Genesis. Chapter 3:7-19 The Fall and Satan ~ Part 2

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1 Genesis Chapter 3:7-19 The Fall and Satan ~ Part 2 I t seems so much of my ministry has to do with trying to help people fix damaged relationships, relationships between themselves and God, themselves and family, themselves and other people. I remember my assistant, back when I was still a hospital administrator. She was bright, attractive and highly intelligent. But she got mixed up with this less than desirable guy. She knew what he was, but she couldn t disconnect from him until he bailed on her. Then there was my front yard. I hated pulling weeds. After all, as soon as you do it you have to do it again. And even the stuff that is supposed to grow, grew too well and had to be trimmed every five minutes. Finally, because of my allergies I hired a gardener. What do each of these have in common? They are all products of the fall. Relationships don t work. Good women fall for the wrong guys. And gardeners make a living off those of us who don t want to fight the landscaping anymore. All this is because Adam ate the fruit and because Eve was deceived. III The Fall Chapters 3-4 A. The Event Chapter 3 3. God, Adam, and Eve Verses The Consequences of the Fall Verses Epilogue Verses Introduction: Last week we took the last part of the session to discuss Satan. We also saw the Fall. This morning we will consider the consequences of the Fall for Adam and Eve specifically and for humanity in general. We ll see the implications for who we are. As part of this discussion we will also consider Original Sin and The Total Depravity of man. When these areas are make clear then we understand both the condition of humanity and why the only way to God is through Christ. 3. God, Adam, and Eve: Verse 7: The first result of the disobedience to God s command was as Schofield puts it a transition from theoretical to experiential knowledge of good and evil. The result of is the loss of innocence, the knowledge of their sin and the desire to cover their nakedness. There is some speculation, that does seem consistent with this action, that says with the loss of innocence there was some other physical loss or change that led to the need (desire) to cover themselves.

2 But the efforts to cover their nakedness is also a picture of humanity s attempt to provide for his own righteousness separate from God. All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away (Isaiah 64:6). The other thing that occurs here is that these two now immediately experience a sense of loneliness and separation from God. This is spiritual death. Not only had the relationship between Adam and Eve changed for the worse, and all relationships have suffered accordingly since, but even more dreadful, their relationship with the Lord had been broken. Verse 8: Adam and Eve realized their sin. They may not have understood all the theological implications of their disobedience, but they couldn t stand before each other naked, and they couldn t face God at all. They are experiencing the real guilt which occurs in conjunction with separation from God. And along with the fall comes the start of self-delusion. They believed that they could hide from God. Can you give any examples of how sin can be selfdeluding? Verse 9: God gives Adam and Eve the opportunity to come forward and to confess their sin. He calls to them, asking where they are. The passage takes, as almost a throwaway, the fact God was walking in the Garden for the purpose of fellowship with Adam and Eve. This is obviously a Christophany. Morris says: This is no crude anthropomorphism, but a repeated, or even continual, theophany, in which the Word of God, Christ pre-incarnate, clothed Himself in human form in order to communicate with those whom He had created in His own image. 1 Verses 10-13: The two are forced to respond to God s call. Adam steps forward. He doesn t confess his sin. He confesses the consequences of his sin. Where once he was able to walk with God, fellowshipping with Him, now Adam is afraid to face Him. God points out the obvious. How did Adam know he was naked. God again give him the opportunity to confess. He asks: Adam did you eat of the forbidden tree? Adam begins the standard response for being caught in sin, buck passing. Who is Adam blaming for his disobedience? At first it appears that Adam is blaming Eve. He may have believed he was. But in reality, Adam is blaming God because he calls Eve the woman God gave him. So whoever is at fault, God or Eve, Adam knows it wasn t his fault. Next, God calls Eve forward giving her the opportunity to confess. She is obviously a quick learner because she also passes the buck, though some might argue, with a bit more strength to her claim. It s the serpent s fault. So whoever is at fault, Eve knows it wasn t her fault. I suspect the serpent looked around for someone to blame but he was at the end of the line. 1 Morris, Henry M., The Genesis Record, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1987, p ) 52 (

