D. A. Carson - The Christian Life: Fighting Temptation - The Temptation of Adam and Eve

privilege for me to join you here at although I been in Africa quite a few times this is my first visit to Zambia so maybe I'm saving the best for the last it's a privilege especially to join you at this particular conference I've had the privilege of knowing konradin Bay way and his family for a few years he spoke at one of the conferences that we helped to organise on the other side of the Atlantic and so this is in some ways a turnabout is fair play my brief in these my brief in these sessions is to talk about temptation and the way I shall proceed is by focusing in each of the six sessions on a separate passage regarding temptation so we'll deal with the temptation of Adam and Eve then the temptation of Joseph and the temptation of Hezekiah and eventually the temptation of Peter eventually the temptation of the Lord Jesus but will instead of dealing with it as an aspect of systematic theology will focus on particular biblical passages that say a great deal about temptation and try to cover the subject that way if we are going to consider the subject of temptation at all it's best to begin at the beginning and the beginning of course is Genesis 3 and I would like therefore to read the entire chapter Genesis chapter 3 Genesis chapter 3 now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made he said to the woman did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden the woman said to the serpent we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die you will not certainly die the serpent said to the woman for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom she took some and ate it she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden but the Lord God called to the man where are you he answered I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid and he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from the man said the woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it then the Lord God said to the woman what is this you have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate so the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel to the woman he said I will make your pains in childbearing very severe with painful labor you will give birth to children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you to Adam he said because you listen to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you you must not eat from it cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life it will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them and the Lord God said the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever so the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken after he drove the man out he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life this is the word of the Lord I'd like to begin with a an introductory remark what's the importance of Genesis 3 to our thinking the primary importance is that it sets the stage for the entire Bible storyline problems and solutions must match if you want to understand what the gospel is about what Jesus is about what the cross achieves then you must understand the nature of the problem that they address and correspondingly if you want to understand what Jesus is about then you need to understand what sin is about if somebody says to you my car won't start you don't say oh I can fix that let's bake a cake because making a cake might be a very good solution for some needs but not for fixing a car that won't start you have to have a solution and a problem that are well-matched to understand the richness of what the cross achieves you need to understand the full range of what sin is that is what establishes the unfolding story line with the hatreds and the inconsistencies and the wars and the idolatries and the murders the terrible sins of the book of Judges and the confessions of sin and Psalm 51 all of it it stems initially from Genesis 3 and our own relationship with God at the personal individual experiential level is bound up with the fact that though we are made in His image we are sinners yet we are Christians may be forgiven sinners but as Paul keeps insisting the flesh wars against the spirit and there is not going to be released from this fight until the new heaven and the new earth the home of righteousness and to understand the nature of the fight and the nature of the gospel to understand how the whole Bible is put together we must come to grips with the origin and nature of sin now it will be useful I think to divide the text into four points number one the deceitful repulsiveness that characterized that first the deceitful repulsiveness that characterized that first temptation versus one to six the chapter begins by introducing us to the serpent exactly what the communication arrangements were in Eden we cannot possibly tell moreover whether the serpent symbolizes Satan or is an embodiment of Satan we can't quite be sure the text doesn't tell us we do know that revelation 12 at the other end of the Bible insists that that old serpent is in fact Satan himself that's what we're dealing with here but the first thing that this text says about Satan is that he is part of God's creation now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made in other words Satan is not presented in the Bible as an alternative god there's God number one he's good and then there Satan God number two he's bad and the two are in clash that is simply not the way the Bible works there is in fact no fundamental dualism like some science fiction that too is portrayed on film and in books there's the force but whether it's the good side of the force of the bad