Paradise Promised

H.G. Wells was an English writer, quite popular in the end of the 19th century and the mid-20th

century. He was prolific. He wrote in many different genres. He wrote more than 50 novels,

dozens of short stories, such as The War of the Worlds turned into a classic movie with Tom Cruise

back in the day. He started life as someone who was, in his own words, sympathetic towards God

and religion, but he ended life as an atheist. He started life hopeful, but ended life actually

quite depressed and despondent. In his short History of the World, which is quite an ironic

statement, title for a book, quite a bold and ambitious thing actually, Short History of the

World, he wrote, can we doubt that presently our race will more than realise our boldest imaginations,

that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world made more splendid

and lovely than any palace or garden than we know, going on from strength to strength in ever widening

circle of achievement. What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state, form but a prelude

to the things that man has yet to do. That's written in 1937. Nine years later, after the awful carnage of

World War II, and just before he died, in fact, this book was published just after he died, he wrote

this. This is his final work. The cold-blooded massacre of the defenceless, the return of deliberate

and organised torture, mental torment, the fear to a world from which such things had seemed well

nine banished. Nine years later, from hope, the world is only improving, improving, improving, to

this is the end of all things. It's hard to avoid the conclusion, which is what we've been looking at

here in the book of Genesis, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world in which we live.

Every worldview, every philosophy must come to terms with the experience of life in this world, and the

difficulty of the experience of life in this world. According to the Christian faith, as we've been looking at

in the book of Genesis, our biggest problem is what the Bible calls sin. That is the linchpin of what is wrong with

our world. Last week, we saw how sin entered the world through the rejection of God. And what we're doing

today, and what we're doing next week, is we're hanging around this chapter a little bit to look at what the results of

sin are in our world and in our lives, and what God does about it. And so if you've got the St. Paul's app, there's

really two points today, with a couple of sub-points, just to expand it a little bit. But really, it's just the curse and the

blessing. The curse of sin, as we see in the Bible, has touched every aspect of life. It is

comprehensive in the way that life has been transformed. There's not a single aspect of life

that is beyond the reach of sin and its consequences. And so I really want to look at four consequences

really briefly, without unpacking them too much, four consequences of sin that we see in the verses that were

just read out for us. The first thing that happens when God is disobeyed is Adam and Eve are cut off from

God. They experience the curse of spiritual alienation. We looked at this last week, we're going to do it again,

verse 8.

Now, walking is a Hebrew idiom. It's an idiom for fellowship. It's an idiom for friendship. It's an

medium for closeness and intimacy. And this is what they had with God before sin entered the world. And

now they are hiding from God. We see it in the prophets. We see it in the New Testament with Peter.

Peter, when they are in the presence of God, they want God to leave. They want God to go.

They cannot be coping with the presence of God. They are terrified. They can't stand. They are overwhelmed.

They can't look at God. Now, of course, in our world, not everyone feels this sense of alienation from God.

That is mainly because anyone in our world who does not know the God of the Bible and his grace and his mercy in Jesus,

what has happened is we've created gods in our own image.

Sort of like if you watch The Simpsons for too long at all, and you will find the cartoon God of The Simpsons,

a God who is powerless, a God who just does not want to be disturbed, who wants to be kind of separated from the

irreligion and the religion of the world, a God who's disconnected, a God who simply shrugs his shoulders

and tolerates our views and our lives. And occasionally when he gets disturbed, he just gets cranky

and throws the odd lightning bolts here and there and so on. That's the kind of God that we have

in our mind. And so we don't feel alienated from that God because it's a God that we've made.

The Bible tells us that we are alienated from the God who creates, the God who defines,

the God who sustains all things, including our very lives.

The second thing that happens when God is disobeyed

is that we are cut off from our self. So spiritual alienation, alienation from God,

leads to personal alienation or psychological alienation. We do not know our true self.

Notice the contrast with Genesis 2.25, which says Adam and Eve were both naked and they felt no shame.

Shame. Shame is an internal uneasiness that's at the centre of the self.

The minute we lost God, there was a dislocation with the self.

The consequence of sin is that we are no longer easy with who we are.

Sin causes every single person to have a deep sense of inadequacy. When we lose God, we lose ourselves.

And the great John Calvin, the theologian, a church reformer, said that we cannot know ourself.

We cannot contemplate who we are unless we have first contemplated and gazed upon who God is.

With the loss of God comes a loss of identity and the drive to cover up that deep inadequacy that we feel.

