Genesis 3:1–13

0:00 Good morning again, everybody. Welcome to 3rd Avenue Baptist Church. Glad that you're here with us. Let me invite you to take a Bible, if you've got one, and turn over to Genesis chapter 3. If you're using one of the Red Pew Bibles, that's going to be on page 2. We're going to be looking at 13 verses of the book of Genesis. If you're new to 3rd Avenue, welcome. I know this is a time of year when there are a lot of people who are sort of cycling through various churches, and so we generally at this time of year have quite a few people who are new to our church. Maybe this is your first time, third time, fifth time, whatever it is.

0:32 What we're about to do is very typical of us here at Third Avenue. What we do every single week is open up the Bible to a particular passage of Scripture. Sometimes it's long, sometimes it's relatively short, like today. And usually I am the guy who stands here and takes you to that particular section of God's Word, reads it, I try to explain it, and then I try to apply it to your lives in various ways. So that's what we're doing here. We call that, just because it needs a name, we call it a particular form of preaching, expositional preaching, which is a big word, but all it means is that all I'm trying to do up here week in and week out is expose the Word of God to you, right?

1:14 I want to uncover what the Word of God says so that you see it and then you yourself are exposed to its power and to its challenge. So that's why we call it expositional preaching. What we're doing today is continuing a series through the first part of the book of Genesis. For the next few months, right up until Christmas, maybe a week or two before Christmas, we're going to be looking at the first 11 chapters of the book, which tell the story of what's known as the primeval age, the first age of human history. So everything that happens up to and right before the call of Abram to be the father of this brand new nation called the Jews or Israel.

1:53 For those of you who are new to this, maybe this is your first Sunday, Genesis, you should know, was in all likelihood, it's a bit of a mystery to figure it out, you've got to do some detective work, but in all likelihood it was written in about 1500 B.C., so something like 3,500 years ago, and it was written in all likelihood by Moses, one of the main characters of the Old Testament, which we know because there are various clues scattered throughout the Old Testament, especially in those first five books, that make us think like people have for centuries that Moses is the one who wrote it.

2:25 And there's no real evidence to make us think otherwise. Well, last week we looked at the story that unfolds in chapter 2, the really detailed version of the account of the creation of human beings, as the text says, as the image of God. They're created as the image, as the likeness of God. You remember last week that means certain things. What we saw in that story in chapter 2 was that human beings were created by God as his image for a particular purpose, for a particular glorious purpose, in fact.

2:56 To rule the world, to rule the cosmos under the authority of God and in relationship with him as their king. They were to have a unique relationship to God, man to God, and then they were to turn and rule the world under his authority and in his image. And they were to do so, on the whole, as male and female, man and wife united in the covenant of marriage. Well, if you've opened up your Bible to Genesis chapter 3, that's where we're going to be. Just to give you a running start, at the end of chapter 2, if you remember, everything is looking great.

3:29 Like the story is moving. History is moving. God has finished the work of creation. He's created Adam as his image and likeness in the world and his son and representative, if you remember from last week. And he's convinced him at the end of chapter 2 that he needs a helper to help him carry out God's purposes. And so he creates then woman equally as his image. But who also holds this honorable and dignified role of helping Adam to fulfill his purposes. So by the end of chapter 2, everything is good. And God even says that everything is very good at that point.

4:03 Everything in place, everything in balance. Like an orchestra that's hitting every note. But then we come to chapter 3 and everything falls apart. Let's read it. Genesis chapter 3 verse 1. And we're going today through verse 13. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

4:52 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. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. So 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. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

5:24 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? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me, and I ate. Now you probably recognize immediately that this is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible.

5:57 Because really the whole history of redemption launches from right here. This is the catastrophe of the story. This is the implosion. This is the collapse of everything that ultimately results in the incarnation, the life, the death, the resurrection, and the reign of Jesus Christ. This is the beginning of it all. Chris earlier in the service said, this is the fountainhead. And he's exactly right. This is the start of the story so that if you don't have a good understanding of this chapter of the Bible, you're not going to be able to understand any of it accurately. So I want you to understand it, and we're going to make our way through it relatively slowly.

