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PARADISE LOST (AND PROMISED)
First Things, Part 7
October 21, 2007
Pastor Bob Sanders
Genesis 3:7-24 (TNIV)
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.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
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."
16 To the woman he said,
"I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of 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."
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 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 them 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.
Carlyle Marney was a well-respected preacher and teacher back in the 1960s and 70s. Someone once asked him where he thought the Garden of Eden was located. He said, “215 Elm Street, Knoxville, Tennessee” – which turned out to be the address of his childhood home. The questioner was confused and said, “I thought it was somewhere in the Middle East.” But Marney said, “You’d be hard pressed to prove that by me, because it was at 215 Elm Street – when I was a little boy – that I stole some money from my mother’s purse and I went to the store and spent it on candy. And when I got home I was so ashamed that I hid in the closet. And it was there,” Marney said, “that my mama called for me: Where are you? And it was there that my mama found me, and asked, ‘Why are you hiding? What have you done?’”
Where is the Garden of Eden? I know: 912 164th Ave. NW, Bellevue, Washington – where I grew up, where I first stole, and lied, and hid, and was found out. The point is, to understand Genesis you have to see it’s not just about Adam and Eve. It’s about us. Their story is our story. The way they mess up their lives is the way we mess up our lives. Last week we saw how sin came into the world – through the sneer, the lie, and the tree. Today we look at the results. First, we get a diagnosis of what this terrible disease called sin does to us. And second we get a description of what God does about it, the hope for healing we find here. First the diagnosis, and then the healing of the disease. Let’s take a look.
The Diagnosis
What does sin do to us? There are four areas mentioned in our text, four major breakdowns brought into our lives by the disease known as sin. And as I hope to show you, these four make up a remarkably comprehensive diagnosis of the world we live in and show how sin touches every aspect of that world.
Spiritual Alienation
First, notice the minute Adam and Eve disobey God they’re alienated from God. They experience spiritual alienation. They’re cut off from God. You see this in verse 8, some of the saddest words in the entire Bible: “They heard…and they hid.” It says, “[They] heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Every evening God came by and they visited together like friends do. It’s a picture of intimacy, fellowship, closeness. But on this day they hid. Why?
Because the first result of sin is you feel cut off from God. You feel trauma in his presence. You feel uneasy, afraid, you want to pull back. Isaiah the prophet came into God’s presence and cried out, “Woe is me! I am lost, ruined, undone!” Peter fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord.” Even the best people, even the saints – whenever they get near the real God they feel like they’re coming apart. They feel terrified. They have to get away.
That’s the first result of sin: spiritual alienation. I know some of you won’t like this, and I don’t say it to give offense. But I know this is true and I care about you. So here goes.
If you say, “I’ve always been close to God and I’ve never felt any unease about God. I’ve always liked God and I’ve never felt any distance or alienation from him” – that’s probably because the God you’re talking about is a god you’ve created. A comfy god. A god you’ve made in your own image. A god who agrees with you and validates you and never challenges or convicts you. Of course you’ve never had any problem with that god! But unfortunately it’s not the real God.
If I said to you or to any roomful of people in the United States, “Hold up your hand if you believe in God” – the majority would hold up your hands. But what if I said, “Hold up your hand if you believe in the God of the Bible? Hold up your hands if you believe in the God who says, ‘Be ye holy as I am holy.’ The God who says, ‘I will by no means clear the guilty.’ The God who comes down to Mount Sinai in smoke and fire and says, ‘If you even set foot on the mountain while I’m here, you will die.’ The God who demands that we do justice and love kindness and walk humbly. How many believe in that God?” I think we’d see considerably fewer hands, because as soon as you bring out the God of the Bible, everybody gets uneasy.
See, we think we have the right to decide what God is like. We’re Americans, and we have the right to determine what’s right and wrong for ourselves. But the God of the Bible says, “No, you don’t. I created you, and I will define your existence, and I will tell you what is the meaning of right and wrong.” And we hate that. Why? Because we’re alienated from God. Because of this disease called sin.
Psychological Alienation
And second, this spiritual alienation leads to psychological alienation. Verse 7 says, “The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” This is the opposite of Genesis 2:25 where it says they were “naked, and were not ashamed.” “Not ashamed.” What is shame? Commentator David Atkinson says shame is “that sense of unease with yourself at the heart of your being.”
