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Genesis
3
[VIDEO CLIP – Jungle Book – Ka singing
‘Trust in me’]
“Trust in me” says the Serpent, Ka in the Jungle Book. And Mowgli falls
under his spell. Fortunately in the Jungle Book, the consequences are not
too drastic… Here in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fall for an altogether more
sinister Serpent. Here, the great serpent known as the devil, invites
Adam and Eve to trust in him and NOT the LORD. The consequences of this
rebellion are cosmic. The LORD curses the ground, death enters creation,
relationships are torn apart and the human race is driven from the
presence of God. No wonder this cataclysmic event is called “THE Fall.”
It is THE greatest fall from glory there has ever been. And until we get
a handle on this event, we’ll never understand why the world is as it is.
And we’ll never understand why Christ, the Saviour had to be born.
Genesis 3 tells us the depth of what
it is Christ saved us from. Let’s have a look at this story in a bit more
detail. To do that we’ll think about three headings – the Good, the Bad
and the Ugly.
[SLIDE – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly]
Firstly, the good. The real good guy
of this story is there in chapter 2 verses 7 and 8. Look with me:
“The LORD God formed the man from the
dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
the man became a living being. Now the LORD God had planted a garden in
the east, in Eden; and there He put the man He had formed.”
Here is the hero of this story – the
LORD God.
[SLIDE – the LORD]
He is the maker of heaven and earth
and to see His power you only have to read Genesis chapter 1 where He
creates all things simply by speaking them into being. Here though He
doesn’t say “Let there be a man” – here we see this LORD God bend down
and form His most precious creature from the dust of the ground. Then the
LORD God gives him the kiss of life – He breathes life into Him and He
sets the man, Adam, in His own garden. And again, the LORD God does not
simply command this garden into existence, He plants it. This Divine
Person who made heaven and earth, is very hands-on. He gets His hands
dirty as a gardener. If we haven’t recognized who this LORD is by now, we
see in Genesis 3 verse 8 that He comes for a walk with Adam and Eve. The
Bible continually tells us that no-one has seen God the Father at any
time – this must be God the Son. The Bible speaks of God as Father, Son
and Holy Spirit and this LORD is the second Person of the Trinity – God
the Son. Here is the LORD Jesus before His birth into the human race.
The LORD Christ, this hands on God,
puts His friend Adam in the garden He had planted. He did this so that
Adam could, verse 15, ‘work it and take care of it’. And He makes for
Adam a wife who is Adam’s perfect compliment and when He sees her he
bursts out into the first ever love song – verse 23 “This is now bone of
my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was
taken out of man.” The LORD is tremendously good to this couple. They
have terrific freedom. Verse 16 – they can do whatever they want –
WHATEVER they like in and with the whole of creation. It all belongs to
Christ but He shares it with His beloved creatures. The LORD is very
definitely the good guy in this story.
In verse 17, the LORD puts just one
tiny rider on the freedom of His creatures. They are not to eat from just
one tree in the middle of the garden.’ Every tree is yours, it’s all good
for food and pleasing to the eye – just refrain from one tree – if you
eat from that tree you will surely die.
Why was this done?
To provide an opportunity for Adam and
Eve to trust the LORD. You see there was no other commandment in all of
creation. No long lists of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’, there wasn’t a great map
detailing all the ‘out of bounds’ areas in the garden – none of that. In
fact there was nothing Adam and Eve needed to do – they simply had to
refrain from doing this one small thing. By not eating from this tree
they were saying “LORD, I trust you. I trust your words, I trust your
warnings.” Without this forbidden tree there was no opportunity to
display this faith. With the tree – there was the small but concrete opportunity
for humanity to exhibit either their trust or their rejection of Christ.
What will they do?
Well, enter the bad guy in Genesis 3
verse 1. The serpent is there in the garden with this couple.
[SLIDE – the serpent]
The serpent was not created evil – the
Bible is clear that he was placed in the garden to protect Adam and Eve.
But in Genesis 3 we see the devil fall into evil along with the couple.