6:31 Chapter 3, if you look down at it, you're going to want to have your eyes on the Bible a lot. I'm going to be directing your eyes down to the text to see certain things. Chapter 3, if you look at it, breaks down very neatly into two parts. So you've got the narrative of the fall from verses 1 to 13. And then you've got God's curses in the wake of the fall from verse 14 down through 24. So today we're just looking at the first part. Next week, God willing, will be that second half. But we're going to look at the first part of it, which itself, in those 13 verses, I think breaks down pretty neatly into three acts.

7:08 So you've got Satan's conversation with Eve in verses 1 through 5. Then you've got the fall itself in verses 6 to 7. That's when the thing actually happens. And then you've got God's conversation with Adam and Eve in 8 through 13. Now, as with so much of the Bible, this text is doing at least two main things. On the one hand, this text is just telling you and me what happened. It's giving you history. It's telling you the events that actually happened.

7:42 And you need to understand that. This is not metaphor. This is not just a fable. It's not just a story that's laden with meaning. This happened. And the way we know that it happened is because the whole rest of the Bible, including Jesus and including Paul, treat it as having historically happened. There's no getting around that. It's telling you history. The second thing that it's doing, though, besides telling you what happened in history, is that it's, even right here at the beginning, it's already trying to teach you something. It's trying to teach you something about the nature of sin and even the nature of you.

8:18 So the main idea of this text is this. Sin always looks good at first. But that's a lie. It leads to death and alienation. Sin always looks good at first, but that's a lie. It leads to death and alienation. I want to work through this text in three points today. It corresponds to those three main acts. So here they are.

8:48 I'll say them twice for you. Number one, verses one to five, the subtle deception of Satan. The subtle deception of Satan. Number two, verses six to seven, the tragic fall of mankind. And then number 3, 8 through 13, the piercing scrutiny of God. So here they are again, verses 1 to 5, the subtle deception of Satan. Number 2, verses 6 to 7, the tragic fall of mankind. And then number 3, verses 8 to 13, the piercing scrutiny of God.

9:19 Okay, so let's go. Point number 1, the subtle deception of Satan. It's probably best to think of chapter 3 as beginning with the last verse of chapter 2. Or at least the last verse of chapter 2 acts as a kind of hinge between the two. I mean, you guys know me. I often give the middle-aged, middle-aged monk, I don't know if he was middle-aged or not. But the middle-aged monk who broke the Bible up into chapters and verses, I often give him a hard time. But this is a hard call, right? So even though I think 225 belongs with chapter 3, it's a hard call.

9:52 so I'm not going to give him too much of a hard time on that. The way it works as a hinge is that at the end of chapter 2, God created woman as a helper for man, and then the situation is described after everything is done. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. In other words, they were innocent and without shame. They weren't ashamed of the fact that they were naked. They were exposed before God, and yet there was no reason for them to be sad about that or angry about it or hide from him. They were completely innocent. What comes next in chapter 3, verse 1 is completely unexpected.

10:28 So look at 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. So all of a sudden, this brand new character is introduced, the serpent, who's not identified any further here in Genesis. The book doesn't tell us anything else about who he is. What we know about him, though, from other places of the Bible, is that this is Satan. He is a supernatural being that's also known at various places in the Bible as the devil, the dragon, Leviathan.

11:00 I mean, there's a whole study that could be done on who Satan is and what his wiles are and what his character is, what he was in the beginning before he fell. All kinds of study that could be done about him. But I want you to notice two things about Satan from the text itself. So put your eyes down on verse 1 and look at what it says about him. This is what I want you to learn today. For one thing, there in verse 1, it says that Satan, or the serpent, is crafty. He's crafty. Now, that's a word that, honestly, is not necessarily bad.

11:31 There are places in Proverbs that tell us that we all, as God's people, ought to work and pray to be crafty. Because what it means is shrewd. It means clever, able to see traps, and even lay traps, as the case is. It also, I think super interestingly, rhymes in Hebrew with the word naked back up in 225. See that? The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty. Those two words, naked and crafty, they rhyme. So the effect, if we translated it with the rhyme, would be something like, they were nude, but the serpent was shrewd.

