The Fall
Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
January 6, 2021 is a day that will be forever recorded in American History. It was the first time that an unfriendly force had breached the Nation’s Capital since the British burned the Capital building on August 24, 1814. Congress was in the process of considering the Electoral College vote when rioters climbed walls, broke windows, and carried confederate flags and signs reading Trump 2020 and Make America Great Again through the halls of congress. One rioter broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and scrawled the words, “We will not back down!” in red ink on a folder in front of her computer.
It would feel good and maybe even patriotic to say that the events of this term’s presidential election have been historically unique, but they haven’t. Time and time again we have struggled with dissension, fraud, lies, and insurrection. Abraham Lincoln, one of the best-known presidents of this nation, won only 40% of the popular vote and wasn’t even allowed on the ballots in southern states because he was anti-slavery. Just weeks after his election the south seceded and people fomented for a civil war. This nation, in its brief history, has had many contentious elections. The democratic process has been tested, and improved, and tested, and changed, and tested again. Elections in 1800, 1824, 1860, 1876, 1912, 1948, and even more recently in 2000 between Gore and Bush have divided our nation.
The problem we face is a problem with humanity. We can never be united, no matter our similarities. We can never find peace, no matter how wise our leaders. We are born into sin. Even our noble aspirations are tainted with it. We are rebels. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that a bunch of rebels would demand what they believe is right from who they believe to be tyrannical leaders. It’s all happened before. Not just in America, and not just in other nations of the earth, but in heaven, too.
Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 tell the story of a being so marvelous and beautiful that we can’t imagine. His name was “light bearer” and he stood guard by the throne of God. Lucifer was blameless, perfect, and holy. That is, until unrighteousness was found in him. He became a trader of secrets and gossip against God. Ezekiel 28:16 says that he was “filled with violence… and …sinned.” It goes on to say that “your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor...” Isaiah 14 describes what went on in his heart when it says,
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
We don’t know everything about that conflict, but we do know it was a political war. God’s government was under attack and the underdog believed he had something better to offer than what God was providing. As we piece the story together throughout the Bible we can see a theme develop. Lucifer, the light bearer, became Satan, the adversary. Today we like to step on satan—everyone knows he’s a bad guy and he’s ultimately a looser. But back in the day he seemed like he could have a shot at overthrowing God’s government. His claims appeared legitimate. Legitimate enough to draw 1/3 of the angels after him, according to Revelation 12.
But his claims were entirely based in his own self-interest. He wanted to be in the place of God, but he wasn’t the creator, and could never be the creator. He could only ever be what he was, a created being, subject to the Father, the Son and the Spirit. He didn’t want to be a subject, he wanted to be a ruler.
All we know for sure is that there was war in heaven and the Adversary and all the angels who rebelled with him were thrown out of heaven. To where, we don’t know. The stories we are told are snatches of the history and pieces of the puzzle. After all, the Bible wasn’t written to tell heaven’s story—it was written to tell our story.
So let’s turn to Genesis 2 and find out how the seeds of sedition spread from the Adversary to the human race.
The Test
The Test
When the heart of a nation is at war, everything is colored by it. Even the good things. God’s government was at war. Though the initial battle had been won, the war continued. And earth was in the crosshairs. Like the angels in heaven who were given the choice to continue serving in God’s government or to seek their freedom by following Satan, God’s new creation on earth must be given that same choice.
Genesis 2 records the tender moments at the beginning of earth’s story. God created the sky and the land, the plants and the animals. Then, he planted a garden that would be home to the humans. He made sure that every kind of tree and shrub that produced food would be there. Then he bent down and formed Adam and breathed into him the breath of life.
Let’s stop there for a moment. The God of the universe is an intimate God that handles his creation. He is not a brute. He is not a dictator. He is a kind Father. Not only that, but he is a giving and providing Father. Adam had done nothing, said nothing, to earn it and yet God gave Him something special, life. The breath He breathed into Adam was His own breath.
God is life. There cannot be life without Him. Without that gift of life, Adam would never have been anything more than a clay figurine. That is grace. Before sin ever existed anywhere in the universe, a God who is love, created intelligent beings and gifted life to them. Lucifer had been given that same gift of life. But Lucifer questioned that reality. He began to wonder if maybe he, and all other living beings, had life in themselves. Maybe God wasn’t the all-powerful creator that gave them life. Maybe, they could live without God. At least that’s what Isaiah seems to suggest when he describes a being intent on usurping the throne of God. How else do you take over a government? The rioters in the capital brought a gallows with a noose to show the lawmakers that if they didn’t overturn what they felt was a stolen election, they should be hung for treason. That’s what you do when you take down a king—you kill him so no one else can follow him. But you wouldn’t kill someone you thought was the source of your existence. If killing them meant that you would die, you wouldn’t kill them. So, Lucifer must have thought that God wasn’t his source of life. Somehow, Lucifer looked at his God-given beauty and decided that he was not only deserving of that beauty, but that he was the originator of that beauty and not God.
Look at Genesis 2:15 and you’ll see the God of grace and life giving Adam a choice:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
We’ll come back to this statement in a moment, so look carefully at it and hold it in your memory. Notice that God says, “do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “in the day you eat of it you shall surely die.”