3 Today people still try to blame someone else, their parents, spouse, society, even God for their failures. They must avoid taking personal responsibility at all costs. Give some current examples of social blame passing and the resulting consequences. But Adam and Eve discovered something else here: it is useless to try to hide sin from God. You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? (Psalm 69:5; 139:7). One other point that needs to be understood is that God sought after man, and still seeks after him. All who are saved are drawn by Him. This is the difference between Christianity and religion. Religion is man s search for God, Christianity is God s choosing man. All of this sorrow and destruction of the relationship between the man and the woman and between them and God comes before He even tells them of the consequences of their sin. This is the result of the warning He had given them dying you shall die. They are spiritually dead. They are fallen creatures. They became what all of humanity after them still is. 4. The Consequences of the Fall: Verses 14-15: Now God expands on the results of their disobedience. God works His way through the guilty parties, working His way back to the one who is most guilty. He starts with the serpent. Here God s curse falls on the creature, not the one who was behind the actions. The consequences of the curse is to turn this beautiful creature into the snake we know today. He also describes the relationship between the serpent and woman, enmity or hatred. But significantly, as we understand from progressive revelation, we have the first hint of God s program for humanity s redemption. He says that the seed of the woman, who we know will later be revealed as Christ, will ultimately destroy the serpent, or more accurately, Satan. God also notes that Satan will bruise the Messiah, but victory will be God s. While some translations use the words crush and strike or bruise in both places, the word is the same in each place in Hebrew. The reason for the translation distinctions is because in one case the blow falls to the head, anticipating destruction, in the other case it falls to the heal reflecting only minor injury. God plans for the redemption of these two before they are even capable of understanding what He is promising or even the implications of why they need it. The war between the seed of Satan and the woman must also be recognized as the ongoing battle between the righteous, the saints of God and the unrighteous, the children of the devil, seen here in the Hebrew in a collective noun. It is also clear, in the light of all of scripture, that Satan s defeat is promised at the sight of maybe his greatest victory. The cross, from his perspective, was to be the other. But from God s perspective the war was won before it even began. Nevertheless, the battles have gone on and continue to do so until Christ returns to rule from the throne of David. Verse 16: Next God identifies His judgment on Eve. The curse is on the process of childbirth and on her relationship with Adam. These judgments are to carry on to all of Eve s female decedents. Let us look at each of these two items separately. ) 53 (

4 Children: This is usually interpreted to tie directly to the process of giving birth. But I think that this needs to be understood as going beyond this limitation. Women s pain continues throughout the process of raising them. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother (Proverbs 29:15). Adam: I said that we would discuss why some women fall for losers. I think that is directly tied to God s judgment here. Leupold says the following related to this issue and the word yearning or desire: This yearning is morbid. It is not merely sexual yearning. It includes the attraction that women experiences for man which she cannot root from her nature. Independent feminists may seek to banish it, but it persists in cropping out. It may be normal. It often is not but takes a perverted form 2 The third aspect of judgment deals with the relationship of husband to wife in the context of the family. While man was intended to be the head of the home, it was to be in a position of love and caring for the wife. This of course is the principle that is presented through out scripture. But because of the fall, men have been more likely to lord it over their wives rather than nurture them as Christ does the church. Headship has often been carried out as if the husband was a dictator. The curse seems to be that the wife is often treated more as if she was in servitude versus the gentile subjection as we are to experience it in the body of Christ when we are subject to the Lord. Where God is the head of the home, and there husband, there is an improvement in the condition and the position of the wife. Verses 17-19: Now God tells Adam his fate. Note, God doesn t curse Adam directly, although Adam has already been cursed with spiritual death. God isn t going to curse the race that He intends to redeem. Christ took the same position on the cross when he said: Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34). He certainly wouldn t curse those he was dying to save. Instead the curse falls on the earth and it is made to suffer for the sin of man. But the results of the curse will directly effect Adam and his decedents. Where once work was a positive, now it becomes toiling, a hassle. The specific curse refers to agriculture and that it would become hard work to raise food. This was a literal judgment, but it seems that it also symbolically represents the fact that any kind of labor became a burden. Just a couple of small points here. First, at this point man is still a vegetarian, as we have previously discussed. This situation doesn t last. Abel was a shepherd and though we are told that the animals were used for sacrifice, they may well have been intended for food. It is obvious though that by the time of the flood God specifically identifies animal life for Noah and his family to eat. 2 Leupold, H. C., Exposition of Genesis, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1981, p.172. ) 54 (