12:06 Right? Not bad. You can applaud. Thank you. No, I mean it. They were nude, but the serpent was shrewd. And you see what that's doing? It's like an arrow lining up with its target, literarily. That's what it's doing. It's saying that the innocence and the unashamedness, the sort of not looking out for traps kind of thing that's going on with Adam and Eve in the beginning is exactly the thing that Satan is going to aim at.

12:37 That's where his craftiness is going to be aimed. So also, second thing, look at the end. Another thing that it says about Satan, look at the end of verse 1. The snake was more crafty than any other beast that the Lord God had made. You see what that's doing? It's putting Satan, the serpent, the dragon, Leviathan, in the same category as created things. So he's not a deity. He's not a God. He's not omniscient or omnipotent or omnipresent or any of those things that God is.

13:10 He's a created being. So even though this isn't a normal snake, it's this supernatural being called Satan, he's still a created thing, like all of us. And yet he's dangerous, as Adam and Eve are going to find out. The main action in the story starts in verse 2, and it plays out in a conversation between the serpent and Eve. It's really interesting, isn't it, that it's Eve that Satan attacks and not Adam. It's the woman and not the man. Why is that? You ever thought about that?

13:41 I mean, even if you know a little bit of the theology of the Bible, you know that Adam gets blamed for the fall, right? Throughout the whole Bible, Eve is not the one that's blamed for it. It's Adam. Adam's the one who throws the human race into sin. Why does Satan go after Eve? Why doesn't he go after Adam? Well, the reason is because Satan is not just interested in getting Adam to do a little sin. He's interested in overthrowing the entire structure of authority that God has installed into creation.

14:16 You remember talking about that last week, right? Authority is a good thing. Hierarchy is a good thing. And God installed it into his creation. So he would rule the world as the high king of the cosmos. And under him, Adam and Eve would rule as king and queen. And even within that relationship, there's some authority, right? We talked about that last week. And then under them, of course, are all the animals that they rule over. There's hierarchy in the creation before the fall. There's authority in it. And what Satan is interested in doing is overturning that entire thing. So he doesn't just want to get Adam to sin against God.

14:48 He wants the woman to convince Adam to sin against God. You see that dominoes are falling upward like that? Here's another question. Why does Satan come as an animal? Why does he come as an animal to them? Well, same thing. Because he's not just interested in getting the man to sin. He's interested in getting an animal whom man and woman are supposed to rule over. He wants an animal to convince the woman, to convince the man, to rebel against God. Upward dominoes again. Why a snake? Well, I think there are two reasons.

15:21 One is just that that's what Satan is, right? He's the dragon, the leviathan, the serpent, the snake. That's what he is. But symbolically, the serpent is also the lowest of the animals. So you see what's happening? You see what's happening? Satan comes as the lowest of the animals to convince the woman, to convince the man, to rebel against God. And everything comes undone. His goal was to upend the entire structure of authority. So that's his goal.

15:52 If you look at his attack, specifically as it unfolds in verses 2 to 5, you can see pretty clearly what's going on. Satan's strategy here is to assault the truthfulness of the word of God. That's what he does. He assaults the truthfulness of the word of God. His strategy or tactic, I guess, is to get Eve first to doubt and then to disobey God's word. The doubt's got to come before the disobedience. And so he structures his attack that way. The whole conversation has to do with taking this very simple, very clear, even very kind commandment from God.

16:26 Don't eat from that tree and twisting it into something unrecognizable. Before we look at the details of it, I want you to notice one thing. Up until this point in the story, from chapter 2 anyway, God has always, through chapter 2, been referred to as Lord God. See the word there, L-O-R-D, all in capital letters. That's the covenant name of God, Yahweh. He's been referred to as Yahweh Elohim. Yahweh is the covenant name of God.

