Fellowship Bible Church
Sermon Series: Our Family Tree: Genesis
Part 3 - “…And It All Fell Down”
02-26-2012
Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr.
TEXT: Genesis 3:1-24
I am so glad to see you here this morning. You can have a seat. I do want to say this. I very seldom will do this.
There are so many wonderful things happening in our church, so to highlight everything that is going on is a
little bit difficult from up front; but there is something very important that is taking place this evening. I hope I
do not embarrass him, but I want the whole church to pray for this tonight. Mark and Debbie McGoldrick are
having an outreach around the movie, “Valor,” and there is a Navy seal that is coming in who is a believer to
speak this evening. It is really exciting. There are 200 people signed up and over half of them are nonChristians. So, this evening at 7 o'clock this evening please send up some prayers that God will work and touch
the hearts of those unbelievers and that they will respond to the gospel. Well, we are just delighted that you
all are here. I hope you feel welcome. If you are not a member of Fellowship Bible Church we love you and
thank you for coming. We want to know how we can serve you, so please let us know. There is some
information out in The Commons area and there are people who can answer those questions for you. Thank
you for being here. Let’s bow together for a word of prayer.
Holy Father, we thank You for Your goodness and Your grace. We thank You for Your love and mercy. Thank
You, Father, for just using the folks in our body to be Your heart, Your hands, and Your feet. God, that is the
way it ought to be, LORD. You have called us to be salt and light -- whether it is an outreach around the movie,
or it is going to Europe in the summertime, or it is loving my neighbor, or it is praying for an opportunity to
share the hope and the love of the LORD Jesus to the person who works next to me in my cubicle or the kid that
sits next to me in my biology class. LORD, may we be sensitive to the love of God that wants to flow through us
to the needs of people all around us. Now Father speak to our hearts today. You know that this text of
Scripture is a tragic passage, but it opens up why things are the way they are in the world in which we live. Give
us clarity, LORD. Give us hope. Give us reality, and may the brightness and the brilliance of Jesus come shining
through today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
If you have a Bible I want you to meet me in Genesis chapter 3. I am not going to do a lot of reviewing today
because there is a lot of ground to cover in this section of Scripture. We are going to be covering the entirety
of Genesis chapter 3. As is the case with so many of these significant passages of Scripture in the Bible we
probably could do a five- or six-week series on Genesis chapter 3, but we are going to sort of survey the
chapter and talk about the most devastating event in all of human history. I want to read to you Genesis
chapter 3, the first six verses of the chapter, but we are going to cover the entire chapter just to set things up.
Adam and Eve have been created. The institution of marriage has been established and now tragedy strikes --awful tragedy strikes. Genesis 3 beginning at verse 1:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
but 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, lest you die.’”
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
1
For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took of its fruit and ate,
and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Genesis chapter 3 is the explanation for the mess and chaos in our lives and in this world. If there is one
passage of the Bible that you need to spend time in and understand it is Genesis chapter 3. It is my prayer
that, and I am not saying this because I want to sell CDs or this kind of thing, but it is my prayer that every last
one of us here today will get a copy of this message and go through this text. This is from theological and
doctrinal development and understanding what is taking place in human nature it is the most important
chapter in the Bible. That is not overstatement. This text needs to be understood by every believer to
understand the implications and ramifications of the pervasive nature of sin in human history. It is an
amazingly important text. One act of disobedience opened the door and welcomed evil and moral
contamination to the human race – one act of disobedience. All that is wrong, hurtful, and damaging is
anchored in sin. That is a principle statement and we are going to come back to this a little bit later on. But,
we need to understand, and please don't take that statement lightly, that all that is wrong and hurtful and
damaging is anchored in sin --- all sickness, pain, bad thoughts, everything under the canopy of what is wrong,
what is damaging, what is hurtful, is anchored to sin. This text is the wellspring of everything that should not
be. It comes from this passage of Scripture.
There is an old nursery rhyme that says “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All
the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” That is because
Humpty Dumpty was broken beyond repair. So, for our purposes this morning I want to adjust that little
nursery rhyme. We refer to this text erroneously as the fall, as if Eve was passive and Adam was passive and
somebody just pushed them off the wall. No, we shouldn’t do that because this is not passive. Eve was not
passive. Adam, well he was passive and we will see this a little later on, but he was complicit in disobedience.
So, for our purpose Humpty Dumpty didn’t fall off the wall. He stepped too close to the edge and took one
devastating step, and the rest is history. So what happened?
