188; Bookends; The Fall
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Intro
Intro
Outline
intro series and reason for series. If we don’t understand where and how sin and struggle entered the world, we’ll be confused about the scope of the problem and the hope we have in Jesus. When we see the struggles around us (everything from marital problems to selfishness to drug abuse to every form of idolatry), we have to understand its origins to understand it at all.
If we don’t come to grips with these bookends, we won’t make much sense of the rest of the Bible.
Bookends of Scripture
Genesis
Context
The Exodus. In the beginning God
Purpose
To explain origins, to make sense of life, and to offer hope.
Revelation - we try to turn it into a roadmap through a haunted house.
Revelation -
Context
Conflict
Purpose
To give hope to Christians. What if Revelation is about something more? What if God looks at the destruction and pain of his good creation and says, “I want it all back!”? But…that’s next week.
If we boil it down to the beginning and the end. How does Scripture start and finish? It starts with the Fall and ends with Restoration
We live in the middle - the already and the not yet
Today we’ll start with the Fall and next Sunday we’ll celebrate in the Restoration.
Genesis 3
Perfection of creation. Over and over we are told it was good.
Story told twice. God is majestic and yet immanent.
Then we come to chapter three
Text
Text
1 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’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’ ”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Intro the Serpent. This isn’t literally about snakes or a random snake. This is something much more terrible and much more deadly. This is Satan. Either, Satan is masquerading as a snake or the language is figurative. Moses calling him, “That old snake.”
Satan (Hebrew). The accuser
Devil (Greek). To throw through
What do we know for sure:
What do we know for sure:
Crafty
This is a real event. (genealogy); , -21 all confirm this really happened.
Created - not equal
Books about hell.
God is not threatened by rebellion.
What we know for certain is that Satan will meet his doom via the Messiah
Crafty/shrewd/cunning - he distorts God’s words. He tricks them into not trusting God’s words and to question his motives. Eve becomes the first legalist (God never said anything about touching the fruit). She emphasizes the prohibition and ignores God’s provision.
Crafty/shrewd/cunning - he distorts God’s words. He tricks them into not trusting God’s words and to question his motives. Eve becomes the first legalist (God never said anything about touching the fruit). She emphasizes the prohibition and ignores God’s provision.
Iphones and Apple
Devil - Throw through
Crafty
The Choice
The Choice
1 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’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 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.’ ”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 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. 7 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.
Gen 3:
They stopped trusting what God said was good. Goodness was no longer rooted in what God had said would make life good. Now, what they are left to trust their own judgment, and they distort what is good into what is evil.
As soon as they do, they realize the great travesty of their choice. Innocence, purity, holiness, and oneness were gone.
God comes and they hide.
The Fall and Judgment
The Fall and Judgment
Spiritual death had entered and now they would experience physical death as well. But If we’re not careful here we miss the grand scope of the problem. Four distinct relationships are devastated:
Unity with others. (; )
Unity with others. (; )
Bone of my bone flesh of my flesh
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Adam blames God and Eve. Eve blames Satan. The only innocent party is God. Everyone else is pointing the finger.
16 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.”
16 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.”
Oneness has been replaced by pain and struggle.
Cain and Able
Families became tribes and even countries
We feel this today.
In our homes (consider when there is an inheritance)
On the news
In our Church
Humanity and Creation (; )
Humanity and Creation (; )
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened 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.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 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.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened 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.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
Adam’s first job was to be a gardener in God’s grand creation. He named the creatures God had made. In Scripture, naming implies exercising authority. God renamed Abram, Abraham, Jacob, Israel, Simon, Peter. Adam exercised authority over creation by naming the animals. But now, creation will rebel.
There is a wordplay here. Adam and Adama.
Creation itself longs for the restoration.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Humanity and God (; )
Humanity and God (; )
23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 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.
People were created to live in the presence of God, but sin changed all that. Satan promised they would be like God. In reality, they became increasingly less like God and completely isolated from him.
Adam and Eve walked with God himself and spoke to him face to face. God provided Adam and Eve with a home, with work, with a relationship.
But he also provided boundaries. Of everything in Eden, there was one thing off limits. Sin had sullied God’s perfect garden/temple.
He drives them out just as Jesus cleansed the Temple Jerusalem. Sin separates humanity from God.
But don’t miss the obvious, God didn’t simply drive them out. They knew they didn’t belong, that’s why they hid.
You and I have inherited this sin and frankly, chosen this sin. You feel this when you sin. We are isolated from God.
Humanity and self
Humanity and self
This one happened instantly when Adam and Eve chose to disobey. It can be summed up in one word; naked.
For the first time they experienced shame and fear. They tried to hide behind the fig leaves but something was different..
This is not only one of the most subtle and dangerous effects of the fall, but it is cumulative.
The realization of the our fractured relationship with God and the world around us, just builds the shame and fear.
We feel this today. We feel...
You’re not good enough.
What do you have to offer?
It’ll never get better
What if everyone else knew the truth
We end up experiencing the unholy trinity of shame, fear, and loneliness.
The enormity of the problem
The enormity of the problem
The Enormity of the Fall
The Enormity of the Fall
What could we possibly do to deal with the problem that each of us.
Relationships are fractured.
With us
With God
With nature
With others
Sin, death, pain, thorns and thistles.
It will take something or someone far greater than us.
The Solution
The Solution
Really it’s more of a glimpse than anything. When he brings the judgment down on Satan we read this one little line where God shows his hand.
15 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.”
I’m not sure the original readers this wouldn’t quite have understood the complexity of God’s statement here.
Throughout Scripture we witness warring of of the battle of the Satan’s children against the children of God. You get the idea that this battle will be difficult. Suffering will be part of the process.
But its more, there is one detail that has to be noticed. “He will crush your head.” He - singular. There is one to be expected. The rest of the OT is in expectation of this one who would undo the fall.
God chose Abraham and said, “Through your offspring the whole world will be blessed.”
Moses said, “He will be a prophet like me.”
David wrote songs about him.
Isaiah wrote in great detail about him.
Amos compared him to a plumb line
Daniel talked about him. He said he looked like a rock hewn out of a mountain.
400 years of silence then John the baptist, standing in the Jordan says, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Adam failed in the garden and was driven into the wilderness. Jesus triumphed in the wilderness so you and I could enter the garden.
He experienced the full weight of the curse so we could be reunited to God’s intended unity.
Close
Close
We live in the effects of the fall. But there was something that struck me in v. 15. When God pronounced judgment on Satan, he placed people in two categories, only two: those with the expected one, Jesus and those with Satan.
Gospel
Next week Revelation
Pray and close