16:57 It has specific reference to God's relationship with humans. In this conversation between the serpent and Adam and Eve, though, the name of God reverts back to just Elohim. The covenant name is gone. And why? Because the covenant between God and man, the relationship between mankind and God, is being assaulted and ultimately upended here. That's why it disappears. Okay, back to the conversation. Satan doesn't, if you look at it, launch a direct assault on Eve. He doesn't just say, look at that tree, go eat it.

17:28 He doesn't do that. He comes in from the side. He comes in from an angle with a question. Look at it. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? Now, you look at that. What has Satan done here with that question? Has he accurately described and stated what God actually said? No, he hasn't, has he? He's made it more restrictive than God did. God said you can eat freely from all the trees of the garden except one.

18:03 But Satan is trying to set the conversation so that Eve's mind is on what she can't do rather than on what God has given her. He's trying to make God seem more restrictive, more cramped, crabbed, and stingy. That's what he's trying to do, and it works. Look at how she replies in verses 2 and 3. 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 look at that carefully.

18:34 Eve makes three errors in what she says back to the serpent. You see them? She makes three errors. She changes the word of God. It shows that her mind is already infected with the snake's poison. Just her having to think about this has infected her mind with his poison. What are the three errors? Well, first look at the phrase, the very first phrase of it. We may eat of the fruit of the trees. We may eat of the fruit of the trees. Now, that's not exactly what God said, is it?

19:07 What God said was you may eat freely of the fruit of all the trees in the garden. Now, that's a subtle little difference. But God's words are far more expansive and inviting. You may eat freely of all. Eve shrinks God's kindness. She shrinks his expansiveness and generosity. She makes it all sound just a little more restrictive and less generous than it actually is.

19:39 Second thing, look at the next phrase. Neither shall you touch it. That phrase wasn't included in God's instruction at all. He never told them they couldn't touch. They could go up and hug the tree if they wanted to. The command was, don't eat of the fruit of the tree. Don't touch it. Again, she's subtly making God's command out to be more restrictive, more limiting, than it actually was. Third, look what she says there. Lest you die. Remember what the command actually said?

20:10 The command actually said, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Well, what's the difference? Lest you die, you shall surely die. What's the difference? Again, it's subtle, but it's important. What Eve said is significantly softer, isn't it? It's like a result of what's going to come from eating the tree. It's a probability. Don't do it in case you die, lest you die. What God said was a judgment.

20:42 If you eat it, you shall surely die. So you see what's happened here with these three errors? In her own mind, Eve has taken what God actually said. This generous command with this single hard prohibition that's for her own good anyway. And she's turned it into something entirely different. She's made God stingy and restrictive. And at the same time, she's softened the consequences of disobeying him into a maybe. Well, in verse 4, Satan sets the hook.

21:17 And he does so by flatly contradicting God's words. Look at verse 4. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. It's fascinating, isn't it? The very first doctrine that gets denied in the history of humankind is the doctrine of judgment. And that has been one of Satan's main strategies ever since. To convince the world that judgment will not happen. That God will not judge, that we as human beings will never be held accountable for our sin.

21:54 But friends, listen, if the Bible is clear on anything at all, it is clear that there is a coming judgment. That God will hold each and every one of us accountable for our sin. And the question is whether we're going to be condemned on that day or whether we're going to be forgiven and welcomed into God's presence on that day. Satan's strategy from the very beginning was to lie to people about that. To convince them that judgment day is not coming. He convinced Eve.

22:26 So what about you? Have you believed that lie? It comes in a lot of forms. It comes in the form of God is only love. And it is his job to forgive everyone at the end of time. It comes in the form of there is no God. It comes in the form of we humans have no purpose. We just live for a little bit and then we die and we're off into oblivion. My friends, the Bible is clear and Satan has lied about it. There is a judgment day coming.

