Imago Dei Series: The Fractured Image - Genesis 3

To the book of Genesis and chapter one.

So we won't be traveling too far, but we'll start at that very first chapter.

Fyodor Dostoevsky said this.

He said, Man does wrong even when he knows the right.

And when he said that, he wasn't trying to be dramatic.

He was actually describing something he saw himself and he saw in every other person that he met.

That there's a contradiction inside the human heart.

Remarkably and tragically, we are capable of astonishing beauty and agonizing cruelty.

And sometimes even in the same hour.

I think all of us recognize that there's something within us that's bent, and there's something in us that's broken.

And we all just know it.

But it's more than just a moral contradiction, it's an ache in our heart.

There's something we feel, not just something we choose to do.

And everywhere that we look, we see people who are dealing with that ache, with that restlessness, with that longing to be something different than they actually are, are never able to be it.

Sometimes you see people trying to eradicate that ache through just diving into passions and pleasures.

Other people are filled with anxieties.

Some wrestle with a screaming emptiness and silence.

We're all restless.

We're all frustrated.

We're all wondering why things are the way they are.

And every one of us can say life just isn't as it should be.

Something's off here.

Something's missing.

But here's the thing.

Though every human heart says that, it's only when we really understand what was supposed to be that we can actually understand how broken we actually are.

It's only when we recognize the beauty of the design that God had for us that we can understand just how fractured that original image is.

And so before we get into the fractured image, which is the topic of this message in the Amalgo Day series, I want us to look at the design and to remember it before we dig into the distortion of it.

And before we face the fracture, I want us to see the beauty that God originally created.

And over the last several weeks, we've been looking at that.

We've sought to capture a vision of that beauty.

We've understood humanity, male and female, designed by God, stamped with his image, created for grand and glorious purposes, to reflect his person in this universe and everything that we do.

That we're marked with the dignity of that connection, and that we have been given a glorious purpose in our reflection of him, and that he's given us an amazing task to cultivate this world under his lordship and in reflection of his sovereignty.

We've seen that the image has shaped our capacities for reason, our capacities for righteousness, our capacities for rulership, and our capacities for relationship.

We've seen what we were meant to be.

And just for a moment, let's sort of reflect back on that and just read a passage that shows that to us again.

So here in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26, God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And they would rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.

And so God created man in his own image.

He created him in the image of God, he created them, male and female.

And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and every creature that crawls on the earth.

God also said, Look, I've given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed.

All this will be food for you.

For all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth, everything that having breath of the life in it, I've given every green plant for food.

And it was so.

And then we give this beautiful summary of all creation.

God saw that all that he had made, and it was very good indeed.

Evening came, then morning, the sixth day.

If the eight tells us that something is broken, Genesis 1 tells us what it was meant to be.

And before the fracture, there was only this beauty where God could look back on it in sort of retrospect, seeing everything as it's laid out in its order, and says, like he hadn't said with the other days, this is very good indeed.

What a beautiful, beautiful creation.

And us at the pinnacle of it all, in this unbroken connection with God, stamped with his image, living within his created realm, and enjoying an unclouded relationship with God, our Maker, filled with purpose and living with unhindered joy and fullness.

Humanity created with a unique connection to God that gives us dignity and was meant to set for us our eternal destiny.

You see, we weren't only made by God, we were made toward God and for God.

And that image that He's put upon us bonds us together with Him.

And it was meant to be visible.

The things that we've talked about here indicate that.

We were designed to reflect God corporately, male and female together, displaying his character, displaying his ways, and carrying out his purposes that he designed for us in this world.

And because we were bearing his image, we are to reflect him in every area of responsibility that we had.

And that image carries with it several different capacities.

And you've heard these words, the four R's that we've talked about.

Reason, thinking God's thoughts after him, righteousness, living in moral alignment with God's character, rulership, exercising wise and careful stewardship as God's representatives, relationship, loving God fully, loving as he loves, and giving as he gives.

Now, all those things are not random abilities, actually, they're the outworking of our image.

In fact, some people would look at them and say, either one of those or composite of those four things, or actually what it means to be in the image of God.

I would say that's not necessarily true, but they are intimately intertwined with the image because they are the first expressions of what it means to be made in God's image.

This is who we were.

This is what we were meant for.

This is the world as God designed it.

Ordered, fruitful, harmonious, and good.

Until.

Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

So let's just go a page or two over.

And there, in verse 1, we see the moment of fracture.

