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The Bible contains answers to life’s deepest questions. The answers have been there from the beginning but it often takes someone to point them out. For example, recently someone pointed out to me that there is an arrow in the FedEx logo…it was there all the time but I had not seen it.

Life is story and every good story needs a villain. In Genesis 3 we are introduced to the villain. He steps out of a shadowy past and onto the stage. His effort to usurp God’s authority leads to the fall of the human race from a state of innocence to the violent and desperate condition we witness today. How did it happen? It took Edward Gibbons six volumes to explain The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, God explains the fall of man in seven verses…Gen. 3:1-7.

The upheaval in the Garden of Eden sent aftershocks down through history that we feel even today. All the evidence you need for the truth of what took place can be found in today’s headlines. G. K. Chesterton observed, “The doctrine of original sin is the only theory empirically validated by 3500 years of human history.” How could two people living in paradise fall so far so fast?
    
Adam and Eve were not alone in the garden. In 3:1 Lucifer, a fallen angel, appears in the form of a serpent. This is not a snake, cf. v. 14. It did not slither on its belly at this point. It was a glorious and very crafty animal as we can see by its tactics. Those tactics have never changed.
The devil weakens our defenses. He inserted himself between God and the woman, engaged her in conversation and planted doubt and suspicion in her heart. Notice the progression:

    1. He questioned the word of God. He pushes the command in 2:17 to the extreme to make is sound absurd. “You mean God said you can’t eat from ANY of the trees?” You often hear this tactic in interviews where the interviewer is not favorable toward Christianity. “Do you mean that the ONLY way to get to heaven it to believe in Jesus?”

Eve takes the bait and her confidence wavers. She makes two fatal errors that we are still very common: adding to and subtracting from the Word of God, vv. 2-3. She leaves out the word “freely” which may indicate she has lost her grip on the goodness of God. Then she adds, “Or touch it.” This may not seem very significant but every perversion of Christianity in history involves one of these two errors; adding or subtracting from the word of God.

    2. He contradicted the word of God…v. 4. He moves from a subtle question to an overt contradiction, “You shall surely NOT die.” The word “not” is placed forward for emphasis. In other words, “There will be no consequences for your disobedience.” If I were the devil, I would question the accuracy and veracity of the scriptures and contradict what Jesus purportedly said by suggesting that evil men put those words in Jesus’ mouth. Remember the DaVinci Code? That was the premise. Dan Brown claims the Bible was put together by a bunch of men who conspired to deify Jesus, a mere man. Why? “Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of church and state. Many scholars claim that the early church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power.” p. 253 The church “sold” this lie in order to gain power.

But there is more here. The serpent questions the truth and contradicts the truth and then…

    3. The serpent assaulted the character of God…v. 5. “God doesn’t want you to become like Him.” This is true. Satan is a master of the half-truth. The serpent impugns the integrity of God by suggesting that God is jealously guarding His divine domain and holding out on Adam and Eve. God is not loving and caring but cold and selfish. The devil’s ultimate blow is to get us to doubt the love of God. His greatest triumph is guaranteed if he can get us to believe that LIMITATION IS UNLOVING.

God has established boundaries for our good and His glory. But once we are convinced that God is merely protecting His own turf, or better yet, that God is the invention of bad men who are protecting their own turf, we no longer respect those boundaries. One of the distinctions God created was male/female. God created men and women equal but different. They were to rule together but they were assigned different roles. If the enemy can get Eve to think that her limitations as a woman are unreasonable and unloving then he can create a civil war between the man and the woman. She will fight for sameness and he will fight to restrain her.

This tactic is as effective today as it was in the days of Adam and Eve. Satan wants you to question the word of God, doubt the character of God, and ultimately the love of God. He will suggest in a million creative ways that LIMITATION IS UNLOVING. God limits us to one God. He limits marriage to one spouse and to male/female. He limits sexual expression to one person. What kind of loving God would restrict your freedom like that? At best, someone has given you false information. At worst, God is heartless and uncaring.

