Bible Study Genesis Part 43-Take This Job and...

Welcome to the program Study in the Chapel.

God's Word is supreme at Chapel Ministries.

We consider it absolutely essential to a proper relationship with God.

We study it, we love it, we rely on it every minute of every day.

The following program is an edited recording of the regular Bible studies we hold.

And we decided to share these with you in the hope that you too will be able to find inspiration, encouragement, and ultimately salvation through discovering Christ in Scripture.

Our intention is to travel all the way through the Bible.

It will be a challenging journey, but one that will undoubtedly bring you to a decision.

Through this study, you will be faced with either believing or rejecting what God has said to us.

It is our intention to provide you with enough knowledge to make an informed decision about God and his word.

We strongly encourage you to listen intently and diligently, because though at the moment you may not realize it, these things are truly a matter of life and death.

In fact, these are matters of eternal life and eternal death.

Never treat what God has said lightly.

There's truly nothing more important to you.

Now join us as we seek God's will through his inspired word.

You know, the one thing you're going to notice about this ministry is that it's all about God's word.

So if you're not interested in that, then you may as well move on because that's all we do.

We don't talk about politics, we don't talk about social arrangements, we don't talk about anything like that.

We talk about God's Word.

Now, sometimes we'll bring it up in the context of the conversation that's going on in God's Word, but usually all we do is concentrate on the Word.

So we are going to get started right away because we have a lot to cover.

Last time we were talking about the curses on Eve, it was uncomfortable.

As you remember, it was difficult.

But I ask you, what curse isn't?

Now let's deal with Adam.

When God first confronted him about his sin, Adam basically said, Well, she talked me into it.

She made me do it.

Now it seems hard to believe, but he must have somehow thought that would get him out of trouble.

Well, in response, God says, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, God immediately throws it right back on Adam.

Listen, you were the one who hearkened.

She may have offered, but you hearkened.

God cannot be so easily fooled.

God does not fall vic fall for the victim excuse.

He knows every situation that leads to sin, and he never accepts any excuses.

Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Listen, Adam, Eve didn't put a gun to your head.

She didn't threaten you with a divorce.

She didn't even really seem to try and convince you to take the fruit.

She just handed it to you and you ate it.

The reason you disobeyed God has no bearing on your guilt.

The simple fact is you disobeyed, and that's enough.

And by the way, that's one of the big differences between God's justice and ours.

And one of the most difficult things that we have to teach when we teach God's word is that his justice is not the same as ours.

Our sense of right and wrong is variable.

We seem to think that there are times when sinning is appropriate and allowed.

Of course, we leave it up to ourselves to make that determination.

We appoint ourselves the judge of the situation as to what action should be taken.

In fact, there are times when we seem to believe that sin is the preferred way to handle things.

Not so with God.

To him, disobedience is disobedience.

You cannot talk your way out of disobeying God.

If we truly want a society that's peaceful and safe and just, then we must see things as God sees them.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Now let me repeat what I've said a lot over the years.

We too often fail to see the impact of certain statements from Scripture.

We're just too familiar with the things it says.

We've heard this stuff so many times, we hardly think of it anymore.

Of course, there's also the fact that we just don't believe what the Bible says.

We don't take it seriously.

And I think it's the fault of our church leaders most of the time.

They don't seem to put much stock into what's said, so then why should we?

And besides all that, we're also victims of our so-called modern times.

The Bible is not highly regarded in our society.

Even when what it contains initially strikes us with excitement or fear or whatever, we're quickly rebuked by the world around us to not be so foolish.

Don't take to heart such silliness.

Don't give these things a second thought.

They're the primitive musings of cavemen only.

Genesis 3:17 contains some of the most remarkable and far-reaching statements ever written down, and yet very few of us give it the least bit of attention.

Genesis 3:17

You know, a few years ago, I'm not telling you something you don't already know, the world descended into a very stressful and for some, a very deadly phase of history.

At the beginning of 2020, even before that, for some, COVID-19 started spreading through the entire earth.

Though it seemed like the world had expected and planned for some sort of pandemic.

I'd seen pandemic plans and business plans all the time.

It sure seemed that this one, though, put the world back on its heels.

When it first started making its way through every corner of the planet, many started to panic.

People were dying at rates we had not seen in our time or our part of the world.