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, Did God really say, You can't eat from any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the tree in the garden, but about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.

No, you will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman.

In fact, God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

The woman saw that the tree was good, good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.

So she took some of its fruit and ate it.

And she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

So they sewed fig leaves together and made covering for themselves.

If Genesis 1 shows us what the world was meant to be, Genesis chapter 3 shows us what the world is.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And the shift between the two is not gradual, is it?

It is sudden, immediate, catastrophic, and the mirror of God's image cracks.

Let's take a look at this passage.

The serpent enters into the garden, and he enters not with blazing force, and he doesn't enter with accusations, he enters with subtlety.

He enters in with a question.

And his question is a deceitful question.

It isn't a direct denial of God at first, but it comes with a distortion.

Did God really say?

And that question was framed in order to provoke and to implant suspicion into Eve and Adam's heart.

He was trying to make them think that maybe God is just a bit too restrictive.

Maybe his generosity is really too small.

Maybe his goodness needs to be questioned.

Perhaps he is withholding the best and the good from us.

But notice what he attacks.

He attacks God's word.

Because if you can distort God's word, you're going to distort his character.

And if you can distort God's character, you're going to distort the arc of human destiny and dignity.

And so he uses a strategy he's still using today to question the goodness and to question the rightness of God.

And Eve listens.

And so does Adam, who's standing there beside her silently.

And in the middle of that silence, something grows.

The desire to be like God.

Not in the way that they were created to be, but in the way that the serpent was alluding to and suggesting.

That they could be God by being self-sufficient, that they could be like God by being independent.

That they could be like God by being self-ruling.

That they could be like God by designating for themselves what is right and what is good.

That they could be the arbitrators of those things.

And so the lure of defining what is right and what is good draws them toward disobedience.

And they eat.

And in that moment, the image is fractured, the connection breaks.

Not because God has moved, but because we have.

Sin is not simply breaking a rule, and many of us think that way.

Sin is breaking a relationship because at its heart it's rebellion.

And here's the creature indicating that it wants to be independent of the Creator.

Here is the image bearer rejecting the one whose image it bears.

And so that fruit taken, the bite made, and the world has never been the same since.

But what was fracture?

That's the question we want to ask ourselves.

We've seen the beauty, we've witnessed the fracture, but what actually broke within us?

When Adam and Eve turned from God, the image of humanity did not disappear.

There are two key verses that tell us that the image of God still carries forward with relationship to humanity.

In Genesis chapter 9, after the flood, in which God is speaking about human government and the responsibilities that we have of keeping an ordered society, talks about those who would take advantage of the weak and the vulnerable, and says that they, if they kill humanity, must themselves forfeit their life.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

Why?

For God made humans in his own image.

There is something grand and glorious and distinct even in fallen humanity after the flood.

To kill a person is to deface the image of God.

And so a person forfeits the right to live on God's earth.

James says the same thing.

He reminds us that we can use our tongue to bless God and at the same time curse people.

And the contradiction of that he intensifies by saying this we curse people who are made in God's likeness.

How can we bless God and curse his image in humanity at the same time?

How can we be so contradictory?

Again, the image remains.

But while the image remains, what have we lost?

Well, the first thing that we've lost is a connection.

That bond of humanity to God, that seal of love and trust.

It's now marked by suspicion and intentional distancing.

The relationship that once brought us joy, as we'll see in a few minutes, now brings only fear.

The God who walked in the cool of the garden or in the garden in the cool of the day is the God we now run from and hide behind trees and leaves.

And where that connection is broken, that means our reflection of him is also distorted because we are not seeing him as we used to.

We're running from him, and our understanding of him is distorted, and therefore our reflection of him is likewise distorted by the sin that we've committed.

And so those things of reason and righteousness and rulership and relationship are all aspects of what has happened in the fractured image.

Let's take them each in turn, and we'll take a short look at them.

Take a look at chapter 3 and verse 7.

And we see, first of all, distorted reason, distorted reason.

Created with the capacity to reason to think God's thoughts after him.

Now in the fall, our thinking is clouded and our understanding is darkened.

And Genesis says in chapter 3 and verse 7, the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.

The first thing that Adam and Eve understand is not enlightenment after the disobedience of eating, but confusion and shame.

Their eyes are opened, yes, but not the way the serpent promised.

Their eyes are opened to shame.

Their eyes are opened to fear.

Clarity and wisdom are not what they received.

Their perception is now clouded, and their understanding is now turned inward.