For the sake of time let me give you the four words that outline I believe Genesis chapter 3 -- four words. By
the way, these four words are also a portrait of what takes place when we sin. It is the word deceived;
secondly, discovered; thirdly, disciplined; and fourthly dispersed. Deceived, discovered, disciplined, and
dispersed. I can get sidetracked by this because that is the way sin always happens. It deceives; it gets
discovered; we get disciplined; and we become alienated and we are dispersed.
1.
DECEIVED (3:1-6)
First of all there is deception, deceived, and that is in verses 1-6 that I just read to you. Before I talk about the
temptation and the response let me make some general observations about these first six verses. As you look
at the context here you discover God created and He spoke it into existence. It is my view that Genesis 1-3 is
not allegory. It is not parabolic. These are actual events, and that creation is not a process. I am not into the
“day age” theory because there is nothing in the text of creation that would warrant that conclusion. I take
“yom” what it normally means, a 24-hour period of time, which really makes creation remarkable. God spoke
it into existence. He spoke it and it happened and He created a mature earth and a mature man. So, the word
2
of the LORD brought life and order, but here in this text the word of the devil would bring chaos and death. It
is very important to understand that here is the strategy of the enemy for the rest of time. He always brings
destruction. He always brings death. God always brings life and He always brings hope.
The second observation is found in verse 1 with the snake there. Not to be too picturesque here but the
tempter was a serpent. He came in the form of a serpent suggesting that temptation comes in a disguise
sometimes hidden and unexpected. For the word “crafty” some translations say “shrewd,” and this is to help
us understand from now on the way temptation comes is indirectly, of course.
The third thing I would like to say as you look at verses 1-6 is that is God setting a precedent in terms of not
blaming sin on anything else but ourselves. Sin cannot be blamed on our environment or heredity. Think about
it. Adam and Eve had God as their Father, so there was no hereditary propensity toward evil. Secondly, they
lived in a perfect environment and yet they still sinned. I would like for us to be careful, and I am going to get
to this later in the text when we start talking about the blaming that takes place here, but one of our biggest
problems as followers of Christ, and I am going to talk very directly to us today, one of our biggest problems as
followers of Christ is to somehow excuse ourselves for the choices and decisions that we make. This is forever
a mirror of personal responsibility as we go through this.
A.
Temptation (v. 1-5)
Now the temptation is found in verses 1-5 and for the sake of time because of the amount of stuff we need to
cover let me suggest to you that Satan’s strategy in these five verses was based upon questioning three things.
He raised three questions.
(1)
Questioned What God Meant
First of all, he questioned what God meant. He says in verse 1 in the middle of the verse:
“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent,
“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,
but 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, lest you die.’”
Now here is the problem. If you go back Eve got it wrong, too. She was hooked at the very beginning.
He questioned what God meant, and Eve’s first mistake was that she contrasted her words with God’s
words, which was not exactly what He said. I won’t do your homework for you, but go back and
read Genesis 2:16-17. She got a little sloppy with what He said, and that set her up. I can’t resist this
one. Listen to me. Don't get sloppy about your Bible study. This is the reason why I believe in
expository preaching and this is the reason why we believe in this church emphasizing the words of
Scripture. You get in trouble when you start speculating, assuming, and generalizing what God is
saying. This was a problem at the very beginning. So, she is actually set up for destruction because she
kind of like summarized it and gave it back to him not exactly.
3
(2)
Questioned What God Intended
The second thing that the devil did was that he questioned what God intended. Look at verse 4.
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”
That is not what He meant. He didn’t mean it that way. This is maybe allegorical or He really didn’t
mean it that way.” When Satan heard what Eve said he blatantly negated the penalty of death that
God had given. “You will not surely die.” The bottom line is he told a lie. He told a lie. Even in this text
the way the devil works throughout human history is established. Hold your finger there and go over to
John chapter 8 where Jesus is reminding the religious leaders that all sin is related to a lie. Wherever
there is a lie there is the presence of Satan. He says in verse 44 in John chapter 8:
“You are of your father the devil.”
You know Jesus said some pretty hard things.
“You are of your father the devil,
and your will is to do your father’s desires.
He was a murderer from the beginning,
and he has nothing to do with the truth
because there is no truth in him.