I think most of you agree that the events of the past few years seem to have changed a lot of how we think.

The pandemic's ferocity and ubiquity scared and shocked nearly everyone, including Christians.

Believers and non-believers were asking the same question.

Why?

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.

Listen to this.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

Now we've been talking about creation for months and months, and up to this point it's all been paradise.

We've said it so many times that I'm sure you're sick of it by now, but let me say it again.

When God created this earth, it was meant to be perfect.

Everything God put into it was meant to be perfect.

God made a perfect environment for mankind to live peacefully, healthfully, and fruitfully.

There was nothing in all the earth that could threaten or impede the physical, spiritual, mental, emotional well-being of Adam's descendants.

There was no disease, no death, no depression, not even melancholy.

God put man in the midst, I'll say it again, of paradise.

Unending, ever-flowing bounty.

The world in 2020 looked nothing like that, nothing.

And need I remind you, 2023 doesn't look any better.

And now I'm no prophet, but if Jesus doesn't come first, 2024 will be just as bad and likely worse.

Disease, still here.

Climate change, yep.

Fear, yep, death, yep, despair, yes.

And you know, we little arrogant fools think we can fix all of it, despite the fact that we are the ones that caused it.

And listen, you don't have to ever read the book of Genesis to figure that out.

If you know even just a little bit about natural science, you know that humans, for the most part, are the only ones who just can't seem to get along with nature.

It seems like by and large, we're at war with everything that's outside our front doors and a lot that's on the inside, too.

It's so obvious, it's so universally true, it's so us, it makes you ask the question, why?

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

I know loving, church-going, God-worshipping people who will just not accept Genesis 3, 17 through 19 as the cause of all of our troubles.

In fact, I know some of you very well.

And I suspect there are people listening to me right now who are in their hearts disappointed in me for suggesting that the woes of the world can be traced back to this only one source.

You pity my ignorance.

You may even question my sincerity.

Ah, he says that, but he couldn't believe it.

He's educated.

There's no way he believes something like that.

Some of you wonderful people might think it's lunacy to believe that the cursing of the ground is still being felt to this very day, if it was ever true.

All right, to those that hold that view, let me ask this one simple question.

If not this, then what?

Listen, our problems are universal.

No one escapes.

Rich and poor, king and peasant, boss and laborer, something affected us all.

The sin of Adam, the Bible tells us, made it necessary for the very agent of creation.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was the mechanism of the creative process.

The sin of Adam was so bad, the world got in such a mess that it brought Jesus off his throne to suffer a miserable life and a grisly death.

And that was our only hope.

That was God's only plan.

I mean, if God could avoid sending his own son, don't you think he would have?

That fact alone grandly displays that the actions of Adam must have caused significant damage.

So significant that only a God could fix it.

Listen, COVID would have never hit had sin not happened.

Listen, you can blame all the monkey bat soup snake eating foreign biolabs you want, but none of those things would have caused so much as a blemish had sin not already critically weakened a perfect world.

Again, there aren't going to be a whole lot of people who want to accept such a simple explanation.

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and has eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake, and sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistle.

Listen, we have to remember another prophecy.

This is another prophecy.

There has to be two meanings to this prophecy.

If God is just talking about the fields that Adam is going to have to work, why share it with us?

Why is it in this book?

Because this is what we experience every day of our lives.

I'm really getting tired of you bringing me down, man.

When are you going to start saying some nice things?

When Jesus comes back.

Thorns also and thistles shall I bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground.

For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Most of us have said at least once in our lives, I hate my job.

I suppose there are a few who claim to love what they do, but let's stick with the vast majority of us.

Few people would argue with me if I said work sucks.

In fact, the Bible says work sucks.

Of course, it says it in a far more eloquent way.

Here's how scripture puts it Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall bring it forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground.

This is your whole life.

This wasn't just Adam.

This was us too.

This passed right through to us.

Till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Fancy, speak for work sucks.

This verse clearly indicates that before sin there would have been no such thing as work.

Now let me clarify: Adam was assigned, as you remember, the task of dressing and keeping the garden.

Of course, you remember that.

Yes, Adam was the gardener of the garden of Eden.

Even at the very beginning, there were certain tasks that would be necessary to keep the garden flourishing and plentiful.