23:00 Don't believe the lies. Look back at the attack. Second part of it. He says, you will not surely die. And then verse 5, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. We're going to talk more in a few minutes about what it means to know good and evil. We're going to sort of take that apart, try to understand it here in a minute. But I want you to just notice what Satan is doing here. He's continuing this ploy of making God's command and character seem more restrictive and stingy than it actually is. He's taking the little bit of room that Eve has given him, right? She's already starting to think of God as restrictive. She's changed the command and he takes that little bit of room that she's given him and he runs the ball up the middle. You see it? He's telling Eve with this whole thing, God is holding out on you. God has something good that you don't have and he's not giving it to you. He's being stingy. He's being ungenerous. And Eve believes him.

24:11 And friends, believing that lie, believing the lie that God is holding out on you, that God is ungenerous and stingy, that's the poison that's infected human beings ever since. One author calls it the Edenic poison, the Garden of Eden, the poison of Eden that courses through all of our veins and it's the assumption almost as natural as breathing that god instead of being a generous good all-giving covenant lord that the bible tells us he is is actually somehow a threat to us that he's this stingy ungenerous miserly old man of a slave master who every once in a while if we do things exactly right if we have enough faith if we just if we do the right things and not the wrong things.

24:54 If we stay on top of our spiritual disciplines, we'll sometimes throw us some scraps of some little good things. My friends, that's the Edenic poison. And it courses through your veins just as much as it does mine. But the Bible tells us that he is not like that. He's just not. He's not like that. This is the covenant Lord who has given you and me everything. Including his own son who died on a cross so that you could be saved.

25:30 What else do you need him to do to convince you that he's generous and good and kind and loving toward you? That's who God is. Not this lie of a miserly old man that Satan has made us think about. Friend, if you're not a Christian, you need to understand that. You need to understand that, that God stands at his throne with his arms wide open in invitation to you. If you'll go to his son and put your faith in him.

26:01 Jesus, I can't save myself, but I know that you died to save sinners just like me. I promise you if you'll do that, God will welcome you into his kingdom with open arms because that's who he is. Look too at that phrase that Satan tells them, this is this other lie, you will be like God. You will be like God. And that right there is Satan's ultimate enticement to them to tell Adam and Eve that they could throw off God's restrictions and be unrestrained, be ungoverned just like him.

26:42 And if you think about it, if you put yourself in their shoes, that's heady stuff that he's promising them that's heady stuff that he's asking them to do join my rebellion against god i will set you on high just like god and it was an act of enormous arrogance and pride for them to then reach out and take that fruit and break god's commandment which makes a lot more sense right of the fact that when our savior came he came as one who had taken on the very form of a servant and won our salvation through obedience what we failed to do jesus did perfectly and to put your faith in jesus among other things is to recognize the error of rebelling against God

27:43 and to cast your lot with the one who did not do that. Here's point number two, the tragic fall of man. The tragic fall of man. The actual action of the human's sin takes place incredibly rapidly. And you can see it happen in the second half of verse 6. Do you see how fast that goes, second half of 6? She took, she ate, she gave, he ate. It's just a rapid, total collapse. After all this talking and all this thinking, it happens really, really quickly.

28:15 But before you get the action, in the first half of verse 6, you get this pause. It's a fascinating thing because what the first part of 6 is doing is giving you a glimpse into Eve's mind. You're getting a glimpse of the thoughts that were swirling around in there as the serpent lied to her and beguiled her. Look at what it says. When the woman saw, and here's her thoughts, 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, she ate, she gave, and he ate. These are those thoughts that led to sin.

28:46 And what was she thinking about? She was thinking, you can see it, on several different levels. The fruit seems good for food. It even, she thought, has some benefits, right? It's beautiful as well. And it'll make me wise. What was she not thinking about? consequences, the negative stuff. When she ran the equation in her mind of what should I do now that I've been asked by the serpent to take this fruit, when she ran that equation, she left out some really big variables. You and I tend to do that with sin, don't we? We tend to see only the rose and never the thorns. It looks good to us at first. So she took it and she ate it, and so did that. Now let's think about that sin a little bit. There are at least a couple of layers to what exactly is going on here. The first level that I want you to understand has to do with the gaining of this knowledge of good and evil. So we're going to look at that in just a second. The other thing