When he lies he speaks out of his own character,
for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
So from the very beginning he acted consistent with his nature. Evil is not cute. I would just like to say
that to you. Evil is not cute. By the way parents, I think we ought to come down very hard on lying in
our kids, in fact lying in our own lives. Lying is from the devil. It is not convenient. To not tell the truth
is to leave the door open to evil in our lives and evil in our families. Lying is absolutely wrong. This is
the lie. You can sin and get away with it. That is the lie. The lie is you can sin and get away with it. It is
okay and that is exactly what he told Eve.
(3)
Questioned God's Character
The third part of his strategy is that he questioned God’s character. He is really slick. Look at what he
says. He is full of himself. Look at verse 5:
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In other words, Satan passed doubt over God’s character, suggesting that God was jealous. That is
what is behind these words. “Yeah, God is jealous of you and He is holding you back from your destiny.
He just really does not want you to have this. Somehow or another there is something sinful about God
Himself, something wrong, and if He did care about you He would let you do whatever you wanted to
do. He would let you eat whatever you wanted to eat. He does not want you to be exactly like Him.”
This was a blatant appeal to pride and competition. By the way, this is the origin of all sin. All sin
4
eventually has to do with pride – every last bit of it. It has to do with acting independently of God,
going out from under His canopy saying “I can do whatever I want to do and I am not accountable for
what I do.” That was the enemy’s strategy.
B.
Response (v. 6)
Let’s summarize this a little bit. First Satan raised doubt concerning God’s Word. “That is not really what He
meant.” Satan lied by saying they would not die. You are not going to die. Satan told a partial truth, which
really is a whole lie – they would know good and evil. That they did. Now verse 6 is one crisp verse in the Bible,
but it is the most tragic verse in the entire Bible. It is the most tragic verse in the entire Bible, from one act. It
threw the world into a mess.
(1)
Defiant Action
There was defiant action.
“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took of its fruit and ate,
and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
First there is the response of the woman who takes the initiative. She is defiant in her action. The
process goes something like this. Satan questioned God’s intentions, questioned what He meant and
then questioned His character to sort of loosen things up for her. She listened to that, and then she
looked at the tree. She said, “Good food. Looks delicious.” -- hooked by the “pride piece.” “I want
wisdom. What is wrong with that?” “I am married. We are having problems in our marriage. I made a
bad decision. Met someone else for everything that I need to be, everything that I want. Maybe this is
the one God intended for me. He wants me to be happy. What is wrong with that?” I could string that
out. “Good food. Looks delicious, and I deserve happiness.” So, she did it.
(2)
Tragic Passivity
Then also in the text, and I don't mean to bash men but you need to see this. There is tragic passivity.
“She took of the fruit and ate
and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Later on you are going to see in the text why I believe Adam was with her even in the middle of the
temptation based upon God’s response. Adam was not out working and then all of a sudden came up
and she ate some of it and he gave it to her. He was with her the whole time. The question is why
didn’t Adam say anything? Why didn’t he correct his wife? More importantly, why didn’t he protect his
wife? Adam was created before Eve. He had intimate relationship with God. It is not like they didn’t
know. Why? I just have to be honest with you. Please don't write me about this. Look, there is
something. There is this confliction in men. On one hand we are hunters and providers and that kind
of thing, but on the other hand there is this natural passivity in all of us. Adam was passive.
5
There is another big thing we need to grab hold of before I make transition to the second major deal,
and that is this. Don't ever forget this. When accountability and punishment are removed from our
actions we will cross the line every time. We will cross that line every time, and I don't care who you
are. People sin because they can. We sin because we won’t get caught – so we think. What the enemy
did was erase accountability, neuter accountability, not make it so bad, taking it away from you, that it
is okay. And some of you that I am talking to today, and please forgive me for my directness but as a
pastor I need to tell you this. Some of you that I am talking to today you are living on thin ice. You have
been doing this for a long time excusing your behavior, nasty attitudes, fudging on the truth, gossiping
about people, hidden lusts, and the way we justify that. There is all kinds of emotional and mental
gymnastics that make it acceptable. It is nothing new. I have that tendency, and so does everybody
else who has been born. When you eradicate accountability, you take away responsibility; everybody
will sin because you can.
2.
