MERCYhouse Nights Website.
It has postings about the new church plant, my podcast, and pictures soon.
Anyway, here is the sermon
Glad to have so many of you back (I hope). For those of you who are new, my name is Nate, I am the pastor of MERCYhouse Nights. We are still at the start of the sermon series for this semester, “From Creation to Christ”, where we will be walking through the entire Bible in 12 weeks, hitting the major points and big themes.
This week we are in Genesis 2 and 3. Let me say before we begin that I am going to be talking about a lot of hard things this week. If you can make it through this sermon, you will make it through anything. This is the section of the Bible known to theologians as the Fall, so we will be talking about some hard things this week. Bear with me. We will be looking at these two chapters in 2 sections, first, there is the special creation of Man, which we won’t spend as much time on, but if you join a housechurch you will have opportunity to discuss it deeper, and then we will get to the bulk of the sermon, which is the Fall. Let’s jump in. The other thing to keep in mind as we read these sections of Scripture is that I had to leave many things out for the sake of time. I also will touch upon some dicey topics, some of which are kind of controversial. If you have questions, feel free to ask me or Scott or any of the Campus Ministers we have her tonight. I would encourage you to do it in fact. I also want to say that people have the freedom to disagree with me. You may be wrong, but you have that freedom.
In Genesis 2 we read
Genesis 2:7-9
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This section is very dense, and as such, I am going to give a lot of information in a very little period of time. The first thing one would notice as one reads this in the Hebrew is the way the Bible is talking about God. In Genesis 1 we learned that the word for God was Elohim. This is true. It means God, but it is sort of generic. Here we see something new. In most of your translations it reads the LORD God, with Lord all capitols. When we see this in English, what we need to be aware of is that it is a proper name in Hebrew. This is the actual name of God, in a similar way as Nate is my name. The Hebrew word is YHWH. Notice there are no vowels. This is because the name was so holy the Hebrews wouldn’t say or write it. Consequently, we don’t really know how to pronounce it, Yahweh being what scholars have settled on.
Why am I making a big deal of this? Well, this is a different side of creation than we saw last week. What we see from the first moment is a much more personal God, one who has a name that he calls himself. That is not to say we didn’t see a personal God last week, in fact that was the point of my sermon, but there is marked difference. Some people see these as 2 different creation stories, and the name change is one of the reasons they point to. What I believe we are seeing in the transition from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 is not 2 different stories, but two perspectives on the same story. Genesis 1 is giving the big picture. It is an overview of all creation. And then, from the Cosmic, the Bible zooms in to explain human creation further. This is in part, because as I said last week, we are God’s pinnacle of creation, we are his crown Jewel, and as such special attention is given us, even in the telling of our creation. So we read a name a creator, instead of a generic God.
Along these same lines, what we see when we look at the creation of man are two things: 1. God formed him with his own hands, 2. He breathed into him life. I am not going to talk here about the first, though, like last week, there are many analogies to artists and creators today to draw, as well as laboring for ones love, etc. But we covered those aspects last week. What concerns us here is the statement, breath of life. In Hebrew this is the word neshema, so God breathed in to Adam, the neshema. So what, we may think. The neshema is important. Earlier in Genesis we read that all creatures have the breath of life.
Genesis 1:30
And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life,
But here the word is different. In Genesis 1, as well as when life of animals is talked about in the Law (which we will get to) and other places, the word is nefesh. This roughly translates into life force. It is like a soul, but not one. It is what people see when they look into the eyes of their pets and swear they have emotions. The fact is, according to the Bible, they do. But they are not the same. Humans have the neshema. This is a soul. The image we need to have of this is God stopping down into the Earth, molding Adam with his hands, and then breathing some of his own essence, the neshema into him. It is an intensely personal and intimate image. It is CPR to the nth degree.
The next thing God does is present Adam with a gift. He puts him in a garden that is lush and vibrant and full of life. Once more we see a God with a plan, the garden was created first, and a God of Grace, who gives good gifts before they are deserved. We see God initiating with Adam after he is created. And there is a tree in the Garden, a tree with a very long name, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are going to be consequences to this later, as we shall see. Let’s move on. We read:
Genesis 2:15-25
15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but 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."
18Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,
"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
There is a ton happening here. First, God gives man a job. Today we think of work as evil, and as we shall see, it can be today, but it was in the initial plan of creation. Adam was made to be a gardener- it was his calling. Work is not bad, but a God given gift. That may sound strange today. We have all worked jobs we have hated. So when I say work is a gift, we shirk. But, have you ever done something you love? I have a friend Tony and he loves wood working. He does it in his free time. He had built bowls and boats, and many other things. Wood working is hard work. There is a lot of labor involved, but he loves to do it in his free time. I image we all have something like this, maybe not woodworking, but writing, or painting, or knitting. Those are all work. That is the gift that God gives Adam. Adam was created for this work, and I imagine loved it.
And God also charged Adam to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the question always is, “Why did God put it there?” And the simple answer is so that Adam had free will. God wanted to love and be loved by creation, but love that is not a choice is not love. Have any of you seen the Stepford Wives. The plot is that the men of the neighborhood turn their wives into robots. They look like their wives, cook like them, etc., but they can never disagree with the husbands. We shudder when we see it and are offended. This is because these robots didn’t love their husbands. Love has to be a choice, so God, loving his creation and wanting it to be free, allows for there to be a choice not to love him back. We can get more into this in housechurch.
One quick aside. For the first time in creation we see that something isn’t good. Did you catch it? It is not good for man to be alone. We will revisit this later.
Then we see God try to create a partner for Adam, and it seems like God is bubbling about. He is making giraffes and manatees and presenting them before Adam and asking him if this is good enough. And they aren’t, so God makes more things. Or is that what is really going on? Remember, God is a God of plan and order. I highly doubt he expected Adam to fall in love with an aardvark. So what is really going on? The tip is that Adam gets to name all these creatures as they pass. To get the full impact of this, we again have to remember last week’s sermon, or know our ancient cultures. I told us that to the Hebrews words had power. More than this, to all other cultures around, if you could know the name of a god, you had power over it. As Adam is naming these creatures, the ancient reader would have heard two things: 1. He has power over them, and 2. That he was allowed to participate in creation. God didn’t make him guess the names he had already come up with. God allowed Adam to partner with him in Creation. He as allowed to name them. God has given some of his authority over to this brand new creation. He is giving Adam a stake. He is also, by contrast, going to show Adam how good the real partner is.
I imaging God telling Adam he will have someone soon, and then God shows him all these animals. Adam is excited, but disappointed that none of them are suitable. Sure they are beautiful and exotic, but they are not right for him. And then God says, ok. I have one more thing to do. He causes Adam to fall asleep, and creates woman out of him. And he uses Adam’s rib to do so. Now, I know it is urban myth that men have one less rib that woman, this is not true, but there is significance to being created from the rib. God, in a symbolic way is saying that woman and men are equal. He didn’t take from the head so she was above Adam, nor from the foot so she could be trodden on, He took for the middle.
And so God creates woman and then brings her to Adam. This is the first wedding in history. We have God the Father walking the Bride to the waiting and expecting husband, Adam. Remember, it is not good for man to be alone. If you don’t believe me, ask any married man how much better his life is now. He has a comb, clean clothes, real food. It is not good for men to be alone. All we would do is play video games and eat junk. Anyway, what does Adam do when he sees his bride? He sings a song! Guys, take notes on this. This is how you woo a woman. I don’t care if you can sing or not, woman can’t resist it. That is why rock stars are so popular. It all stared here. Blame Adam if you thin it is unfair. I also imagine he did a stupid dance as he sang. It probably looked like this:
This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."
(Imagine me actually doing a stupid dance)
But we have to cut him some slack, it was his first attempt at song writing, and there were not other woman around to teach him how to dance, so he can be a little of rhythm.
Another thing we see in this text. Does Adam say, “Well, she’s nice, but what else do you have?” NO. He doesn’t shop around. She is his, and he hers. He is not pointing out ways other women look, or things he sees as imperfections. Adam is a one woman kind of man so we need to be too. Same for Eve. She is brought to Adam, and then marries him. She is not asking God for another guy. They don’t hook up to see if they are compatible. They don’t do friends with benefits to make sure the magic won’t wear off. They don’t move in together. They aren’t looking for the next best thing. They see each other and get married. I am not saying that you should all marry the first person you see, but we do need to know that shopping around, testing the product, sleeping with people, is also not in God’s plan. He doesn’t create multiple people and let them chose the best, or go for test runs. He brought one woman to one man, and it was enough. And it was good.