side of the force who knows it's just the force it's powerful and which side strengthens you really depends on you that's just not the way the Bible is put together there is one God and he made everything there is no competition for him and so whatever this creature is he is first of all a created being and if he is against this God that he must also himself be some kind of rebel in fact the word that is used in the first line suggests that the text reads now the serpent was more crafty our English versions have crafty or shrewd or something like that than the other creatures that word in the original language is sometimes used positively now to my ears from English Canada crafty has a negative overtone doesn't it to your ears it's slightly sneaky but the word in Hebrew can is sometimes translated prudent that is in some contexts it's got positive overtones for instance in proverbs 12 23 a prudent man not a crafty man a prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself or 1418 the prudent are crowned with knowledge I suspected what has gone on it's in in Satan's life is something like this he was the most prudent of all the creatures that God has made but now in himself becoming a rebel he's become the most crafty of all the creatures that God has made what begins as a good gift gets turned to sheer poison and this is the creature now that confronts Eve he approaches her with a question not a contradiction with a question the question nearly entertains a possibility it expresses just the right amount of skepticism did God really say that now this question is in some ways flattering in some cases in some ways it's horribly disturbing it's flattering because it's suggesting to Eve that she has the right to stand in judgment of God did you see did God really say well that's a shocker that God should say something like that asking her inviting her to pass judgment on her maker do deduce it and what is the nature of the question did God really say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you you must not eat tree fruit from any tree that is in the garden that is the question as he casts it is is exaggerated God had forbidden one particular tree but he as he asked the question you must not eat from any tree in the garden in other words he presents God as a cosmic party-pooper someone who comes along and just like saying no to everybody no you can't do that no you mustn't do that that might be fun but no you can't do that God has to be the one who looks at every tree in the garden that says no no no no dude you say that's the way he presents God God is the cosmic disturber of all human joys she responds initially with an appropriate word we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden God did not condemn all the trees but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden so far she's still telling the truth so far she's still refuting him and then she says something rather said she exaggerates what God has forbidden God did say you must not eat fruit from tree the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it it's almost as if it's beginning to rankle under her skin that God has forbidden something so she exaggerates exactly what God said do you see she is prepared to stand in judgment of God just a wee bit after all you see what she's saying wrong if you understand what she should have said this is what she should have said are you out of your little skull this is Eden God made it it's perfect it's wonderful we walk with garden and the cool of the day we we enjoy fellowship with him that the Bliss's is passed measure I've got a husband who actually loves me and I love him God has made everything wonderful it's unthinkable that we should challenge him he knows best he designed the whole thing if he says no then it's for our good it's not because he's mean to imagine that he's mean is is is sheer a turkey it's repelled are you out of your little skull get out of here you wretch now that's what you should have said and then biblical history would have looked a little different but in fact she is entertaining the possibility of standing in judgment of God and that encouragement brings Satan to introduce the first flat-out contradiction in the Bible you will not certainly die he says no God had said when you take this fruit you will die Satan says maybe not indeed the first doctrine to be denied in Scripture is the doctrine of judgment and that is often the case when Satan begins with a new fresh attack on the nature of biblical revelation very often the first doubt to be entertained is the doubt about whether there is judgment or not whether hell is final God surely is much too loving to send people to hell isn't he it's the same temptation all over again because you see once you've got rid of judgment then you can change anything else because there are no consequences then in verse five we finally come to Satan's big ploy the total temptation the thing that shows how deceitfully repulsive this temptation is verse five for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil here is the heart of the vicious deceitfulness because what the serpent promised was partly true and totally false the truth is that in some sense by succumbing to this temptation human beings are opening up to a deeper level of moral consciousness at some level or another he promises God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil and after the whole thing God Himself says verse 22 the Lord God said the man has now become like us knowing good and evil in some sense Satan told the truth but in another sense it was a total misrepresentation because the way God knows good and evil and the way we know good and evil are really quite different