Yom Kippur—to even global issues, as Bill Maher pointed out last week, the systematic killing of over 100,000 Christians in Nigeria since 2009---from large ways to small ways we intuitively know “everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.” Which begs the question, why is the world the way it is, and why are we the way we are? And that leads us to Genesis 3, so go ahead and open your Bible to the book of Genesis, and we’ll be in Genesis 3 which tells us why the world is the way it is, and why we’re the way we are, but to feel the full force of it, you have to step back and see how the world was made, and how we were made…. In Genesis 1 and 2 we’re told the that everything God had made was very good…so the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, the waters and the land were all good—and then men and women were created in God’s image—the creation was given to them to steward under God’s gracious provision—they were told they “may surely eat of every tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” So the creation was given to them with abundant provision and they were given to each other with joyful delight as Adam breaks out in song when he first sees Eve…. we read in Genesis 2:25 that “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” So the picture we have of man and woman in the Garden is that they exist in full-orbed peace. Peace with God, peace with the Creation, peace with one-another, and peace within (no shame or guilt), but by the end of our account, all of it will be lost—what happens here sets the stage for the rest of the Bible, and makes the most sense of the world we find ourselves living in…. The Nature of Seduction: Read Genesis 3:1-7 Notice where as before their nakedness was seen as a positive thing—they had an open-interface with the Lord and each other…and now in verse 7, all of that has changed, and they now have a closed-interface with the Lord and each other….something has happened that has reinterpreted life as they know it…. Well, what was it and how did it come about? Here’s the deal, it didn’t come about through rebellion initially, it came about through deception; or better put, through seduction. Eve is being persuaded that the Lord doesn’t truly love them and is holding out on them…… And we see The Nature of Seduction: We’re told in verse 1 that “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” And the word crafty here carries with it the idea of shrewd, or cunning. Now the serpent isn’t identified here, but the New Testament identifies the serpent as our ancient foe, Satan, the adversary, the devil---but again the focus of the passage isn’t on his identity, but on his seduction of man and woman—on the temptation. Satan Mispresents God’s Word: Look at how he does it….Look at the second part of verse 1. Satan, ever so subtly emphasizes God’s prohibition, rather than His abundant provision and by doing that Satan Maligns God’s Character. Satan’s not coming with a straight-forward attack on the idea of God—he’s attacking with a sneer—he’s ridiculing; he’s mocking---“Did God really say?” “Does God really mean?” “Does God really expect?” He’s trying to mock—to ridicule; to get underneath to a heart level and subtly imply that you can’t really trust God’s Word or His character. C.S. Lewis in the novel, The Great Divorce talks about two friends who went to college and lost their Christian faith—and one years later got it back, while the other one didn’t…and the one who got their faith back is speaking to the one who “lost their faith in College” and he says this… “Let us be frank. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. We were afraid of the label of fundamentalism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, and having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. In the same way, a drunkard reaches a point at which he believes that another glass will do him no harm. This is so often how people are seduced from trusting God’s Word and His character to starting to doubt His Word and character and that’s an incredibly steep and slippery slope. Can you really believe God? Satan plants seeds of doubt concerning God’s word and his character—Satan is asking, “can you really trust God’s Word and can you really trust His character?” Satan misrepresents God’s Word—“Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” That’s not what God said. In fact, what God said is, “You shall surely eat of every tree of the garden, except for one.” And so right here, the devil is twisting the Word of God and very subtly maligning the character of God. He’s bringing into question, “Is God really good? Is He really for you? And notice how Eve responds—first she Magnifies God’s Strictness: She says in verse 2, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 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….” The Lord only said they couldn’t eat of the tree, but she added the prohibition, neither could they touch it—“just touch the tree and zap!