Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Origin of Our Marriage - Genesis 3:8-24 (Oct 23) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, I pray that in this room, even now in this moment, by the power of your Holy Spirit, God, you would cause every heart to long with that great desire, Lord, that you would be magnified in our lives.

And yet, Lord, I know how often in my own life, Lord, that's not my desire.

God, so often my desire is to magnify myself.

God, so often I'm so broken by sin, or even broken by the sinfulness of others, or broken by the suffering of this world, God, that it's hard to sing those words with utter truthfulness of heart, Lord.

And so, God, I pray for your help right now, God.

God help us.

Or there's no greater name to magnify.

There's no other place to run.

There's no presence to be in that's so delightful and so joy-giving as to be in your presence, God.

And so, God, help us in this moment.

God, help us to run to you.

God, I pray as we open up your word.

As we hear from you, God, that this would continue to be a time of worship.

God, that we would take our attention off of ourselves, off of this world that is so broken by sin, and place them on you, Lord.

The one who is glorious, the one who is beautiful, the one who is strong.

And God, as we see you, you would fill us with the joy that you promised to your people.

And so, God, fill us, we pray.

I pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

If you guys have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can open them up to Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 3, we're gonna be in verses 8 to the end of Genesis 3 this morning.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

I wonder if there's times uh in your life where this whole church thing feels kind of odd, doesn't it?

You come on a Sunday morning and maybe things are going really well in your life one week, maybe the next week your life is a complete wreck.

And you come in on a Sunday morning and hopefully you're greeted by smiling faces who say, Welcome to Redemption Church, but maybe on the inside it doesn't feel like that.

You know, you walk out from a pretty broken world.

Maybe on the drive here, your mind is on the hardships that you're facing at work, the difficulty in your family, the thing that keeps nagging at your heart, causing you to be anxious.

And you walk into this room, and sometimes it feels like everything's not broken.

And you're encouraged to sing songs like this: Great is your faithfulness.

I wonder if there are times in your life where maybe it's even this morning, you have trouble to utter those words because you look around this world, you see all the brokenness, you feel all the destruction, you feel all the evil, and how can you sing these words in a world that is so broken by sin, in a world that is filled with the shrapnel of the destruction of sin?

How can you sing these words?

Great is thy faithfulness.

Maybe you come in and your heart is so weak, you're so discouraged by the way that sin has been beating you down.

How can I sing, Christ, be magnified in me?

That hasn't been my desire at all.

So often we come in here and sometimes feel that the brokenness that we live our day-to-day life in in the world isn't maybe represented here.

Sometimes we have difficulty to get our hearts to the place that they need to be to hear what God has to say to us.

This is the reality that we can all affirm.

No matter the worldview, we live in a messed up world, don't we?

Turn to your neighbor right now, say, this world's messed up.

Turn your neighbor, this world is messed up.

I hear some people you've never preached a more true sermon.

We know that to be true.

This world is messed up, but this is the reality that I want you to know this morning.

In the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the brokenness, in the midst of the sin, in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the suffering that you are experiencing right now, that you have experienced in your life, God has a word for you.

In fact, it is the most important word.

God wants to speak to us this morning in the midst of our broken world.

And this morning, as we discuss the origin of our creation, the origin of our existence, I want us to look at the origin of our destruction.

Every once in a while it's helpful to our human minds to see pictures or maybe videos of destruction.

Like it was one thing on September 11th in 2001, it was one thing to hear that the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists.

It was another thing to see the destruction, to see the videos, to see the planes flying into the towers.

It's one thing to hear about hurricanes and their destructive forces and the magnitude of their power and to hear that they've wiped out cities.

It's another thing, though, to see the helicopter footage of the destruction.

Sometimes you don't really know how broken something is.

Sometimes you don't really know how destroyed something is until you actually see it.

It's only then that you know just how rip how uh horrific or how strong that power was that created all that destruction.

Well, what's happening in Genesis chapter 3 from verses 8 to the end of Genesis 3 is God is showing us the destruction of sin.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

What we're doing this morning is an open house tour of the world after it was completely obliterated by sin.

It's like someone took a grenade.

No, it's even more powerful than a grenade, someone took C4, someone took a nuclear bomb in the middle of the garden, set it off, shrapnel went everywhere.

The world is destroyed by sin.

Almost nothing is the same.

Everything is tainted by the fall.

Everything that was once blessed is now cursed.

And what we're doing this morning is an open house tour through that destruction.

And it's not only the destruction of the garden, it is the destruction of our lives that we still experience today.

It's the pain of that sinful action that you need to bear that someone did against you.

It's the pain of suffering in a world that is now plagued with sickness and death.