my wife suffered from serious cancer twelve years ago and had a double mastectomy and many things went wrong so over the years we've come to visit many oncologists who are brilliant specialists in their own discipline they know a great deal about cancer what they don't know is what cancer looks like from the inside my wife doesn't know all that they know about cancer from the outside but she knows what cancer looks like from the inside God knows all about good and evil from the outside as it were that is without ever being evil we come to know about good and evil from the inside by becoming evil but it's even more than that the expression to know good and evil is often used in the Old Testament in a way that suggests you establish good and evil you you know the situation and form your judgment so that you can truthfully say that's good and that's evil you know good and evil in that sense it becomes almost a pronouncement but God then knows good and evil in an absolute sense god alone knows what is perfectly good and he knows all that is bad he knows it because he's omniscient he not knows not only what has been and what is and what will be he even knows what would have been under different circumstances he has contingent knowledge so he knows all about good and evil and can pronounce this is good that is back and that's final God has decreed it but for us to come along and on our own over against God to determine what is good and what is evil is in fact saying I won't accept God's verdict I'll make my own thank you I make my own rules I decide what's good for myself I decide what's bad for myself no one's gonna tell me what to do and not what you have is the dhih guarding of God you have unguarded God you have made yourself God you're at the beginning now of all idolatry do you see isn't that bound up with a great deal of contemporary sin as well you decide you will make your own rules and then if you don't believe in judgment in any case there are no consequences and pretty soon if this god is so uncomfortable to you then you make another God you have a more domesticated God you you have idols you you you create different gods here is perhaps where we need to think a little bit more about the nature of this tree and its fruit it was not an apple tree despite all the cartoons the text doesn't mention apples it's not as if pears and pineapples are ok but God is arbitrary and whimsical and Hazzard unveils we don't know what kind of tree it was it wasn't sex in the history of the Christian Church many people have thought that this forbidden fruit was sex but God made man and woman and brought them together and as late as Hebrews we're told marriage is honorable in all of the bed undefiled there is nothing intrinsically evil with sex but like all of God's good gifts it can be abused and perverted in wretched ways but sex itself is not the problem here there's no hint of this being a sexual sin no it was bound up whatever the nature of this fruit with a move into experience that would illuminate good and evil experientially from the inside by defying God and ourselves becoming our own masters where we ourselves define what is good and what is evil this is not merely the breaking of one small prohibition it is the breaking of one small prohibition you must need that tree but it's much more than that it's anarchy it's a revolution against God against the maker the glorious maker whose world Adam and Eve are enjoying verse six reads when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was number one good for food number two pleasing to the eye number three also desirable for gaining wisdom she took some and ate it so it was good for food that is physically appealing number two pleasant to the eye it was aesthetically pleasing number three desirable for gaining wisdom well the word is sappy entually pleasing that is it's pleasing because because it promises you wisdom it that is transforming so you want to go after this wisdom in other words here is a pattern of sin that runs right through not only this act but many sins in Scripture you start listening to the creature instead of the Creator you then follow your impressions instead of your instructions and then you make self-fulfillment your goal the prospect of material good good for food aesthetic good pleasant to the eye and mental enrichment desirable for gaining wisdom seems to add up to life itself jump in this has got to be a good thing but in fact it leads to death wretched death here is the heart of covetousness wanting something that I don't have that is forbidden I needed to make me happy even in her judgment that this is good she is already taking God's place so we are told she took it and ate she took it and ate one commentator writes so simple the act so hard the undoing God will taste poverty and death before take and eat become verbs of salvation the reference of course is to the words take and eat at the Lord's table and she gave some were told to Adam and he ate now the shocking thing here is that the text says she gave some to her husband who was with her in other words the impression is given that she didn't do this on her own she did it while Adam is there standing by he doesn't protect her he doesn't warn against her he doesn't defy Satan he he doesn't lead her in some other dirt he just keeps quiet and watches and then when she gives him some he takes some too he's as complicit and as stupid as she is so here is the deceitful repulsiveness of that first temptation second the initial consequences that erupted from this first temptation verses 7 to 13 the initial consequences that erupted from this first temptation there are a couple of implicit things that are just part of a storyline as it