—You’re dead!” her comment suggested that God isn’t good, or fair, but rather harsh but then her next comment reveals even more. Eve Minimizes God’s Penalty—at the end verse 2 after having just said, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, either shall you touch it, lest you die.” And that right there minimizes God’s penalty, because God didn’t say lest you die, He said, ‘for on the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Eve magnifies God’s strictness -Eve gradually adopts the Serpent’s assertions about God’s Word and His character. When you start to believe you can’t trust God’s Word and His character, and you start to magnify His prohibition while minimizing His penalty, you can rationalize away almost anything…. Satan goes for the kill shot and he flat out contradicts God’s Word: Satan says in verse 4 and 5, “You will not surely die. For God knows what when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The Nature of Sin. It’s now Satan’s word against God’s Word---and note the first doctrine to be denied is the doctrine of divine judgment, and the world has been attacking it ever since…. Now notice the nature of seduction—the pathology of descent. It begins with a mocking question of God’s Word and His goodness….and then Eve gradually begins to question it herself, as evidenced by her revisions of God’s Word and His character, and when that happens, Satan is free to declare God’s Word as wrong…. It’s so important for two realities to shape your life….first, you need to continually meditating on God’s Word and His character as revealed in the Word because you’re constantly being told you can’t really let your full weight down on Him; you can’t really believe what His Word teaches about life, and godliness, about marriage and sexuality; you can’t really believe there’s only one way to God and that’s through Jesus Christ—you see you need to continually be meditating on God’s Word and God’s ways…and then secondly, you need a community who will have the courage to come to your aid when you’re being tempted, when you’re being lied to, when you’re being swayed by the wisdom of this age! You can’t be a lone ranger Christian and think you’re going to withstand the enemy's tactics because Satan is crafty—you need a community with courage, and sadly, Adam failed Eve in this way—because we read in verse 6 that Adam was with her---was he tending the garden? Was he within ear shot? Was he standing right there and remained passive while his wife was being deceived? We don’t know…but rather than having someone step up and step in and speak the truth about God’s Word and God’s ways, Eve goes it alone---and it has devastating consequences and that’s why you need a Christian community of courage who will step up and step in when you’re being tempted to doubt and then deny God’s Word and God’s ways We saw the nature of seduction…and the second thing we saw in this passage is…The Nature of Sin: Satan tells Eve, “God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan is saying that God is holding out on you—real fulfillment and real life is over here, and God wants to withhold it from you. And this is the nature of temptation and sin—it’s always presenting to us something as forbidden as something that will fulfill our lives---and we have FOMO—the fear of missing out…and the temptation for Eve was moral autonomy—she wanted to usurp God’s role in determining right and wrong apart from God’s word. When she looked at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and she saw we’re told in verse 6, that it was good for food and a delight for the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise.” It looks so good….she gradually ponders it….and sin always looks like the highway to happiness, when in reality, it’s the highway to hell and when you no longer have clarity on the truthfulness of God’s Word, and you no longer have certainty on the goodness of God’s character, you’ll find yourself arguing against conviction, or against the clarity of Scripture—and like Eve, it may start gradually, but sin will happen quickly. Eve’s sin is reported in rapid succession as we read in verse 6, “she took, she ate, she gave some to her husband, and he ate.” The nature of sin is similar to the nature of bankruptcy—in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” Mike Campell, who comes from a wealthy Scottish family, but who has squandered his wealth on alcohol is asked how he lost his money and he responds, “Two ways….gradually…and then suddenly.” It starts slowly, maybe you begin to doubt God’s Word, you begin to question His goodness and then you magnify His prohibitions and minimize His penalty, you’ll plunge right into death Let me give you an example—years ago, I had a husband and wife come into my office, they attended another church in the Rogue Valley and the husband said, “After badgering my wife for months, I finally convinced my wife to bring another man into our sexual relationship. Now I can’t get those images out of my head, and she won’t speak to me and wants a divorce.” I looked at him and said, “How long have you been addicted to pornography?” And he said, “38 years.” I said, “Okay. You thought the pornography would bring you life, but you didn’t realize that it was deadening your sexual