It's the suffering of working a job that maybe isn't the most ideal for a person who maybe isn't the nicest or filled with the most Christ-like character.

It's the suffering that we live in day in, day out.

And God this morning wants us to walk through it to see the destruction, but he wants us to do it for a purpose.

See, what we're gonna see this morning, I think, is pretty horrific.

At times when we see the sinfulness of sin, we want to turn our eyes away.

And yet I think it's the love of God for us to see the destruction of sin.

And this is why.

Until we see the destruction of sin, we won't see the sweetness of Christ.

I love what one Puritan pastor said, Thomas Watson.

He said, Till sin be bitter, Christ will never be sweet.

That's a good word for us this morning, church.

Till sin be bitter, Christ will never be sweet.

And so what we're doing this morning as we walk through the destruction of Genesis chapter 3, because of the sin of Adam and Eve, is we're tasting the bitterness of sin.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

We're seeing the destruction of our sin.

And what I hope is that as you taste the bitterness, as you see the destruction that sin causes, what I hope is that it makes you hate sin more and more.

So that we can sing those words that we just sang with even greater urgency, that our desire would be that sin would be minimized in our life, and that Christ would be magnified in our life.

But until we know the bitterness of sin, until we know the painfulness of sin, until we know the destruction of sin, we will not know the sweetness of Christ.

And so let's read this together.

Follow along with me.

I'm going to be reading from the ESV in Genesis chapter 8.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

It says, 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.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.

He said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?

The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.

And the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done?

The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I'll put enity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain you shall bring forth children, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

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 it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living, and the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins, and clothed them.

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

Now lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had taken, which he was taken.

He drove out the man, and at the east of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

I want you to see a picture of sin's destruction in Genesis chapter 3, and I want you to see what God is wanting to do in us as we see this picture of this destruction.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

If you're taking notes, the first point that I want you to write down right now is that when I see the picture of sin's destruction, when I see the sight of sin's destruction, I see the pain of my personal loss.

When I see the sight of sin's destruction, I see the pain of my personal loss.

See, this is the reality of our sin.

Every time that we choose to sin, every time that we sin, we are choosing to lose.

Now there are some uh financial gurus in here who hate that word.

We hate lose, especially right now with the markets the way they are.

We hate that word.

We hate to see the red.

There are some competitive people in here who will lose at absolutely nothing, no matter how simple the challenge is.

They make it a competition and they will never lose.

Quickest one to empty the dishwasher, I'm gonna win that competition.

We hate loss.

That's what it means to be a human being is to hate loss.

But what we see in Genesis 3 is that to commit sin is really to commit to loss, to painful loss.

And I want you to see what Adam and Eve lose, but before we see that, I want you to understand exactly why Adam and Eve lose because of our sin.

Because so often we have this kind of like, we're living in this broken world, and we have this attitude to God of like, God, how could you let us live in the pain of this broken world?

God, why are you letting us suffer?

God, what did I do to deserve this?

Why isn't my life better?

Why isn't it like this?

God, why would you allow us to live in such a broken and sin-cursed world?

And I want you to see exactly why Adam and Eve were in the position that they were in.

First reason they experienced personal loss was because they had chosen to be God.

See, the the problem of sin is a problem that instead of wanting a God, our problem with sin is that we want to be God.

And that was the exact problem that Adam and Eve had.

You see it right here in the text.

We read it last week that in verse 6, Eve begins to do what only God had done, and only what God was to do.

So in verse 6, it says, So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, wait, back up a minute.

Who's the one who throughout Genesis has been telling Adam and Eve what is good and what is evil?

This is God.

And yet what Eve has done is she's stood up and declared the thing that only God should declare.

She's looked at the tree and said, This is good.

And up until this point, it's been God that has shown Adam and Eve what is worthy of delight and worthy to be desired.

And yet in verse 6, we see again Eve playing the role of God.

That she says, she saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and was to be desired to make one wise.

And in that moment, she ripped God off the altar, off his throne, that he deserves to be on because he is the creator.

And she sat on it herself.

She did the same thing that we do every time we sinned.

She declared, I am God.

And this is why we experience such pain in our sin, because when when we say that, when we look to God and say, You're not a sufficient God, I make a better God than you.

And so I'm going to do things my way.

I'm going to live life my way.

The judgment of God against us is that He lets us do it.

Listen, if you want to be the God of your life, God is going to step back and let you do that.

Well, there's a verse for that.

It's in Romans 1, and I want to read this to you.

Romans 1, verse 18, Paul says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Romans 1:18

This is what Paul is saying.

The wrath of God is revealed against the unrighteousness of men.

And we ask, well, Paul, what is the wrath of God?

Because I'm looking at people who are living a sinful life, and it doesn't really seem like the wrath of God is being revealed against them.