were first there's a massive inversion now as God made things in Genesis 1 and 2 there is God and he makes Adam in his own image and from Adam he makes Eve to be a help suitable for him and together man and wife both in the image of God are to rule over nature they have a certain responsibility over the created order that's the order that God makes but now you have an inversion the woman listens to the creature Adam listens to his wife and together they are all thus rebelling against God nobody's listening to him which is why a little farther on in the chapter in verse 17 the first thing that God says when he condemns Adam is because you listen to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you you must not eat from it and so on do you see it's part of the inversion there is an inversion that's going on instead of listening to God and as it were taking care over the rest of the created order protecting his wife looking after the structures that God has put him over in fact all of the authority flow is running the other way and God is simply ignored denied there is anarchy against him that's the first obvious entailment is part of the account and then we also have to think through what God meant in 2:17 when he says if you eat this fruit you will die what kind of death does he have in mind has Adam died in one sense of course Adam and Eve do die one of the best brief treatments of this is by a 4th century Christian a Christian North African called Agustin and in his book City of God chapter 13 Augustine raises this question one of Africans greatest thelo Africa's greatest theologians Agustin if it be asked what death God threatened man with whether bodily or spiritual or that second death we answer it was all he comprehended there in not only the first part of the first death were in the soul loses God that is spiritual death Adam is now dead to God as the following story shows he doesn't listen to him he's frightened of him he doesn't want his words you see he's died to God so he comprehends there in first part of the first death wheresoever the soul loses God nor the latter only were in the soul leaves the body that's what we normally call death but also the second death which is the last of deaths eternal and following after all this matter of the centrality of death is made very clear in the book of Genesis in Chapter five you have the first of the great genealogies is another one for example in chapter 10 and what do you read so-and-so lived so many years and he begat so and so then he lived so many more years and he died someone so live so many years maybe and so on so and he lived so many more years and he died so one so live so many years he begat so and so and if he live so many more years and he died and he died and he died and he died and he died and he died and he died the point is that we are to be shocked death is not natural this side of the fall it's inevitable but it's not natural it is a wretched thing this is not the way Genesis 1 in Genesis 2 are put together this is what happens after Genesis 3 and he died and he died and he died did you see Christians face death with a certain kind of confidence because as Paul puts it we sorrow not as those who have no hope but he doesn't say we don't sorrow he still refers to death as the last enemy there is something intuitive in us when we come up to death either our own or the death of a loved one where we start saying to ourselves this is not the way it's supposed to be it's the last enemy and although we can by faith overcome this last enemy because we know the one who has overcome death himself and promises us on the last day resurrection existence there is a sense in which this death is shocking it is abnormal it is not right it's not the way it's supposed to be but it is now inevitable because it's the consequence of human sin and anarchy against God if you rebel against the God who gives life what is there but death yet the particular results that follow from the sin that are mentioned in the text focus attention on a couple of other things number one verse seven their eyes were opened we are told and they realized that they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves now verse seven is clearly harking back to the last verse of chapter 2 chapter 2 says Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame what's the point of that there's an obvious point they don't have any clothes on but where's this and they felt no shame bit coming from the point is that they are so utterly guilt free so utterly sinless so utterly good that they're not ashamed of anything so they can be completely open and expose to one another you men now just you men I'll come to you women in a moment you men how would you like everything about you all that you think and desire and dream about everything about you to be fully known fully exposed to your mother or your wife or your sister or your daughter you women how would you like everything you think about all of your feelings your emotions your desires all that you are to be fully exposed to your father your husband your son your brother you fantasize along those lines for a moment and you will see right away you become terribly uncomfortable I mean there's just so much that we're ashamed of we have so much to hide and so the first thing these people do is recognize that in their nakedness it's not just a physical nakedness they have so much to hide and part of the way they try to cover up their shame is to cover up physically there is a whole history of nudist colonies believe it or not and they in the better nudist colonies a mice allowed to speak of some nudist colonies as being better than others some nudist colonies were merely excuses for