experience with your wife, so you thought another guy would bring life to it, but it killed your marriage; it was the death blow to it. This is the nature of sin, it starts gradual, but then it takes everything. It promises life, but it produces death. This is why Adrian Rogers says, “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you far more than you want to pay.” That’s what it did for Adam and Eve. Sin looks like life, but it's really death. Sin is misery masquerading as mirth. When Eve took and ate, and then gave some to Adam and he ate also, they plunged humanity into sin and death, and we’ve been repeating the process of doubting God’s word and distrusting His character ever since. So we’ve seen the nature of seduction; the nature of sin, and the text shows us next. The Nature of Shame: Read Verse 7: The last time we heard of their nakedness in verse 25, it was a positive thing, they were naked and unashamed, but now, because of the seduction, and because of the act of sin. We see the first blush of shame on a human face; the first pang of guilt in the human conscience, and the first impulse to run and hide in the human race. They now have Inward Guilt—mistrust and alienation replaced the security and intimacy they had enjoyed with God and with each other, So inward guilt…but also Outward Shame: They realized they were naked; and it’s not just that they realized their physical nakedness. They realized the vulnerability of their souls. They recognized that they had transgressed. That they had stepped over a line. They had crossed a point of no return. And so what do they do? They tried to cover themselves with fig leaves! But it's futile. They get to work and sew fig leaves together, but it’s an inadequate covering. But it’s the response we all do when we recognize our sin—our first parents hid themselves away from God and one another after they sinned. And their sin nature gets passed onto us, and as a result we have a built in propensity to reject God’s Words and ways and live for ourselves, like our first parents did, and to hide from God, because though we do our best to look good, and put up a good front, the fear of being found out locks us up in shame. Look at how devastating the fall was and is our first parents are seduced away from listening to and loving God’s Word and His ways; they’re deceived and led to believe that the Lord is holding out on them, and so they act on their own accord and plunge humanity into alienation from God, and from each other, and they now hide themselves away from God and each other so seduction, sin and shame. Because we’ve inherited their sin nature, we choose to ignore God’s word and ways. We are seduced again and again by the lies of the enemy, we plunge ourselves headlong into sin, and we’re filled with shame, and hide ourselves away from each other and God. This is all the fallout from Adam and Eve. It’s our nature to hide but here’s the good news. It’s God’s nature to seek! And that brings us to The Nature of Salvation We’ll see more of this next week, but after they hide, God comes to them and says, ‘where are you?’ Now, does God not know where they’re at? No, of course not then what’s He doing? He’s counseling them, He’s seeking them out. God’s going out in love and the ultimate expression of God going out in love is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Because it’s in Jesus, where God comes to us in love. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is struggling, you see centuries later, after Adam and Eve are struggling in the Garden about a command about a tree, centuries later, Jesus is in another Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane and He’s struggling with a command about a Tree…the tree is called the Cross. And He knows that He has got to go to the Cross to die for our sins, in order to pay the penalty and He’s struggling, beads of blood pouring out from Him. Now think about this, Adam and Eve were in a bright and beautiful garden and God said, ‘obey me about the tree and you will live’ and they didn’t, and they brought death….but here’s Jesus in a dark garden, and God said in essence, ‘Obey me about the tree and you’ll be crushed.’ He did! Jesus endures the tree of death and turns the tree of death into a tree of life for you and me….this is the great reversal that God in love brings about through Jesus Christ. The great John Stott captures it so well by saying, “For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.” God comes down in Jesus Christ and endures the tree of death, and when Jesus dies, He dies alone and stripped naked…why? So your alienation with God can be restored to fellowship, and you can be clothed with His righteousness. He bears our burden, He pays our penalty, and He clothes us in His righteousness. This is the only message with enough power to dislodge our heart’s belief that we’re on our own and proves to us that God’s love is enough for us and we can trust. “For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of Salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself where only man deserves to be.” John Scott, The Cross of Christ.