And even when I sin, it's not like thunderbolts come from heaven and strike me dead.

It doesn't seem like your wrath is being poured out at all.

It doesn't seem like your wrath is being revealed at all.

In fact, it seems sometimes like sinners are prospering in this world.

Paul says the wrath of God is being revealed, but then in verse 24, and again throughout chapter 1, he continually tells us exactly how God is revealing his wrath against those who are living unrighteously.

It says in verse 24 of Romans chapter 1, I'll read it for you.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Therefore, God gave them up.

God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Again, in verse 26 of Romans 1, I'll read this for you.

Paul says, For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Again, in verse 28, Paul says he's emphasizing how God pours his wrath out, how he reveals his wrath.

God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

And this is the reality of our sinfulness.

When we look at God and in our sin say, God, I'm gonna do it my way.

I don't care what you have to say, I don't care how your word instructs me to live.

What we do is we choose to live on the path of destruction.

Again, we've come to this time and time again.

The only thing promised of sin is death.

There's no life on that path.

And when we do that, God stands back, and one of his greatest judgments of us is to let us walk on that path.

And some of you here are having the very wrath of God poured out on you in your life in this time because God is letting you walk the path of disobedience.

He's letting you walk the path that leads to destruction.

And you need to hear this word that if you want to be your own God, God's wrath poured out on you is to stand back and let you do that to your own destruction, to your own eternal death.

That wasn't the only problem for Adam and Eve.

The other problem was that rather than being fathered by God, they would have rather been fed.

And so, really, the verb that we keep coming back to in Genesis chapter 3 is this verb eight.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

We read it time and time again.

And we read it in verse 6: she took of its fruit and ate.

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

And again, as God confronts Adam and Eve in the garden in verses 11 and 12, he says, Who told you to eat of the tree which I commanded you not to eat?

The problem was that Adam and Eve were too driven by their physical and really spiritual appetites, that rather than delighting in who God was as their father, rather than in delighting in the relationship that they had with God, they desired the fleeting filling of the fruit.

And this is the same thing that we do when we sin.

Whenever we sin, we have a choice.

Do I want to be fathered by God?

Do I want to follow that great shepherd who in that memorable psalm reminded me that when the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

That those who follow the Lord are lacking nothing because their cup is overflowing.

And the choice that we have when we sin is do I want to be fathered by that God, or do I want to be fed with this temporary meal?

And the reality is that we choose time and time and time and time and time and time and time again that rather than being fathered by God, we would rather be fed by the meals of this world that do not satisfy that so quickly leave us alone.

This is why Adam and Eve experienced personal loss because they choose, chose to be fed rather than fathered.

They chose to be their own God rather than have a God.

And so now they found themselves in this position of loss.

Well, what did they lose?

Well, the first thing I want you to see that they lost was the presence of God.

So we find something really striking in verse 8.

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of day.

And we're not told exactly how often this this happened, but we can trust from other scriptures that God often walked with Adam and Eve in the garden.

This was God's desire in his creation of his people, and it was God's desire in his covenant with his people in future days, so that every time God would covenant with his people, his desire was this, that he would be their God.

We read this time and time again in scripture, and that they would be his people.

God desired to walk in the midst of his people.

This is why they were created, because it brought God great joy to walk in the midst of his people.

And so in the verse eight, we see the presence of God in the garden with man in the cool of day.

But what are Adam and Eve doing?

You see those horrific words in verse eight.

The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees.

Church, this is brokenness.

Because of our sin, because of our sin, we don't desire to be in the very best place we could ever possibly be.

Do you realize that this is objective truth?

There is no better place to be than in the presence of the Lord.

Better is one day in your courts than a hundred days elsewhere.

That's not it either.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

That's objective truth.

No matter how you feel about it, no matter what your worldview is, the objective truth is that you were created to live in the presence of God.

That means no matter how you feel about it, it's better to be in the presence of God for one millisecond than to spend a thousand years outside of the presence of God.

This is to be the desire of God's people, is to desire to be in God's presence.

But what sin does is flip that on our on its head.

So that so often what we think we need is not to be with the Lord, but instead what we think we need are the things of this world.

I wonder how many of you have this problem with rest.

How many of us long for rest in this world, especially in this time?

Don't you find October, it's so busy, and we're just staring down the tunnel of the busiest two months to come.

If you feel busy now, just wait till December.

The church, elders, and staff, we don't even book anything in December.

It's like church service, because we know everyone else is busy every other night.

Can you do Monday?

No, I'm busy.

Can you do Tuesday?

No, I'm busy.

That's how December looks.

Life's only getting busier, and we're only gonna be getting more and more tired.

And then eventually we're gonna die, and that's just how life goes.