DISCOVERED (3:7-13)
The second major block here is the word “discovered.” Now I have to say this, and you put quotes around
“discovered,” it is not that God discovered it. He didn’t discover it. He knew what was going to happen. I
would say that this is self-discovery. It wasn’t what Adam and Eve were looking for. The results were Adam
and Eve were not what they thought they would be. The promised divine enlightenment never showed up. It
didn’t show up. You see sin always promises more than it can deliver. What is the old line? “It promises more
than it can deliver and takes you farther than you want to go.” Sin always does that. It always promises great
fulfillment. It always promises great happiness. It always promises that you are going to get what you really
want. Well, you do, but you never don't. That is what happens here. There are two big things that they
discover. One is shame and the other is the ability to blame.
A.
Shame (v. 7-11)
(1)
Before Each Other ("Naked")
Look at verses 7-11.
“Then the eyes of both were opened,
and they knew that they were naked.
And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
and the man and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”
Lift those two words up. The shame, number one, was for each other. They knew that they were
naked. If you go back to Genesis 2:25 when God brings Eve to the man and the institution of marriage
is established you notice the text says “the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed.” Here
we have the introduction of guilt in human history. This is the introduction of guilt in human history.
We feel guilty because we have done something wrong and this is the beginning of this guilt. They felt
this shame. They were ill at ease with one another. That is the import of the whole idea of seeing their
nakedness. It is the introduction of mistrust and alienation. That is the bigger issue here. Mistrust had
not been known. Alienation had not been known. They were one with God and they were one with
each other. God would meet with them and commune with them on a daily basis and they had nothing
6
to hide with one another, and all of a sudden they were aware. “Oh my. Oh my. You have done
something wrong.”
(2)
Before God ("Hid")
So, first you have shame before each other, and then shame before God. Notice how silly this is.
“And they heard the sound of the LORD God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day,
and the man and his wife hid themselves
from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
But the LORD God called to the man and said to him,
“Where are you?”
And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden,
and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
He said, “Who told you that you were naked?
Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Now God didn’t raise these questions because He didn’t know. God didn’t raise these questions
because He didn’t know. He says, “Adam, where are you?” It is like He said, “Look at where you are.
Look at you.”
By the way when I read this text I think of something my oldest daughter did which is so hilarious.
When she was about 2 or 3 years old she was going to get disciplined. So, she committed the cardinal
sin. She ran from me. She ran downstairs. There was this toy box that you could see through and so
she got in the toy box. I am saying, “We have issues with this child.” [laughter]. So, I stood there.
Actually she didn’t get it so bad because I was laughing so hard. “What is she doing?” I don't think God
was laughing, but can you imagine the idiocy of hiding in the garden from God? “Adam, where are
you? What are you doing?” Did they actually think God wasn’t going to find them?
I need to make an ancillary application here right now. Do you actually think God does not know about
the stuff in your life? Do you actually believe that? Do you actually believe that you are going to get
away with that? Do you think so? Do you actually think so? Do you actually believe that God is not
going to find out and uncover the stuff in your life? This scares the heebie-jeebies out of me because I
thought about it this week when I read the text. I said, “You know Adam and Eve had a relationship
with a perfect God, lived in a perfect environment, and up until this time had a perfect nature, and yet
they sinned.” I sat back in my chair in my study and I said, “Home boy, you ain’t got a prayer.” So, let’s
not get too hard on them. If they can have daily communion with God in a perfect environment and be
fooled, think about yourself. Don't ever say what you wouldn’t do. Don't ever go around talking about
how good you are. Don't ever look down your self-righteous nose at somebody else that is caught in
some debased, life-altering, ugly pattern of sin. We could all do that. They did. So, can we.
B.
Blame (v. 12-13)
There was shame but also there was blame. There was blame. Verses 12 and 13 say:
“The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
7
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
You know it is interesting to me that God speaks to Adam first. He goes to him first. He goes to him first. Adam
should have taken the initiative to protect Eve, but he didn’t. He was passive. Adam blamed Eve and Eve
blames the serpent, but no one wants to take responsibility. The question is who are we blaming? Who are we
blaming? Please forgive me here, but I have to tell you that one of the most important things you can do in
raising your kids is not to cover for their weaknesses and mistakes that they make, but early on in their lives
help them to take personal responsibility for the choices and decisions that they make. Don't bail them out.
Don't lighten the consequences. Help them to take that personal responsibility. Blaming is inside of all of us.