And what was once innocence now feels like shameful exposure.

Ephesians 4 in verse 17 says this that our thoughts have become futile because our understanding is darkened through the hardness of our hearts.

We still are reasoning people, but our reasoning has been affected by the fall.

Paul says in Romans 1 in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

Truth is there, truth wants to grow and to flourish, and what do we do?

We try to get our hands over the top of it and shove it back down because we don't want to deal with the truth.

Our reasoning is corrupted.

Think about Pharaoh as an example.

There, Moses comes to him, makes an appeal to him that should be reasonable.

He refuses in his pride, and in order to break that pride, God brings plague after plague after plague after plague.

And as he watches those plagues come and go and come and go, Moses says that instead of it opening up his heart, it just made his heart harder.

Evidence didn't melt his heart.

Evidence actually calcified and exposed his heart.

Sometimes we think that the problem of humanity is a lack of information.

That is not true.

It's not a lack of information, it's a will that refuses the illumination that's there.

The Bible tells us in Psalm 19 that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.

Day after day they spread forth their speech.

There's not a language on earth in which their voice is not heard.

We're inexcusable.

Our reasoning doesn't need information.

Our reasoning needs to be restored to the way God made it.

We see the pattern in ourselves.

We know what is right and we choose not to do it.

We hear God's word and we walk away unchanged.

This is why we misjudge ourselves.

This is why we rationalize what is sinful.

This is why we can be surrounded by truth and still blind to it.

Because our reasoning is corrupted.

And this is why salvation is more than just information for us.

It is meant to give us a transformation of our inward parts so that we might have God given clarity once again.

Now, secondly, our distorted righteousness, not just distorted reason, but distorted righteousness.

Before the fall, righteousness was natural.

We are simply living in alignment.

With God's character.

God, in all of his fullness and all of his goodness, is there in handfuls.

Everything you want to eat, you can eat.

All of it is given for you.

Barring one thing.

But now righteousness feels foreign.

And shame enters our story.

Look at verse 7 again.

They sowed fig leaves and made coverings for themselves.

They hide from one another, they hide from God, and they're hiding from each other.

And God calls to Adam, and in verse 10, he says, I was afraid because I was naked.

So I hid.

Isaiah 64 and verse 6 said, All our righteousnesses are like polluted garments.

Our best efforts are stained with self-interest and self-protection.

In 1 Samuel chapter 15, we're told the story of Saul, and he is there disobeying God's commands, and yet blatantly says these words.

1 Samuel 15 · chapter mention

While the sheep are bleeding in the background, he can't see his sin because he's so busy trying to defend himself and to self-justify his actions.

And so we find our righteousness, moving from fellowship to fear, from honesty to hiding.

And we are now filled with self-protection, our self-fulfillment and pride.

The fracture means that we don't not that we don't ever do anything good.

It's just that everything that we do that might be good or beneficial is bent the wrong way.

We do good and we want the control.

We do good and we want to call ourselves righteous on our terms.

And this is why shame clings to us, because we can never get away from it.

We realize that it's just not enough as much as we try to tell ourselves it actually is.

And so we need a righteousness, not one that we can produce, but one like we see in the book of Genesis, a covering to cover those things that we can't when we sow our own leaves together.

And that leads us to the third element of what is fractured, that is our distorted rulership, our distorted rulership.

Take a look at verse 17 of chapter 3.

Before the fall, our dominion was wise and careful.

We were stewards of God's creation.

We were reflecting God's person through our attentiveness, our protective and fruitful goodness in relationship to the created world.

But now God says to Adam, the ground is cursed because of you.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you.

And here in Genesis chapter 3, we see the ground itself groaning under our failed stewardship.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And Romans chapter 8 tells us that the creation was subjected to futility because of our rebellion.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Now work is still a calling, but now it is marked by frustration.

Our rulership is tainted.

The world that once responded to our humanity's touch now resists anything that we do.

Our rulership now is a struggle.

Our responsibilities become toil.

Our stewardship is really trying to eke out mere survival.

And if we do enter into stewardship, we often do in one or two ways, either through exploitation or abdication.

We either overdo our rulership or refuse to exercise our stewardship.

We grasp for control or we abandon responsibility.

Solomon begins his rule with wisdom and justice.

He's ruling as a shepherd king.

But as his heart drifts, so does his rule, and his stewardship becomes self-indulgence.

And the kingdom fractures under the weight of that excess when the rulers rule for themselves and the people suffer.