Isn't it?

Life's just getting busier.

Where are we going to find rest?

And so what many of us do is we say, well, if I'm going to rest, I just need a night off.

I just need like a night with a converter, a bowl of popcorn on the couch, watching TV.

And once I do that, I'm going to be so rested and satisfied.

And then the show is really engaging, though, isn't it?

So we watch another show and staying up till two in the morning is not the most restful thing.

Or we turn to other things for rest.

Well, I just need an I just need to hang out with my friends.

I just need to get away from the work and the grind of life.

And I just need a vacation, and I just need this, and I just need that.

And what we do is we look at what the psalmist says, where the psalmist says, Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere, and we keep looking to the a thousand elsewhere.

Maybe I can get rest in that thousand.

Maybe I can get rest doing the things that aren't of the Lord.

When Jesus came to be present with us, he said, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

In that moment that you come to Jesus.

You're given rest.

That's the promise.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

What we need to be is in the presence of God.

That's what we were created for.

But you know what sin's destruction is?

Is that by your corruption, you believe that it's better to be elsewhere.

And so here are Adam and Eve hiding themselves, among what?

You ever notice what Adam and Eve are hiding themselves in?

In the trees of the garden.

In the trees of the garden.

Man, we could build a whole theology of trees.

Any arborists in the church are super pumped about us working through Genesis 1 to 3.

We've been talking about trees constantly.

Well the trees are the things that God created.

And the things that God created are the very things that we use to hide from God.

And I wonder how many of us here need to hear this reality that it's the created things that God has created that we use to hide from His presence.

And I wonder how the Spirit needs to wake you up right now to the things that you are using to hide from God.

Maybe it's your investment portfolio.

Maybe you look at that more than you look at the Bible.

Maybe it's your work.

Maybe you open your email more than you open the Word of God.

Maybe it's even something like your kids.

That you're so concerned about your kids that you're willing to forsake life and fellowship in the church on the altar of your kids.

The things we use to hide from the presence of God are the very things that God created.

The created things become the worshiped thing.

Rather than worshiping the Creator, we worship the created thing.

And this is the very thing that Adam and Eve did.

They hid themselves from God.

I want you to notice something, church.

I want you to notice something.

That when we sin, who is it that leaves?

You notice it's not God?

It's Adam and Eve that don't want to be in the presence of God.

God always wants to be in the presence of his people.

Don't you feel the opposite way when you sin?

When you sin, don't you feel like, okay, God's never gonna love me now?

Of course, he's gonna love my small group leader, of course he's gonna love the elder, of course he's gonna love the lead pastor.

They're so holy, but not me.

My sin is too great.

But here's Adam and Eve having just sinned, having just ruined God's paradise, and they're the ones hiding from the presence of God.

God is in the garden calling, where are you, Adam?

Where are you, Eve?

God's looking for them.

You need to know that the same thing is true in your life.

When you sin, it's not God that departs from you, it's you that departs from God.

That's why the promise of Scripture is that if you draw near to God, he will draw near to you.

But our sin, what it does is it clogs our desire to be in the presence of God.

And this is the destruction of our sin, that it keeps us from the very thing that we absolutely need: the presence of God.

This is the pain of our personal loss, it's the pain of God's presence, but the next thing that they lose is the pain of peace with God.

So then in verse 9, you see that the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid.

I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.

Adam and Eve were meant to experience delight in the garden.

If we read just a chapter ago, it was God who said to Adam and Eve, I have created this whole world for you.

You are the crown of creation, and I have given you every tree for your delight.

And Adam and Eve could walk through this garden that God had created and eat of the fruit of all but one tree, and enjoy the taste of this world, and enjoy relationship with each other.

They were created for each other.

There was so much joy in the garden.

There is joy in the presence of God, living in God's garden temple.

But now in the presence of God there is great fear.

And rightly so for those who are outside of Christ.

Because of our sin.

It is right that if we are not in Christ, in the presence of God, we have fear.

Why?

Because of sin.

What is sin?

Well, sin is enmity with God.

Sin is a launch against God's kingdom.

You remember how Adam and Eve got here?

It's by saying that they wanted to be God.

This was kingdom warfare.

Adam and Eve were saying to God, God, I can do way better than you.

You can't rule like I can rule.

I know what I need.

It was kingdom warfare, and they had sinned against God's created order.

It's right then for them to be afraid, especially if they know who God is.

It's right to be afraid.

So often in our lives we lack the fear of the Lord, don't we?

We don't have this fear in the presence of the Lord because we don't really know who God is.

If you really know who God is, you really, in the presence of your sin, especially in the presence of your sin outside of Christ, you're filled with fear.

You know why?

Because you look at God and you realize that God's a holy God.