There is not a single person alive who believes that they are entirely okay.

Not a single person.

Other people and circumstances in life might aggravate our sense of inadequacy, but they are never the cause of it.

They are never the cause of our inadequacy.

Spiritual alienation leads to psychological alienation.

The third thing that happens when God is disobeyed, for Adam and Eve here, is they are cut off from others.

So spiritual alienation leads to psychological alienation, which leads to social alienation.

Back to chapter 3, verse 7.

That is, they are not just hiding from God and they are not just trying to hide from themselves, but they are hiding from each other.

Sin, this is very general terms, but sin is the source of every single personal relationship problem.

Every single one of them.

If we cannot be utterly transparent with God, then we cannot be utterly transparent with another human being.

And unless we are resting deep in our hearts in the assurance that God delights in us, despite all of our flaws and inadequacies,

then we move into every single relationship desperate for the approval of others.

And we sit in the process.

Gossip comes from a deep sense of inadequacy in me, and it's the way that I connect with others.

Gossip becomes a relational connector point for me, where I'm constantly communicating information in the hope that this person will connect with me,

and love me, and approve of me in some kind of way.

If we are not sure about our own lovability, then we seek to extract it from others.

I'm just using gossip as an example.

I will destroy that reputation in order to build this one.

That's what gossip is.

It's relationally destructive in order to build this relationship.

If we choose people and relationships that make us feel good about ourselves,

that is one of the results of our social alienation.

I'll only choose those relationships that will make me feel good.

And in that sense, I'm simply using other people to build up my own sense of self because of my deep inadequacy.

And therefore, keep covering up.

Have to keep covering up more and more.

Keep covering up, keep covering up, keep covering up,

lest they will see the real me.

We can see how sin creates barriers in verse 11.

God comes into the garden.

He finds Adam and then says to him,

Who told you you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

Now, what God's trying to do here with Adam in this moment,

he's trying to get Adam to confess his sin.

He's trying to get Adam to repent.

He's trying to help Adam see that he has failed.

And so Adam has a choice.

He knows God.

He's walked and talked with him in the Garden of Eden for who knows how long.

He's got a choice here.

He could lean into God's mercy.

He could have admitted this point.

You're right.

I am so flawed.

I have done the wrong thing.

Instead, he makes a decision to justify himself.

In verse 12,

You see what he does?

Oh, come on, God.

Seriously.

You know that helper that you gave me?

She did it.

Not only is he blaming Eve,

he's blaming God.

You know?

I mean, if it wasn't for the helper,

we wouldn't have this scenario.

He turns the focus away from himself onto Eve and onto God.

And Eve does the same thing.

Verse 13,

The serpent deceived me and I ate.

There is even a breakdown in relationship with the animal world.

God, it's not my fault.

The dog ate the homework.

Not my fault at all, God.

God.

Racism, sexism, classism,

every other relational barrier that we keep fueling

is linked to Genesis 3 and the decision to disobey God.

The fourth thing that happens when God is disobeyed

is Adam and Eve are cut off from nature.

There's even physical alienation.

Verses 17 onwards.

Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree

about which I commanded you, you must not eat from.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you.

And you will eat the plants of the field.

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.

Into dust you will return.

We saw in the second message of this series,

humanity was created to steward creation as God's representative.

From the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed God,

it put them and us at loggerheads with the creation that we were meant to steward.

Things do not work well.

And there is this big problem.

Nature draws us in.

It is meant to draw us in.

We are meant to delight in it,

but it is not our friend.

Disease, floods, extreme weather, earthquakes, landslides,

and the weeds I was trying to dig out in my garden yesterday.

And on it goes.

And goes and goes.

Because sin ruined our relationship with the natural world.

The great English preacher George Whitefield once asked,

haven't you ever noticed that when you come near the animals,

they growl at us?

They bark at us?

The birds screech at us and fly away?

Do you know why?

They know that we have a quarrel with their master.

Nature draws us in and it wears us down.

It's why we go to work and we delight in it on one level

and it ruins us on another.

While it's satisfying on one level,

but deeply dissatisfying on another.

It's why the emails keep coming and keep coming and keep coming

and keep coming and they will never stop.

Now all of these alienations come because we have rejected

and we are now hiding from God.

This is how the Christian faith understands what is wrong with the world.

What the problems of the world are.

It's deep and it's complex and it's quite devastating.

Every single area of life is touched by sin.