29:51 has to do with Adam and Eve's initial job given to them by God of ruling the garden, ruling the cosmos under him. So you might think of it as knowledge of good and evil and their gaining of it through this tree, that's sort of personal, right? And then the failure of their ruling under God as they were supposed to, that's kind of royal. So the effects of sin are multi-layered, they're personal and they're royal, and we're going to talk about both of them. Now this is important because I think you and I tend to think of sin, most of us as human beings anyway, as a fairly small matter. You know, I mean, you go downtown and you park in the wrong place, or you let your meter expire, or the app, or whatever it is, and you're going to get a parking ticket, and on the back of it, you're going to have to check a box that says guilty, right? You're going to have to declare yourself guilty unless you want to go to court and pay your fine. You and I, even though we check the box that says guilty, we do not tend to feel guilty about that. We broke a little law, there's a little traffic violation, and now I'm happy to pay the fine to get it off my back.

30:52 I think far too often you and I and the world around us think of sin like that. It's just the breaking of a little heavenly traffic law that God has put into place. And if I have to pay the penalty for that, I'm happy to do it. But I think that low view of sin comes from the fact that we don't understand what it is. And I want to show you by looking at the personal aspect of their sin and the royal aspect. So first, the personal aspect. Shows up in the fact that the result of this sin was in fact that their eyes were open and they gained what's called knowledge of good and evil.

31:26 and it's not it's the text is very serious about it it's said several times through the story and God himself even confirms it down in chapter 3 verse 22 that eating the fruit of that tree really does impart to them some knowledge so what is it what is that knowledge of good and evil that they get well there's tons of conversation about it tons of books that have been written about it through the centuries but the best answer seems to be that in eating that fruit Adam and Eve became intimately acquainted with both good and evil.

32:01 Up to that point, think about it, up to that point, all they had known was good. They knew fellowship with God. They knew the Garden of Eden. It was good, it was good, it was very good. All they had known was good. So the only thing that they're gaining is not the knowledge of good, It's the knowledge of evil. They're gaining the knowledge of what it is to be in rebellion against God. And they're going to feel the difference between that and the good that they had before.

32:35 That's the knowledge that they're getting. But Satan, of course, convinced them that having that knowledge would be good for them. To know evil, to know how it's different from good, that's good for you. It'll make you a more mature person. It'll make you a more experienced person. It'll make you like God. So they ate. and the result was yeah they got some new knowledge but that new knowledge was not good for them at all it was knowledge of what it meant to be alienated and cut off from God listen let me let me just say a little parenthesis here especially to those of you who are young maybe junior high maybe high school maybe college maybe just out of college the world is going to tell you over and over and over again that there is knowledge that it has that you need that in order to be a mature well-adjusted human being you need to have knowledge of this or that thing listen to me not all knowledge is good to have you do not want knowledge of what it is to have cancer you do not want knowledge of what it is to

33:42 lose a child all knowledge is not good knowledge and you do not want knowledge of what it looks like to rebel against God and sin. Don't do it. Second thing, second aspect, not just that personal one, but a royal aspect of their sin. The name of the tree is tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? We've already talked about how one of the things that happens is that some knowledge is actually imparted to them. But those words, knowledge of good and evil, have another meaning to them in the Bible. To know good and evil, to discern between good and evil, is actually the job of judges and kings. So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, besides limiting Adam's authority, was also kind of the, it seems to serve as kind of Adam's royal seat. It's the place where he's supposed to do his job as king of ruling the garden and discern between good and evil, to work and keep, or you remember, guard the garden from evil.

34:46 So when the serpent slithers up and starts questioning the word of God, what should Adam and Eve have done? They should have exercised rule. They should have guarded the garden from evil. They should have grabbed that sucker by his tail and snapped his neck like Indiana Jones and thrown him out. That's what they should have done. But they didn't. That tree's a reminder to him, like we said last week, that his rule is not ultimate, right? He rules under God. So his rule is derived and secondary to God's.