He's perfectly pure.

And you look at God, you realize that God is a just God.

That those who sin against his kingdom will be held accountable.

Because you know that God is both these things, when you are in the presence of God and have personal sin, your life is filled with fear because you've sinned against the Creator.

You've sinned against the judge.

It's right for you to be afraid.

If you sin against a lesser being, you don't have to be as afraid, don't you?

Let me illustrate this for you.

You might have heard this before, but I think this is a really helpful illustration.

If I were to pull someone up on the stage this morning, I wouldn't do this to anyone here.

But if I were to pull someone on the stage this morning and spit in their face, there'd be some consequence to that, wouldn't there?

You'd probably be like, this pastor's kind of weird.

I don't think I'm gonna come back to this church.

Well, there's some consequence, okay.

I mean, that person might be angry and do other things.

It's a bit of an unpredictable scenario.

Well, what if I were to go to a police officer in uniform and spit in their face?

Well, it's a bit more of a consequence, isn't there?

It's not just you're gonna leave the church, probably I'm gonna get arrested.

I mean, I don't know the law, but I don't think that's gonna be a good thing.

Now, what if I go to court and I walk up to the judge and I spit in his face?

Well, that's gonna be even worse for me.

Because the more authority a person has, the worse it is for me to sin against them.

How much worse then is it that we have sinned even in the most insignificant way against an eternally worthy God?

Against an eternally authoritative God.

And if we have done that, even in the smallest way, that's just in one sin.

Think about all the sins of your life that have been all out warfare on God, the eternally worthy God.

It's right for us to be afraid.

And so often the reason we're not afraid, I fear, is because we just don't want to think deeply about who God is.

And I'm afraid that so often it's come from the pulpit.

So often what we hear from the pulpit are are these kind of cushy messages about Jesus' love and God, you know, you know, you don't hear about sin, you don't hear about the payment penalty for sin.

And yet if we're to walk verse by verse through Scripture, we find that our God is both a loving God and our God is both an angry God.

And it is right for us to be afraid outside of Christ in the presence of God with sin.

It is right for us to be naked and to try to hide ourselves.

This is the same thing that when Christ returns, it's the very same thing that people are going to do when they realize on that day that Christ was Lord and that they should have lived for him.

You know what it says in Revelations?

That on that day, people are gonna cry out for the rocks to fall on them.

Because they realize who Jesus was, they really is, and they realize who they should have lived their life for.

And so, if you don't have the fear of the Lord today, know that there is a coming day where you will, because you will meet God face to face, and you will know who he is in that time.

And God in his love has you here this morning.

That you might experience fear for a moment, that leads to peace for a lifetime.

But in our sin, we lose that peace.

We have only fear.

Last thing that we lose in our sin is the preciousness of God's creation.

And so in verse 12, we see Adam do maybe the most stereotypical man thing he could do.

The man said, when God had asked who gave him the fruit, the man said, The woman.

The woman you gave to be God.

She gave me the fruit, and I ate.

You remember just a verse ago, or just a chapter ago, what was happening with Adam and Eve?

What happened when God provided Eve to Adam?

Oh, it was like the most uh intense scene in the best romance movie you've ever seen, where Adam with poetic language says, This at last is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

He even intimately names her woman because she was taken out of man.

There's such a high degree of intimacy, such a preciousness of God's gift.

Adam is in love with Eve.

Finally, he has the fellowship that he was created for in Eve.

But now sin happens, and what happens?

We lose the preciousness of God's gift.

Adam pushes her away.

God, it was her.

It was her.

What does Eve do?

See, Adam and Eve were to have dominion over the serpents.

Now Eve looks to the serpent in verse 13 and says, No, no, wait, it was the serpent.

Adam and Eve are like even better than children at this blame game.

But what's happening here?

Well, the preciousness, the beauty of God's creation is being tainted.

The things that God had given to Adam and Eve for their good, they were no longer satisfying.

You know, this is the same reality about of our sin.

Whenever we sin, we take a good gift that God has given to us, and we try to make a God out of it.

And by doing that, we lose the preciousness, we lose the beauty of it.

This is the loss of our sin.

It's the great personal loss of our sin.

Every time we sin, we are choosing to lose in these ways.

We lose the presence of God, we lose the peace that we live with.

And we lose the preciousness of God's created gift.

The second thing I want you to see is that in the picture of sin's destruction, I see the promise of certain suffering.

I see the promise of certain suffering.

Now, this is the reality of sin.

This is a true reality that I want you even to maybe take this verse, this verse, not verse, this quote has been so helpful to me.

I've tucked it away in my tool belt in the battle against sin.

But I want you to hear this: that whenever you choose to sin, you choose to suffer.