After this God gave Adam some work to do, and then he made Eve. At the end of chapter two there was a wedding, and the final words of that blissful story say, “and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
Jewish tradition states that Adam and Eve were clothed with a light from God, much like the “light bearer,” Lucifer had been, or like Moses who had spent time with God on the mountain and came down glowing so brightly that the people asked him to cover his face with a veil. The story in Genesis doesn’t say that they were clothed with light, but there is about to be a change that makes us consider this as a real possibility.
Genesis 3 opens with a sinister character—the serpent. It doesn’t tell us how Eve found herself by the tree—we’re left to imagine that all on our own. It also doesn’t tell us what Adam was doing—we just find him by her side about the time she decides to eat the fruit. We should be careful not to read too much between the lines here. The author has recorded the important points that we need to focus on.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
This isn’t an angel of light, or a demonic adversary that we’re introduced to, but a snake. Different translations call the snake crafty, or shrewd, or cunning. And the snake talked—something that is uncommon among animals. And what he said was deceitful and manipulative. It’s these attributes that make us realize that this isn’t just a snake—this Satan, either disguised as a snake or manipulating and speaking through a snake.
Notice how he begins with a sly question, “Did God actually say, ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden’? It’s like the snake is inviting Eve to correct him—like any good gossip would. “Do I have this story correct?” A not-so-innocent way to start a conversation.
Eve’s response is intriguing.
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
Wait, is that what God told Adam? No, God said, “don’t eat the fruit… in the day you eat it you will die.” But somehow, between God’s instructions to Adam and this moment where Eve is being tested by the serpent, the message has gotten muddled. God invited Adam to obey his instructions without explanation, but Eve now has some form of explanation. Maybe Adam padded God’s instruction to not eat it with “don’t touch it” so that Eve wouldn’t even get near enough to eat it. Maybe, when Eve heard the command, she made an assumption that she shouldn’t even touch the tree because it was deadly poisonous. Maybe… but we don’t know. What we do know is that Eve had this extra tid-bit of false information, and that there seemed to be an air of doubt already in her mind before the snake even spoke. Like Lucifer looking at his own beauty and wondering why God had limited him to being a covering cherub, Eve looked at the beautiful tree that had been forbidden her and she wondered why. Why had God said no? It looked like it bore good fruit. Surely, the fruit itself was not likely to be poisonous. And, if it was poisonous, what kind of a creator makes something that would kill people? Whatever the thoughts in Eve’s mind were, the snake quickly capitalized on them as she drew close enough to the tree to hear him speak.
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 is this claim that fills out the stories of Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. Satan’s claim is that God is withholding good things from His creation. He is arbitrarily locking us into roles and requirements that limit our potential and stifle our pleasure. He does this because He is afraid. He’s afraid of what we’ll do to Him when we are released from our shackles and rise to our rightful positions as His equals. Did Satan really think we are God’s equals? Yes. That’s Satan’s claim.
God said, “you will die,” but Satan said, “you will not die.” And he believed every word he said. No one had seen death. No one had any concept of what it would be like to not have life. This amazing gift of God was so common that they never considered the possibility that it could cease. We are gods! Satan boasted. If only you step out of the cage God made for you, you’ll become just like the one who claims to have created you.
Enchanted by the possibilities, Eve reached out and touched the fruit. She didn’t die. Her doubts were cemented and she boldly took a bite. By that time, Adam was at her side and she repeated the claims of the snake to Him and held out the fruit for Him to eat.
It’s not until the new testament that we find out that Adam was not deceived by the snake. His temptation was not to become like God. Instead, Adam had fallen so much in love with Eve that he chose a death with her over a life with God.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
The snake was right, their eyes were opened. But they hadn’t become like God. In fact, they lost the light of their creator. It was the first sign that God was right and they would die. In shame they tried to replace the light of God with their own artistic designs—covering themselves with the now infamous fig leaves.
But they weren’t dead. Hadn’t God said they would die? Yes. He said, “in the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” Before the day was over Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden. He called to them, “where are you?” Fearfully Adam called back “we’re hiding among the trees. We saw we were naked so we hid.”
Tenderly, patiently, God asked “how did you know you were naked? Did you eat the fruit I told you not to eat?”
Of course they had! God knew that. But he didn’t come to condemn them, He came to draw them out and back into His presence. He knew that nothing would be the same again, but the Adam and Eve had to be willing for the next step or else they would not survive the night.
The questions went on, and Adam blamed Eve (and the creator who made Eve), and then Eve pointed to the snake (and the creator who made the snake), and then something special happened. God started cursing things. Not in the way you and I curse. It wasn’t angry expletives flying all around. It wasn’t mean and unkind things. God did good things.
He cursed the serpent—a creature so lovely that it was more attractive and beguiling than all the other created animals, according to Genesis 3:1. If God had not cursed this animal to crawl on its belly, instead of fearing it, we would probably worship it.
Then he cursed Satan who had manipulated the snake, saying,
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
This curse on the Devil was a promise to mankind. The first in a long series of covenant promises that God would make. He promised that He would one day come as a descendant of Adam and Eve and would, as the Hebrew word implies, or fatally crush Satan’s head.