35:16 There's a higher throne. There's a higher authority than his. Now you understand that. You understand that there's a higher throne and higher authority than Adam's and that that's symbolized by the restriction that was placed on him by this tree. And you'll begin to understand that sin is not some little heavenly traffic violation. And this is not just a story of a silly little stolen apple. It's the story of Adam listening to Satan and making a decision that, yes, I like that offer.

35:49 I don't want there to be a higher authority over me. I don't want to have a higher throne and a higher crown above me. I don't want to be restricted. When he reached out his hand and grabbed the apple, he was declaring war against the king of the universe. That's what sin is. Sin is not just a little mistake. It's not just a little white lie or a little bad thing that you did. Sin is rebellion against the most high God. Friend, maybe you need to come to grips with what your sin really is. Maybe you need to see the enormity of it.

36:27 For Adam and Eve to take and eat was an act of rebellion against the creator of the universe. Just by the way, do those words sound familiar? They took and ate. It's probably just a coincidence in the Bible. It's the same words that Jesus says, take, eat, this is my body. There's a vast amount of difference between the first, taking and eating, and the second, take and eat, isn't there?

37:03 God himself would have to die to get us there. but friend when you next take the lord's supper think about this maybe our taking and eating the symbolic body of christ in faith is a kind of symbolic undoing of our taking eating the fruit in rebellion maybe maybe it's a way of saying look god instead of being a rebel instead of being a rebel i want to be like jesus the obedient one, the servant of God. Here's point number three, the piercing scrutiny of God.

37:46 Last few verses. If you hadn't read this story before, verse 7 would seem completely unexpected, almost shocking. You see why? I mean, what you've been prepared for right up to the end of verse 6 is that at the end of that verse, when they eat the fruit and rebel against God, they're immediately going to keel over dead that's what you've been prepared for and you've been watching it like a like a slow motion train wreck the entire time and then verse 7 happens and what happens there is crazily enough pretty much exactly what the serpent said was going to happen their eyes are opened and all of a sudden they have this new knowledge sadly for them though the knowledge they get is just it's knowledge of evil of shame of humiliation and guilt and so what do they do they hide the word naked there is different than the word naked in 225 you look at verse 9 where well that's god's question then adam says i heard the sound of you in the garden i was afraid because i was naked that word right there is different from

38:48 the naked in 225 it's just a it's just a completely different word they're similar but they're different in 225 the word just means uncovered that's all it means it's pretty flat in in meaning you can you can talk about a you know a table being uncovered or you know anything can be uncovered so it's a flat word in the context it's all obviously referring to adam and eve's innocence here though in in this part of the story in verse 10 it's a word that means exposed guilty it's a humiliating word so yeah adam and eve have some new knowledge they have some new knowledge of good and evil, but what they know is their own disgrace. Well, in 8 through 13, you've got this account of Adam and Eve's first encounter with God after the fall, and in it, God systematically leads both Adam and Eve to admit what they've done. So look down at 8 through 13 and notice that everything God, well, you look at it. Look at 8 through 13. With what punctuation

39:51 mark does every single thing God says end with? A question mark. Everything that God says to Adam and Eve in 8 through 13 is a question. Until he starts in 14 giving the curses, it's all questioning. And he asks four of them. Where are you? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I told you not to eat from? And what is this that you have done? And each one of those four questions uncovers a bit more of what's happened and leads them to see the enormity of their sin. so let's let's look at them first in verse 9 where are you where are you so apparently Adam and Eve had been accustomed to this wonderful easy intimate friendship with God right walking and talking with him in the garden fully present with him fully exposed to him and yet feeling no shame but now this question reveals that for the first time there's separation between them and God there's alienation they're hiding and he's looking for them where are you and why are you not here with me? It's a heartbreaking question that gets at the result of sin, alienation, separation from

40:53 God. And look at Adam's answer there in 10. Well, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, exposed, guilty, and I hid myself. That is so sadly typical of us, isn't it? We get a glimpse of our sins, we get afraid, we get ashamed, and we go hide from God. It's exactly the wrong response. Friend, if God shows you your sin, don't go hide. Run to him.