Whenever you choose to sin, you choose to suffer.

The very foundation of this theology is in Genesis, where God, again, says to Adam and Eve, if you eat of that fruit, you will die.

The very choice to pick of the forbidden fruit and to eat of it was a choice to die.

And for Adam and Eve, the choice to sin was a choice to suffer.

And so what we see in verses 14 to 19 is that Adam and Eve are suffering because of their sin.

Everyone who was involved in the fall of mankind is cursed, falls because of their sin.

So first in verse 14, the Lord speaks to the serpent.

And he says to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

God looks to the serpent and he curses the serpent.

Now, this doesn't mean that the serpent was like a salamander before it was a serpent and it had four legs, but now it needs to crawl on its belly.

At least I don't think that's what it means.

But what it does mean is that now, all the days of its life, the serpent will be humiliated.

And even more so on that final day we read in verse 15, because now God says, I'll put enmity between you and me, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

What the curse for the serpent is, is this you are going to experience humiliation because of your sin.

And church, you need to know the same reality for you.

You are not cursed in the same way that the serpent is.

In fact, it's notable that in the fall of man, the man and woman are never cursed themselves.

God curses the serpent with humiliation, but it's the same humiliation that we experience every time we sin.

See, if you choose to sin, you choose to be humiliated.

Now, isn't it interesting that when we sin, we often think the opposite.

We often think that our sin is gonna lead us to glorification.

Isn't that what happens in like the moment of anger?

When you feel it welling up inside of you, what you think is I deserve to say this, I'm gonna make things right.

I've been bottling this up inside.

It's time.

Time for justice to be laid out and you start uh screaming.

Or maybe you're the opposite and you do that internal rage thing where you start seething, start planning, I'm gonna get them back.

But it never works, doesn't it?

Whenever you've yelled in anger, it's always turned out to humiliation.

Whenever you've said that word in anger that you thought would bring healing and restoration, it always turns out in an argument or uh in a relationship that's destroyed.

But the promise of sin is that it will lead to our glorification.

So the person who struggles with pornography is told that they can have any partner that they want.

They're promised a glorification, and then they're led to the darkness of their room or their abasement, or there is nothing but humiliation.

You don't become a god at all.

You don't get the treasure that you sought.

Instead, all you receive is humiliation.

And it's the same for the serpent, it's the same for us.

To choose to sin is to choose to be humiliated.

God speaks to the woman, and to the woman, he says, I'll surely multiply your pain in childbearing.

In pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

Now that I should have just done the whole sermon on this point and said, Because of sin, this is why childbearing hurts so much.

Then we could have some women come up and give testimonies of their labor and how painful it was, and I could just say that was all because of sin.

Okay, so don't go and sin.

That might be a really strong application.

But here's what we surely know is that the fall made it so that the very thing that Eve was gifted to do, she was gifted to fill the earth, we learn in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Hers was the role of multiplying the people of God.

The very thing that she was called to do would be painful.

It's the same thing for the husband, isn't it?

The curse affects our roles.

So if the husband was called to work and keep the ground primarily with the help of the wife, but now the ground is cursed.

Now things don't come easy.

The relationship they were given would also be spoiled.

So then in verse 16, the fall for the woman means that her desire shall be contrary to her husband.

But he shall rule over you.

Now there would be turmoil within the marriage relationship.

Now there would be differing desires.

Verse 17 to Adam he says, But because you have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Here is the message to Adam and Eve.

Everything is going to be difficult now.

Nothing is going to be easy.

And then the difficulty of this world, you're going to be driven even further to sinfulness.

Here's the principle that we need to take from the fall.

There's so much that we could go here, but the principle that we need to take is that there are blessings for obedience, that the choice to obey is the choice of God's blessing, and that there's suffering for sin.

The choice to sin is the choice of suffering.

Church, take this truth and put it in your tool belt.

And in the moment of temptation, remind yourself that that temptation is only going to lead to suffering.

It can't go anywhere else.

For all history of humanity, this has been the case.

The choice to obey is the choice to be blessed by God.

The choice to sin is the choice to suffer by God.

This is the reality is that whenever we sin because of our sin, because of our corruption, we're promised certain suffering.

Last thing I want you to see in this text is that in the picture of sin's destruction, I see the providence of my unrelenting God.

You know, it's amazing.

I think so many of us walk in here experientially, personally, knowing the pain, having felt the pain of the world that we live in.

And I can't know what's going on in your life, but I'm guessing that there's some heaviness.

Doesn't it feel like the days that are joyful and light are few and far between?

And so often in this world, the heavy days are the days that last and linger.

And in the pain of your world, God wants to show you a marvelous truth that He is a God who will not stop chasing His people.