We have been playing the blame game for thousands of years. As I was doing some background reading on
this text I came across this article on the effects of sin, and I just want to quote the first paragraph because
this woman who wrote this article says it so clearly. She says:
“In our postmodern society more often than not people account their misfortunes or their hurt-felt lives to their
environmental surroundings, sickness, and anything else that will remove the blame from their own sinful
nature. The husband who is dissatisfied blames the critical wife. The student with bad grades blames their
terrible teachers. The depressed woman blames her childhood and people continue to blame everyone except
the sin that entangles our thoughts and ways when we walk away from obedience to God. The fact is sin gives
birth to enslavement, self-centeredness, and leaves people with an inability to love among many other things.
We are in a mess today because we have sinned.”
Now I need to say this. Do people mess over us? Absolutely. Is their abuse? Absolutely. Are their contributing
factors to how we think about ourselves? Absolutely. But I have to tell you we never get free until we own the
responsibility for our own mess. We don't. We don't get free until I look in the mirror and say yeah, yeah, I
wish my dad would have done this. I wish they hadn’t messed over me. I wish they had this opportunity, but
you know what I own what I have done. Blaming is as old as human history.
3.
DISCIPLINED (3:14-21)
A.
Satan (v. 14-15)
(1)
Despised
Well they were deceived, discovered, and now they are disciplined. First God speaks to Satan – verses
14 and 15. I wish I had an entire message just on these two verses, but I don't, so let me just
summarize it. Basically God says two things to Satan. (1) You are going to be despised and (2) you are
ultimately going to be defeated.
“The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.”
8
I don't want to get too heavy. I think that it is obvious the snake would be a perpetual reminder to
mankind of temptation and sin. They are going to be a perpetual reminder and I am going to use you as
a word picture throughout all of history of sin. You are going to be slimy. You are going to be
despicable. I want to make you that way.
(2)
Defeated
But also defeated, and this is an incredible verse. Most scholars believe, and I agree with this, here is
the first Messianic prophecy concerning Christ in the entire Bible, which is found in verse 15. He says:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;”
The first part of that verse means simply this. There will be a perpetual struggle between satanic
forces and mankind until Christ returns. That is what the first part of that verse means, that from now
on the arena for my activity in the world will be this great struggle between the kingdom of darkness
and the kingdom of light. I don't mean to scare you, but ladies and gentlemen the devil has a target on
you and he is out to destroy your life. He is out to destroy your marriage. He is out to destroy anything
good about you. It is part of his strategy. So, we are involved in this warfare, this struggle.
But the second part of the verse is that Satan would be defeated at the cross. He says:
“he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
This means that our Savior on the cross will step on the head of the devil, that there would be a
provision in human history for the God of the ages blessed Son would ultimately defeat the power of
the enemy over our lives.
B.
The Woman (v. 16)
(1)
Pain in Child-bearing
Now to the woman he says in verse 16:
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.”
This is self-explanatory; from now on you are going to have pain in bearing children. I don't want to
comment too much about this because I will get in trouble. I am not a woman, but I have seen my wife
in labor. It is not a joyful thing. There will be pain in childbearing.
(2)
Compete With Her Husband
But I want you to “star” this next one.
9
“Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
There is going to be competition with your husband. I have to tell you that there are three views about
this whole passage here. This has caused quite a bit of conversation.
View 1: This view means you are going to have sexual desire toward your husband. I discount that view
because it does not fit the context.
View 2: View number 2, this desire for your husband means that you are going to desire security and
protection from your husband. You could sort of do that, but that also does not fit the context here.
View 3: The third view is that you will compete with your husband. In the Hebrew there is an
alternative rendering for the preposition. It says “your desire shall be for your husband.” It could have
been translated “your desire will be against your husband.” In other words, because you took the lead
and you listened to the enemy, from now on in marriage there is going to be this competition about
who takes the leadership. You are going to compete with your husband. This is all a part of the fall. You
are going to second guess him. You are going to question his decisions. You are going to think you can
do things better. Maybe you can, but there is going to be this competition in marriage.
C.
The Man (v. 17-21)
(1)
Rebuked For Failure To lead
God comes very hard at Adam. The man is disciplined in three areas. Number one, God rebukes him for
failure to lead. He says in verse 17:
“And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife”
This is an indication that Adam was there all the way along and he listened to his wife and he did what
he knew that he should not have done. He was created before Eve. He had relationship with God.
Adam knew this and he was passive. So, God Himself rebukes him for his failure to lead. Guys, I am not
trying to beat us up here. I am just saying what the text says. Adam simply did not show up. How in the
world are you going to let some snake talk your wife into doing stuff that you know good and well God
said not to do?