But let me assure you, anything Adam may have been assigned to do before sin would have given him great joy to perform.

Yes, it was employment, but it sure wasn't work.

Sin changed everything.

That is my point.

That has been my point for about a two months.

You can't ignore sin.

If you ignore sin, you miss the entire point of the Bible.

No wonder people don't want to study Genesis, because Genesis tells us what sinful creatures we are, number one, and what we're going to have to suffer because we're sinful creatures.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake.

In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field in the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground.

Three of the most enduring verses in all of Scripture.

Listen to me.

The answer to all of our pain and all of our suffering to this very day can be directly traced to right here.

Now, before moving on, I want to remind you to realize that the entire Bible is talking about the same thing.

The entire Bible is the gospel, is the good news.

I know right now it doesn't feel like it, but it is.

It's good news and it's the good news.

In other words, generally speaking, it's good news, but more specifically, the good news, the gospel, the same gospel as is found at the very beginning of the New Testament.

That gospel and this gospel are the same gospel.

Verse 20, and Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

We'll deal with that in a second.

Verse 21.

This is the one I want to point out.

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them.

That's the gospel.

You want to hear the gospel again?

Verse 21.

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them.

They're the ones that sinned.

God is the one that covered it.

That's the gospel.

John, I don't see Jesus' name anywhere in those two verses.

How can this be the gospel?

You may not see his name, but you can sure see his story.

But you have to look for it.

You have to accept a number of things.

You have to accept that you are born a sinner.

You have to accept there's no way to escape that in yourself.

Once you accept those things, then you can see the gospel in Genesis 3.21.

That's why I've been hammering away, hammering away, hammering away at the fact that this life is not what is meant, it was meant to be.

But God wants it to return to that.

But we have to get some things straight first.

You have to accept that you need a rescue.

Otherwise, you'll never put the coat of skins on.

God will have slain an animal and it would lay next to you and you would freeze to death.

You would die not putting on the coats of skins that God provided you.

It's the gospel.

It's not going to jump right out at you, but it's here.

So what's happened so far?

We're not going to go all the way back to the beginning, but we will go back to man's beginning.

And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

Now, when we were studying this particular verse, we mentioned the fact that although this is one of the most, if not the most, incredible statements in the Bible, we're not really sure what it means.

God made us in his image.

And likeness, yes, but how so?

As we discussed before, there are some who say, well, this just means we look like God.

I kid you not, that is a theory.

I don't think many of us find much value in it, especially since the Bible, especially God Himself in the form of His Son, says over in John's Gospel, chapter 4, verse 24, God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

God doesn't have an appearance, so to speak.

So it's kind of tough to say that we look like him, since, well, what does a spirit actually look like?

We're body, he's spirit.

So as you remember, after we rejected that theory, we turn to Adam Clark, who said, quote, of course you remember all this.

You probably could, you know, say it from memory with me.

What is here said, what is here said refers to Adam's soul.

God is holy, just, wise, good, and perfect.

So must the soul be that sprang from him.

There could be in it nothing impure, unjust, ignorant, evil, low, base, mean, or vile.

It was created after the image of God, and that image, Saint Paul tells us, consisted in righteousness, true holiness, and knowledge.

My point is that God's intent was not that mankind be a sinner.

It sounds simple and obvious, but God wanted Adam to be like himself: holy, just, wise, good, and perfect, to use Adam Clark's words again.

God did that.

God created a sinless creature in the form of Adam.

That was his plan.

That was his purpose.

And by the way, my friends, when God had you in mind, it was in the same way.

God before the foundation of the world thought of you and I as sinless.

Listen, I'll say it for the one millionth time.

God's purpose for us was to be his companions who would then spread his glory over the earth.

And who knows where else from there.

But the only way we were going to be able to do that, the only way that could work is if it all went according to his plan.

And the most crucial part of that plan was that humans would not be tainted with sin, because sin would stand between man and God, block man's access to God.

There could be no cooperation between a holy God and a sinful anything, but in this case, a sinful man.

This is why God is working so hard.

This is why he sacrificed so much.

This is why he's given up so much, so that he could return us to this plan he has always had.

That's why God made man in his image and after his likeness in the beginning.

Holy, just, wise, good, and perfect.

And now he is going to return you to that.

Because he slain an animal to cover your sins.

It's the gospel.