The minute we lost God we experienced shame – this deep, radical psychological dislocation. We no longer are at ease with who we are. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re made in God’s image, so when you lose who God is you lose who you are. Psychological alienation means loss of identity, shame, painful self-consciousness. It produces this deep sense of insecurity and anxiety, this feeling like I’ve got to do something to cover up the deep inadequacy I feel. I have to do something to prove to you and me that I’m OK. Where does this fear come from? It comes from sin – sin that first separates us from God then separates us inside our own selves, producing shame and insecurity. Psychological alienation.
Social Alienation
And then, third, social alienation. Spiritual alienation leads to psychological alienation, and that leads to social alienation. Look at verse 7 once again: “So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” What’s going on? They’re not just hiding from God. They’re hiding from each other. They’re afraid to be transparent, to be known.
Genesis tells us that the root cause for all of our problems in our personal relationships is the disease of sin. If you cannot be transparent with God, you can’t be transparent with others. If you can’t trust God with your real self, you can’t trust anybody.
Why not? Unless you know, unless you are absolutely certain God loves you and delights in you, unless you know you’re OK in your inmost self, how do you move out into relationships? You move out desperate to prove to yourself and to others you’re OK, you’re lovable. You never let people know who you really are, what’s really going on inside. You cover up. You hide behind fig leaves – or in our case, behind designer clothing, or behind a mask of irony, or behind career accomplishment, or (when those fail) behind some kind of self-medication. And that’s why our personal relationships are so shallow, so superficial, so unsatisfying. Sin keeps us hiding: social alienation.
And sin doesn’t just cause our individual relationships to fall apart. Sin also creates social alienation between groups of people. Look at this. God comes to Adam and says, “What have you done?” God’s trying to get Adam to open up, to confess, to repent. Look at verse 11: “God said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’” At this point Adam had a choice. He could have thrown himself on the grace of God and admitted he was a sinner. But he didn’t. And if you’re not going to admit you’re a sinner, you have to justify yourself, you have to find some way to bolster up that desperate, sinking feeling of inadequacy. You have to prove you’re OK.
How did Adam do it? Look at verse 12: “The woman, Lord. The woman you gave me. She was supposed to be a helper. Look at what she did!”
And here we see the start of all the problems with gender relationships, all the issues we deal with between the sexes, all the conflicts that come up in our marriages. But the point I’m trying to show you is this. When we reject God’s grace, we have to find a way to justify ourselves. How do we do that? We look at other genders, at other classes, at other races, at other cultures, at other groups – and we say, “They’re the problem, not me. I’m not like them.” Do you see how racism and classism and sexism all come from sin, from this refusal to rely on the grace of God? Do you see how it works? Sin brings spiritual alienation – separation from God. That leads to psychological alienation – shame and insecurity within each of us. That leads to social alienation – broken relationships and conflict between different groups of people.
Physical Alienation
And last of all sin brings physical alienation. Listen to verses 17 and following again. God says to Adam,
“Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it…
It will produce thorns and thistles…
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food
until you return to the ground…
for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
What does that mean? It means we were made to take care of creation. But when we turned our backs on God, it put us at odds with creation. And that’s why things don’t work well for us here. Sin infects our relationship with nature itself. Weather works against us. It’s too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet. Nature is not our friend, not anymore. And so now we have diseases – cancer and malaria and AIDS and so on. Now we have hurricanes and tidal waves, earthquakes and droughts. All because we’re no longer in right relationship with nature. And yes, we keep making it worse with pollution and disregard for creation, but the point is sin has put us out of accord with the physical order, with nature itself.
I told you a few weeks ago what George Whitefield, the great Anglican evangelist, said in one of his sermons. You remember how he said, “Why do the birds screech at you and the animals growl when you come near?” And his answer was, “Because they know you have a quarrel with their Master.” That’s pretty graphic, but it makes the point well. In God’s original plan, we were put here to work with nature. But because of sin, we’re at odds with the owner of nature, and as a result nature is just grinding us down.
Physical alienation. The very ground is cursed because of sin. Instead of fruitful work in a garden, thorns and thistles spring up, and we work in the dust by the sweat of our brow. And in the end, who wins? You remember Erma Bombeck? In one of her columns she talked about how the number one enemy of a housekeeper is dirt. Dirt on the floors, dirt on the plates, dirt in the clothes. You start at one end of the house to clean and before you can get to the end you have to go back and start over because of dirt. And then she said you fight with dirt your whole life, and in the end what is your reward? Six feet of dirt. She’s saying what Genesis says: “Dust…to dust.”