Just stop for a moment and consider the character of God. He’s just experienced sedition and rebellion. If what Satan said about Him were true, then He should be afraid or at least angry. Instead, he offers himself as their substitute—once again giving the gift of life, but this time at the cost of His own.
He keeps on cursing things, or at least identifying the costs that sin would bring to this world.
He said that Eve would experience sorrow in conception and pain in childbirth. How many women have been subjected to slavery and sorrow as their bodies have been used and abused? How many have suffered at the death of their child during labor, or have died themselves as they gave birth? This may not have been by God’s design, but it certainly has been a consequence of evil in our world.
God also looked at Adam and said,
“cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19, ESV)
When Adam and Eve consented to follow the advice of the Adversary, they didn’t realize they were falling into slavery. Satan is deceptive. He doesn’t tell you that obeying him costs you your freedom. He tries to make you think you’re enslaved by God, and then as soon as you follow Him into what He describes as freedom, you find yourself trapped and enslaved. Following Satan enslaves us to pride, power, greed, envy, violence, and addiction. Even though Satan’s influence would bring destruction and slavery to this world, God gave Adam a gift in this curse. Through hard work Adam would feed his family, and that hard work would ennoble his body and his spirit—drawing him back to his Creator with every plant that grew out of the ground.
The final curse was the curse of death. A delayed death. It wasn’t going to happen that same day, but one day, some years from then, they would die and return to the ground.
There’s another consequence of their sin that I skipped over. When God was talking to Eve about childbirth, he also said, “You will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” (Gen 3:16, NLT). A natural consequence of each of us trying to become like God is that we try to rule over each other. Women try to manipulate and control men and men try to manhandle and subjugate women. God’s design was for a man and a woman to be “one flesh”—a perfect unity of two different and equally valuable beings. Neither one could represent God’s loving nature by themselves, but together they would be the image of God. After they sinned, they broke that design. Instead of seeking unity and oneness, they began to seek power and dominance over each other.
The last verses of chapter 3 record Adam doing just that—he named his wife. You name things that you own. And, with the tender possessiveness of the first sinful husband, Adam named his wife, Eve. The verse says, “because she was the mother of all who live, and eve does imply motherhood, but the Hebrew word for Eve is chawwah which could also be tent or dwelling place, and its root word is chyh which means to “be alive” or “stay alive.” Eve’s name was both a sign of affection and bitterness—she was the mother of all living, but also the tents that they had to dwell in because God had kicked them out of Eden. She was the source of life for all mankind, but the reason that all mankind would be separated from the true source of life.
Because of their sin, God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden. They and their children lived for hundreds of years and the results were so evil that God had to cleanse the world with a flood. Imagine what the world would have been if no one could die. So God separated them from the tree of life and set angelic guards at the entrances to the garden.
Garments and a Sacrifice
Garments and a Sacrifice
Verse 21 has a remarkable piece of the story in just a short line:
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
It doesn’t tell how God obtained the skins, or how he fashioned them to fit Adam and Eve. It just says that God clothed them. His original grace had given them the breath of life and clothed them with his brilliant light. Now, after they had disobeyed, God extended his grace again by giving a substitute to take their death, and robes of animal skin in place of the robes of light. God was still their creator, and provider, and now he would be their ransom and their savior.
If we read between the lines a tiny bit, we can see God showing Adam and Eve how to confess their sin on the head of a lamb, how to kill and carve, and then burn the lamb on an altar. And how that lamb’s sacrifice was a substitute for their own lives, and essential for their redemption. How that lamb pointed to the true lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.
Conclusion
Conclusion
There are so many different directions that you can go when you read this story. Reading these verses you could go into the study of marriage or the nature of the occult or the doctrine of death, or the issue of gender equality. There are so many different focuses that it can be hard to find the golden thread of truth that is meant for you.
If you ever have this struggle figuring out what the bible is trying to tell you, then you should do what my wife told me to do as I was preparing for this sermon: find the goodness of God and the depravity of man; that’s where you’ll discover the main idea.
The main idea of this passage is God’s grace.
His grace in giving life to his creation, and covering them with his light.
His grace in being patience and tender after their rebellion.
His grace in providing the curses that would ultimately bless them.
His grace in offering his own life so they could live.
His grace in covering them with the skins of an animal—the animal that was their substitute.
Eve was wrong to think she could become like God. Adam was wrong to idolize Eve above God. They were both wrong in accusing each other and pointing fingers. And, as their children, inheritors of all their sinful tendencies and all the evil of our world, we continue to be and do wrong.
Yet, God still extends His grace.
He extends his grace as He provides for our needs:
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
He extends his grace in giving Himself to die in our place. He extends his grace in giving us life where we would have surely died.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
He extends His grace in promising us eternal life with Him.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
We may be tempted to believe the Adversary’s lies, but when we see the goodness of God our hearts are drawn to Him, and we confess the truth that we are wicked and He is holy.
Here is the golden thread in Genesis 2 and 3. God made you. God loves you. God gave His life for you.
God is good.