orgies but in the better nudist colonies there was in fact a certain kind of theory behind them namely if we can be completely candid and open in one domain namely the physical domain then eventually we'll be candid and open and completely honest with each other and will regain paradise all we need is to be perfectly honest and candid and not hide anything anymore and will gain paradise that was the theory behind the so-called better nudist colonies of course it never works because there's so much shame there's so much guilt there's so much that needs to be hidden of course the way they hide themselves sounds a bit silly to our ears covering themselves with fig leaves pretty pathetic well there was no store around to go and buy some cotton they use fig leaves the interesting thing is that when God pronounces on this at the end of the chapter as we'll see in a few moments he doesn't say rip off those stupid fig leaves what he does is cover them with more enduring clothing because he knows too that they have so much to hide now so much shame they must be clothed it's a remarkable thing and then second there is broken fellowship with God verses 8 to 10 they hear the sound of his movement not his voice anymore but the sound they don't hear his voice they run from his voice but they hear that he is there and they don't look to him they don't rush to meet him they don't ask for forgiveness God pursues them they cannot possibly find him they don't want to they're frightened of him so already by God pursuing them there is the first sign of grace God might simply have totally destroyed them at this point only God's voice penetrates their concealment God's question to Adam in verse 9 where are you is not of course because God doesn't know but because God is soliciting a response from Adam so that Adam will recognize the futility and stupidity of trying to hide from God but in verse 10 Adam doesn't come through with an appropriate answer he says he says I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid he does not come right out and say I was afraid because I rebelled against you he talks about a shame he won't admit quite to his guilt and then there's broken fellowship with other human beings verses 11 to 13 adam promptly blames his wife god quite frankly it's your fault if you had given me a better woman this wouldn't have happened you know it's your fault not the last instance of a husband blaming his wife for everything but she's no better she's got to blame the devil himself the devil made me do it do you know if it hadn't been for the devil I would have been just fine and so what you find in both of them is a refusal to face responsibility it's part of the shame the guilt and the shame are tied together you can't face up to things and this becomes part of a regular pattern rationalization in which the criminal becomes the victim it's not my fault it's somebody else's fault always the interesting thing is here that as these human beings cover themselves with fig leaves which seems so stupid at one level yet which God in some ways authorizes by saying how they really do need to be covered and later on covers them with his skins of animals it's a way of saying there is no way back to innocence you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube you can't undo this personalized knowledge this experiencial knowledge of good and evil they are not innocent anymore they are guilty and a shape there's no way back none none the most you can do is cover the shame you can't undo the shame there's no way back to the end of chapter 2 none there is only a way forward that comes in the following verses and finally takes us all the way to the cross it is the only way forward for there's no way back to innocence the guilt and the shame must be dealt with which brings us now to the third point the explicit curse that was pronounced on the man on the woman on Satan the explicit curse that was pronounced in the wake of this temptation verses 14 to 19 you must see that God continues to be sovereign God's sovereignty is undiminished it is undiminished as you move from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3 it's simply set in a different context rebellion against God cannot threaten God's sovereignty God in effect pronounces three curses number one against the serpent verses 14 and 15 so the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock on all wild animals you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel now there are really two elements to this curse the first is what happens to him he is rejected crawls on his belly he eats dust he's cursed above the entire created order what does that mean exactly there are some people who argue that this becomes a kind of just so story the technical term that theologians use is an a theological story a story about how the snake lost its feet that is it had a bunch of feet and now because it's done something naughty now from now on a squirm is on its belly well it's possible I wasn't there I don't know exactly how it worked on the other hand it is important to remember that sometimes God takes something that is already there but attaches new significance to it for example later on we read in Genesis the account of how God ordained circumcision to Abraham and his family that's the first you read of circumcision in fact circumcision was practiced by many tribes in the ancient Near East at the time of Abraham it wasn't brand new it was something already known but as God ordains it for Abraham and his family he ordains it as a seal of the covenant he ordains it with specific sets of conditions and promises attached so that for Abraham and his family it has a set of meanings that it didn't have for the