There is another lesson here for all of us today. Men, you are the ones who are supposed to court. Eve doesn’t sing a song. She stands there trying to not laugh at the guy, but thinking he is really sweet. He is pursuing her. As I said, men and woman are equal, but there are still gender roles. I know that isn’t popular today, and I actually bet the men are more upset by this that the ladies, but please bear with me as we flush out what this means.
Ladies, don’t you want the guy who is going to buy you dinner, hold the door, sing you songs, write you poetry, make you feel loved. Of course you do. So hold out for it. Wait for the guy who is doing it all for you. Don’t pursue them. Guys, that means you have to step it up. Don’t wait for her to ask you out. You do the work. You sing the songs. We need to think of this as a dance. It only works if one leads and the other follows. But the follower is following voluntarily. The guys asks the girl to dance, and if she accepts he escorts her to the dance floor, guides her in the dance, and protects her from other dancers. This happened naturally and we don’t even realize it. This is the kind of roles we see in the Bible. Remember though, the lady can opt out of the dance or wait for the guy she really wants to dance with. It is not a dictatorial thing. We are going to revisit this in a moment.
Let me also say here, Adam is not the leader to be submitted to unquestionably by Eve. God is the leader. Adam has an authority over him. This needs to be true today also. Guys, you are not the head, Christ is. If you are not being a good guy, God will kick you r butt, because these women here are His children and he loves them and wants them protected. Ladies, this is why finding a guy of good character is important. You don’t want to be submitting to men who are not submitting to God themselves. It is a terrible idea.
Eve marries Adam, and things are great. They are both naked and unashamed. And then the story continues. We read in Genesis 3:
1Now 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'?" 2And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3but 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.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6So 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. 7 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 serpent enters with his eye set on making Man fall, and he does. How does he do it? The same way he continues to do it- by lying with the truth. He asks Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat of any tree?” He knows God didn’t say that. He is trying to twist the truth; there is a prohibition of eating from one tree, and at the same time start putting seeds of doubt into Adam and Eve’s hearts. The question is really a question about God’s goodness, is in not? He is telling them that God isn’t really providing for them, is He? An Eve answers him, “No, that’s not what God said, but he did say we can’t touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Did God say this? NO.
At this point, I imagine the serpent is touching the fruit of the tree all over and he is not dying. He knows that they were told just not to eat of it. They could touch it all they wanted. It is probably a good thing they weren’t touching it, however Eve needs to know that is their rule not God’s. Here is why it is good. Playing with temptation is a fine line. By playing with forbidden fruit, the temptation to taste it is a lot greater. What Eve had done by having the rule not to touch it was keeping a fence between her and sin. I do this is my life. I have anti-pornography software on my computer. Not because I had a huge problem with it, but because it lessens the temptation. I know every time I go to a website, it is logged and emailed to a trusted friend. Another way I do this is to not be alone with women in my house. I have set up a fence. Now is it a sin to be alone with women, no, it is my rule to keep my life above reproach. It is noble what Eve is doing, but she forgot it was not God’s words. That gave Satan a foothold.
The moral here is: know what Scripture says. If we only have half truths, or partial knowledge, or we make up our own things and add them to the Bible, like God helps those who help themselves- Benjamin Franklin, not the Bible- we walk a very narrow wire. All it takes is for someone to show us what we believed extra Biblically was wrong for us to stumble into sin. Know your Bible. It is the greatest defense. What does the Bible actually say about sin and sins? If we don’t know, how will we know what we can eat, and what we can’t? Take slavery, for example. People say the Bible justifies slavery, but in fact, it does just the opposite. They say this because in some letters Paul tells slaves how they should behave, and one of these ways is to submit to their owners. People read this, take it out of context, and say that the Bible justifies slavery. Now people abuse Scripture to justify their sins, but the Bible itself says that slavery is an abomination, and in 1Timothy lists enslaving with the characteristics of sinners, along with murder and stealing. If you hadn’t read 1Timothy though, how would you know that? Also, if you didn’t have the context of the letter Paul wrote about slaves, knowing that the slavery or Rome was different than American Slavery, and that they were to submit to win people to Christ, that the letter was written when slavery was ok, and was part of culture, and so it needed to be addressed, you wouldn’t know this. Or if you had not read Philemon, you would not know that Paul tells a man to free his slave. And the same is true for most hot button topics. But I digress.