(2)
The Ground Cursed
The ground would be curses – verses 17, the second part, and 18:
‘You shall not eat of it,’
[meaning the ground]
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.”
10
What he is saying here is simply this. Adam and Eve sinned by eating. Now they would suffer in order
to eat. You are going to suffer in order to eat. It is not going to be as easy as you thought.
(3)
Weariness In Work
The third piece of discipline that God issued to Adam is that he would have weariness in work. Verse 19
says:
“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.”
(4)
Mercy
But then this next little section here even in the fall, even in light of the fact that these people that He
had created sinned against Him, we see even as God rebukes them, the mercy and provision of God.
Look at these words in verse 20.
“The man called his wife's name Eve,
because she was the mother of all living.
And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife
garments of skins and clothed them.”
Oh my! You might miss this if you just read it casually, but God institutes the sacrificial system as a sign
to be merciful to Adam. Here we have God slaying animals and using the skin to cover Adam and Eve. It
was a tender thing. It is as if he is saying I want to cover your sins. I want to be merciful to you. And
ultimately our sins will be covered and taken away through the bloody sacrifice of God’s Son on the
cross, the LORD Jesus. You know throughout history thousands of years after this blood sacrifice, blood
sacrifice, blood sacrifice, blood sacrifice, and we get into the law and each year on the Day of
Atonement our sins would be covered. This all goes back to what God did in the garden, but in the
fullness of time the LORD Jesus would come and die on the cross in our place and for our sin. The
writer of Hebrews would say “once and for all our sins would be covered.” They would be taken care
of. Adam and Eve had life. They now had death. They had pleasure. They now have pain. They had
abundance. Now they hold meager subsistence or have meager subsistence and toil. They had perfect
fellowship and now alienation and conflict.
4.
DISPERSED (3:22-24)
A.
Loss Of Intimacy (v. 22)
The final straw. They were deceived. They were discovered. They were disciplined. And finally they are
dispersed.
“Then the LORD God said,
“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.
11
Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden
to work the ground from which he was taken.
He drove out the man,
and at the east of the garden of Eden
he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword
that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Here is our legacy. Here is our legacy. In the dispersing of mankind God summarizes our legacy. Our legacy has
to do with loss of intimacy with God and distance and separation from God.
B.
Distance And Separation (v. 23-24)
We experience death, physical death, but more tragically we experience spiritual death because of sin.
I am going to have the worship team come back up at this point and we are getting ready to celebrate
communion. I want to read a passage of Scripture in the New Testament that finishes the story. I am so glad
that God made provision through the Person and work of the LORD Jesus Christ for our sin. Jesus was called
the last Adam. The first Adam screwed up, but the gospel and our restoration comes through the last Adam,
the LORD Jesus. Just listen to these words beginning at verse 12 of Romans chapter 5.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,
and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given,
but sin is not counted where there is no law.
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam,
who was a type of the one who was to come.”
But here you have it:
“but the free gift is not like the trespass.
For if many died through one man’s trespass,
much more have the grace of God and the free gift
by the grace of that one man Christ Jesus abounded for many.”
What he is saying is simply this. There is not a person here that has to be guilty of sin, that through Jesus Christ
when He died on the cross, He erased the penalty of sin and we can stand forgiven in Him. We can have our
sins washed away. We don't have to have fig leaves tied around our guilty consciences and our hearts. We can
be loose and free. When we celebrate communion we celebrate the fact that, no, not physically the garden of
Eden has not been restored, but spiritually we have been restored to the garden of Eden, that God tells us to
come on back in the garden.
Don't you want that? Don't you desire that? I would like for you to bow your heads with me right now. If you
are here today and you know that you need forgiveness and you have been beaten up because of your sin and
your shame and your guilt has gotten to you. There is nothing you can do to make God love you. He already
does. The great news is He has turned things around through Jesus Christ and all you have to do is say LORD
12
Jesus please forgive me of my sins. I turn from them. I trust You and I receive You. We are going to celebrate
communion. I am going to have the men come forward even now as I pray. We are going to pass out the
elements. As we celebrate communion this celebration is for those of us who have invited Jesus Christ to
come into our hearts and lives, for we are celebrating what He in fact has done for us in forgiving our sins on a
personal basis. But, if you have just invited Christ into your life I invite you to celebrate with us.
LORD Jesus, thank You for Your goodness. Thank You for Your provision. We love You. We bless Your name for
all that You are. In Jesus' name. Amen.
13