other ancient Near Eastern tribes do you see that's the significance of it not that it was brand-new so it's also possible here that the serpent did slide around in the grass but now the sliding around in the grass is connected in public curse as a deeply simple Laden thing that shows he is a slimy creature a dust eater down at the bottom of the pecking order damned by God so that in the visions of the Old Testament that look forward to a new heaven and a new earth you read words like these I saya 6525 the wolf and the lamb will feed together that is in a new heaven and you are not feeding off each other they will feed together the lion will eat straw like the Ox but dust will be the Serpent's food do you see it's a symbol Laden way of saying the old order of sin and the devil and destruction they're gone but in the new heaven and the new earth there there is peace and tranquility and not the law of the jungle anymore but the more important part of what's pronounced on this creature is found in verse 15 those of you have been studying theology for a long time will know that this verse is sometimes called the protei found Gallio that is the first gospel the first announcement of the good news verse 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head you will strike his heel all right I will put enmity between you and the woman what does that mean that all women hate snakes well my wife is certainly one of them she's okay with spiders and rats and mice and all kinds of creepy crawlies but when it comes to snakes just get out of the way she's not having any part of them thank you on the other hand I know some women who are herpetologists that is biologists who make herpetology the study of snakes their particular field of specialism the point here is is is not just in the natural order of things all women hate snakes men are okay they don't mind snakes women aah snake that's not what the text is saying at all because it goes on to say I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers that is it's not just the woman it's the woman and her offspring which means human beings there's enmity between human beings and the seed of the serpent but it's not just snakes don't forget this serpent is bound up with Satan and all that is evil there is a perpetual conflict between human beings and the whole demonic realm right till the very end of the age and in particular it comes to the supreme crunch in the last two lines your offspring your seed he will crush your head and you will strike his heel now of course this is only Genesis chapter 3 a person beginning to read Genesis the Bible for the first time doesn't know where all of that is going but anybody who has read the whole Bible all the way through cannot help but know where it's going ultimately the ultimate seed of the woman the ultimate human being born of the descendants of this woman he would crush the Serpent's head and thus destroy him but in so doing the serpent would bite him and kill him and in the New Testament not only is that bound up with the implicit depiction of Christ and his work it's also applied to Christians read Romans chapter 16 verse 20 the Lord will shortly crush serpent under your feet Paul writes to the Romans because you see Christians bound up with the work of Christ and the gospel good news they end up crushing serpent the serpent again and again and again by the proclamation of the good news as men and women are released from death and given new life now and ultimately resurrection existence because of the gospel which is why when the Apostles are sent out with other trainees in Luke chapter 10 and then come back from their training mission Jesus says I saw Satan fall from heaven do you see part of this crushing is taking place precisely in the pronouncement of the gospel of the one who crushed Satan under his feet and took the blow from Satan himself so that's the first of the pronouncements the explicit curses in this case a curse undone pronounced in the wake of the temptation second the woman verse 16 to the woman he said I will make your pains and childbearing very severe with painful labor you will give birth to children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you the first part about childbearing is a way of saying that that which is uniquely distinctive of women as human beings namely childbearing men don't bear children that's uniquely distinctive of women even that which is uniquely distinctive that which brings life that's which should bring joy and pleasure and the promulgation of the race and so on that which should bring glory to God precisely by such means in fact is also bound up with curse and hurt and pain the entire order of things is bound up with loss and rebellion once you detach yourself from the god of life the second part of the verse is much disputed and not easy to understand your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you I'll tell you what I think it means I think that when this book was first written someone would take and say Moses says something a bit strange here not quite sure what these two verbs mean your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you he's reading the book for the first time doesn't quite know but then he reads the next chapter and he discovers that the same two verbs are used in the next chapter in fact in all of the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible these two verbs come together and only this verse chapter 316 and in chapter 4 they come together only there so I suspect if somebody's quietly reading the first book of Moses and he gets to chapter 3 verse 16 he reached these two verses these two lines and he says I don't know what that means then he gets to chapter 4 