Now I would suggest that every other worldview,

every other worldview, whether it be religious or secular,

is more simplistic in the way it tries to understand the world.

What I mean by that is other worldviews tend to identify

the source of the world's problems or our personal problems

in one or two of the alienations I mentioned,

but not all of the alienations of the world.

The stream right-wingers say that the problem with the world

is the left-wingers.

They're the bad people.

They're the bad people over there.

Those other people are the problem.

Others say it's psychological oppression

is the problem with our world.

Give everyone a healthy self-esteem

and the world will be changed.

Others say it's social isolation.

Learn to love

and the world will be problems and be solved.

You see, what happens with every other way you look at it,

every other solution wants to find some villain in the world.

And if we can solve that villain,

then our problems are fixed.

The Bible says that villain is sin

and it's touched every single thing in our existence.

Everything.

Sin's the problem.

It's not religion and it's not irreligion.

It's not right-wing.

It's not left-wing.

It's not this racial group.

It's not that racial group.

It's not the body nor the mind.

Sin is the problem.

And that's why the Christian church,

as well as the life of the individual Christian,

our response to a broken world

ought to be one of comprehensive healing.

comprehensive healing.

Some churches,

you might call these churches more conservative churches,

would focus on the spiritual alienation

and a little bit of the psychological alienation.

Others, which tend to be more liberal churches,

focus on the physical and the social alienation in our world.

What we desire here at St. Paul's

is to have an appropriate balance

of seeking to meet all kinds of alienations in this world.

The problems of this world are not just solved

by people needing just to love each other a bit more

and just by being accepting and embracing of everything.

Nor are they solved just by telling them

you need to repent of your sin.

It's proclamation of the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ

and works of service

of serving the alienations of our world.

It's all of those things.

This is how we seek to bless the world

that is broken by sin.

Which brings me to

the second point, the blessing.

How does the blessing come then to our world?

How does this broken world get healed?

Verse 15 is a tremendous hope.

Verse 15 is only one of two places in the Bible.

Only one of two places in the Bible

where God verbalizes a curse.

The others in chapter four of Genesis.

The only two places in the Bible.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.

What's interesting here is the division of the world.

The division between the serpent and the woman

and the serpent's offspring and the woman's offspring.

Now, is that saying, therefore,

that all people from here on in

are going to have a problem with snakes?

Well, now, I've got to agree with Indiana Jones.

I don't like snakes.

All right?

Not a personal preference.

Although, I don't like spiders more.

But that's not what's being said here.

Let me just take that out

in case you're putting that down in your notes.

John 8.44 sheds a little bit of light

on what's being said here.

You belong to your father.

This is Jesus speaking, the devil.

And you want to carry out your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning,

not holding to the truth.

For there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks his native language,

for he is a liar and the father of lies.

So the serpent's children, according to John 8.44,

the offspring are those who buy into his lie.

His lie that God is not good.

That lie.

And as we saw last week,

this lie permeates right through to every human heart

that God cannot be trusted.

He cannot be trusted.

In fact, this is not in your notes.

I said, for those of you who are reading it,

I said a couple of weeks ago,

the language, the name of God changes in Genesis.

So from in Genesis chapter one,

it is Elohim, almighty God,

the creator of all things, Elohim.

And then when he creates humanity,

it shifts to Elohim Yahweh,

the creator almighty God

who is in covenant relationship with people.

And I said, that is Elohim Yahweh

is the dominant name for God

in Genesis chapter two,

the end of chapter two,

right through until later in Genesis.

The dominant name.

There's only one place in Genesis

where once Elohim Yahweh is used,

it shifts back to Elohim

and Elohim Yahweh is not used.

Only one place.

In other words,

there's only one place in Genesis

where the disconnection happens

between a powerful God

and a relating God.

Only one place.

And it's in the serpent's dialogue with Eve.

The main thing that the serpent does with Eve

is he disconnects relationship with God.

And that is the impact of sin in our lives.

And we buy into that lie here

that he is not a good God.

That if you obey him,

you follow him,

you trust in him,

you will ruin your life.

And we buy into that lie

every time we gossip.

And every other sin.

If you want to be fulfilled and happy,

you have to determine

how to live your life.

And that is the lie

that's deep in every human heart.

Notice what God says here.

I will put enmity

between your offspring and hers.

First of all,

God says,

I will take the initiative.

I will put.

It's not saying here

that some are bad

and some are good by nature.

That's not what it's saying.