The Healing
Do you see how total this diagnosis is? No other philosophy, no other religion, no other political ideology has a view this comprehensive of what’s wrong with the world:
- Poverty and famine and hunger and disease and death – all the result of physical alienation.
- War and sexism and racism and oppression and crime and violence and genocide – all because of social alienation.
- Depression and anger and bitterness and lack of identity and anxiety and self consciousness – all from psychological alienation.
- And it’s all because we’re hiding from God, we’re cut off from God – spiritual alienation.
Sin has brought this worldwide epidemic, this comprehensive crisis. And the only hope, the only answer to this crisis is a comprehensive Savior.
Look at verse 15. Biblical scholars call it the “proto-evangelium” – the first time the good news is preached in the entire Bible. This is the Gospel according to Genesis. God curses the serpent and says, “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.”
What does that mean? Well, some dismiss it by saying it’s just an ancient folk-tale to explain why we instinctively hate snakes. More serious scholars suggest this is describing the age-old battle between the woman’s descendants (that is, us, all humanity) and the serpent (Satan, the enemy). That’s better, but it still doesn’t go far enough. What’s going on here?
Notice it talks about a person, a he: “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heal.” Who is this One who comes to wrestle with the serpent, with evil and sin and death itself, and crush it? Who is this Person, and why is he called the offspring of just the woman?
The answer is this. In all the history of the world there has only been one human being who was only the offspring of a woman. “A virgin shall conceive” – without a man – “and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” Right here in the first book of the Bible we have this prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ. It says when he comes he will destroy all the works of the serpent, though at great cost to himself. He will crush the serpent’s head, but the serpent will wound his heel. Remember what Isaiah 53 says? “He was wounded for our transgressions” when he died on the cross. And it goes on to say, “By his wounds we are healed.”
What that means is that when Jesus comes, everything infected by sin gets healed – physically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. Every one of those alienations will be put right. That’s the promise of the Gospel according to Genesis. We’re going to sing about it when December comes. There’s a wonderful hymn, a Christmas carol, and every time we sing it we’re singing about Genesis 3:15. Do you know the hymn I’m talking about? It starts off this:
Joy to the world! the Lord is come:
Let earth receive her king!
You know that part. But do you remember the third verse? The part where it goes:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
Who’s that talking about? It’s talking about Jesus our King. It’s saying when the King returns he will overturn all the works of evil. When the King returns he will deal with – what? With spiritual alienation? With converting all the people who don’t know him? Well, yes, of course. What about psychological alienation – dealing with the deep shame and fear inside us? Yes, certainly. What about social alienation and physical alienation – with racism and war and poverty and injustice? Yes, absolutely! It’s not just about saving souls. It’s about saving whole persons, saving culture, saving the planet. “He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
That means if you’re a Christian, you’re committed to healing all these things as well. Not that you’ll do every one of them. Some of us are gifted to help people find faith. That’s dealing with spiritual alienation. Some of us are gifted at counseling people, helping them work through their problems. That’s psychological alienation. Some of you are musicians and you’re trying to create beauty in an ugly world, some are doctors trying to bring wholeness and hope. Some of you are working to build affordable housing for the aged and the homeless in our community. Some of you are passionate about children in places like Senegal and Zambia and Honduras – lifting them out of poverty, bringing justice to an unjust world. Because the King will do all of that. Because all of these are the results of sin.
When you bring a person to Christ, when you bring yourself, your marriage, your family, when you bring a neighborhood, a sponsor child, an injustice, a need – when you bring anything to Christ – to the extent that you bring it under the Lordship of Christ, it begins to heal. It begins to heal now, today. Not total healing, but substantial. And then final, ultimate healing when he comes to rule the world with truth and grace. Healing for broken hearts and broken homes. Healing for broken relationships between neighborhoods and nations. Healing for broken bodies and broken minds. And we who are Lake Grove Presbyterian Church are committed to pray and to work for healing in all these areas – spiritual, psychological, social, and physical. Because that’s what Jesus does. That’s the work of the King.
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
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