And then from Adam, God created Eve.

The only two people who ever lived up to that point were at creation, sin free by design, so that God and man could interact with one another in companionship and purpose.

But then Adam brought sin upon himself, and that effectively stopped any possible interaction between God and man, at least the kind God had designed.

This sin barrier stood in the way of God's plans.

And just as a side, sin still does that.

But I hope you're understanding what I've been saying.

God will not be defeated.

So he planned to do something about this sin problem.

Well, what did he do?

You might be asking.

Well, the answer to that question we will focus on next time.

But before we go, I do want to cover one of the most subtly significant verses in all the Bible.

Now I've said to you before that I loathe when Christian preachers and teachers resort to hyperbole in order to draw the audience in.

I don't think we need to exaggerate the facts of scripture to make them interesting.

So rest assured, when I say this next verse is crucial, it truly is.

I'm not embellishing.

And I'm not just trying to keep you awake.

I mean it.

I'm looking at you.

Verse 20.

A verse very few of us have ever given a second look.

And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

Now let's go back to some review, starting at the beginning.

No moaning, this is going to be short.

As you remember, the world is recreated.

God puts in all the seas and land and sky and plants and animals.

Then he creates Adam.

And then from Adam's rib, he creates Eve.

Now, let me remind you of a significant and applicable point.

I'll read it.

This is how Adam reacts following the realization that God created woman from him, from Adam.

Genesis 2, 23.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

So what we read from verse 20 of chapter 3 was a renaming process.

Adam's wife was at first called woman or Esha in the Hebrew from Esh meaning man.

Esh means man, Esha means woman.

Adam at first called her Esha because, as he said, she comes from Ish.

Woman came from man, so her name was woman.

Eve was not her name at first.

In fact, the first time the name Eve even comes up is here in verse 20.

Did you realize that?

Up to this point, she was really only known as woman.

Nothing wrong with that name.

It's not a disparaging name, but it's not a name we ever associate with the wife of Adam, do we?

Now I admit I've been calling her Eve this whole time.

Well, I was technically inaccurate.

I hope you'll forgive me for that.

Adam's wife is not known as Eve, listen to me, until after the cursings.

That is an important fact to keep in mind.

The fact that she was given the name Eve after God dealt with their sin.

Verse 20, and and Adam called his wife, his wife's name Eve, because she was the she was the mother of all living.

The word because is crucial here.

But let me finish my recap.

So Adam is given his helpmate.

He names her woman.

Woman is tempted by the devil.

She falls for the temptation, and she gets her husband to fall for the temptation as well.

God discovers their disobedience.

I used the word discover, but that too is inaccurate.

God knew all along what was going to happen.

The Bible makes that abundantly clear in many places.

I'll just quote one, but it's probably the most important one: Revelation 13, 8.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.

Our Lord was designated the redeemer before there was anything to redeem, because God knew it was going to happen.

Don't ask me how.

I have no idea.

But Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation, meaning before there was a structure to the world, he paid the price for sin before sin existed.

He was slain before his slaying was payment for sin, and it happened before anyone was around to sin.

Mind-blowing.

I wish we had more time to get into it, but we have to keep moving.

Back to the quick review.

God confronts Adam about his disobedience.

He gets statements from Adam and woman and pronounces his judgments and at the same time lays down the first and most significant prophecy of the whole Bible.

You already know that prophecy, but if you don't, I'll remind you in a minute.

And then, after God pronounces those judgments, and then Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

Names in the Bible are significant.

Names are almost always a part of the story.

Whenever the Bible tells you someone's name or tells you that someone named something, that is a clue to pay attention to.

Names are to me landmarks in scripture.

They designate a milestone of some sort.

Now, I could give you many examples, but I want to wrap this up.

Listen to me.

Here in verse 20, we are told why Adam decided to call his wife Eve.

This is a moment of naming.

This is something we need to pay attention to.

We have to understand there is something significant that is about to happen because a name was given to someone.

Adam named his wife Eve, and we are told it was because she was the mother of all living.

As I've said before, Adam was an amazing man.

He has, as far as we know, only one blot upon his name.

Yes, it's a big blot, a blot that has had horrifying consequences.

But that aside, and I'm not trying to be funny here, I mean this, that one sin aside, the only sin we know of that he ever committed.