Even though the world is destroyed, God will not give up on His people.

Even though your world is upside down, even though you don't understand how what's happening right now could be happening, God is after you.

And Adam and Lee and Eve live in this world that's destroyed by the nuclear bomb of their sin.

But here is God, unrelenting in his desire to care for them.

You see it from the very beginning, don't you?

In verse 8.

You see that?

Sorry, in verse 9, when the Lord God walks into the garden, what does he do?

Where are you?

Where are you, Adam and Eve?

Here's what we know about God.

God is not bad at the game of hide and seek.

He knows exactly where Adam and Eve are.

Adam and Eve are hiding at the back of the tree as though God didn't also create the front and the back of the tree.

It's like when your uh little toddler hides, and as soon as you walk in the room, you can see their feet poking out from the curtain.

God knows exactly where Adam and Eve are.

And yet these words are filled with such grace.

Where are you?

Where are you, Adam and Eve?

This is who God is.

He is the heavenly hound.

If you are his child, he will chase you down.

This is the reality of all who are saved in Christ.

It had to be God.

It had to be God.

This is the case as it was for me.

I was saved when I was 12 years old.

If you had asked me who Jesus was, you probably won't believe this, but I'm telling you the honest truth.

If you had asked me who Jesus was the minute before the conversation I was shared the gospel with, I would have said, I don't know, I've never even heard of that.

Is that it like a swear word or something like that?

I'd never stepped foot in the church.

I didn't know anything about God.

My family wasn't Christian.

I didn't have any Christian friends.

There was nothing.

I was not on the path at all.

And yet on that day, I'll never forget the moment.

I'll never even forget what I was wearing.

I won't share it with you because it's too embarrassing in my teenage years.

I'll never forget it.

When God stepped into my life and he said, Where are you?

Where are you?

And he sought me out.

I would have never found him if it wasn't for the place in my life that he had.

Brought me and the people that he had brought into my life to share the gospel with me.

And God stepped into my life and he said, Where are you?

I'm seeking you.

I'm going to find you and save you.

The same is true for all of those who are in Christ.

It was God who stepped into your life, whether it was the word of a faithful parent or the word of a faithful preacher or sometimes just some circumstance in life that led you to the Lord.

If it was God calling to you, where are you?

For some of you, that moment is right now.

For whatever reason you find yourself in this seat, for whatever reason you find yourself watching online, and the moment is right now that God is calling to you and saying, Where are you?

I know your sin.

I know the destruction that has been caused because of your sin.

I know the pain that you're experiencing.

And I'm calling to you, where are you?

Listen, God is not far from you.

God is calling to you.

Where are you?

The answer is not, will God come to you?

He's already calling to you.

The answer is, will you respond to the God who is calling out to you right now, just like he did to Adam and Eve, saying, Where are you?

Adam, God found Adam and Eve.

And in verse 20, it's fitting that the man calls his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

And from the very beginning, God wants us to know, through the faithful action of Adam, that what was meant for our death will lead to our life.

God's going to bring us life.

And so look what he does in verse 21.

It's so fascinating.

In verse 21, the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Adam and Eve had made themselves fig leaves, but it wasn't adequate enough.

They were still naked in the presence of God.

And so what does God do?

He makes them garments of skin and clothes them completely, robes them in these garments of skin.

What Adam and Eve were promised in the garden was death because of their sin.

And in the garden, what happened because of their sin was death.

But it wasn't their death.

The first death in the garden was not the death of Adam and Eve.

It was the death of the animal, which God sacrificed to cover Adam and Eve.

And God seeks us out.

He calls to us, where are you?

And then he provides for us exactly what we need.

What we need is an answer to our greatest eternal problem that someday we're going to stand before a holy God, and having sinned just like Adam and Eve did, we're going to stand naked before him.

And in that moment, God will know every single thing that you have ever done.

Even the sinful actions that you have forgotten about, even the sinful thoughts that you have forgotten about, all the sinful attitudes will be in a book before him.

And you will stand on that day naked and exposed.

And the question, the eternal question, more important than anything else, is what are you going to do on that day?

What are you going to do on that day?

And the only ones who will receive eternal life will be those who say, I have no answer for myself.

I could never justify for myself.

God, the only way that I can ever receive eternal life is if you will clothe me.

I'm completely exposed.

I'm completely naked.

Even my righteousness is like filthy rags.

God is so unrelenting in his pursuit of you.

You know what he does?

He clothes you.

And he's clothed you in such a more significant way than Adam and Eve.

He gave Adam and Eve skins of an animal.

For you, he's given his own son.

So that Jesus Christ has come to this world and he was made sin.

He hung on that tree to pay the penalty.