It says that God will take the initiative

and as a result,

some will reject the lies

of the serpent

because of God's initiative.

Those are the offspring of Eve.

Notice

that he doesn't say

the offspring of Adam.

Have you ever read that

and wondered

why Eve,

not Adam?

I mean,

this is a patriarchal society

where genealogies

were all about blokes.

So,

why

mention Eve?

Why emphasize Eve?

It's a good question.

I'm not going to answer just yet.

We'll get there in a minute.

What is intriguing

is the first part of verse 15

is that it's all plural.

Two groups of people,

children of Satan,

children of Eve.

Then there's a shift

to the singular

in the original Hebrew language.

At the end of verse 15,

he will crush your head

and you will strike his heel.

That is,

there is an individual

who will crush the serpent

and his lies.

And as he crushes

the serpent's head,

the serpent will be

in an attempt

to destroy,

to destroy him.

The he.

This person

is the offspring

of the woman.

Why not the man?

Why is it Eve

and not Adam?

There is only one person

in the history

of humanity

that was the,

who was only

an offspring

of a woman.

Only one person

in history

who was only ever

offspring

of just a woman.

Not,

I'm an offspring

of a man

and a woman

as you all are.

but not Jesus.

And we celebrate

the offspring

of a woman,

a virgin,

will conceive

and give birth

to a boy

and his name

will be called

Emmanuel,

God with us.

You see,

Genesis 3.15

is the earliest account

looking forward

to the coming

of Jesus Christ

who will destroy

the works,

the lies

of Satan.

When the creator God,

the rule of the universe

comes,

he's going to come

to bring blessing.

He's coming

to undo

all aspects

of the curse.

All aspects

of the curse.

He went

to the cross,

was abandoned

by his father,

rejected

by his friends

in turmoil

in the garden

beforehand.

Every single

aspect

of the cross,

every single

aspect of the cross,

of the,

sorry,

of the curse

is dealt

with at the cross.

And we sing

about it

Christmas

every year.

The Christmas

carol,

Joy to the World,

was written

by Watts,

based on

Psalm 98

and Genesis 3.

Joy to the World.

It's the one

we always end

with every year,

Joy to the World.

Joy to the World,

the Lord is come.

Let earth

receive her king.

Let every heart

prepare him room

and heaven

and nature

sing.

No more

let sins

and sorrows

grow,

nor thorns

infest the ground.

He comes

to make

his blessings

flow

as far

as the curse

is found.

Comprehensive

healing.

So first

application,

right in front

of you

in your seats

is invites

to bring people,

invite them

to Christmas.

It's all

about the

reversal

of the curse

that they

are experiencing

every single

day of their

life.

Joy to the

World declares

as the Bible

declares

that when

Jesus comes

to crush

the serpent

he is crushing

all the effects

of the serpent's

lies.

Satan

attacked him.

Satan

participated

and was in

great joy

as Christ

was nailed

to the cross.

Finally,

I'm killing

God,

not realizing

that at the

time his head

was being

crushed.

he came

to make

his blessings

flow

as far

as the

curse

has gone.

And so

as a Christian

church,

we seek

to make

an impact

in every

aspect of

the curse

and as far

as it's

gone.

As a Christian

church,

we welcome

everyone

here.

Everyone,

however sin

has touched

your life,

including

if you're

a habitual

gossip,

however sin

has touched

your life,

we welcome

you.

Whatever

impact,

it doesn't

matter who

you are,

there's not a

single person

who's excluded

from this

church.

church,

it doesn't

matter who

you are,

it doesn't

matter who you are,

it doesn't matter

whether you're

white-collar,

you're blue-collar,

it doesn't matter

whether you're

neurotypical or

neurodiverse like

me, it doesn't

matter who you

are, you are

welcome in this

church.

But we want to

bring healing to

your life,

healing to your

life.

we welcome

you, but we

do not affirm

your sin.

We do not

affirm it, but

we welcome

you.

We want you

to embrace,

embrace the

healing of

Jesus Christ

in your life.

Because that's

what the

offspring of

Eve do in

the world.

We spread

joy as we

seek to

work to

undo the

curse and

to spread

the blessing.

Not that we

all do

everything,

not that we

all do

everything,

each is

gifted in

our own

way and

have our

own

particular

unique

opportunities,

but this

is the

work of

the King

that we

at St.

Paul's are

committed to.

We treasure

Jesus

together for

the joy of

all people.