and he says oh that's what it means and then he can go back to chapter 3 verse 16 and says yes now that makes sense now what is it in chapter 4 then that he sees chapter 4 verse 7 this is the account of Cain and Abel God is addressing Cain in verses 6 and 7 why are you angry why is your face cast down if you do what is right will you not be accepted but if you do not do what is right sin is crouching at your door now these two verbs it desires to have you but you must rule over it so sin desires to have okay it desires to control him to control them but you must rule over him now take those same two verbs and put them back in chapter 316 your desire will be for your husband that is in the wake of the fall you desire to control him and he will rule over you that is he becomes the stronger when it often batters you in other words there's sin on both sides what you have is a desire for control on the woman side and a bullying tactic from the man side that depicts an awful lot of marriages I know and that too is part of the effect of the fall instead of husband and wife loving each other instead of both of them seeing themselves as made in the image of God and nestling into the plan of God already laid out in Genesis 1 and 2 instead of that you find both of them in different ways trying to rest their own way and being cruel in the process how many marriages hover on the brim grim edge of self-destruction or in any case breed a lot of unhappiness because on the one hand there is lust for control on the other hand there is a brutalizing sort of power and then to the man verses 17 to 19 to Adam he said because you listen to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you you must not eat from it there's the inversion do you see the inversion he listened to his wife instead of to God therefore cursed is the ground because of you that is the sphere in which you do your work the entire created order is corrupted because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it that is instead of the Bliss of a perfect weed-free garden full of joy and health and pleasure if a foot full of perfection and sweetness and light and the cycles of life instead of that now this created order which still has so much sign of God's glory and presence in it so much color and beauty is now afflicted it's because human beings are themselves part of the created order such that when human beings follow the whole created order falls it's not as if human beings are separate from the created order they represent the created order they control the creator or they're responsible for the created order and they fall in the curse falls in the entire created order cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life it will produce thorns and thistles for you you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food and you return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return of course chapter two has already said there more than dust God breeze in them the breath of life and so on but they must never ever forget that they're just creatures they're trying to act like God but at the end of the day you and I are dust and to dust we will return because we are under the curse of death and there is no escape even the curse of the thorns and the thistles I experienced a little bit of a couple of weeks ago if you get close to my arm you can see I've got some blotches still on this arm I was working in a field and I brushed up against some poison ivy you don't have that curse in Africa do you but we haven't poison ivy is a plant that has an oil on it that almost always makes your skin burn and come up in blisters and and you have to get some antihistamines to stop it as one can go into your whole system and come out all over your body so I've still got the scars I thought to myself huh huh Genesis 3 did you see what can I say blame Adam not my fault blame Adam blame somebody else and there we go again with more self exoneration do you see it's somebody else's fault so here are the curses then a return to dust death itself both spiritual and physical and for all eternity finally the long-term effects that flowed from this first temptation verses 20 to 24 verse 20 is striking Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living don't forget verse 15 had said that the seed the offspring of the woman would ultimately crush the devil's head now we're told Eve is given the name Eve as the mother of all living so the line has begun that will ultimately bring you to the ultimate seed that will destroy the devil's work do you see thus first twenty becomes a mark of grace verse sixteen is a mark of grace that God actually speaks to Adam and Eve in the garden is a mark of grace three marks of grace in this chapter already he speaks to them even when they're fleeing from him second he promises relief in the coming of a seed and now third he gives life through Eve such that the beginning of the human line that brings us to the human Redeemer Christ Jesus himself who will crush the Serpent's head has begun the long Bible story line the line that takes you to Jesus has now begun then verse 21 the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them in other words as we've already said God does not rip away the fig leaves and say they're too stupid just go around naked he knows they have to be clay beat to be clothed their shame is too self-evident there is so much to be hidden but he provides something more durable than fig leaves but to get the skin of an animal you have to kill the animal now by itself this text is not saying this inaugurates all sacrificial systems it's not saying that yet and yet as you follow this line through Scripture you cannot help but see that it's the