In this chapter he quickly forms an alliance with humanity in his mutiny
against the LORD.
The devil tries a number of tactics in
his deception. He questions God’s goodness, he denies God’s word and he
creates resentment in the humans. The heart of it is there in verse 5:
The serpent says to Eve “God knows that when you eat [from this tree]
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and
evil.”
‘God is holding out on you.’ Says the
devil. ‘God knows what a great tree this is – that’s why He’s withholding
it from you.’ Do you see him creating resentment here?
The devil will always try to portray
himself as more kind than God. The devil will not approach you with a
pitchfork and horns. He won’t introduce himself as the Lord of Darkness.
He is Very attractive. But in fact he is deadly dangerous. Do you see at
the end of verse 14 – the LORD’s curse of the devil – ‘you will eat dust
all the days of you life.’ Then at the end of verse 19 the LORD’s curse
of the man says “you ARE dust, and to dust you will return.”
To the humans the LORD says “you are
dust” – to the devil He says “you will eat dust.” The devil is no friend
– he considers us food. But the way the devil devours us is not by
getting us to bite the heads off chickens. All he does is to simply offer
us the thing we want the most. It’s there in verse 5 – those three little
words: ‘be like God’ says the devil. And the humans like the sound of
that. Don’t be near God, don’t be with God, certainly don’t be under God
– be like God. Don’t sit around and let God call the shots – you be God.
Why don’t you be your own God!
And Adam and Eve decide that is what
they’ll do. The only possible way they could show their rejection of the
LORD and they go out of their way to make their own declaration of
independence. As they eat from the tree, this is out and out mutiny and
it constitutes the ugly of this passage.
What a thing – to depose such a loving
LORD from His rightful throne. He has given them ONLY good – ONLY the
very best. And yet this couple trust Satan before they trust the LORD.
That’s what it boils down to. Do you see how relational this is? The
couple are rejecting relationship with the LORD.
[SLIDE – they reject relationship]
They would rather follow the devil
than follow Christ. In putting their own interests first, they have no
room for the LORD of life. When He comes to walk with them in verse 8 –
they hide from Him and then they blame Him for their own predicament. So
they’ve definitely fallen out of relationship with the LORD. And they’ve
also rejected His rule over them.
[SLIDE – they reject rule]
When the devil tempts them to ‘be like
God’ he’s getting them to reject God’s rule, and set up their own.
Effectively he’s saying don’t let God decide what’s good and evil, right
and wrong. You decide – you define good and evil. You play God like that.
It’s often been said that the real sin
of Adam and Eve was not so much rule-breaking as rule-making. They decide
to know good and evil – better than God. They push God off His throne and
they clamber on in His place. They crown themselves as ultimate arbiters
of good and evil.
Their act of defiance is the same
rebellion that is in all our own human hearts. It’s that rebellious cry:
“No-one’s going to tell me what to do. Not even you God, especially not
You.” We all have that – it defines all our thinking and acting and
being. The basic fact of all our lives is that we naturally think we are
the boss. Isn’t that true?
If I were to ask you – “who has the right to tell you what to do?” I’m
guessing your gut reaction is to cry ‘Nobody!’ I’m the boss.
The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith,
said it best: Here is his assumption about human nature. All of modern
economics is built on this, let’s see if you think it’s true: “We are
self-seeking individuals looking to maximize the optimum benefit for
ourselves from every decision.”
Is that right? Does that ring true?
Well the Bible says that this self-centred attitude is as old as Adam.
And the Bible gives it the label sin.
Now when I use the word sin I have to
be careful. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about that word. Generally
people think of sin as a spot of naughtiness. Or the name of an
ice-cream. Some people talk of sins as the bad stuff that may back-fire
on you. ‘Be sure, your sins will find you out.’ Then there’s the concept
of sin I just can’t understand. Have you heard this one? “I’ve just been
promoted for my sins.” (What kind of office do you work in??)