And as the serpent is sitting on the tree of good and evil, touching the fruit, he is again planting seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind. He is questioning God’s goodness. Why would God tell you not o touch this? I am touching it and not dying. He is keeping something from you. And so Eve eats.
Ladies, Eve gets a bad wrap. We all blame her for sinning, and it is seen as Adam being an innocent bystander, right. Now, Eve did sin first, make no mistake, but where is Adam when all this is going down? Right next to her! In the Hebrew text the “yous” the serpent speaks are plural. Adam is right there, not saying a thing. Guys, this is our sin. I see it all the time- passive, weak men who won’t shepherd or protect their woman. Why hasn’t he stepped in and set the serpent straight. Why is he not telling Eve we can touch it, just not eat it, why doesn’t he stop her from eating. Guys, as I talk about gender roles, this is why women get upset. Often we don’t take the lead, and so the woman is forced to. We are passive, letting the woman plan the dates, pick the restaurant, cook the meal. We want to hang out, watch the game, veg, and so we let woman pick up our slack. The reason woman rebel against this is valid. Stop doing it. Be men. Lead, protect, guide. Now I am not saying be a jerk or force woman to follow you. Go back to the dancing. We need to be the ones who ask the lady to dance, make sure her feet aren’t getting stepped on, make sure she feels safe. Not the other way around.
And Eve eats the fruit, and gives some to Adam, and he eats the fruit, cause she told him to, like a weakling with no spine, and the entire world changes. Here too is something I think most of us are guilty off- we sin, and then bring others down with us. I know I do it. I used to be in a Fraternity and loved getting the new members to drink as alcoholically as me. We could share the brokenness and then I wouldn’t be as alone. I don’t think me and Eve are unique in this either. Most of us want others to sin with us, or bring them into our sin, don’t we? If we are not alone, we don’t fell it as bad. We have comradery in our shame. It all started with the first sin too. The story goes on.
8And 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. 9But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" 10And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." 11He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." 13Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
God comes back, and he knows something is up. Where are you, he asks, like the Creator of the Universe is fooled by two people hiding in a bush. And Adam says he was afraid because he was naked. Remember, not a few verses earlier he was naked and not ashamed. He saw Eve naked, she him, and all of it in front of God. God made them. He has seen all their junk before. There is no reason to feel shame, but the universe has changed. And God asks who told him he was naked, knows he ate for the tree, and is giving Adam the opportunity to fess up. What a great time for Adam to be a man. He can say I ate it, I didn’t shepherd my wife and she ate it, we are sorry, etc. But instead, what does he say?
“The woman you gave me! She made me eat! This is not my fault. It is hers, or yours, I mean you brought her to me. What a courageous and stupid thing to say to God!
And then God asks Eve what she has done. What a time for her to be a woman. God, I ate from it, I am sorry. But what does she do? She passes the buck too. It is the serpents fault.
Notice one more thing before we move on. Who sinned first? Eve. Who was blamed? Adam. Again, there are gender roles. Guys, we are the leaders of the house. When things fall, it is our fault. When we die and give an account, and we will, it is not just for ourselves, but for our wife and kids. Hear this. This is a huge responsibility. If you think, “I will just do my thing and let my wife do hers”, or she is working here butt off and you are watching TV, or anything else, know you will be called to task on it. If your wife doesn’t feel loved, guess whose fault it is- yours. If your wife eats of the tree of good and evil, guess whose fault it is- yours. Let’s move on before we run out of time.
Then God tells the guilty parties what is going to come of their sin. I don’t think God is cursing them in the way we think. When I think of a curse I think of a witch who makes evil come upon someone regardless of what they have done. That is not God’s curse. God is more telling like it is. He is not imposing this upon them so much as telling them the consequences Adam and Eve incurred upon themselves. He is telling them how the universe had just changed. We are going to skip over some of this. We read
14The LORD God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15I 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."
I don’t want to talk too much about the serpent’s curse here, though we will come back to it in a few months. What is important is verse 15. It is called the proto-evangelium by theologians. It is recognized as the first prophecy of Christ in the Bible. The idea that a man will try to be killed by a serpent, but instead Satan will have his head crushed will become on of the things the Messiah is supposed to do though out the Old Testament, and what Jesus did. God goes on.