death of animals under the Mosaic Covenant the Passover lamb that turns away the wrath of the destroyer the death of a bull and a goat on Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement that pays for the sin of the people the priest and his family and of the people of God ultimately pointing to the ultimate Passover land the ultimate atonement sacrifice do you see so already this initial covering secured by the death of an animal is pointing forward to the fact that there's going to be the death of another to cover our sin and guilt oh the whole picture is not clear yet but already the little seed is planted something else must die so that we are covered in our shame and guilt and then we're told further the Lord God said the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil now he does not mean he's become exactly like us but that he has tried to become godlike by establishing good and evil for himself that is the unguarded of God it is the dhih guarding of God it is anarchic we cannot possibly allow him simply to go on living eternally that would be rebellion against God that God Himself could not possibly allow there must be an end the pronouncement of death must bring an end to this so he's banished banished as a race from paradise banished from the garden forbidden to go back it's another way of saying once again there is no way back to innocence the man verse 24 is driven out and God places on the east side of the Garden of Eden shadow beam and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the Tree of Life expulsion by decree an impossibility of returning to innocence the only way out of is forward to the seed of the woman whom God will see slain so that we might be covered with his righteousness brothers and sisters in Christ in a world where good and evil are described using many different criteria social science criteria personal judgments government decrees ideological perspectives political dreams Christians have to come to grips with the fact that the ultimate determination of good and evil is from God himself and the heart of our rebellion in lostness is tied up with not the breaking of one little prohibition but anarchic rebellion we don't see how guilty we are we so easily think of sin as breaking one or two rules oh I haven't had a bad week haven't sinned at all this week but somehow we've lost a vision of sin in in which anything less than absolute God centeredness is already anarchie in the beginning there was God and human beings were rightly related to him and they had perfect relationships with each other because each was in perfect relationship with him and when Adam and Eve woke up in the morning their first thought was about God they lived life seeing it in relationship to God their pleasure was in Him their delight was in him their work was for him their love for each other was a reflection of his love for them everything was God orientated God centered that was the very nature of existence before the fall so with the fall we don't have these human beings in exactly the same relationship with God except now they've eaten one piece of bad fruit what you have now is a kind of anarchy in which each human being says I will be God but that means I want to say I will be gone I want to rule my own life I want to control things I want to make the decisions I want to control others the problem is that I want to be God on you you stupid idiot you want to be God and you you stupidity you want to be good and you use stupidity you want to be God and so suddenly all these people because they're not rightly related to God are at war with each other an ayah of the beginning of fences and racism and hate and war and lust and jealousy and all the rest all all because we begin by saying I will be God that's the nature of sin and the for God Himself was still there how do we relate to him we want him to serve us and if he doesn't serve us because I'm really God if he doesn't serve us then quite frankly I'll find another God he's not quite so miserable quite so full of judgment quite quite so full of harshness judgmentalism I want a God who will serve me and there's the beginning of idolatry do you see and suddenly we discover that sin is far more complex and far more deeply rooted even in the lives of Christians as Paul himself acknowledges when he says saved we are but the flesh fights against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh it's the very nature of the struggle in Galatians 5 do you see and we will not finally beat that struggle until the new heaven and the new earth the home of righteousness I've been meditating recently on Psalm 36 where the psalmist writes I have a message from God for you concerning the sinfulness of the wicked there is no fear of God before their eyes and then he says in their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin that suggests that if we cannot detect our sin it's because we flatter ourselves too much or if we can detect it but do not hate it it's because we flatter ourselves too much there was no fear of God before our eyes but a god-centered view of what sin is what the fall is what the first temptation was about teaches us of the depth of depravity what it looks like what we mean when we speak of original sin and total depravity it is bound up with this sweep of lostness because we have D goddddd God do you see and only that begins to open our eyes for the spectacular measure of grace we need the grace that we can receive only through Christ Jesus let us pray

Channel: Bethesda Baptist

Views: 12,033

Rating: 4.8367348 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: R2gZgE5c9hc

Length: 60min 27sec (3627 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2013