And we see the pattern in our own hearts.

Work becomes for us a place to prove ourselves rather than a place to serve others.

Our leadership becomes a means of control rather than an avenue of care.

Or we might, as some do, shrink back from responsibilities because it just seems too costly to step into it.

And this is why the things that we do feel frustrating.

This is why our efforts feel fruitless.

This is why we swing between over control or disengagement, because there's something broken and fractured within us.

Not just our righteousness, but our rulership is broken.

And this is why Christ's restoration means that we're not just forgiven people, but we need to be renewed people.

And that leads us to our last one, the distortion of our relationships.

Think about how we were made.

Made by God with His image on us, responding to Him, fellowshipping with Him in the evening, with the winds beginning to pick up, there with one another, without any shame, united with one heart, harmony with God, harmony with one another, harmony with all creation.

But the unity of Genesis 1 and 2 gives way to the blame of chapter 3.

Take a look at verse 12.

God asks Adam what happened, and Adam replies, The woman you gave to me.

Maybe I put the emphasis this way the woman you gave to me.

She gave me some fruit, and I did eat.

And God says to Eve, your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

Now there's a lot of ways to look at what that means.

But one thing we can say for certainty is that a relationship that was meant to be one of unity and harmony and compatibility has now become one of tension and conflict and power struggle.

Our love is still tangled with self-interest.

And unity is now given away to blame and conflict.

And the people that we were meant to cherish now become people that we use, or we avoid, or we accuse.

Genesis 4.8, the fracture shows up immediately, brother against brother, murder on earth.

James chapter 4 asks us this question What is the source of wars and fightings among you?

James 4 · chapter mention

Do they not come from the passions that wage war within you?

James is telling us that the problem is not out there, the war is in here.

It's a war that's spilling from within ourselves outward.

And this is why marriage strains and friendships fracture, and churches divide, and families are left wounded.

And so the gospel not only has to reconcile us to God, it's meant to reconcile us to one another.

It heals the war within us, so God can heal the wars between us.

And so, to sum all of this up, this moment of fracture has had a reverberation that lasts until our very day in all of these places.

The image remains, but every part of it is marred.

The capacities remain, but every one of them is bent the wrong way.

Our responsibilities remain, but they're carried out in a way that distorts God's good design.

This is the tragedy of the fall.

And this is why we live in this world and none of it seems to make sense.

Why our lives never seem to be utterly fulfilled, why the ache won't go away.

Let me just mention the consequences very briefly.

Genesis chapter 3 and verses 17 and 18, God speaks about this world and he says, the ground is cursed because of you.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It produces thorns and thistles for you.

Now, why is the earth subjected to these things?

Well, it was from the ground that Adam was made.

Out of the dust of the earth he was formed and shaped, and then placed into the garden to cultivate that very ground.

And so when he turned from God, this dirt corrupted the rest of the dirt.

And the world itself fell under this futility in which it still continues.

It's affected by that breach.

The soil that responded to humanity's care now resists our touch.

Paul talks about this in Romans 8.

He says, This, the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.

But there's something that I want to share with us.

It says, We know in Romans 8, it says, we know the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.

And there's two things to draw out of that verse.

One is creation groans.

The world groans.

We groan.

We hear it in the brokenness of our systems, in the fragility of our bodies, in the instability of our world, in the ache of our hearts.

I watched this video some weeks ago of a grandfather with his uh, I think a grandson, I think it was his grandson.

And uh his grandson was walking around the house going, oh, oof, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

And the grandfather's just looking at the grandson, going, Why is he going, oh, oof, and then he caught himself getting out of the chair and then moving across the kitchen.

Oof.

And the grandson was just mocking his grandfather or mimicking his grandfather by making the noises that his grandfather was making.

He the grandfather felt the ache of the bull the bones, but the grandson simply said what his grandfather was doing.

We feel that groaning.

But I want you to catch something that Paul says here that's easily overlooked.

Listen again to this verse.

The whole creation has been growing together with labor pains until now.

Isn't that an interesting phrase?

Labor pains.

Not death throes, labor pains.

Labor pains are real, and I've been told and I've seen that they're intense.

They're also unavoidable.

But what is it about a labor pain?

It's pointing to something.

Right?

A labor pain is anticipating something.

A labor pain is a signal that something is coming.

And Paul picks that up and says that this creation is groaning and travailing in labor pains until now.

What is it saying?

The creation is longing for the better day, that creation is waiting for the day of restoration.