5 There is also an almost throwaway line here. At the very end of verse 19 God says that this struggle will continue until Adam returns to the ground from which he was taken. Physical death in now identified as the end of physical life for man. But the wording doesn t identify this as part of the curse. I believe in some ways physical death was a blessing for those who turn to God. Why do I think this might be true? Remember Adam has died spiritually. He life has become one of struggle. Even with his repentance and turning to God, his life would never be the same relationship with God, that is until he died and went to paradise. So for the believer death then is release from the curse of sin. While in once sense death is a curse, because it is the product of sin, it is also relief from the grief of this world. Of course for the lost, death is an end of this life and movement into an eternity of great suffering. The true product of the fall, spiritual death is finally experienced with physical death by those who have rejected the call to salvation. Conclusion: The world we live in is not the world God created. It is, as Francis Schaeffer calls it, an abnormal 3 one. We live in a fallen world. All the pain and suffering, all which many men blame on God either through His active will or passive allowance, are the products of man s sin in the fall. God allowed man the choice of obedience or disobedience and the sick world we live in is a product of the wrong choice. The only hope for man is to accept the offering of God s plan for restoration The death and resurrection of the Messiah for our sins. It is possible to undo the damage done to us through Adam, through the work of the second Adam. Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being ; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:45 49). Remember, To be born once is to die twice. To be born twice is to die once. And so as we see the fall we are seeing a record of separations. I think Francis Schaeffer summarizes this best when he said the following: First is the great separation, the separation between God and man. It underlies all other separations, not only in eternity but right now. Man no longer has the communion with God he was meant to have. Therefore, he cannot fulfill the purpose of his existence to love God with all his heart, sour and mind to stand as a finite personal point before an infinite-personal reference point and be in relationship with God Himself. When man sinned, the purpose of his existence was smashed. 4 3 Schaeffer, Francis A., The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Vol 2, Genesis in Space and Time, Crossway Books, Westchester, IL, 1982, p Ibid, 69. ) 55 (

6 The second great separation is separation of man from himself. Man has fear. Man has psychological problems. How does a Christian understand these? Primarily as the abnormal separation of man from himself. Man s basic psychosis is his separation from God carried into his own personality as a separation from himself. Thus we have self-deception. All men are liars, but, most importantly, each man lies to himself. The greatest falsehood is not lying to other men, but to ourselves. A related aspect is the loss of ability to acquire true knowledge. 5 The third of the great separations is man from man. This is the sociological separation. We have seen already how Adam was separated from Eve. Both of them immediately tried to pass off the blame for the Fall. This signals the loss of the possibility of their walking truly side by side in true democracy. 6 The fourth separation is a separation of man from nature and nature from nature. Man has lost his full dominion, and now nature itself is often a means of judgment. 7 But there is one thing which he did not lose, and that is his mannishness, his being a human being. Man still stands in the image of God twisted, broken, abnormal, but still the image-bearer of God. 8 For that reason let us never forget. The message of salvation is that God loves His creation, even in its fallen state. And therefore, we are called to love all men also, to live out God s love before them, and to give them the message of salvation, showing hits of God can still be seen in His creation. Earth s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from Aurora Leigh 9 5 Ibid 6 Ibid, Ibid 8 Ibid, Larson, Craig Brian and Phyllis Ten Elshof, Gen. Eds., 1001 Illustrations That Connect, Grand Rapids, MI, 2008 ) 56 (

7 Genesis Chapter 3:7-19 The Fall and Satan ~ Part 2 III The Fall Chapters 3-4 A. The Event Chapter 3 3. God, Adam, and Eve Verses The Consequences of the Fall Verses Epilogue Verses Introduction: 3. God, Adam, and Eve: Verse 7: (Isaiah 64:6) Verse 8: Verse 9:

8 Verses 10-13: (Psalm 69:5; 139:7) 4. The Consequences of the Fall: Verses 14-15: Verse 16: Children: (Proverbs 29:15) Adam:

9 Verses 17-19: (Luke 23:34) Conclusion: (1 Corinthians 15:45 49) Personal Application: How have you seen the impact of blame shifting and self-delusion manifest itself? How can we address this in our lives. Prayer for the Week: Father, help me to live in a way that demonstrates integrity, taking responsibility for my failings with myself and others. In Jesus name, amen.