The devil attacks our senses…v. 6. This three-pronged attack is against the body, the soul, and the spirit. The corresponding temptations are physical pleasure, material pleasure, and “spiritual” pleasure. Rebellion often feels good (good for food), looks good (pleasing to the eye), and makes me look good (able to make one wise). Eve takes the bait (NOT an apple) and exchanges the love of the Creator for the love of the creation. That is why John warns us in 1 John 2:15-16 “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

Satan’s tactics are consistent throughout scripture.
Genesis 3               Good for food                 Pleasing to the eye             Able to make wise
Matthew 4              Stones to bread               Glorious kingdoms            Pinnacle of temple
1 John 2                  Lust of the flesh              Lust of the eyes                 Pride of life

The man joins her in her rebellion and the immediate consequence of their sin was shame. They were no longer comfortable with their nakedness…v. 7a. (Cf. 2:25) They became self-conscious. In order to remedy the problem they “made for themselves” loin coverings. This is the first recorded religion of works. Their shame was proper. Their desire to cover their shame was proper. The means was inadequate. Only God can cover our sin and deliver us from shame.

Some of you feel shame this morning. Some shame is the toxic variety that is imposed on us by other people. But there is a legitimate shame that is one of the consequences of our alienation from our Creator. If you feel shame then you have not dealt with your sin and rebellion in the proper way. You may have joked about it, medicated yourself to cover it over, dabbled in philosophies that explain it away, but in those quiet moments it’s still there. God has provided a way for you to eliminate the shame and fill you with His peace.

The truth is rebellion is bred into us. The sin of Adam and Eve has been passed down from generation to generation until “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  Last week we saw paradise lost and thus began the long and painful story of God’s pursuit of mankind. Though we betrayed Him and chose to listen to the voice of another, God did not abandon us. In fact, notice what He does to win us back.

God pursues a confession…vv. 7b-13. As a result of their disobedience Adam and Eve’s relationships have become radically altered. Having declared independence from God, everything now changes. “Whereas Adam and Eve had life, they now will have death; where they had pleasure, they now will have pain; where abundance, now a meager sustenance by toil; where perfect harmony with God and with each other, now alienation and conflict.” Ross, Creation and Blessing, p. 139 Let’s analyze their response to these new circumstances:

First, they hide behind fig leaves (vv. 7b-8). Then they hide themselves in the garden. They have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they are exposed. Why do they cover themselves? God has seen them naked before but now they feel exposed. In our fallen condition we fear how God and others will respond if they see us as we really are. So we pose.

God responds with two profound questions. The first is the question of proximity, “Where are you?” (v. 9) At face value that is a disturbing question. The all-knowing God of the universe has lost track of the only two people on the planet! He is graciously moving Adam toward a confession. In our rebellion we are reluctant to acknowledge our condition. I have never met an alcoholic! I have met scores of people who “drink a little bit and could quit anytime they wanted,” but I have never met anyone who admits to being an alcoholic…until they recognize that they “are powerless over alcohol and that their lives have become unmanageable.”

Then God asks a second strange question, the question of authority. (vv. 10-11) “Who told you you were naked?”  “Where did you get this knowledge?” Again, God knows the answer. He is gently moving Adam toward an understanding of how this happened.

These are two great questions. “Where are you?” Are you in a right relationship with God resulting in a peace that passes understanding? Or are you a wreck, full of guilt and shame? Second question, “Who told you…” Who told you you were worthless? Who have you been listening to, the voice of the accuser or the voice of God? God, in His grace, is initiating a dialogue with Adam and Eve.

How do they respond to being busted? Vv. 12-13…the blame game. The man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent and the serpent doesn’t have a leg to stand on! Rather than acknowledge their sin, Adam and Eve blame others. We are still playing the blame game, still hiding from God. We hide behind our titles, our jokes, our possessions. We hide behind our addictions and our pleasures. We all hide because we don’t want to be exposed for who we really are. Nevertheless, we can’t escape the consequences. Hiding doesn’t make the problem go away.