16To the woman he said,
"I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you."
Here God is telling Eve a few things. First, one of the consequences to sin is that our relationship with ourselves has changed. We are not who we were supposed to be. There wasn’t supposed to be pain, now there is. This is a huge change. I deal with this all the time. I don’t know how many students I meet with, who, because of sin have hurt themselves. In a college town, this mainly has to do with booze and sex. People drink alcoholically and their lives are ruined. They don’t even know who they are anymore. But even more common is the sex. I see people having sex outside of marriage and thinking it is no big deal. And then they are crying in my house. The other person wasn't in to them, or it was just for fun, or had an STD. Today we see things like random hookups or friends with benefits and we believe the lie that it is ok, that there need not be emotional involvement, that it can be just for fun. Here is the truth. It can’t be. I have seen so many people devastated by it, or devastating someone else. My own story has this as well. I came to college, was in a Christian relationship, and we started sleeping together. The relationship lasted longer than it should have, because physicality bonds people together, whether they want to be or not. (A chemical called oxytocin, which is as addictive to the brain as heroine in released when we have sex, and then the body craves more of it. This is a good thing in marriage, because it also bonds people together, stimulating the emotional response center of the brain, but outside can be very damaging, binding people who otherwise shouldn’t be, and creating a need to get more of the chemical the way they did last time.) When we did break up, there was all the added stress of sin and unhealthy bonding. We ended up just sleeping together to get our fix, and both ended up becoming very hurt by the entire thing. I was changed by it. She was changed by it. I still live with the pain and sorrow of the whole thing. Our relationship to ourselves are effect by sin.
So are relationships to others. We read that Eves desire, or woman’s desire, will be for, or against her husband, and he shall rule over her. This is the other aspect of broken femaleness and maleness. On the one hand we had the weak guy who was not protecting his wife, right. The passive, TV watching, let the wife plan everything guy. We look at him, and woman say, there is no way he can lead me, and so they do it. One the other hand is this guy. The one who will rule over his wife. He is abusive, mentally, and physically, controlling. We look at him and woman say, there is no way I am going to submit to that either. And let me say if there is abuse in the relationship, get out. You don’t need to submit, it is not sin to not submit to abuse. Get out. If you are a guy and I find out you are abusive, I will show you why the elders of a church are called to be soldiers, warriors and tough. That is not a threat, it is a promise. A shepherd is supposed to protect his sheep, and I will do it. Shepherds used to have to kill wolves. Remember that.
So we have brokenness on both sides of men. And woman shouldn’t or don’t want to follow the lead of either. Very often what I see is men being passive at first, and then the woman takes over everything, and then they get mad at her for trying to be the guy. Guys, you need to not be either passive or controlling. As men of Christ, we are called to love as Christ loved the church- and he died for it. This means very often, the woman’s needs come before yours. That you are sacrificing to see her thrive. Again, ladies this is why it is important to find a good Christian man who is submitting to God. And guys, you need to submit to God, these ladies are crown jewels of Gods creation. If you are passive or abusive, He will not be happy, and although He is abounding in live and slow to wrath, he also pours wrath out sometimes.
Ladies, this is your curse however, and you are equally as broken as the guys. I see men who want to lead in a Godly way all the time, and independent, self actualized, modern woman won’t let them. I am not saying you can’t have your own life or anything like that. But what I see is woman frustrated men won’t lead them, so they put them down, complain, and then take the lead themselves. Or on the flip side, to find a strong leader, they search out abuse, which seems odd, but happens, or guys who are no good. Hear me ladies. Wait for him to sing you a song, and then respond to it. If he isn’t taking the lead, encourage him to, and don’t do it yourself. This may seem scary. Talk to my wife about how scary it actually is. She handed me the checking account when we got married so that she didn’t have to be involved with money, which was hard because she likes control, and I didn’t pay all our bills for a few months and her credit took a hit. But instead of taking the control back, she let me lead, even when I was terrible at it, and encouraged me when I was good. Today I am the leader I am partially because of actions like these.
I want to give another example of how sin changes our relationships to each other. As I said, I had been sexually active before marrying Sarah. Now after we were married, it brought a lot of pain into our first year. She was always comparing herself to my other girlfriends, wondering if she was good enough physically, if I still wanted the others, if she was beautiful enough. And I don’t think Sarah s unique in this. We may think sex is harmless, or see it harms ourselves, but it harms others more. Guys, do you really want to cause harm to your wife, the love of your life, by making her feel inadequate. Same for the ladies. Do you want them wondering of they would prefer another more, if they just settled, etc.