Listen, we seem to all love Abraham and Moses and some of the others, but all of those other famous Bible characters sinned constantly.

Adam didn't.

Abraham, when he was Abram, almost lost his wife, whose name was Sarai at the time, because he lied and said she was his sister just to save his own skin.

He was afraid that because she was so beautiful that other men would want to kill him so they could have her for themselves.

In fact, he did that twice.

And he got rebuked by a heathen for it.

A heathen king rebuked him for that.

How about Moses?

He murdered a man.

Did you know that?

If you if you watch the Charlton Heston, you know that.

Moses murdered a man.

He once disobeyed God and struck the rock twice.

Both these men and almost every other revered Bible character committed sin after sin.

As far as we know, the fruit thing was the only sin Adam ever committed.

And as I've already pointed out, Adam is credited with other righteous actions.

But here in verse 20, in my opinion, is the most significant.

And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

Though you get this hint by the phrase at the end of that verse, the word Eve is translating the Hebrew word chavah, which basically means, get this, life giver.

You know, we back to Abraham for a second.

We often call Abraham the father of faith, but let me say, listen, I love Abraham, but I'm trying to make a point about Adam.

We call Abraham the father of faith, but nowhere is he called that in Scripture, to my knowledge.

Therefore, I think I'm safe when I argue that Adam is really the father of faith.

Listen to me.

When he renamed his wife Eve, it was a direct response to what God had said.

Eve became Eve because Adam believed that God would do as he said he would.

Listen, as far as Adam was concerned, the only one who ever gave life, the only life giver he had ever known up to that point was God.

That's all Adam ever knew.

And yet he gave Eve the name life giver.

One of our very astute Bible study members correctly pointed out some time ago that neither Adam nor Eve in the beginning knew what parents were.

They didn't come from parents, they didn't know what they were.

That's why we said at that time that Adam could not have been the originator of the statement found in verse 24 of Genesis 2.

Let me quote this real quick so we can race to the end of this lesson.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

Adam would not have said that since he didn't know what a mother and father was.

He didn't know that anyone else gave life except God.

As far as he'd ever seen, God was the one giving life.

There's no reason to believe that Adam would say this then.

And the Bible doesn't say this was Adam's reasoning.

It wasn't, it couldn't have been.

This was obviously a statement placed here by Moses, the author of Genesis.

It was sort of a footnote based on what happened.

No time for any further details.

What's your point, John?

When Adam named Eve the life giver, he really didn't even have a clear idea of what that actually meant.

He only called her that because God said she would bear seed.

She didn't bear seed yet, but God said she would.

And so he said, Then you're a life giver.

Here's the prophecy again.

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Again, he must have had no clue what a seed was.

But he trusted God.

And to him, if God said she would bear a seed, then by golly, that's what she would do.

And he put that faith into action by calling his wife Hava, life giver.

Listen.

Having faith is so important to God that it's the only connection you can make between yourself and the Savior.

You can't touch him, you can't hear him, you can't smell him, you can only believe.

That's the strength and the power of faith, and it pleases God.

When when Adam named Eve life giver, it was a pure statement of faith.

And listen, having faith means having faith without knowledge.

I'm not saying that God believes in blind faith, but Adam sure showed it.

He named his wife life giver, and he made it with no knowledge of what God was even talking about.

He trusted God's word only.

He didn't sit down and figure out, no, how is God going to do this?

This doesn't make any sense to me.

God said Eve is going to bear a seed, meaning she's going to have children.

I don't even know what that means, but I believe him.

He didn't try to work it out.

He didn't go to the blackboard and figure it out.

Okay, gather around, everybody.

Let's talk a little bit about this seed stuff.

What do you think?

What do you guys think?

Should we believe God?

None of that.

He said, You're now life giver, because God said you're life giver.

And almost no one gives him credit for it.

Well, I do.

And I thank God for this testimony because it proves what the Bible says the rest of the way through.

Faith is highly valued by God.

Now I want to go on, but we're way over.

Maybe one of these days we'll come back to it.

But for now, let's leave it there and continue with verse 21 next time.

We hope this study has blessed you.

God's word is a great treasure, and it's our belief that a thorough, purposeful study of it will bring all of God's children to an understanding of his eternal plan of redemption.

It is our prayer that this will be so for all of our listeners.

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