The creation is aching for the moment when the sons and daughters of God are brought into full glory.

And on that day they will groan no more.

Because what is coming will have been realized.

Why does the world groan?

It groans because it remembers Eden.

Why does the world groan?

Because it's longing for Eden's return, if I can put it that way.

And this is the thread of hope that I want to leave us with.

Look at Genesis 3 again.

In verse 8.

The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.

What an astonishing comment this is.

Here is humanity fallen, rebellious, disobedient, hiding, humanity ashamed, humanity running away.

And God comes walking toward them, just like he did the day before.

He doesn't storm into the garden, he doesn't shout from a distance, he comes walking, seeking, pursuing, initiating, asking.

Verse nine, Adam, where are you?

God's not lacking the information of where Adam is at.

He's causing Adam to reflect upon himself and where he's at.

Adam, where are you?

He's drawing Adam out of hiding with this question.

He's inviting Adam toward confession.

He is eliciting from Adam honesty about what's happened.

He is in some ways saying, I still want to relate with you.

Adam answers sadly in verse 10, I was afraid and I hid myself.

Again, fear and shame and hiding have replaced fellowship and innocence and communion.

But even here, God doesn't abandon him.

Yes, he names the consequences, and yes, he speaks of judgment, but woven into these statements is a promise.

A promise that is so profound that theologians call it the Proto-Uangelian, the first gospel message.

God says to the serpent in verse 15, I will put hostility between you and the woman, between the offspring, your offspring and her offspring.

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

Right there, right in the middle of our ruin, right in the middle of our shame, right in the middle of our hiding, God promises a deliverer.

He promises that someone is going to be born of a woman, that someone's going to enter the human story, that someone's going to confront our enemy, someone who is going to be wounded himself, but ultimately will crush the head of the things that brought us this shame and this destruction.

Yes, the fracture is real.

Yes, the consequences are real, but God's commitment still is real.

He doesn't walk away from his image-bearers, and he doesn't abandon the world that he made.

And he doesn't leave the story in the hands of the serpent.

For the first time, hope enters into this world at the very same moment that sin does.

And that hope is what we're going to carry into next week.

Because we're going to look at next week the echoes of Eden.

But when we step back from Genesis 3, we see this world as we know it.

That's uncomfortably familiar to us all.

We see in Genesis 3 the things that we feel within our own hearts, hiding and fear, and blame and ache and self-justification.

These things are woven into the world that we inhabit and the lives that we live.

It's a fracture that's not just a theological category for us, it's a human experience.

It's our experience.

And yet, in the middle of that brokenness, Scripture refuses to let the story end in despair.

It's brief, but it leaves the story open for something different.

It tells us that God hasn't withdrawn, that He hasn't left us, that He is planting a seed of hope that we can look forward to.

And so we end this evening, not with an understanding of that resolution, but with a sense of quiet anticipation of it.

Because we still feel the pain and the ache of the fall.

We still know it's real, but we also know that our lives are not meaningless and empty.

We know that the longings rise up within us, but they're no accident.

That the groanings that we feel and the groanings that creation sounds are not the sounds of a world that's completely unraveled, but of a world and a humanity that's waiting still for something better.

And so this evening, I'd like for us all to appreciate better that there's a reason why we sense life to be different than we think it ought to be.

There's a reason why we feel a pull toward the good and the wholesome, even if we don't do it.

That there's a reason why the fractures in our relationships and the futility of our work trouble us.

Because those are all longings, not of weakness, but of memory.

Even though we've never been to Eden, we remember it and we feel it because we want it to come back so we can actually experience it.

The reminders to us that our story began in beauty, and we have a God who speaks promise that one day it'll be beautiful again.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that we have been given the lines of this story far better than Adam and Eve received it on that day.

We know it captured their hearts.

We know that they longed for.

It to be realized in third time.

For when that first child was born, Eve cried out, I've received a child, the Lord, thinking perhaps that that first one that was born would be that very deliverer that you spoke about.

And here we are, thousands of years later, knowing that in the fullness of time, made of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that are under the curse of the law, Jesus Christ is come.

And we know that your word tells us that this one will crush the serpent's head under our feet shortly.

And so, Father, with a better understanding of the story as it unfolds, with still the ache of fulfillment still residing within us, we cry out, even so come, Lord Jesus.

Bring these days of woe to an end.

And may those labor pains that creation groans with produce the fullness of eternal life in the manifestation of the children of God.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.