41:24 You already know who he is. You know he'll welcome you if you come to Christ in faith. In 11, you get two questions. The second one that God asks is, who told you you were naked? Okay, well, what's the answer to that? What's the answer to the question, who told you you were naked? Who told Adam he was naked? You know what the answer is? Nobody, nobody told him this new awful state that Adam is in, knowing his nakedness, being exposed and ashamed and guilty, isn't something that somebody did to him.

41:59 It's something that he did to himself. He owns it entirely, and he can't blame it on anybody else. Look at the third question. Did you eat from the tree that I told you not to eat from? What's that doing? Well, it's nailing down in Adam's mind exactly why all of this stuff has happened. He has this horrible new self-awareness, this horrible feeling of guilt and shame and nakedness, and God doesn't want there to be any doubt why that's there. It didn't just happen to you, Adam. It happened because you disobeyed me. It's his own fault, and it's the result directly of disobeying God's command.

42:33 Adam's response in 12 is another very typical human response to sin. It's to blame someone else. And Adam, like four seconds after he's sinned, is already an expert at that. Look at what he says in 12. The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me a fruit of the tree and I ate it. Already blame shifting. And you see who he's shifting the blame to? He's shifting the blame, yes, to the woman, but also to God. Lord, it's the woman that you gave to me.

43:05 It's even the same word. You gave me the woman. She gave me the fruit. It wasn't me. If you hadn't put that woman here, none of this would have happened. In 13, God turns now to the woman. Look what he says. The Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Now at the most basic level, that question, what is this that you have done, is just kind of an incredulous and sad almost.

43:37 What have you done? What is this that you have done in joining Satan's rebellion against me? That's part of what it is. But there's another layer to it. Because that word this, what is this thing that you have done? It is the same word that Adam exclaims back in chapter 2 when he first sees her. This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. It's a really important word. This is it. What is this that you have done?

44:08 Do you see the point? Why is that call back there? Well, it's because God is making a point. The woman who was supposed to be a helper to Adam in pursuing God's purposes has now become the very means of his failure. She's completely failed in her job to be a helper to him. She's become the exact opposite of what she's supposed to be. Ladies, there is a critical lesson here for you if you're married or if you want to be married or if there's any chance that you will ever be married.

44:40 your very job as a wife is to help your husband pursue the Lord and his purposes in joy that's your job help your husband pursue the purposes of the Lord in joy and the question to you the lesson to you is are you doing that are you helping him to do that or are you subtly undermining that like Eve did there are a thousand ways to undermine it I mean sure you can encourage to sin, like, you know, babe, let's go sin, right? That would be a very unsubtle way of undermining the purposes of God. But friend, also, do you know what else undermines it? Also just being a general discouragement to your husband. Making obeying the Lord difficult, making your home one of threat instead of joy. Creating an atmosphere that's filled with Edenic poison of ungenerosity.

45:39 Instead of the clear air of grace, be careful, be careful that you're not doing that. This story here doesn't end on a high note, does it? It just really doesn't. But I want you to notice one more thing. You remember back when we were talking about the temptation that the serpent was giving, we said that the covenant name of God goes away because the relationship between God and man is under assault. Remember when we said that? Well, look down at verse 8.

46:12 After the fall, the covenant name for God comes back. Yeah, Adam and Eve have done some enormous damage here. But the covenant name being right there in the midst of the wreckage is a sign of some hope. Everything's infected now. Everything is infected with Eden's poison. They're afraid of God. They're ashamed. of themselves and we live in that world gassed with the poison of Eden afraid of God ashamed of ourselves but friends listen to me the covenant God holds out hope if you'll come to him if you'll put your faith in his son and repent of your sins he will save let's pray Our Lord God, we thank you that you are a good and generous God.

47:10 A God who has given us everything, including your only son, Jesus Christ. Oh, Father, we pray that as Christians, as a church, you would help us to no longer be infected with Eden's poison. With this assumption that you are stingy and miserly. But, Father, help us to know who you are from your word. A good and generous God who loves us and has given us eternity. Our Lord, we pray that you would help us to reflect you in that, even in our own relationships as well. And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus and always to his honor and glory.

47:44 Amen.