God pronounces a curse…vv. 14-19. God announces the consequences of their sin. First, He curses the serpent (14-15). There will be ongoing strife between the serpent and the descendents of the woman. The serpent will continue to strike at every descendent of Adam and Eve. He will succeed in wounding the heel, the human race will live with a limp but one of the woman’s offspring will crush the head of the serpent. Jesus was “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” but His wound was not fatal. He would recover and be raised up to reign forever at the right hand of the Father. The serpent sustained a crushing blow at Calvary.

The punishment for the woman (16) The consequences of the fall are both physical, pain in childbirth, and relational pain, she will be the man’s nemesis. The word “desire” is used only three times in the OT. Once here, once in ch. 4, and once in Song of Solomon. In trying to understand this phrase greater weight should be given to the closer context. In other words the word “desire” is used in a negative sense in Gen. 4:7, "Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it." The word here is used to describe a prompting to evil. It cannot mean desire in a positive sense, as in romantic desire since this is an announcement of punishment. It has to mean either the desire to control or dominate her husband or her psychological dependence upon her husband in spite of his “rule” over her. She will desire his role and he will dominate her. Male domination of women has been the norm through history.

The punishment for the man (17-19) This verse points out the passive response of the man as he “obeyed his wife and ate.” His punishment is that, since he ate, it would be only through painful toil that he would be able to eat again. Work is not a curse but the pain of work and the stinginess of the environment is the new feature.

God provides a covering for sin…vv. 20-24. In chapter two Adam and Eve attempted to cover their sin with fig leaves. Their actions give us a sneak preview of how men will respond in a fallen world. We are hard-wired for worship, but we feel alienated from God. So man creates works religions that make the worshiper feel like they have atoned for their sin. There is no shortage of “do-it-yourself” religions.

In vv. 15 and 21 we detect the first hint of the Gospel. There will be enmity between God and the devil until the end of time but God has provided a way to cover our sin and our shame, and make a way back to the Garden. It is a costly way, a bloody way. An innocent animal will have to die, the first recorded physical death in all of history. Its skin will be removed to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. Only God’s provision is adequate. “(Adam) had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever follow wrongdoing. From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood.” Marcus Dods. This is a painful passage but full of grace. God graciously afflicts Adam and Eve with the painful consequences of our disobedience to remind us of our sinful condition. “Pain plants the flag of reality in the fortress of the rebel heart.” Haddon Robinson. If there were no consequences we would never be motivated to change. God, in His great mercy and love pursues us still. Though we hide from Him, He will not stop pursuing us. He shows us a road, a broken road that will lead us home.

I once read about a very wise and loving father who helped his daughter purchase her first car. Before she drove off on her own he handed her a sealed envelope. “This is only to be opened if you get in an accident. I have put some instructions in there so you will know what to do.” One day it happened. It wasn’t a serious accident but this teen-aged girl was scared to death to tell her dad. As she reached into the glove box to get her insurance card she remembered the letter. She took it out and opened it. It began, “My precious daughter. If you are reading this you have been in an accident and you are not hurt and that is all that matters to me. The car can be fixed, I’m just glad you are all right.” Then he went on to give instructions.

Our ancestors didn’t get very far before they experienced a head-on collision with a serpent. They were at fault for what happened. In the aftermath of their bad choice they were scared to death of what the Father would do so they hid. We’ve been hiding ever since. It’s time to stop hiding. Open yourself up to God, don’t hold back. Accept His provision for your sin. Galatians 3:13 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-- for it is written, ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE.’”

The road back home begins with a step of faith. Faith is simply trusting God. First you have to trust what He says about you. “All have sinned.” If God calls it sin it is sin. Our culture has dressed up sin and made it socially acceptable. The enemy whispers to us, “You won’t experience any consequences for your sin.” God says, “The wages of sin is death.” Do you believe Him? The next step is to trust in God’s provision for our sin. No human solution will do. Education won’t do it nor will wealth or achievements or appearance. God has offered one solution to our sin, the precious blood of the lamb.

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