Well I think we can see from Genesis 3
that sin is not fundamentally about doing bad things. Sin is about
relationship and rule. Sin is failing to love and trust Jesus and setting
ourselves up as the god of our own lives. Once we see that that’s what
sin is – it becomes very clear that we all have it. You can be a model
citizen, a wonderful neighbour, a loving parent, a caring friend and
still in your heart you have no love for Jesus who made you and died for
you and no respect for His rule in your life. Adam might have been an
excellent gardener, a terrific husband, a loving father but actually in
his heart he has utterly rejected the loving kindness of Jesus and he
made himself god.
This is a Very serious matter.
As Genesis 3 unfolds we see that the
consequences of our rebellious hearts are extreme. The LORD had made us
for the closest fellowship. He had placed His relationship with us at the
center of His purposes for creation. Our rebellion therefore has
far-reaching consequences. It disrupts the very operating system of the
universe. From verses 14-19, we see the whole created order going
hay-wire. The LORD pronounces punishments that strike at the heart of
humanity’s created roles, He even curses the ground – He curses the very
fabric of the cosmos. He determines to banish Adam and Eve from His
Presence so that the whole of the human race would be born in
estrangement from Him. His rightful anger at this needless and willful
rebellion drives a wedge between the LORD and the creatures He loves. The
LORD is holy – His people have become wicked rebels. They can no more
safely live with the LORD than paper can safely survive a consuming fire.
Everything looks hopeless.
And yet, in the midst of this calamity
in which it seemed like the whole of creation must unravel – the LORD
Christ prepares for Christmas.
[SLIDE – the Christmas Hope]
Just as it seemed the universe must
come undone, the LORD preaches His first gospel sermon. Genesis 3:15.
Have a look with me: The LORD is
speaking to the serpent and He says “I will put enmity between you (the
serpent) and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will
crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”
What’s that all about? Well the LORD
is addressing the serpent and telling him that one day, a woman would
have a child who would crush the serpents head. It would be costly – His
own heal would be bruised in the process, but This offspring, this child,
would one day defeat the powers of evil.
What a hope! One day, The bad guy –
the devil – would be crushed under foot. And the hope of his defeat was
the hope of a miraculous birth. Did you notice that – the offspring would
be born of a woman. Not of a man and a woman, just of a woman. He would
not be the natural offspring of human reproduction – humanity cannot
produce its own heroic Saviour – this child would be a miraculous gift to
the human race.
What grace the LORD shows even in the
midst of the curses. What had the human race done to deserve this
promise? They had just rebelled against the LORD in the ugliest way and
yet, He repays them by promising His own birth as one of us.
Humanity had decided to align itself
with the devil, but Christ comes in and says – No. Don’t you join him. I
will join you, and I’ll defeat him for you.
In Genesis 3:15, the LORD Christ
declares that evil will not have the last word in His creation. He would
come to defeat the powers of evil (He would crush the serpent’s head),
even though it would be very costly (His own heal would be bruised).
Well this promise of the serpent
crusher was The hope of the Old Testament believers. He was the hope of
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Simeon.
All of them were waiting for that first Christmas when the LORD would be
born into the human race to sort out what we have done wrong.
They looked forward to His birth –
through prophesies like this one. We look back on a life lived 2000 years
ago of unparalleled goodness. The LORD was born of a woman, just as was
promised. And He did everything the Bible predicted He would do. The LORD
Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophesies from the Old Testament. He spoke
as no-one before has ever spoken. No question was too difficult for Him.
No disease was found He could not cure. He healed the lame, He raised the
dead, He proclaimed the forgiveness of sins. And on the cross He suffered
and died a godforsaken death – paying Himself the penalty for our many
sins. You see His heal was bruised on the cross – but after three days He
rose again in victory and He walked out of the tomb. The hope of the ages
HAS come and He is everything He said He’d be.
As we prepare for Christmas, it’s so
easy to get wrapped up in wrapping and to miss the real meaning of Christmas.
I hope you’ve begun to see though, that the child in the manger is not an
allegory or a metaphor, He is not a children’s story, He’s not even the
founder of a religion. He is the meaning of history, the hope of
humanity, the LORD and Reconciler of heaven and earth.
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