And finally we get to Adam.
17And to Adam he said,
"Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
'You shall not eat of it,'
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19By 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."
And God tells Adam that not only has humans relations to themselves changes, and their relations to each other, our relationship to creation has changed. It is no longer easy. Jobs are no longer fun. What used to be in submission to us, is now in rebellion, in the same way that we used to be in submission to God and are now in rebellion.
And then God does something interesting. He kills and animal and clothes Adam and Eve. We read:
20The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
This whole interaction is interesting for number of reasons. First, remember what the penalty or eating from the tree was- death. Not death sometime, not spiritual death, although these are definitely true, but real, instant death. Right away we see God giving grace. We also see a sacrifice being made. As we walk through the Bible, what we are going to see is there is always a sacrifice for sin. This peaks at the Cross, where God sacrifices himself for all our sins.
And finally, God gives his kids clothes. Remember, they were wearing fig leaves. I brought some leaves to show you how crappy they are as clothes. I imagine even in His anger and grief, this scene was still funny. So like a good Father, he continues to provide for his creation, even after it revolted against him. This is a God of love and mercy, not judgment and wrath. Finally we get to the end, and we see the trinity talking to each other once again.
22Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" 23therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
And even here there is grace. God blocking the tree of life was grace. Now we may not see it, but imagine living eternally in this world. Places where torture never ended, where we have to bare our sin for eternity, where rapes and traumas must be in our mind for all time. Imaging living in the ghetto, or starving for hundreds of years. Imagine having to toil forever. No, this was grace.
And this is also not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. What happened when Adam sinned, happens when we sin, is four fold. We hurt our relationship with ourselves, others, creation and God. We live today in a broken world where people are abusive, there is murder and sexual molestation. Work is no longer fun, but toil. We try to rule over others, or we are passive aggressive. We have holocausts and genocides and atrocities. We look at the world though, and see something more. We know that we were created for something better. We wonder why this place so jacked up. Here is the answer. Sin has entered the world. But it is not the end.
Yes there is sin, but there is also a loving God who is providing for us through it, who is giving us grace all the time. There is sin, but there is also hope. Although the serpent seemed to win the battle, his head has been crushed. We read in the New Testament that although all sinned through one man Adam, so too can all be made righteous through one Man, Jesus Christ. When Jesus hung on the cross he put himself in the same place that many of us have been in. He was convicted unjustly, beaten, maimed, mocked spit on. He was betrayed by one of his closest friends and abandoned by the others. The men, who just hours before said they would be with him until the end, didn’t even go to his grave. And as he hung on a cross, a word which has been so sterilized we forget that for thousands of years it was the prime way to torture some one, a machine that slowly suffocated the victim and allowed them to be eaten by vultures and other birds and rats and everything else while alive, a device that hung people up by their hands and feet, naked for all to see, he said, “Father forgive them.” In fact, the language is such that it is implied he kept saying it. A man who couldn’t breath kept uttering the words, “Father forgive them.” “Father forgive them.” “Father forgive them.”
The God who created these miserable little wretch called humans, the same creatures who cause so much heart ache and pain to each other, and to him, hung on a cross, dying in our place, so we could be reconciled to Him. This God who formed Adam out of the dust of the earth, who initiated a relationship with his creation, is the same God who initiated in the last way he could, and sent his Son to die that we might live. And through this act, we can be reconciled. We can be reconciled to each other, to ourselves, to creation, and to God.
I invite you now, if you want this reconciliation, to ask for it. God is stooping down from creation; He entered into it, He shared in your pain, and wants to bare the burden for you. All you need do is ask. He is there in the same way he was there for Adam. He made the sacrifice, now let him clothe you with it. He has done all the work. Our fig leaves won’t work any more. Ask for his clothing, for his provision. Ask that you might have a relationship with him again. If you’re here and are a Christina, or are not, I say, ask. We have all sinned. We have all fallen, and God wants all of us to have life once more. He is here with his arms spread wide, waiting for you to accept his embrace. Feel his forgiveness, cry in his arms, love him again.
Let us pray.
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