Just like God sacrificed an animal to take the skins and clothe Adam and Eve, so God would sacrifice his son to take his son's righteousness and clothe you.

So that if you are in Christ, you now live in this world destroyed by sin, filthy with sin.

And you are in robes that are pure as snow.

White as snow.

Because they're not your robes, they are the robes of Jesus Christ.

God has clothed you through your faith in Jesus Christ.

He has provided a way for you because he's unrelenting and he is after you.

Verse 24, God drives out the man and he places a cherubim at the gate of the garden.

This cherubim would be significant.

Every time that God would call his people to build either the tabernacle or the temple, there would always be placed a curtain in front of the Holy of Holies.

And on this curtain would be a very intricate picture of the cherubim to remind the people of God that the presence of God is no longer accessible because of their sin.

Because of their sin, God cannot dwell in the midst of an unclean people.

And so this giant curtain that covers the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God.

A constant barrier to the presence of God.

The people who so long to be in God's presence, who could sing, who would sing the psalm time and time and again, better as one day in your courts and a thousand elsewhere, could not be in the inner courts of God's presence.

On the day that Jesus was crucified, when he died, we're told everything went dark.

And in that moment, that giant curtain ripped into and fell.

And you know what it signified?

It was that the way to life was opened up.

The tree of life that was once guarded by a cherubim has now been removed.

If you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you now dwell in the presence of God.

Why is that?

Because he's provided a sacrifice for you.

Because our God is unrelenting in his chasing of us.

He will not give up on us.

As we celebrate communion this morning, we're celebrating this truth.

Jesus called us to do this in remembrance of him.

And if you don't have a communion cap, some of the ushers are going to stand come up to the front and walk back, and you just flag him down.

In fact, I need to flag you down because I left mine down there.

So I'm happy for these ushers.

Oh no.

He didn't hear me.

Yeah, can I come out?

Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, said to do it as often as you meet together, and he said to his disciples, You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Pretty odd thing we do, isn't it?

To drink some grape juice, to eat the stalest bread you've ever eaten.

It's a pretty odd thing we do, and yet we do it for a specific purpose because it reminds us that we have an unrelenting God.

He will not give up on us to the point of sending his own son.

Not just sending his son to preach a good message, not just sending his son to do some cool miracles, not just sending his son to cast out some demons.

God sent his son to spill his blood, so that his flesh might be pierced, so that he may pay the penalty of your sin.

It was supposed to be your blood that was spilled, it was supposed to be your flesh that was pierced.

Instead, it was the perfect righteous son of God.

And in exchange, he gave you his robes of righteousness and clothed you in his perfectly white robes.

And so we take this this morning to remember that truth that God has done this for us.

We ingest it, we drink it, we eat of it to remind us that this personally affects us.

This is in us.

Christ is now in us.

There are two reasons why you might not take this this morning if you're not a believer.

And that reality just isn't true for you.

Reality, there's a coming day, as we've talked about this morning, that you're going to pay for your sins.

And because you haven't placed your faith in Jesus Christ, that day's still to come.

The beautiful truth is in this moment now, as you place your faith in your heart of hearts in Jesus Christ, you can be saved.

You can participate with us this morning.

The reality that this cup represents.

The second is if you have any unrepentant sin.

If there's any way that you have not made Jesus Lord of your life, if there's any area of your heart where you're just saying, God, you're not allowed here, this is mine.

You're doing exactly what Adam and Eve did.

You're saying, God, I'm my own God.

Then you haven't really fully absorbed the truth of who Jesus is.

And so we would just ask that you would let this pass.

Paul says that to drink that is to drink fire and judgment upon yourself.

You'll find in your cup, there's two little sections here.

The top's gonna let you uh find the wafer there.

Before we take this, let me pray.

Heavenly Father, God, thank you for Jesus.

Thank you that his side was pierced.

Lord, thank you that he was unwilling to do anything but give all of himself to us.

So, Lord, that we could dwell in your presence.

God, this was your desire to dwell in the midst of the people, your people, to walk in their midst.

And you were so unrelenting that you would chase a sinful people who never would respond to you.

God, you would chase them down and save them, even sending your own son.

And so, God, we give you the praise.

Thank you.

God, thank you for this bread that we take.

Amen.

Jesus, on the night he was crucified, said to his disciples, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, This is the cup.

This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's pray again, church.

Father, thank you.

God, thank you for this all that this cup represents.

God, the truth, very truth that you would not give up on a sinful people.

God, you were unrelenting in your mercy, unrelenting in your grace to Adam and Eve.

And God, our testimony, if we're in Christ, is the exact same that you will not let us go.

So, God, we give you all the praise.

Thank you for the righteousness that you've given us in Jesus Christ.

And we pray this all in the name of your Son.

Amen.